You have missed the point completely, like a typical American politician. Before you spout off, learn what the word hypocrite means: a person who pretends to have virtues, moral or religious beliefs, principles, etc., that he or she does not actually possess, especially a person whose actions belie stated beliefs.
The point: China doesn't act like they don't filter. China has quite clearly stated that they believe that press should be limited. China has quite clearly stated that the group has more importance than the individual. China has quite clearly stated that they want to do what's best for their economy only.
The problem is the U.S. THEY say they are for freedom of the people, and install dictators in countries. THEY say the are for freedom of the press, and limit war reporting, harass reporters, and go after people who expose government abuses. THEY are for capitalism, and then bail out the companies that should have been allowed to fail.
Entanglement is quite different from that. As you say, the effect you talk about can be seen classically with a pair of dissimilar coins that are hidden in boxes and then separated. As soon as one box is opened, we instantly know the contents of the other box.
Can you please explain "how we instantly know?" I see this bandied about. If by "instantly know" there is an observable change in the particles pair, that seems to me a form of FTL transmission. We each send a series of entangled particles to/from a distant location. We carefully time observing the particles or not observing the particles so as to send bits of information. I would think that is not possible.
Otherwise, if you mean "instantly know" by simply knowing that the other particle must be the opposite of what you have observed with a high statically likelihood, it sounds like not spooky action at a distance but what Frango Assado saids is Bohm's interpretation. I guess I am having a hard time understanding how something can be spooky action at a distance without transmitting information.
I have never been able to find a place to answer this idea: Is it possible that quantum entanglement is actually just fixing two particles to a stable spin?
(If I understand it correctly) If a person takes two entangled particles and take each one to a place farther than it takes the speed of light to travels, each can be measured faster than it would take for light to travel to "inform the other" of its state, yet each particle will always have the opposite of the other's state. The kicker for me is: one cannot know what state each will be, only that they will be opposites. This is why there is no information transfer. There is a correlation of behavior, not an inducement of behavior.
It seems to me this can be explained with the mind-experiment of replacing the two particles with a pair of coins. The two would naturally align and "stick," although in opposite directions, such as heads to heads or tails to tails. Quantum entanglement means the reduction of "noise" from space itself. If no longer being disturbed by interactions with the universe, physics would suggest they would continue to keep the the same momentum. If they are separated without being disturbed, distance is not relevant. Whenever, wherever, and as long as they are "viewed the same way" they will have opposite ends showing because they have kept the same rate of momentum. The catch is this is happening in more dimensions than our normal three, so the spin doesn't make sense in classical term.
P.S. I am an armchair physicist. I apologize for any misuse of a term.
The very point of a patent is to publicly give out your understanding of an implementation for protection for a period of time from anyone else being able to use that implementation.
Specifically, if a person writes code that uses a patent, Microsoft cannot claim ownership of the code (because it is copyrighted), but Microsoft can sue you to prevent you from using the code because they own the idea.
It is a misunderstanding to say that the laws are coming into conflict. As an example, if it was against the law to drive less than 50 mph and above 40 mph on a road, you are guilty of one or both for driving on the road. Law is about one question: which, if any laws, have you violated. For those with which you are guilty, what should be your punishment. This is why the law is about people finding people guilty or not guilty. Innocence is not a part of law. Unfortunately, laws that are astutely obvious get struck down because there is enough outrage.
The DMCA was written specifically to kill fair use without actually striking down fair use. In an admiring-an-evil-genus way, I'm impressed withe DMCA.
The reason why you are confused is because you're used to a compiled environment, where every call is an immediate action. A C/C++ program must be coded to (i.e. explicitly) deletes memory references. If you explicitly delete, you can also tie in other explicit behavior; therefore, it's common "duh this is how you do it" practice to tie "finalize" behavior to the object's deletion. But remember, it is your program's logic that has decided when to get rid of it. In a GC environment, deletion is no longer an explicit event--it is autonomous, automatic; therefore, it is illogical to tie anything to the deletion of the memory reference to anything other than deletion of the memory reference. There is no connection between when the object was dereferenced and when the GC chooses to clean up the reference. Generally, the only events that are tied to the finalize method are sanity checks to make sure non-Java code knows the reference is going away. Put differently: in Java, memory deallocation is not a part of the running logic of your program and so the program must create an explicit method of releasing resources in your program's logic. In other words, do what you were doing before, just don't call it finalize. That's a gripe of mine about Java: It confuses C++ users who are used to using the function finalize because Java gives finalize a specific purpose that cannot act the same way.
Having worked with Rails for a year, I have found listening to people who talk on any web forum about any language draws out nothing but hyperbole. So, I would take most of what is said here with a grain of salt since it is obvious that most of the people commenting here are stating "truths" from religious wars.
The framework operates a multiple levels. At the highest, a complete page can be generated from scaffold that automatically hook model to controller to view. I have found the scaffolds to be lack luster. From a completely database-centric view, there are some neat things that are automatically generated. For instance, verification methods in models are use to display errors on the page and mark input fields in red. My personal experience has found scaffolds to be lackluster.
