Emeril Lagasse suffers from the same problem as the article writer. They both think that one ingredient is the key to a winning formula. BAM! Just add some EVOO or in this case turn the difficulty all the way up.
The secret, which isn't a secret at all, is that balanced gameplay is the true Sangreal of gaming. Pitting a newbie against a grizzled Korean veteran in Starcraft isn't going to give anyone a challenge or make them feel like they want to come back to the game again. It's only when the players are evenly matched or only slightly mismatched that gameplay becomes exciting. It is the thrill of being able to beat a game but with enough challenge that victory isn't guaranteed.
One aspect to this is programming the mind itself.
To some extent we already do this naturally with our learning and memory forming cognitive capabilities. Simple programs are easily written to our minds.
THINK ABOUT YOUR BREATHING YOU ARE NOW BREATHING MANUALLY
It will take time to build a language in which we can program more complex behaviors, but I have no doubt it is possible.
So if internet usage is indicative of depression, then it stands to reason that people who are prone to depression (social outcasts for one) would be inordinately engaged in that type of activity. The flow isn't internet leads to depression but rather that depression leads to internet.
All stereotypes have some basis in reality, so if we consider a significant fraction of internet users to be fat, ugly, borderline autistic, Cheetos and Doritos crunching, Mountain Dew swilling, World of Warcraft playing dweebs who used to get beat up in high school, then we can see how an activity that allows relative anonymity and essentially zero repercussions would attract this type of user. In turn, this type of user would tend towards clinical depression due to their social awkwardness and isolation.
I've been personally touched by MPEG LA's patent witch hunt. And not in the good way like Kathleen Fent does.
My brother in law is the CEO of a small LCD monitor company that uses H.264 decoder chips. He buys these chips from a Taiwanese maker who in turn licenses the patent for H.264 decoding from MPEG LA.
But MPEG LA has been spamming everyone and anyone vaguely connected to H.264 encoding or playback or even (in this case) sending files across the intarweb. He is expected to succeed if MPEG LA ever takes this to court since the patent is already licensed by the chip vendor and his agreement with them covers him under its indemnity clause.
However this is a really plain-as-day example of how patent trolls are ruining business for everyone.
I agree on all counts (except the navigation one, but I digress). There is a distinct advantage to using Linux to build Linux-like devices for all the reasons you mentioned. If building an Ubuntu system is your goal (like it is with Sharp's Netwalker), then having those tools and environment working for free in a cross platform way is unbeatable.
I'm looking forward to seeing the performance on the A9 CPUs. WinCE is in a bad way right now without any multi-core support. It's coming soon, and has been for a year or so. In fact, this is Microsoft's Achilles heel in the navigation space.
There are multiple tiers of navigation devices ranging from low-end PNDs to mid to high-end navigation systems from makers like Clarion, Pioneer, and Kenwood all the way to full-fledged Navigation Systems like Ford's Sync. On the low end you'll not find much CE, but in the high end you'll find that CE (Windows Auto/Microsoft Auto) dominates. There isn't any particular reason why this market couldn't swing towards Linux (or QNX, but c'mon) except for inertia, but the market is what it is.
Microsoft is going to have to pull a rabbit out of its hat with WinMo 7 if the platform is to survive. But CE isn't going anywhere, and as long as ARM performance is subpar compared to the equivalent x86 CPU, we won't be seeing Windows Desktop (XP, Vista, Win7) coming to ARM.
I'm only trying to clarify how MS will approach this problem. On the embedded side of the market, they put CE and WinMo up against Linux. It's not Win7 vs Linux there because the processor power is too low to run either OS at a useful speed. Win7 doesn't run at all (easily remedied, I'm sure) and Linux needs to be as barebones as possible (which puts it up against WinCE/Mobile). And the "advantages" of CE vs Linux are well understood by Microsoft's sales and marketing teams.
MS considers iPhone a serious threat. They only recently began considering Android a threat.
