I think the simplest solution that protects consumer privacy, prevents MMORPG companies from collecting Tax IDs and issuing W-4s is to have a virtual sales tax. If indeed these sales do constitute legitimate income for real people, then I think SL should simply bargain with the IRS and say "there's no good way to tax people who cash in from their virtual earnings, so we'll just collect a tax in Linden dollars, convert it to real currency, and send you a check and call it good."
Sounds like the easiest solution at this point. It also prevents real governments from getting too involved in what are essentially virtual foreign nations. If we can keep taxation issues at arms length like this, I think it's a good way to start addressing the issue without raising a terrible ballyhoo.
No need for alleging here. When you go to IBM's Site for Mainframes, you see that the tag line under the photo is "Breakthrough Economics, Security, and Energy Efficiency." They are the three points from the three videos. It doesn't get any more plain than that.
As a sysadmin, it should be easy to get the praise and admiration you deserve tomorrow. Simply revoke the user privileges of every employee, then simply ask that they come see you to have them restored if they are having internet issues. Have them thank you for your hard work, and then magically their computers all work again! Everyone at the company will realize how awesome you are and really appreciate you!
It went over great at the last place I worked, right before they fired me.
"Because we do not understand the brain very well we are constantly tempted to use the latest technology as a model for trying to understand it. In my childhood we were always assured that the brain was a telephone switchboard. ('What else could it be?') I was amused to see that Sherrington, the great British neuroscientist, thought that the brain worked like a telegraph system. Freud often compared the brain to hydraulic and electro-magnetic systems. Leibniz compared it to a mill, and I am told some of the ancient Greeks thought the brain functions like a catapult. At present, obviously, the metaphor is the digital computer." -John R Searls.
After reading this quote, I have doubts this simulation will succeed in accurately simulating the brain. However, I'm sure it will further our concepts on other important topics, so I'm not opposed to it. Best of Luck!
While the article was interesting, you are absolutely right. I was wondering why the author didn't mention Nintendo at all. They have a great collection of not just icons, but mascots. Mario is perhaps the mascot of all time. He has moved into so many genres Close to him is Link an the Legend of Zelda series. It will be (one of) the flagship titles for the Wii this fall. It has a huge following and is more than just a recognizable face. This mascot is the reason many fanboys remain loyal to Nintendo. There are other mascots (Metroid, Starfox, etc.), but some might debate if they are icons or not, so I'll just throw them out there for ideas.
Nintendo has this icon thing down. Somehow Mario has been trendy (which the article stressed is bad for mascots), but I suppose his trendiness comes from retaining his character in every new game he inhabits. Perhaps that's the secret then to a flexible mascot. Link is pretty well stuck in Hyrule and Smash-Brothers-type games. Mario can go anywhere.
I think this could be good for gamers who haven't developed the skills to press the buttons precisely (the "button-mashers"). Normally RPG-type games have some kind of training so that you can learn every move, so I assume this would be different from that.
An AI coach would have to be more than Navi from Ocarina of Time too. In theory, it could replace talking to tons of townspeople for clues and hints, annoying fairies, and the like. I think I would use it if I got stuck in some place and didn't know what to do, but that really doesn't happen that often with current-gen games. There's enough memory that characters can give you all the information you need.
The catch for me is that we already have the townsfolk, the fairy, et. al. They work well enough and add to the environmental realism/fantasy in ways that a coach wouldn't. Star Wars wouldn't be nearly as cool if Obi Wan was always just over Luke's shoulder telling him what to do.
Having a coach would either need to be extremely detailed in its instructions, like a walkthrough. The only reason I might use it would be for random sidequests that seem to have dead ends. But for that I usually go to an online walkthrough. They're never essential for beating the game (hence "sidequest"), so I don't think it would be practical for most gamers. It would only work for those too young and uneducated to understand the puzzles or for the absolutely new gamer. Other than that, I don't forsee it being all that useful.
I'm obviously not the normal college student, but Gonzaga University uses Ruckus and I've used it a little. Generally I listen to my modest collection on my laptop almost exclusively. I have an iPod Shuffle that is fine for what I need it for. I don't use it nearly as often as many of my piers. I use iTMS for music I want to own and will rip it from m4a/AAC to mp3 as necessary. For music that I want to listen to but don't want to necessarily pay for (like 80's Christian Rock or early Electronica) I have been lucky to find it on Ruckus and listen to it on there.
I don't really use P2P networks because I just don't have the desire for tons of music. Maybe I'm just weird. That would explain my addiction to/.
I don't know about other/.ers, but I've never had to call tech support for a game console, nor have I ever needed to use the warranty. As far as I can tell, voiding your warranty is only a nominal loss, nothing more. Most people who are thinking about modding their XBox won't care about the warranty--they know full well they are voiding it. They probably have the connections to fix whatever they break. I guarantee MS doesn't.
