She understands quite a bit conceptually - how our bodies work (most organs, muscles, bones, red vs. white blood cells), how the Moon was created, what the atmosphere is like on Venus, why we see the moon in different phases (use balls and flashlights!), why the sky is blue, how trees reproduce, why magnets attract (as much as I do anyway...), why balloons go up, why pancakes rise, and lots more.
I'm starting to worry here that your daughter understands more than me.
All I can say is: why won't people learn from history?
Almost 10 years ago now there was a little app some of you may remember called Napster. It offered mp3 downloads that, at the time, could take half an hour or more to complete. But it was worth it, because you couldn't get the music anywhere else (for free, anyway). Napster got closed down, but everyone just moved their collections over to Kazaa, Limewire, BearShare, etc etc. A few years later, the music industry catches up and realises that users are resilient and know what they want. This the iTunes Music Store (and its rivals) were born.
Now we're in a faster internet age, the same is happening with video. People want on-demand content. If someone tells me about a funny Colbert clip, I'm not going to check the TV guide for a repeat showing. I'll stick it into YouTube and watch it there. YouTube delete the Colbert clips? I'll watch it on DailyMation. Repeat ad infinitum.
Myspace can block out videos but people will find a way, and continue to find a way until the networks realise that in 2007, for the first time, the audience is starting to control the media.
Interesting, but we need to consider the human memory. Do we really 'forget' things? Or do we simply lose the 'links' to the memory, akin to deleting a file but not emptying it from the Recycling Bin. 'Psychics' like Derren Brown are able to get people to unlock memories they forgot they had - it doesn't mean we've forgotten the details themselves, just how to access them. We're not so different from computers after all.
I agree. I'm rewriting my site to include a few fancy Web 2.0 features (really nothing more than some Lightbox stuff and perhaps a digg-style counter/votebox thing) and it's been a mission to find a lightweight framework. I tried a combo of Prototype and Scriptaculous but was horrified at the sluggish loadtimes, so moved onto MooTools which is much faster and achieves similar results.
Believe me I totally understand how much fun it is to have fun with a group of people (insert your own pun here). I'm just speaking having played GH as a group and played with a *real* band - I know which one I prefer.
True, but you could just as easily apply that logic to getting a new game and sucking at it and giving up. The reward here is that you can be "that guy" at parties who gets out an acoustic guitar (everyone has one somewhere) and plays a few classics, rather than being all "just wait till I get my PS3, cables, converter jack, games and controllers and I'll show you guys how to rock!".
I think your latter point about differing reasons is fair when applied to just Guitar Hero, but the notion of an entire band should really be 'real'.
As a musician who plays in bands (and, admittedly, sucks at Guitar Hero despite being able to blaze a few sweet solos on my real axe), this is kinda sad. The amount of money totalled to buy this game, console and peripherals could just be spent on buying cheapo instruments (like most musicians begin with) and forming a real band where the songs you play aren't controlled by a game. It's much more rewarding and has just done so much for me. Imagine forming a console-based band, it's the musical version of cyber sex.
The sad part here is how backward the Church is being (assuming that those 48% are all God-fearing Christians). Rather than trying to fill the gaps in science or offer alternatives for the trickier aspects (where did the Big Bang come from? What was there before? etc), Christianity (or its public face) tries to send us back to medieval concepts. Their mistake is denying clearly factual evidence (the Earth is 6000 years old? Ancient fossils are there to test our faith? etc) rather than moving with the times and working alongside scientific theory and using it as a backup for Christian beliefs rather than a contender.
Is this our future? Our corpses will be discovered in thousands of years, only for science to experiment and announce that our mothers were just Eurotrash? For shame, anthropology.
If Adobe release some kind of program to detect doctored images, I anticipate a new trend for artistically-minded geeks: reverse-Photoshopping. Instead of forum contests to produce realistic-looking fakes in Photoshop, people will be out with their cameras trying to capture unrealistic-looking originals in efforts to "beat" Adobe's tool and have it label a real photo 'doctored', purely to gain kudos from fellow photographers.
If (as the grandparent) you have to spend 75% of your ram to just start with OS without anything productive running, there's something seriously wrong with your setup. In this case, it'd be because the OS is way too wasteful.
Yep.
What's that quote about PC owners being far too accepting of errors (compared to, say, a car owner). If your car consumed tons of fuel just idling, you wouldn't settle for it, even if you had the money to afford it. It's inefficiency and it's unfortunate that buying another OS isn't as simple as buying another car.