Most well-designed applications revolve around the application's use, not its internal data representation. Using scaffold strongly ties the interface to data representation which creates the situation that "the user can be wrong." You see this in Microsoft Access databases where you can enter something in or choose options that are mutually exclusive. Because the application lets you see that data, the program generates an error if you are wrong. From what I have seen, the gripe is that the full scaffold is too specific and rigid. Well, duh?! That's the point of each layer of scaffold--to provide a guide for usage.
Personally, I have shunned most of the page scaffolding and tend to rely on creating my own use flow. I use the controllers to present that choices are possible and to manipulate the models as opposed to the common practice of having the controller just load a set of records and pass it to the view (which formats the output). The advantage is that the user is never wrong. Options that are logically inconsistent are never presented. Add to this the ability to monkey-patch (the extension of predefined classes) and lambdas, the code is clean and concise. Both can be used to refactor procedural code into functional code and move it out of the controllers and models. Most importantly, the design allows you to think about what you want to manipulate and then after the fact extend the functionality. A common example of the is the statement: 1.day.from_now The numeric class is extended in Rails so that you do not have find and use a static date class, but can state simply the desired result.
So, where does it fail miserably? So far, I have not found any great place that it does. It performs as well I need it to serve about a dozen users on a lowly Pentium 4 machine with 256 megs of RAM. So far, the application has been 99% maintenance free. A date verification package I am using had a Feb 29th bug in it. The cool thing is that since I can see the source, I could fixed it. Perhaps there are issues with scaling, but from what I understand, the system was designed around a non-centric design. In theory, a correctly designed application should be able scale horizontally.
Given that there are other high-profile, high-use web sites written in Rails that do not suffer from Twitter's issues, I am left thinking that its failure in general looking for a specific reason. Rails has been very stable and easy to extend, but then I write for maintenance and ignore hype.
The point is not that a piece of software can be mod'ed. The problem with the game is that the content is included but disabled. While in some ways I think it's stupid to make a distinction, I also think it's stupid that the company is being so lazy as to not product a finished product solely in the form expected.
Think of it this way: Child porn is legal in some parts of the world. A magazine is printed that contains it and some company decides that people in the US might want to read everything save the "naughty parts." So, they fold the pages over and use some sticky glue to keep it shut. It does take a little effort to get steamer out to undo the glue, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure it out. Do you not think people won't freak out over the magazine? After all, the "bad parts" have been made "unavailable."
I'm not saying the the ESRB is doing things correctly nor am I thinking that Congress is either. But, there is some modicum of truth to rating content that is there even if "unaccessible." If they hadn't included anything but what was necessary for the game, there would be no issue.
Wow. BBC is having street protests? And, this is over a media player? The U.S. invades Iraq on dubious grounds, without warrant wiretaps its people, and suspends the constitution, and what does the people of the United.. OOOOohhhh.. MSNBC says Brittany is being a bad mother and Kevin is being a good guy;although, it may be a shame just to get more money from her. Back in a few minutes.
When it is a pure service, you can. You go to a bar, you can be kicked out. You go to a restaurant, you can get kicked out. What you are confusing is when you create an on-going relationship for a commercial benefit. Termination of service then becomes an economic hardship (i.e. if you create a business reselling WoW account from Blizzard and suddenly Blizzard refuses to sell you more accounts despite contractual agreement THEN you have a case.)
As for the crack, it is against the law. The DMCA clearly defines cracking their software is illegal. I don't agree with it either, but you are still not in the right. Second, you're confusing the felony (criminal) with tort (civil). Cracking the software a criminal offense, which must be brought via the government. If you were selling copies of their software, it is a copyright violation, which is a tort. Modification of a piece of software for compatibility is legal and within copyright. This is why they won't sue you. The most they can do is attempt to get your prosecuted.
Your dislike Blizzard or their policies or their games is irrelevant.
Not trying to be mean, here, it is just that there is a lot of "common sense" going around in these debates that is just not correct.
First, the government will never be interested in taxing virtual goods because it already does. Taxable income is, roughly speaking, any increase in wealth not derived by previous obligation. Any time you get a dinner from a friend that is taxable income. Any time you get a pair of tickets you won off of the local radio station that is taxable income. Again, any time you do something for benefit (tangible or not) where you did not gain an obligation (i.e. you loaned money) it is taxable income.
Now, the reality is that a lot of income is not worth the effort to track, nor even necessary. If I recall, if non-disclosed income is less than $800 for the year, I.R.S. doesn't care. What the I.R.S. does care about is if people have a significant ability to hide income through an institution. This is why banks have to report your transactions to the I.R.S. This is why investment firms have to report transactions to the I.R.S. The I.R.S. wants to know.
What congress is considering is that any company that looks like a bank, act likes a bank, and quacks like a bank should be considered a bank. In the case of Second Life, they maintain an exchange, allow transactions to and from U.S. currency, and store currency. If their market is large enough, the concern is not taxable income, but the means to use said market to hide the income. This is why congress is looking at requirements from Ebay because there are people's whose whole income is cash and can be hidden from the I.R.S.
So, first point, congress isn't interested in taxing virtual goods in games, they want to tax the benefit individuals get in trades that meet with U.S. currency, as they always have. Your bank metaphor does not follow.