I'm really not surprised. With people going online not only to post their own information on lots of websites like Myspace, Facebook, eHarmony, and other social networks, but also generally looking for other people's personal information online as well, we just generally have less concern over privacy. People post blogs about the most intimate parts of their lives and think nothing of it. Others read those blogs, watch and post private videos, view and post possibly inciminating photos. People just generally care less about privacy today.
But they do care a lot about security. It's not just a culture of terrorism, but it is a big push today everywhere. It's more of a culture of fear that society perpetuates on itself. I recommend reading Corey Robin's Fear for more about this.
I could see some benefits to a cashless society. First, you no longer have people hoarding currency here or abroad. The loose coins and change that you have in your car, in your sofa, in your pocket, etc. would all be in an account. Here they could all earn interest. Your money would make more money more efficiently. Given it's probably a trivial amount, but still, better than nothing.
It would also be good for international economics since sending money out of the country would be as easy as emailing. The electronic exchange would just run it through an exchange-rate program and you wouldn't have to worry about having to change physical dollars into physical pesos, euros, yen, or yuan.
On the other hand, people who do use credit cards etc. instead of cash tend not to be so responsible with their spending. America is saving at an all-time low, and part of that is because it is so easy to whip out the plastic and pay, not thinking about how much you have left. I could see this system in France leading to great personal debt.
Also, I'm worried about having all of my cash in electronic form--doesn't it kind of depend on electricity? right now money only depends on the durability of the paper or the metal of the coins. Physical currency will last hundreds of years and in all circumstances. But if the power goes out, or your battery dies, you're out of luck. That could be solved with some kind of universal charger for all cellphones or electronic wallets, but still, the problem is there.
Lastly, I'd be worried about security. Identity theft is huge already. I don't want someone just grabbing my cell phone while I'm making a call and running away with it. How would I report it stolen? I certainly can't call the cell phone company and cancel my plan. And then, how do I get to start spending money again? Do I have to go out and buy a new cell phone? It just seems like it has too much to worry about.
I have experienced the dreaded update sounds as you describe. If you're looking for a service that doesn't interfere, I recommend T-Mobile. I have that phone on regularly and I never get interference with it.
When my friends come over and have Nokia phones (I'm not sure who the provider is, but I think it's AT&T) then it gets quite annoying.
T-Mobile should solve your problems
(full disclosure: I do not work for T-Mobile or Nokia)
What I wonder about is if this woman is able to not see. To put it another way, is the camera always on? Can she turn it off to go to sleep, or does she have to cover it? And does it require a power source? If so, how did they do it? Some technical specs on this would be awesome.
On the plus side, she could probably watch a solar eclipse without special glasses. That would be awesome.
The event is scheduled to happen in June, to coincide with that country's launch of Ghost Recon, among other titles.
Japan doesn't need or want a FPS game like Ghost Recon. What they want is Brain Training and Nintendogs. They want Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts. They want Zelda and Mario.
If the second launch doesn't include any new genres, then I expect it to succeed as much as the first one. That is to say, not at all.
"Not everybody has broadband or will have broadband for quite a while."
Sure, but most people are going to have the Hi-Def TVs that make the blu-ray component useful. I don't have any numbers, but I would imagine more people have cable/DSL than HDTVs. That's just what I think though.
"Clearly, you are not going to use a keynote by the head of first party studios to announce the price of PlayStation 3. I don't think anybody was surprised yesterday when I neglected to include that slide in my deck."
Maybe not surprised, but disappointed certainly. While there may be smaller concerns for consumers right now, the biggest one (and one that will affect every consumer and their wallet) is the price. That little tidbit of news probably would have caused more articles, blogs, and rumors on the web than anything that was in the GDC keynote.
here is the home page of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal (in English. Also available in French). It looks like they deal exclusively with discrimination cases as defined under the Canadian Human Rights Act.
I can understand discrimination, but is free speech discrimination? Does having a website calling for hate and attacks against Jews, Blacks, and Muslims, count as discrimination? I'm not sure it does.
I'm all for Human Rights. But I'm not for censorship--especially when the government might find ME to be the one discriminating.
This doesn't look so good for Microsoft. If towns (or businesses) are still using Windows 2000, and only migrating to XP this year, how in the world are they going to find people who are going to adopt Vista? The world is still catching up to XP--we don't need yet another version of Windows to create even more distance between where Microsoft is and where many companies are.
"The primary driver behind expanding the reach of IE7 to Windows XP was security," and again, "The additional functionality is only one half of the equation; the other half is security."
Hmm... I wonder where they got the idea that IE wasn't secure enough? *cough*Firefox*cough*
I guess competition is good, since now people know what they are missing. Finally someone is, in a small way, asking Microsoft to step up the quality of their products.