Re:Easier way to colonize the universe
on
Interstellar Ark
·
· Score: 1
That's true, I don't think the multigenerational solution really works either. What about the good old cryogenics option? At least then we know we can personally deal with the people who will be colonising, rather than hoping the generations evolve correctly or that the computer raises our interstellar offspring into a class that can survive a new world.
Re:Easier way to colonize the universe
on
Interstellar Ark
·
· Score: 1
So wait, you're saying we essentially send a baby-making kit into space? So what happens when these embryos are fertilised and 'born'? The computer somehow brings them up?
Calling the results of this "human" is pretty wack; they would have absolutely no similarity to us beyond physical appearance. No amount of research here could prepare them (particularly newborns!) for life on a new planet and they (presuming it ever got this far) would grow up in completely different circumstances.
Also, these people would have no emotional attachment to us whatsoever; they would never have seen Earth and would only be told (presumably) by this "onboard intelligence". It would really just be the same result as if alien life was discovered somewhere in the universe.
In Prince Of Persia: Warrior Within (PC) there was this bug at the end. You have to follow the Empress through the portal, and it gives you a video clip of her jumping through. It then switches to your view. When I tried to go through, nothing happened. I reloaded and tried again. When I still couldn't do it I went on the Ubisoft website and checked out the support forums. Turned out it's a random bug in the game and when it happens, it also corrupts all your saves so if you go back and reload, the bug is there too. The worst part is that this comes at the very end of the game, because after the portal is the final boss. In the end I had to download some dude's save game and play that, which sucked because he'd developed his character in different ways to mine so it wasn't really "my" Prince finishing the game.
I was so mad at Ubisoft for letting the game ship with such a bug present. I mean, the fact that it wasn't an isolated case or anything just makes it so much worse. Their official FAQ basically said "Try doing X, Y and Z [a ton of crap that did nothing], and if this doesn't work, restart your game from scratch". This is as extreme a "wall" in gaming as I can think of.
Slashdot Mirror
Moral? Er, doesn't it just mean, "the police"? Sharing copyrighted material is a legal matter, it's not like debating the ethics of euthanasia.
I'm starting to worry here that your daughter understands more than me.
All I can say is: why won't people learn from history?
Almost 10 years ago now there was a little app some of you may remember called Napster. It offered mp3 downloads that, at the time, could take half an hour or more to complete. But it was worth it, because you couldn't get the music anywhere else (for free, anyway). Napster got closed down, but everyone just moved their collections over to Kazaa, Limewire, BearShare, etc etc. A few years later, the music industry catches up and realises that users are resilient and know what they want. This the iTunes Music Store (and its rivals) were born.
Now we're in a faster internet age, the same is happening with video. People want on-demand content. If someone tells me about a funny Colbert clip, I'm not going to check the TV guide for a repeat showing. I'll stick it into YouTube and watch it there. YouTube delete the Colbert clips? I'll watch it on DailyMation. Repeat ad infinitum.
Myspace can block out videos but people will find a way, and continue to find a way until the networks realise that in 2007, for the first time, the audience is starting to control the media.
Sure! I assume this means you're willing to be infected with cancer for research purposes - after all, interests of the many...
Interesting, but we need to consider the human memory. Do we really 'forget' things? Or do we simply lose the 'links' to the memory, akin to deleting a file but not emptying it from the Recycling Bin. 'Psychics' like Derren Brown are able to get people to unlock memories they forgot they had - it doesn't mean we've forgotten the details themselves, just how to access them. We're not so different from computers after all.
I agree. I'm rewriting my site to include a few fancy Web 2.0 features (really nothing more than some Lightbox stuff and perhaps a digg-style counter/votebox thing) and it's been a mission to find a lightweight framework. I tried a combo of Prototype and Scriptaculous but was horrified at the sluggish loadtimes, so moved onto MooTools which is much faster and achieves similar results.
You mean the link does go to nude pictures?
Believe me I totally understand how much fun it is to have fun with a group of people (insert your own pun here). I'm just speaking having played GH as a group and played with a *real* band - I know which one I prefer.
True, but you could just as easily apply that logic to getting a new game and sucking at it and giving up. The reward here is that you can be "that guy" at parties who gets out an acoustic guitar (everyone has one somewhere) and plays a few classics, rather than being all "just wait till I get my PS3, cables, converter jack, games and controllers and I'll show you guys how to rock!".
I think your latter point about differing reasons is fair when applied to just Guitar Hero, but the notion of an entire band should really be 'real'.