Next, you are mixing service with property. While there are a lot of questions lingering over what people can and cannot do with your property (and whether or not you actually got property in the transaction for buying that MP3), services are quite a bit more clear. There are basically three things that can stop a contract: You cannot sign away your ability to litigate. You can always go the courts; however, a judge may rule that the requirements for a specific venue (i.e. arbitration) are acceptable, rules the contract valid, and does not interfere. You cannot sign for actions that are illegal. Finally, the contract must be with conscience and consideration. Both parties must get something (but not necessarily equal in value) and the contract cannot be simply one-sided.
Blizzard can and does have the right to terminate users for trading outside of the game. Hell, Blizzard has the right to terminate because they don't like you. You have the right to seek wrongful termination of service in small claims court, if you so choose. In the end, Blizzard is a service for playing in their game world. You can tack on all the ideas about how much it is worth to some to play, it Blizzard's game is still treated as a service. Blizzard doesn't look like a bank, doesn't act like a bank, doesn't talk like a bank. You're mixing property with service. Blizzard's terms of service means you do not possess anything. While some people may feel the desire to exchange money for something you do not own, it doesn't stop your relationship to Blizzard from being a service. But when you do trade money, the government's interest in taxation show up.
Despite the contrary, all systematic views of the Whole Thing(tm) require faith (philosophically known as a "world view"). Science is no different in this regard. Science has two basic articles of faith: First, that mankind has the mental capacity to reason out the universe and can do so through independent, verifiable testing of mankind's understand of the universe. Second, that despite not understanding currently everything, eventually mankind will figure out the Whole Thing (tm).
The first article of faith has shown repeatedly that there is no need to call in anything supernatural. Time and time again, when confronted with things (i.e. miracles, magic, etc), science has shown through testing that non-supernatural answers (or no answer) has been found. There has never been a proven case that science was left with "boy, no matter what, it seems God is working that."
The second article of faith has shown that many things that were labeled as unknowable or only in the realm of the supernatural were eventually solved with non-supernatural, testable, verifiable understanding; thus, one can conclude that while we do not have an explanation of the Whole Thing (tm) now, it seems some day we will.
Remember, there was a time when most people only accepted that the world was flat. A few people did tests and realized that their tests and the laws of math for a flat earth did not jive. Many people through away the differences because "how can you explain a round Earth when I clearly see flat land and the sun and moon revolving around us?" It took a long time of gathering evidence to recognize that it was *our perspective* that was flawed.
The Big Bang is merely our current understanding given the view of all our evidence. It is not the first proposal. An early proposal was Steady-State universe. Like any good theory, it gave predictions of other things we should observe, but they didn't hold up to testing. The Big Bang has. Does this mean that Big Band is The Answer (tm)? Of course not, because it doesn't (yet!) explain what came before it; however, that may be a meaningless question.
Paul Davies has been trying to marry Quantum Dynamics with Cosmology has the interesting suggestion that the idea that there is such a thing as time may be very misguided. I can't do justice to his work here, but the short version is that time is just another direction in QD. The QD works irrespective of time and the suggestion that perception a past and future comes from how we view things in a macroscopic view; in other words, our perspective is likely wrong.
What makes Science scientific is that scientific theories present something that is testable and is rooted that everything we need to observe exists within the universe. Intelligent Design coached in statements that sound plausible to the layman, but it is flawed because it makes claims that cannot be tested. It's faith is based on lack of proof. Science is faith based on proof.
Because when religion is allowed to overshadow history, inevitably religion is used to harm. Every single Luxembourg law was a propel edict. Every single thing that the Nazis did to Jews were decreed by a Pope as the appropriate thing to do. It was Christians who designed using a star and argued Jews should be tagged. It was Christians who said Jews should be eradicated. This is why Christians were so silent in the war: the Nazis were doing exactly what was said to be correct about the history of the Jews.
No, the right to believe what he or she wants to believe is anyone's choice. There is no right to cause others to accept ignorance just because it does not fit within your world view. In fact, history has shown that when history is ignored (ironic, isn't it?) that which is at first a denial is then used as a reason to subjugate.
Christianity has finally had to deal with this issue. That is why the Pope has been calling for the right anyone to trade faiths and not be punished. It is time militant members of Islam grow up.
Isn't this part of the basic framework of Ruby on Rails? I call "high-level" commands which "translate" to AJAX functionality. Rails has been around since 2004.
Not to mention the obvious, but how is creating a framework that encapsulates another system's behavior new in any sense.. Yeah, yeah, I know..
I suppose the following is a patented, "new" idea:
I found this announcement amusing because Blizzard has been doing this off and on already. In the last several months there have been weeks where maintenance was skipped, at least on my server. What has happened now is that they already have it in place and are just giving political cover: "Hey, we're going to make this the norm, but if it doesn't work, we'll reboot or do normal maintenance."
In the end, is this really news that a system has implemented 99.99% service?
What I am surprised that hasn't happened is a WoW based dating site. Despite the myth, plenty of people who play have lives; however, plenty of us are also very busy between work, school, etc. I am long past any interest in bars nor people who ask, "what's an online game?" It's funny that people don't think twice about picking up chicks at bars, concerts, etc, but you're a wacko if you want to find someone who enjoys your entertainment on a computer.