But the embedded market is much larger than netbooks. Cellphones are a huge market that MS is trying not to lose its minimal marketshare in. However there are other embedded markets (like projectors and automobile navigation) where it is unmatched.
CE as an OS isn't terrible, despite WinMo. It is Microsoft's embedded OS and it is well designed to compete in that market.
What is being glossed over by many here is that Microsoft doesn't see Netbooks as a standard embedded device but rather a smaller form factor of a laptop PC. Intel's Atom has really opened up this market for Microsoft, and Asus did a lot to get Microsoft involved here. So the difference between Microsoft's vision and ARM's (and Apple's) vision of this market comes down to a difference in device applicability. If ARM CPUs were comparable performance-wise to Intel's offerings, this would be a different story, but the difference is still too great for ARM to compete on that point.
Do you think MS isn't already on this? They have WinCE which is slowly but surely focusing on ARM as the primary platform. They have Windows Mobile which is designed to run *only* on the ARM platform.
They will stress interoperability between device and PC. The ecosystem works (they say) because the two systems are designed to work well with each other. Even things like Vista/Win7 are designed to work with CE-based projector devices. Their strategy extends far beyond Netbooks/Smartbooks and reaches into every single high-function embedded market.
Linux doesn't have the same ability to say something and have it taken as gospel truth. If Linux wants to claim seamless interoperability, the vendors need to put up or shut up.
The real breakthrough in computing will be computers that can replicate themselves. Biological creatures can do this already. Cells replicate constantly, and the totality of this replication is our own existence. If computers could do this on their own, it would be a huge step forward in the development of reliable systems.
College degrees are way overrated. This is coming from someone with multiple degrees from MIT, Harvard, and Oxford.
College degrees have always been worthless the moment you joined the workforce and got your first day of actual working experience. It's always been worthless because the assclown with family connections will get the job over any random summa cum laude. The worthlessness is even worse since anything worth knowing is learned on the job and not in the classroom.
Consider this. Right now we are in a terrible recession. Many people are going back to school because they can't find a paying job. That means that in 3 year's time we will have a huge glut of people with advanced degrees fighting over the same pool of jobs. It's the same as always, only the requirements to play require a higher standard of education.
Or does it? Since experience and personal contacts mean much more than degrees, the earlier you can get a job, the better. Wasting your time in actual school taking actual classes is a net loser compared to getting a cheap diploma from a diploma mill and getting a paying job today.
I spent a lot of time to get my advanced degrees, but I have no illusions about their actual value. My real value comes from my work experience and successes in my field. Degrees aren't worth the paper they are printed on. If you want one, you should do it for yourself, not for a job.
I used to get called every evening several times by unscrupulous companies trying to part me from my money. They expanded from just calling my home to calling me at the office, then calling my family. What started as a polite brief conversation in which I rejected their offer and asked them to stop calling me became a vicious conversation with yelling on each end of the phone. Hanging up had no effect since they simply called me back. Somehow my phone number was marked as Active and I was harassed incessantly by these goons.
But then I found out about opting out and did just that. Now when I get a call from these telemarketing agencies I make sure I get their name and then report them to the local BBB. It's nice to have recourse when I get called now.
So when an author with a handful of books and articles needs to write a single note to Google to tell them to leave them alone, it's not a terribly huge burden. For a bunch of people who make their living *writing*, what's the big deal in saying, "Hey Goog, don't upload my books. Thanks, Chief Breaks Like The Wind"?
While this may have impressive consequences for the NAND market and for end-user storage solutions, there is a much larger problem which everyone is skirting around. It isn't about how NAND can only be used for storage and not for executable ROM like NOR Flash. It isn't about how stuffing more memory into a smaller space will allow for insanely huge SSD drives in devices ranging from cellphones to television sets.