As a musician who plays in bands (and, admittedly, sucks at Guitar Hero despite being able to blaze a few sweet solos on my real axe), this is kinda sad. The amount of money totalled to buy this game, console and peripherals could just be spent on buying cheapo instruments (like most musicians begin with) and forming a real band where the songs you play aren't controlled by a game. It's much more rewarding and has just done so much for me. Imagine forming a console-based band, it's the musical version of cyber sex.
Come on, article author, would it have killed ya to say "lay cables"?
The sad part here is how backward the Church is being (assuming that those 48% are all God-fearing Christians). Rather than trying to fill the gaps in science or offer alternatives for the trickier aspects (where did the Big Bang come from? What was there before? etc), Christianity (or its public face) tries to send us back to medieval concepts. Their mistake is denying clearly factual evidence (the Earth is 6000 years old? Ancient fossils are there to test our faith? etc) rather than moving with the times and working alongside scientific theory and using it as a backup for Christian beliefs rather than a contender.
Is this our future? Our corpses will be discovered in thousands of years, only for science to experiment and announce that our mothers were just Eurotrash? For shame, anthropology.
Couldn't you just cut out the middleman and turn dirt into the commercial goods you seek? Take that, tax!
"At any time, it's possible to walk into one of Second Life's two data centers, pat one of the rack-mounted servers..."
Who says they'll stop at patting? What if they cripple the servers?! It sounds like Linden need to hire some security.
If Adobe release some kind of program to detect doctored images, I anticipate a new trend for artistically-minded geeks: reverse-Photoshopping. Instead of forum contests to produce realistic-looking fakes in Photoshop, people will be out with their cameras trying to capture unrealistic-looking originals in efforts to "beat" Adobe's tool and have it label a real photo 'doctored', purely to gain kudos from fellow photographers.
Yep.
What's that quote about PC owners being far too accepting of errors (compared to, say, a car owner). If your car consumed tons of fuel just idling, you wouldn't settle for it, even if you had the money to afford it. It's inefficiency and it's unfortunate that buying another OS isn't as simple as buying another car.
"iTunes Uncovers Musical Hoax"
It's become self-aware!!
That's true, I don't think the multigenerational solution really works either. What about the good old cryogenics option? At least then we know we can personally deal with the people who will be colonising, rather than hoping the generations evolve correctly or that the computer raises our interstellar offspring into a class that can survive a new world.
So wait, you're saying we essentially send a baby-making kit into space? So what happens when these embryos are fertilised and 'born'? The computer somehow brings them up?
Calling the results of this "human" is pretty wack; they would have absolutely no similarity to us beyond physical appearance. No amount of research here could prepare them (particularly newborns!) for life on a new planet and they (presuming it ever got this far) would grow up in completely different circumstances.
Also, these people would have no emotional attachment to us whatsoever; they would never have seen Earth and would only be told (presumably) by this "onboard intelligence". It would really just be the same result as if alien life was discovered somewhere in the universe.
I, for one, welcome our robotic probe overlords.
It took me about 8 attempts loading this page, fighting this error:
/.!
"503 Service Unavailable
The service is not available. Please try again later."
I was paranoid they got
Good point; I guess this is millionaire's guilt. "Oh, but if I throw a bunch of money at it, it'll counteract the problems I've caused!".
In Prince Of Persia: Warrior Within (PC) there was this bug at the end. You have to follow the Empress through the portal, and it gives you a video clip of her jumping through. It then switches to your view. When I tried to go through, nothing happened. I reloaded and tried again. When I still couldn't do it I went on the Ubisoft website and checked out the support forums. Turned out it's a random bug in the game and when it happens, it also corrupts all your saves so if you go back and reload, the bug is there too. The worst part is that this comes at the very end of the game, because after the portal is the final boss. In the end I had to download some dude's save game and play that, which sucked because he'd developed his character in different ways to mine so it wasn't really "my" Prince finishing the game.
I was so mad at Ubisoft for letting the game ship with such a bug present. I mean, the fact that it wasn't an isolated case or anything just makes it so much worse. Their official FAQ basically said "Try doing X, Y and Z [a ton of crap that did nothing], and if this doesn't work, restart your game from scratch". This is as extreme a "wall" in gaming as I can think of.
In actual fact, it breaks the search!
r y=%22the+500%2C000+lines+of+code+I+need+to+finish+ by+friday+all+the+stupid+extra+features+the+PHB+wa nted+after+we+had+set+a+deadline+based+on+the+orig inal+spec%22&bSubmint=Search
http://search.allthecode.com/search/results?zeque
Maybe we're being told something.