On a side note, it's also noteworthy that while online games make us more connected, they really make us more distant. You end up meeting people with whom you'll never be able to meet up because they live a thousand s of miles away. I think a way to establish local groups and interests would be a great thing.
I have been fearful of Blizzard for a while now, and now it seems my concerns are slowing being realized. I played SWG for 1.5 years since release. The urge to use the fans for money just became too tempting to resist. Things changed from "we want to provide you with fun," to "things will change and it is our game."
With the change to the UI's to be locked down to the +healing nerf, Blizzard has now clearly stated that they know how the game is "supposed" to be played. The mods they disliked were written and heavily used for a reason. People do not like being used for a particular purpose (i.e. be the wack-a-mole'er). My greatest fear was the statement that Blizzard plans to release an expansion pack a year when there are plenty of mechanics in the game that would be far more interesting if the would routinely add to them. We already have a lot of factions that are unused. There are plenty of lower-level recipes, enchants, etc that could be added. In short, a lot of things that would add more richness to the world, but would not be an immediate selling point.
And, that's the rub. It is far easier to add breadth than depth to a game. But, breadth is far more marketable. What made WoW popular was the depth. After all, once you max in any system, it's the replayability that keeps the people--the social environment. I think Blizzard no longer understand that.
Having done a great deal of data processing, I have watched these projects off and on with minor amusement. The reason why is that, in my humble opinion, it will never work. That is not to say that it can't, just that these projects just love to forget Gödel's Theorem, which states, roughly: any sufficiently complex system will have things that are obviously true or false, but are not provable within the system.
Put another way, any complex set of rules will inherently be unable to stay consistent because eventually the syntax complexity become able to state, "The following sentence is false. The previous sentence is true." This occurs regularly in data processing when a given field's syntax (datum value) bridges or is not defined by your context (schema).
The real crutch is that syntax is inductive, where we try to fit each word into a category; however, our context (use of language) is deductive, we all learn it through experience with a physical world. I have seen this problem over and over as people constantly modify the schema to overcome syntactic limitation. While Cyc is designed to be constantly expanded with new rules, they are still syntactical statements.
By Gödel's Theorem, syntactic systems are doomed to fail. Instead, Cyc should be allowed to learn through observation and deduce its own understanding of the world so that it is not bound by any particular syntax. While this could work, it fails the ultimate intent. We want a computer that can both learn and yet not be wrong.
The problem is you can't have that. You can either be syntactically correct, but simplify the model until it works (Physics). Or, you can allow deductions and have to work in the realm of probability (Humans).
Although, I would gladly accept a computer that erred like a human and yet didn't bitch about how it was someone else's fault.
-rant-
It's the same every time: Guy on top doesn't deserve the money, the little guy has no say. Bull$h!t. The guy on the bottom doesn't have the balls to quit, create a company, and run it in the way they feel.
And, that is exactly what I am doing. I decided several years ago that I did not like the way I was treated nor the way employees were treated. So, I left. I am about to graduate with a dual-degree (MIS and Accounting). I believe a lot of companies do not invest enough in their employees and believe that if I create such a company, I can grab the best talent and employees in the process.
It boils down to this: you either believe in capitalism or you don't. I am NOT saying that companies should be allowed to do anything they want (lazzi faire capitalism), but there is a reason why some people do get paid more than others: he or she was willing to take a risk and effort do something that this writter wasn't--get off their ass and make something in this world like they want.
You can't both be employeed to be a worker and believe you get to call all the shots.
-/rant-
Einstein once commented that the tools necessary to discover a problem are not the same tools necessary to solve it. Humans are notoriously horrible at recognition of statistical patterns; however, when we are good at solving problems, we often over-estimate our ability when his or her skills cannot be used for a purpose, like statistics. In this case, Keplan obviously knows very little about statistics. The first rule of statistics is humans are very poor at recognizing statistical patterns. Human brains are meant to find patterns and we will see what we naturally wish to see even when it is not there.
In a similar vein, Holocron of SWG once came out with some statistic about how the player base was performing. So I popped him a personal message and asked him for the f-stat and autocorrelation of the statistics. I was asking for the fitness and what-external-influence values for the stats he generated. Both are fundamental values easily generated in Excel. His response: "Well, we really just looked over the numbers."
Long story short, anyone who says "I think," "I feel" or "it ought to be about" usually should be immediately dismissed. He or she is using the wrong tools for the wrong purpose. Unfortunately, until a person takes statistics, he or she usually doesn't realize this.
The first thought about this is: What happened to imagination?
The tools we use (like language) influence us in our choices and views. While greater tools can allow greater accomplishments, their purpose is should be to allow a complex process to be addressed simply, not to allow a simple process to be more complex.
In computers, one of the best ways to get a real understanding of computer programming is to debug a program without a debugger. At most, using a couple of print statements to allow some additional helpful information. The advantage to a lack of information is that it requires A) truly understanding how the mechanism works which leads to B) attempting to keep the code human-readable.