It's about how Intel is going to leverage their CPU monopoly to take over the Flash memory market. They have not been able to make any headway with their StrataFlash due to their lukewarm support and eventual divestiture of the StrongARM CPU series. So by building this new super-efficient NAND solution, they are positioning their Atom CPU as *the* architecture for embedded systems.
If I were ARM and ARM CPU vendors, I'd be very wary and worried.
This is really a case of technology moving too fast for its own good.
The fundamental concept behind Japan's quality is kaizen. This is the constant improvement on existing techniques and technology. By starting with what works, it is simpler to build in very small steps without losing any quality along the way.
However, due to perceived pressures from non-Japanese automakers, companies like Toyota have begun bold initiatives to modernize their cars. The typical automotive embedded system is fairly simple (relatively speaking, of course). There are only a few inputs and only a few outputs and the systems are usually isolated from each other. However, as more features become desired, more interaction between isolated systems becomes a reality. The gas pedal used to only manage the amount of fuel fed to the injection valves. Nowadays it works in tandem with the brake system and suspension to manage tire slippage and traction control.
In this case, Toyota implemented a very complex system without a series of solid intermediate steps. The result is catastrophic failure when unforeseen interactions suddenly arise. If they were slowly adding features, they could immediately pinpoint the problematic interaction. However because they did it all at once they don't have any idea where the problem lies.
It makes me want to buy an American car.
Re:Could someone explain to me
on
Making Sense of ACTA
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
American content will finally die the death that it needs to. I don't know about you but all the good stuff is filmed in other countries anyways.
That's an awfully subjective view of American media. The objective view is that the most popular content worldwide is produced by America.
Say what you want about the quality of "American content", but you'll find that most people will not agree with you.
Don't forget the destabalising influence of self-interested foreigners
The immigrant Jews?
Really, it's stupid. And also in effect in the US
on
Making Sense of ACTA
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
It's all about standardizing shipping documents between countries. If you have ever tried to ship something bigger than a letter to the U.S., you'd find yourself spending an inordinate amount of time filling out forms just to get it into the American borders.
ACTA aims to make this pain equal across the board. In some ways it will protect shippers because the better they describe the contents of the package, the less likely it will be to be targeted for extra search measures. On the other hand, who in their right mind ever tells the complete truth on shipping documents? Shipping company hardware overseas isn't a gift, and it isn't really a "customer sample", and it definitely isn't a "commercial sample" or any other category listed on the document. So you usually just mark it as something random and give it a value of 50USD and hope for the best.
God help you if you try to send anything that could possibly generate radio signals. There is an additional form just for that.
The ACTA will pass because it will make it easy to manage documentation for shipping. There won't be a need to keep different forms for different countries at the post office or FedEx counter anymore. Everyone just uses the same ridiculously difficult forms that require signing in triplicate and exact descriptions of the shipment items.
Yakiniku, Shabu shabu, Teppanyaki, Tartare, even "en slab" as you say. I've had Japanese beef every which way but I'm simply unimpressed. The fat levels in Japanese beef is simply too high which leads to greasy flavor and texture.
An interesting claim considering that the marbling levels in American beef have been dropping for decades in response to customer demand for lower fat meats.
No doubt. Most of the stuff seen at the supermarket is inedible.
Even worse is American pork! I literally cannot cook from a 1970's cookbook without heavily modifying the preparation process and cooking times because there has been such a drop in fat levels and the pieces are so closely trimmed.
Now pork is a meat that the Japanese have done well with compared to Americans.
Things change. Once companies realized that controlling access to the hardware meant more control over their users, companies decided to close up the manuals and license them just like software.
Slashdot Mirror
If you make online gambling lawful, it just gives the online casinos incentive to go overseas to avoid paying any tax whatsoever.
Emeril Lagasse suffers from the same problem as the article writer. They both think that one ingredient is the key to a winning formula. BAM! Just add some EVOO or in this case turn the difficulty all the way up.