You are a brave soul for admitting you work in Redmond on/. and for that I tip my hat to you.
If it is indeed true that it is hard to play games that are designed for HD on non-HD TVs ("Many games such as Project Gotham Racing 3 is[sic] very difficult to play ona[sic] normal tv screen"), and most people now still have non-HD TVs, doesn't that imply bad sales for the 360? If most of the market will play games that the user has difficulty seeing, then what which is cheaper--buying a new TV to go with the game system, or getting a different system?
Seems like this is a point to Nintendo on this match. Their games will look good with what people have now, boosting sales over those whose games do not look good with what people own.
The article isn't about Microsoft trying to look smaller. It is about microsoft looking less American-centered. Since 1/3 of its business comes from outside the US, it only makes sense to start looking like Microsoft cares about each country that it sells in. It wants people to believe it cares about issues facing each country and region, not just American consumers far far away.
Kudos to those who have posted similar replies. Hopefully people will read these enough to get the message. Or perhaps this just proves that most of the/. community would rather read what they want than what is on the page.
(note: this might be a repeat, but I haven't been able to read 200+ comments)
It is very messy trying to deal with rating articles based on the number of comments. Certainly a large number does not directly correlate with quality comments. So I think the whole issue of expanding and contracting articles based on comments should be approached in a different way.
If an article does approach some comment benchmark, perhaps we can just add an icon into the title, or make articles without body text render in bold or something along those lines, and then add "popular" as a new section.
This solution would allow people to find articles that have a lot of comments easily and help users navigate to those articles that they might not read for any other reason. This also prevents the page from being dictated by commenters rather than the editors. This isn't Digg.com and we don't need the users to mod up or down various articles. The editors serve that purpose just fine for me.
I like the new design, but hope that you can find a good work-around for the visual impact issues of the grey articles.
Slashdot Mirror
I think the simplest solution that protects consumer privacy, prevents MMORPG companies from collecting Tax IDs and issuing W-4s is to have a virtual sales tax. If indeed these sales do constitute legitimate income for real people, then I think SL should simply bargain with the IRS and say "there's no good way to tax people who cash in from their virtual earnings, so we'll just collect a tax in Linden dollars, convert it to real currency, and send you a check and call it good." Sounds like the easiest solution at this point. It also prevents real governments from getting too involved in what are essentially virtual foreign nations. If we can keep taxation issues at arms length like this, I think it's a good way to start addressing the issue without raising a terrible ballyhoo.
It went over great at the last place I worked, right before they fired me.
After reading this quote, I have doubts this simulation will succeed in accurately simulating the brain. However, I'm sure it will further our concepts on other important topics, so I'm not opposed to it. Best of Luck!
Nintendo has this icon thing down. Somehow Mario has been trendy (which the article stressed is bad for mascots), but I suppose his trendiness comes from retaining his character in every new game he inhabits. Perhaps that's the secret then to a flexible mascot. Link is pretty well stuck in Hyrule and Smash-Brothers-type games. Mario can go anywhere.
An AI coach would have to be more than Navi from Ocarina of Time too. In theory, it could replace talking to tons of townspeople for clues and hints, annoying fairies, and the like. I think I would use it if I got stuck in some place and didn't know what to do, but that really doesn't happen that often with current-gen games. There's enough memory that characters can give you all the information you need.
The catch for me is that we already have the townsfolk, the fairy, et. al. They work well enough and add to the environmental realism/fantasy in ways that a coach wouldn't. Star Wars wouldn't be nearly as cool if Obi Wan was always just over Luke's shoulder telling him what to do.
Having a coach would either need to be extremely detailed in its instructions, like a walkthrough. The only reason I might use it would be for random sidequests that seem to have dead ends. But for that I usually go to an online walkthrough. They're never essential for beating the game (hence "sidequest"), so I don't think it would be practical for most gamers. It would only work for those too young and uneducated to understand the puzzles or for the absolutely new gamer. Other than that, I don't forsee it being all that useful.
I don't really use P2P networks because I just don't have the desire for tons of music. Maybe I'm just weird. That would explain my addiction to /.
That's no moon... It's a Space Station!
I don't know about other /.ers, but I've never had to call tech support for a game console, nor have I ever needed to use the warranty. As far as I can tell, voiding your warranty is only a nominal loss, nothing more. Most people who are thinking about modding their XBox won't care about the warranty--they know full well they are voiding it. They probably have the connections to fix whatever they break. I guarantee MS doesn't.
But they do care a lot about security. It's not just a culture of terrorism, but it is a big push today everywhere. It's more of a culture of fear that society perpetuates on itself. I recommend reading Corey Robin's Fear for more about this.