In places where a debugger is available, I have seen too often that the tool is use to simply find the problem and move on. After all, if I know that the loop is crashing, break the loop before the end of the run and see why it went too far. This is great for catching simple errors, and I do not knock the debugger for helping me realize that I accidentally incremented the wrong variable. What I do like is that people raised on debuggers generally cannot see anything other than simple operations. It will not explain why mutex is not being freed or many systemic problems; however, because he or she was never forced to think through his or her problems, the symptom of the problem (not the problem itself) is coded around at the location where the problem shows up in the debugger.
I cannot help but think that while this tool will be used to model some nice things, but I think a lot producers fail to realize that most people will happily take some good acting, a reasonable plot line, and intriguing dialog over wiz-bang camera zooms. Thank God for Battlestar Galactic.
First of all, I know for a fact that you can use the instance portals to dupe because I have had it accidently happen to me twice (i.e. trade food to a friend and I got kicked out with the items I traded). Second, the dup bug has never been really repaired. After all of that hooplah, I tripped across another dupe bug that can be done; albeit, it is very hard to reproduce and has very limited dupe options. To my knowledge, it still hasn't been repaired. If my suspicion about how their system works, it can never be repaired.
The truth is that the server and the client can both make decisions on trade/buy/sell of items. If you can get them out of sync far enough, both transactions will occur. Ultimately, the problem with items is that Blizzard trusts the client for item changes, and that is bad.
As for someone who has dealt with Smedley as a customer, I cannot count the number of imcomplete issues about SWG. From missing necessary items to grammatical errors in dialog, the simple truth is their definition of complete is seriously off-base. Numerous aspects of the game were removed simply because they could not get them to work (i.e. corpse runs, battle grounds, etc.). The jetpack was not craftable for two months until SOE finally acknowledged that one part was, indeed, not dropping in the game. Then it was "fixed." Jedi was supposedly always "in the game, ready to be unlocked." Except, when patches came out, we the customers looked inside the executable, as it was often the only way to found out about all the commands the client would take. (Yeah, the documentation was incomplete, fancy that..) The month someone actually unlocked was on the same patch that a series of Jedi action command names appeared in the executable, plus Jedi resources (graphics, items, etc).
The simple truth is: SOE has be shown without a doubt that they release incomplete products. It is beyond dispute. The classic blunder was the boss in EQ that had to be downed to get to the new zone. After four hours combat, the players actually beat it to move to into the new zone to find litterally nothing was there. The boss wasn't supposed to have been beaten. SOE are liars, and generally always have been. I have found no personal understanding that allows me to remove Smedley from this list.
In general, if a service makes no attempt to censor its contents, it can be considered a distributor and is not responsible for its content; thus, that is why internet news groups do not get ISPs in trouble. If Craig's list makes any attempt to regulate the content (removes postings, states criteria, etc), it is a publisher and is subject to being liable for its content. As for where they stand? That's going to be up to the court.
Slashdot Mirror
You have missed the point completely, like a typical American politician. Before you spout off, learn what the word hypocrite means: a person who pretends to have virtues, moral or religious beliefs, principles, etc., that he or she does not actually possess, especially a person whose actions belie stated beliefs.
The point: China doesn't act like they don't filter. China has quite clearly stated that they believe that press should be limited. China has quite clearly stated that the group has more importance than the individual. China has quite clearly stated that they want to do what's best for their economy only.
The problem is the U.S. THEY say they are for freedom of the people, and install dictators in countries. THEY say the are for freedom of the press, and limit war reporting, harass reporters, and go after people who expose government abuses. THEY are for capitalism, and then bail out the companies that should have been allowed to fail.
Entanglement is quite different from that. As you say, the effect you talk about can be seen classically with a pair of dissimilar coins that are hidden in boxes and then separated. As soon as one box is opened, we instantly know the contents of the other box.
Can you please explain "how we instantly know?" I see this bandied about. If by "instantly know" there is an observable change in the particles pair, that seems to me a form of FTL transmission. We each send a series of entangled particles to/from a distant location. We carefully time observing the particles or not observing the particles so as to send bits of information. I would think that is not possible.
Otherwise, if you mean "instantly know" by simply knowing that the other particle must be the opposite of what you have observed with a high statically likelihood, it sounds like not spooky action at a distance but what Frango Assado saids is Bohm's interpretation. I guess I am having a hard time understanding how something can be spooky action at a distance without transmitting information.
I have never been able to find a place to answer this idea: Is it possible that quantum entanglement is actually just fixing two particles to a stable spin?
(If I understand it correctly) If a person takes two entangled particles and take each one to a place farther than it takes the speed of light to travels, each can be measured faster than it would take for light to travel to "inform the other" of its state, yet each particle will always have the opposite of the other's state. The kicker for me is: one cannot know what state each will be, only that they will be opposites. This is why there is no information transfer. There is a correlation of behavior, not an inducement of behavior.