The secret, which isn't a secret at all, is that balanced gameplay is the true Sangreal of gaming. Pitting a newbie against a grizzled Korean veteran in Starcraft isn't going to give anyone a challenge or make them feel like they want to come back to the game again. It's only when the players are evenly matched or only slightly mismatched that gameplay becomes exciting. It is the thrill of being able to beat a game but with enough challenge that victory isn't guaranteed.
One aspect to this is programming the mind itself.
To some extent we already do this naturally with our learning and memory forming cognitive capabilities. Simple programs are easily written to our minds.
THINK ABOUT YOUR BREATHING
YOU ARE NOW BREATHING MANUALLY
It will take time to build a language in which we can program more complex behaviors, but I have no doubt it is possible.
The manner in which they are pursuing sublicensees is very much in the pattern of a patent troll.
Mo, Marcie! You didn't have to do that!
Yeah, I wasn't talking about uh you..
It takes a chicken to lay a chicken egg.
So if internet usage is indicative of depression, then it stands to reason that people who are prone to depression (social outcasts for one) would be inordinately engaged in that type of activity. The flow isn't internet leads to depression but rather that depression leads to internet.
All stereotypes have some basis in reality, so if we consider a significant fraction of internet users to be fat, ugly, borderline autistic, Cheetos and Doritos crunching, Mountain Dew swilling, World of Warcraft playing dweebs who used to get beat up in high school, then we can see how an activity that allows relative anonymity and essentially zero repercussions would attract this type of user. In turn, this type of user would tend towards clinical depression due to their social awkwardness and isolation.
Google seems to be changing video on Youtube to use HTML 5 pretty quickly. Why can't other people?
I don't think Google would let them...
I've been personally touched by MPEG LA's patent witch hunt. And not in the good way like Kathleen Fent does.
My brother in law is the CEO of a small LCD monitor company that uses H.264 decoder chips. He buys these chips from a Taiwanese maker who in turn licenses the patent for H.264 decoding from MPEG LA.
But MPEG LA has been spamming everyone and anyone vaguely connected to H.264 encoding or playback or even (in this case) sending files across the intarweb. He is expected to succeed if MPEG LA ever takes this to court since the patent is already licensed by the chip vendor and his agreement with them covers him under its indemnity clause.
However this is a really plain-as-day example of how patent trolls are ruining business for everyone.
I agree on all counts (except the navigation one, but I digress). There is a distinct advantage to using Linux to build Linux-like devices for all the reasons you mentioned. If building an Ubuntu system is your goal (like it is with Sharp's Netwalker), then having those tools and environment working for free in a cross platform way is unbeatable.
I'm looking forward to seeing the performance on the A9 CPUs. WinCE is in a bad way right now without any multi-core support. It's coming soon, and has been for a year or so. In fact, this is Microsoft's Achilles heel in the navigation space.
There are multiple tiers of navigation devices ranging from low-end PNDs to mid to high-end navigation systems from makers like Clarion, Pioneer, and Kenwood all the way to full-fledged Navigation Systems like Ford's Sync. On the low end you'll not find much CE, but in the high end you'll find that CE (Windows Auto/Microsoft Auto) dominates. There isn't any particular reason why this market couldn't swing towards Linux (or QNX, but c'mon) except for inertia, but the market is what it is.
Microsoft is going to have to pull a rabbit out of its hat with WinMo 7 if the platform is to survive. But CE isn't going anywhere, and as long as ARM performance is subpar compared to the equivalent x86 CPU, we won't be seeing Windows Desktop (XP, Vista, Win7) coming to ARM.
How is it that when given a set of options, the majority of users will select the worst possible one?
They didn't review Notepad, but I would wager that it is pretty well used by a majority of PHP "developers"
I'm only trying to clarify how MS will approach this problem. On the embedded side of the market, they put CE and WinMo up against Linux. It's not Win7 vs Linux there because the processor power is too low to run either OS at a useful speed. Win7 doesn't run at all (easily remedied, I'm sure) and Linux needs to be as barebones as possible (which puts it up against WinCE/Mobile). And the "advantages" of CE vs Linux are well understood by Microsoft's sales and marketing teams.