It would also be good for international economics since sending money out of the country would be as easy as emailing. The electronic exchange would just run it through an exchange-rate program and you wouldn't have to worry about having to change physical dollars into physical pesos, euros, yen, or yuan.
On the other hand, people who do use credit cards etc. instead of cash tend not to be so responsible with their spending. America is saving at an all-time low, and part of that is because it is so easy to whip out the plastic and pay, not thinking about how much you have left. I could see this system in France leading to great personal debt.
Also, I'm worried about having all of my cash in electronic form--doesn't it kind of depend on electricity? right now money only depends on the durability of the paper or the metal of the coins. Physical currency will last hundreds of years and in all circumstances. But if the power goes out, or your battery dies, you're out of luck. That could be solved with some kind of universal charger for all cellphones or electronic wallets, but still, the problem is there.
Lastly, I'd be worried about security. Identity theft is huge already. I don't want someone just grabbing my cell phone while I'm making a call and running away with it. How would I report it stolen? I certainly can't call the cell phone company and cancel my plan. And then, how do I get to start spending money again? Do I have to go out and buy a new cell phone? It just seems like it has too much to worry about.
I have experienced the dreaded update sounds as you describe. If you're looking for a service that doesn't interfere, I recommend T-Mobile. I have that phone on regularly and I never get interference with it. When my friends come over and have Nokia phones (I'm not sure who the provider is, but I think it's AT&T) then it gets quite annoying. T-Mobile should solve your problems (full disclosure: I do not work for T-Mobile or Nokia)
On the plus side, she could probably watch a solar eclipse without special glasses. That would be awesome.
Japan doesn't need or want a FPS game like Ghost Recon. What they want is Brain Training and Nintendogs. They want Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts. They want Zelda and Mario.
If the second launch doesn't include any new genres, then I expect it to succeed as much as the first one. That is to say, not at all.
Sure, but most people are going to have the Hi-Def TVs that make the blu-ray component useful. I don't have any numbers, but I would imagine more people have cable/DSL than HDTVs. That's just what I think though.
"Clearly, you are not going to use a keynote by the head of first party studios to announce the price of PlayStation 3. I don't think anybody was surprised yesterday when I neglected to include that slide in my deck."
Maybe not surprised, but disappointed certainly. While there may be smaller concerns for consumers right now, the biggest one (and one that will affect every consumer and their wallet) is the price. That little tidbit of news probably would have caused more articles, blogs, and rumors on the web than anything that was in the GDC keynote.
Here Is The Article
As far as I know, it should be Crucifixion. And it's in the title even! We really need a -1 Spelling/Grammar mod.
I can understand discrimination, but is free speech discrimination? Does having a website calling for hate and attacks against Jews, Blacks, and Muslims, count as discrimination? I'm not sure it does. I'm all for Human Rights. But I'm not for censorship--especially when the government might find ME to be the one discriminating.
This doesn't look so good for Microsoft. If towns (or businesses) are still using Windows 2000, and only migrating to XP this year, how in the world are they going to find people who are going to adopt Vista? The world is still catching up to XP--we don't need yet another version of Windows to create even more distance between where Microsoft is and where many companies are.
Hmm... I wonder where they got the idea that IE wasn't secure enough? *cough*Firefox*cough*
I guess competition is good, since now people know what they are missing. Finally someone is, in a small way, asking Microsoft to step up the quality of their products.
The link is labeled "Cedega 1.5" while the title and summary clearly state it as "Cedega 5.1". Can we fix this please? Thanks.
If it is indeed true that it is hard to play games that are designed for HD on non-HD TVs ("Many games such as Project Gotham Racing 3 is[sic] very difficult to play ona[sic] normal tv screen"), and most people now still have non-HD TVs, doesn't that imply bad sales for the 360? If most of the market will play games that the user has difficulty seeing, then what which is cheaper--buying a new TV to go with the game system, or getting a different system?
Seems like this is a point to Nintendo on this match. Their games will look good with what people have now, boosting sales over those whose games do not look good with what people own.
Kudos to those who have posted similar replies. Hopefully people will read these enough to get the message. Or perhaps this just proves that most of the /. community would rather read what they want than what is on the page.
It is very messy trying to deal with rating articles based on the number of comments. Certainly a large number does not directly correlate with quality comments. So I think the whole issue of expanding and contracting articles based on comments should be approached in a different way.
If an article does approach some comment benchmark, perhaps we can just add an icon into the title, or make articles without body text render in bold or something along those lines, and then add "popular" as a new section.
This solution would allow people to find articles that have a lot of comments easily and help users navigate to those articles that they might not read for any other reason. This also prevents the page from being dictated by commenters rather than the editors. This isn't Digg.com and we don't need the users to mod up or down various articles. The editors serve that purpose just fine for me.
I like the new design, but hope that you can find a good work-around for the visual impact issues of the grey articles.