It seems to me this can be explained with the mind-experiment of replacing the two particles with a pair of coins. The two would naturally align and "stick," although in opposite directions, such as heads to heads or tails to tails. Quantum entanglement means the reduction of "noise" from space itself. If no longer being disturbed by interactions with the universe, physics would suggest they would continue to keep the the same momentum. If they are separated without being disturbed, distance is not relevant. Whenever, wherever, and as long as they are "viewed the same way" they will have opposite ends showing because they have kept the same rate of momentum. The catch is this is happening in more dimensions than our normal three, so the spin doesn't make sense in classical term.
P.S. I am an armchair physicist. I apologize for any misuse of a term.
The very point of a patent is to publicly give out your understanding of an implementation for protection for a period of time from anyone else being able to use that implementation.
Specifically, if a person writes code that uses a patent, Microsoft cannot claim ownership of the code (because it is copyrighted), but Microsoft can sue you to prevent you from using the code because they own the idea.
It is a misunderstanding to say that the laws are coming into conflict. As an example, if it was against the law to drive less than 50 mph and above 40 mph on a road, you are guilty of one or both for driving on the road. Law is about one question: which, if any laws, have you violated. For those with which you are guilty, what should be your punishment. This is why the law is about people finding people guilty or not guilty. Innocence is not a part of law. Unfortunately, laws that are astutely obvious get struck down because there is enough outrage.
The DMCA was written specifically to kill fair use without actually striking down fair use. In an admiring-an-evil-genus way, I'm impressed withe DMCA.
The reason why you are confused is because you're used to a compiled environment, where every call is an immediate action. A C/C++ program must be coded to (i.e. explicitly) deletes memory references. If you explicitly delete, you can also tie in other explicit behavior; therefore, it's common "duh this is how you do it" practice to tie "finalize" behavior to the object's deletion. But remember, it is your program's logic that has decided when to get rid of it. In a GC environment, deletion is no longer an explicit event--it is autonomous, automatic; therefore, it is illogical to tie anything to the deletion of the memory reference to anything other than deletion of the memory reference. There is no connection between when the object was dereferenced and when the GC chooses to clean up the reference. Generally, the only events that are tied to the finalize method are sanity checks to make sure non-Java code knows the reference is going away. Put differently: in Java, memory deallocation is not a part of the running logic of your program and so the program must create an explicit method of releasing resources in your program's logic. In other words, do what you were doing before, just don't call it finalize. That's a gripe of mine about Java: It confuses C++ users who are used to using the function finalize because Java gives finalize a specific purpose that cannot act the same way.
Having worked with Rails for a year, I have found listening to people who talk on any web forum about any language draws out nothing but hyperbole. So, I would take most of what is said here with a grain of salt since it is obvious that most of the people commenting here are stating "truths" from religious wars.
The framework operates a multiple levels. At the highest, a complete page can be generated from scaffold that automatically hook model to controller to view. I have found the scaffolds to be lack luster. From a completely database-centric view, there are some neat things that are automatically generated. For instance, verification methods in models are use to display errors on the page and mark input fields in red. My personal experience has found scaffolds to be lackluster.
Most well-designed applications revolve around the application's use, not its internal data representation. Using scaffold strongly ties the interface to data representation which creates the situation that "the user can be wrong." You see this in Microsoft Access databases where you can enter something in or choose options that are mutually exclusive. Because the application lets you see that data, the program generates an error if you are wrong. From what I have seen, the gripe is that the full scaffold is too specific and rigid. Well, duh?! That's the point of each layer of scaffold--to provide a guide for usage.
Personally, I have shunned most of the page scaffolding and tend to rely on creating my own use flow. I use the controllers to present that choices are possible and to manipulate the models as opposed to the common practice of having the controller just load a set of records and pass it to the view (which formats the output). The advantage is that the user is never wrong. Options that are logically inconsistent are never presented. Add to this the ability to monkey-patch (the extension of predefined classes) and lambdas, the code is clean and concise. Both can be used to refactor procedural code into functional code and move it out of the controllers and models. Most importantly, the design allows you to think about what you want to manipulate and then after the fact extend the functionality. A common example of the is the statement:
1.day.from_now
The numeric class is extended in Rails so that you do not have find and use a static date class, but can state simply the desired result.
So, where does it fail miserably? So far, I have not found any great place that it does. It performs as well I need it to serve about a dozen users on a lowly Pentium 4 machine with 256 megs of RAM. So far, the application has been 99% maintenance free. A date verification package I am using had a Feb 29th bug in it. The cool thing is that since I can see the source, I could fixed it. Perhaps there are issues with scaling, but from what I understand, the system was designed around a non-centric design. In theory, a correctly designed application should be able scale horizontally.
Given that there are other high-profile, high-use web sites written in Rails that do not suffer from Twitter's issues, I am left thinking that its failure in general looking for a specific reason. Rails has been very stable and easy to extend, but then I write for maintenance and ignore hype.
The point is not that a piece of software can be mod'ed. The problem with the game is that the content is included but disabled. While in some ways I think it's stupid to make a distinction, I also think it's stupid that the company is being so lazy as to not product a finished product solely in the form expected.
Think of it this way: Child porn is legal in some parts of the world. A magazine is printed that contains it and some company decides that people in the US might want to read everything save the "naughty parts." So, they fold the pages over and use some sticky glue to keep it shut. It does take a little effort to get steamer out to undo the glue, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure it out. Do you not think people won't freak out over the magazine? After all, the "bad parts" have been made "unavailable."