MS considers iPhone a serious threat. They only recently began considering Android a threat.
But the embedded market is much larger than netbooks. Cellphones are a huge market that MS is trying not to lose its minimal marketshare in. However there are other embedded markets (like projectors and automobile navigation) where it is unmatched.
CE as an OS isn't terrible, despite WinMo. It is Microsoft's embedded OS and it is well designed to compete in that market.
What is being glossed over by many here is that Microsoft doesn't see Netbooks as a standard embedded device but rather a smaller form factor of a laptop PC. Intel's Atom has really opened up this market for Microsoft, and Asus did a lot to get Microsoft involved here. So the difference between Microsoft's vision and ARM's (and Apple's) vision of this market comes down to a difference in device applicability. If ARM CPUs were comparable performance-wise to Intel's offerings, this would be a different story, but the difference is still too great for ARM to compete on that point.
Do you think MS isn't already on this? They have WinCE which is slowly but surely focusing on ARM as the primary platform. They have Windows Mobile which is designed to run *only* on the ARM platform.
They will stress interoperability between device and PC. The ecosystem works (they say) because the two systems are designed to work well with each other. Even things like Vista/Win7 are designed to work with CE-based projector devices. Their strategy extends far beyond Netbooks/Smartbooks and reaches into every single high-function embedded market.
Linux doesn't have the same ability to say something and have it taken as gospel truth. If Linux wants to claim seamless interoperability, the vendors need to put up or shut up.
That's trouble of some kind, George.
The real breakthrough in computing will be computers that can replicate themselves. Biological creatures can do this already. Cells replicate constantly, and the totality of this replication is our own existence. If computers could do this on their own, it would be a huge step forward in the development of reliable systems.
The asians are killing us at this. http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=10/02/01/0922205
College degrees are way overrated. This is coming from someone with multiple degrees from MIT, Harvard, and Oxford.
College degrees have always been worthless the moment you joined the workforce and got your first day of actual working experience. It's always been worthless because the assclown with family connections will get the job over any random summa cum laude. The worthlessness is even worse since anything worth knowing is learned on the job and not in the classroom.
Consider this. Right now we are in a terrible recession. Many people are going back to school because they can't find a paying job. That means that in 3 year's time we will have a huge glut of people with advanced degrees fighting over the same pool of jobs. It's the same as always, only the requirements to play require a higher standard of education.
Or does it? Since experience and personal contacts mean much more than degrees, the earlier you can get a job, the better. Wasting your time in actual school taking actual classes is a net loser compared to getting a cheap diploma from a diploma mill and getting a paying job today.
I spent a lot of time to get my advanced degrees, but I have no illusions about their actual value. My real value comes from my work experience and successes in my field. Degrees aren't worth the paper they are printed on. If you want one, you should do it for yourself, not for a job.
I used to get called every evening several times by unscrupulous companies trying to part me from my money. They expanded from just calling my home to calling me at the office, then calling my family. What started as a polite brief conversation in which I rejected their offer and asked them to stop calling me became a vicious conversation with yelling on each end of the phone. Hanging up had no effect since they simply called me back. Somehow my phone number was marked as Active and I was harassed incessantly by these goons.
But then I found out about opting out and did just that. Now when I get a call from these telemarketing agencies I make sure I get their name and then report them to the local BBB. It's nice to have recourse when I get called now.
So when an author with a handful of books and articles needs to write a single note to Google to tell them to leave them alone, it's not a terribly huge burden. For a bunch of people who make their living *writing*, what's the big deal in saying, "Hey Goog, don't upload my books. Thanks, Chief Breaks Like The Wind"?
While this may have impressive consequences for the NAND market and for end-user storage solutions, there is a much larger problem which everyone is skirting around. It isn't about how NAND can only be used for storage and not for executable ROM like NOR Flash. It isn't about how stuffing more memory into a smaller space will allow for insanely huge SSD drives in devices ranging from cellphones to television sets.
It's about how Intel is going to leverage their CPU monopoly to take over the Flash memory market. They have not been able to make any headway with their StrataFlash due to their lukewarm support and eventual divestiture of the StrongARM CPU series. So by building this new super-efficient NAND solution, they are positioning their Atom CPU as *the* architecture for embedded systems.
If I were ARM and ARM CPU vendors, I'd be very wary and worried.
This is really a case of technology moving too fast for its own good.
The fundamental concept behind Japan's quality is kaizen. This is the constant improvement on existing techniques and technology. By starting with what works, it is simpler to build in very small steps without losing any quality along the way.
However, due to perceived pressures from non-Japanese automakers, companies like Toyota have begun bold initiatives to modernize their cars. The typical automotive embedded system is fairly simple (relatively speaking, of course). There are only a few inputs and only a few outputs and the systems are usually isolated from each other. However, as more features become desired, more interaction between isolated systems becomes a reality. The gas pedal used to only manage the amount of fuel fed to the injection valves. Nowadays it works in tandem with the brake system and suspension to manage tire slippage and traction control.
In this case, Toyota implemented a very complex system without a series of solid intermediate steps. The result is catastrophic failure when unforeseen interactions suddenly arise. If they were slowly adding features, they could immediately pinpoint the problematic interaction. However because they did it all at once they don't have any idea where the problem lies.
It makes me want to buy an American car.
American content will finally die the death that it needs to. I don't know about you but all the good stuff is filmed in other countries anyways.
That's an awfully subjective view of American media. The objective view is that the most popular content worldwide is produced by America.
Say what you want about the quality of "American content", but you'll find that most people will not agree with you.
Is this something that I'd pay an arm and a leg for? Is it commonly available?
Don't forget the destabalising influence of self-interested foreigners
The immigrant Jews?
It's all about standardizing shipping documents between countries. If you have ever tried to ship something bigger than a letter to the U.S., you'd find yourself spending an inordinate amount of time filling out forms just to get it into the American borders.
ACTA aims to make this pain equal across the board. In some ways it will protect shippers because the better they describe the contents of the package, the less likely it will be to be targeted for extra search measures. On the other hand, who in their right mind ever tells the complete truth on shipping documents? Shipping company hardware overseas isn't a gift, and it isn't really a "customer sample", and it definitely isn't a "commercial sample" or any other category listed on the document. So you usually just mark it as something random and give it a value of 50USD and hope for the best.
God help you if you try to send anything that could possibly generate radio signals. There is an additional form just for that.
The ACTA will pass because it will make it easy to manage documentation for shipping. There won't be a need to keep different forms for different countries at the post office or FedEx counter anymore. Everyone just uses the same ridiculously difficult forms that require signing in triplicate and exact descriptions of the shipment items.
Good day, Citizen. Papers please.
Yakiniku, Shabu shabu, Teppanyaki, Tartare, even "en slab" as you say. I've had Japanese beef every which way but I'm simply unimpressed. The fat levels in Japanese beef is simply too high which leads to greasy flavor and texture.
An interesting claim considering that the marbling levels in American beef have been dropping for decades in response to customer demand for lower fat meats.
No doubt. Most of the stuff seen at the supermarket is inedible.
Even worse is American pork! I literally cannot cook from a 1970's cookbook without heavily modifying the preparation process and cooking times because there has been such a drop in fat levels and the pieces are so closely trimmed.
Now pork is a meat that the Japanese have done well with compared to Americans.
Things change. Once companies realized that controlling access to the hardware meant more control over their users, companies decided to close up the manuals and license them just like software.