I'm not saying the the ESRB is doing things correctly nor am I thinking that Congress is either. But, there is some modicum of truth to rating content that is there even if "unaccessible." If they hadn't included anything but what was necessary for the game, there would be no issue.
Thank you. At least one person got it. :o)
Wow. BBC is having street protests? And, this is over a media player? The U.S. invades Iraq on dubious grounds, without warrant wiretaps its people, and suspends the constitution, and what does the people of the United.. OOOOohhhh.. MSNBC says Brittany is being a bad mother and Kevin is being a good guy;although, it may be a shame just to get more money from her. Back in a few minutes.
When it is a pure service, you can. You go to a bar, you can be kicked out. You go to a restaurant, you can get kicked out. What you are confusing is when you create an on-going relationship for a commercial benefit. Termination of service then becomes an economic hardship (i.e. if you create a business reselling WoW account from Blizzard and suddenly Blizzard refuses to sell you more accounts despite contractual agreement THEN you have a case.)
As for the crack, it is against the law. The DMCA clearly defines cracking their software is illegal. I don't agree with it either, but you are still not in the right. Second, you're confusing the felony (criminal) with tort (civil). Cracking the software a criminal offense, which must be brought via the government. If you were selling copies of their software, it is a copyright violation, which is a tort. Modification of a piece of software for compatibility is legal and within copyright. This is why they won't sue you. The most they can do is attempt to get your prosecuted.
Your dislike Blizzard or their policies or their games is irrelevant.
Not trying to be mean, here, it is just that there is a lot of "common sense" going around in these debates that is just not correct.
First, the government will never be interested in taxing virtual goods because it already does. Taxable income is, roughly speaking, any increase in wealth not derived by previous obligation. Any time you get a dinner from a friend that is taxable income. Any time you get a pair of tickets you won off of the local radio station that is taxable income. Again, any time you do something for benefit (tangible or not) where you did not gain an obligation (i.e. you loaned money) it is taxable income.
Now, the reality is that a lot of income is not worth the effort to track, nor even necessary. If I recall, if non-disclosed income is less than $800 for the year, I.R.S. doesn't care. What the I.R.S. does care about is if people have a significant ability to hide income through an institution. This is why banks have to report your transactions to the I.R.S. This is why investment firms have to report transactions to the I.R.S. The I.R.S. wants to know.
What congress is considering is that any company that looks like a bank, act likes a bank, and quacks like a bank should be considered a bank. In the case of Second Life, they maintain an exchange, allow transactions to and from U.S. currency, and store currency. If their market is large enough, the concern is not taxable income, but the means to use said market to hide the income. This is why congress is looking at requirements from Ebay because there are people's whose whole income is cash and can be hidden from the I.R.S.
So, first point, congress isn't interested in taxing virtual goods in games, they want to tax the benefit individuals get in trades that meet with U.S. currency, as they always have. Your bank metaphor does not follow.
Next, you are mixing service with property. While there are a lot of questions lingering over what people can and cannot do with your property (and whether or not you actually got property in the transaction for buying that MP3), services are quite a bit more clear. There are basically three things that can stop a contract: You cannot sign away your ability to litigate. You can always go the courts; however, a judge may rule that the requirements for a specific venue (i.e. arbitration) are acceptable, rules the contract valid, and does not interfere. You cannot sign for actions that are illegal. Finally, the contract must be with conscience and consideration. Both parties must get something (but not necessarily equal in value) and the contract cannot be simply one-sided.
Blizzard can and does have the right to terminate users for trading outside of the game. Hell, Blizzard has the right to terminate because they don't like you. You have the right to seek wrongful termination of service in small claims court, if you so choose. In the end, Blizzard is a service for playing in their game world. You can tack on all the ideas about how much it is worth to some to play, it Blizzard's game is still treated as a service. Blizzard doesn't look like a bank, doesn't act like a bank, doesn't talk like a bank. You're mixing property with service. Blizzard's terms of service means you do not possess anything. While some people may feel the desire to exchange money for something you do not own, it doesn't stop your relationship to Blizzard from being a service. But when you do trade money, the government's interest in taxation show up.
Despite the contrary, all systematic views of the Whole Thing(tm) require faith (philosophically known as a "world view"). Science is no different in this regard. Science has two basic articles of faith: First, that mankind has the mental capacity to reason out the universe and can do so through independent, verifiable testing of mankind's understand of the universe. Second, that despite not understanding currently everything, eventually mankind will figure out the Whole Thing (tm).
The first article of faith has shown repeatedly that there is no need to call in anything supernatural. Time and time again, when confronted with things (i.e. miracles, magic, etc), science has shown through testing that non-supernatural answers (or no answer) has been found. There has never been a proven case that science was left with "boy, no matter what, it seems God is working that."
The second article of faith has shown that many things that were labeled as unknowable or only in the realm of the supernatural were eventually solved with non-supernatural, testable, verifiable understanding; thus, one can conclude that while we do not have an explanation of the Whole Thing (tm) now, it seems some day we will.
Remember, there was a time when most people only accepted that the world was flat. A few people did tests and realized that their tests and the laws of math for a flat earth did not jive. Many people through away the differences because "how can you explain a round Earth when I clearly see flat land and the sun and moon revolving around us?" It took a long time of gathering evidence to recognize that it was *our perspective* that was flawed.
The Big Bang is merely our current understanding given the view of all our evidence. It is not the first proposal. An early proposal was Steady-State universe. Like any good theory, it gave predictions of other things we should observe, but they didn't hold up to testing. The Big Bang has. Does this mean that Big Band is The Answer (tm)? Of course not, because it doesn't (yet!) explain what came before it; however, that may be a meaningless question.
Paul Davies has been trying to marry Quantum Dynamics with Cosmology has the interesting suggestion that the idea that there is such a thing as time may be very misguided. I can't do justice to his work here, but the short version is that time is just another direction in QD. The QD works irrespective of time and the suggestion that perception a past and future comes from how we view things in a macroscopic view; in other words, our perspective is likely wrong.
What makes Science scientific is that scientific theories present something that is testable and is rooted that everything we need to observe exists within the universe. Intelligent Design coached in statements that sound plausible to the layman, but it is flawed because it makes claims that cannot be tested. It's faith is based on lack of proof. Science is faith based on proof.
Because when religion is allowed to overshadow history, inevitably religion is used to harm. Every single Luxembourg law was a propel edict. Every single thing that the Nazis did to Jews were decreed by a Pope as the appropriate thing to do. It was Christians who designed using a star and argued Jews should be tagged. It was Christians who said Jews should be eradicated. This is why Christians were so silent in the war: the Nazis were doing exactly what was said to be correct about the history of the Jews.
No, the right to believe what he or she wants to believe is anyone's choice. There is no right to cause others to accept ignorance just because it does not fit within your world view. In fact, history has shown that when history is ignored (ironic, isn't it?) that which is at first a denial is then used as a reason to subjugate.
Christianity has finally had to deal with this issue. That is why the Pope has been calling for the right anyone to trade faiths and not be punished. It is time militant members of Islam grow up.
I found this announcement amusing because Blizzard has been doing this off and on already. In the last several months there have been weeks where maintenance was skipped, at least on my server. What has happened now is that they already have it in place and are just giving political cover:
"Hey, we're going to make this the norm, but if it doesn't work, we'll reboot or do normal maintenance."
In the end, is this really news that a system has implemented 99.99% service?
What I am surprised that hasn't happened is a WoW based dating site. Despite the myth, plenty of people who play have lives; however, plenty of us are also very busy between work, school, etc. I am long past any interest in bars nor people who ask, "what's an online game?" It's funny that people don't think twice about picking up chicks at bars, concerts, etc, but you're a wacko if you want to find someone who enjoys your entertainment on a computer.
On a side note, it's also noteworthy that while online games make us more connected, they really make us more distant. You end up meeting people with whom you'll never be able to meet up because they live a thousand s of miles away. I think a way to establish local groups and interests would be a great thing.
Like it or not, WoW is going mainstream.
I have been fearful of Blizzard for a while now, and now it seems my concerns are slowing being realized. I played SWG for 1.5 years since release. The urge to use the fans for money just became too tempting to resist. Things changed from "we want to provide you with fun," to "things will change and it is our game."
With the change to the UI's to be locked down to the +healing nerf, Blizzard has now clearly stated that they know how the game is "supposed" to be played. The mods they disliked were written and heavily used for a reason. People do not like being used for a particular purpose (i.e. be the wack-a-mole'er). My greatest fear was the statement that Blizzard plans to release an expansion pack a year when there are plenty of mechanics in the game that would be far more interesting if the would routinely add to them. We already have a lot of factions that are unused. There are plenty of lower-level recipes, enchants, etc that could be added. In short, a lot of things that would add more richness to the world, but would not be an immediate selling point.
And, that's the rub. It is far easier to add breadth than depth to a game. But, breadth is far more marketable. What made WoW popular was the depth. After all, once you max in any system, it's the replayability that keeps the people--the social environment. I think Blizzard no longer understand that.
Having done a great deal of data processing, I have watched these projects off and on with minor amusement. The reason why is that, in my humble opinion, it will never work. That is not to say that it can't, just that these projects just love to forget Gödel's Theorem, which states, roughly: any sufficiently complex system will have things that are obviously true or false, but are not provable within the system.
Put another way, any complex set of rules will inherently be unable to stay consistent because eventually the syntax complexity become able to state, "The following sentence is false. The previous sentence is true." This occurs regularly in data processing when a given field's syntax (datum value) bridges or is not defined by your context (schema).
The real crutch is that syntax is inductive, where we try to fit each word into a category; however, our context (use of language) is deductive, we all learn it through experience with a physical world. I have seen this problem over and over as people constantly modify the schema to overcome syntactic limitation. While Cyc is designed to be constantly expanded with new rules, they are still syntactical statements.
By Gödel's Theorem, syntactic systems are doomed to fail. Instead, Cyc should be allowed to learn through observation and deduce its own understanding of the world so that it is not bound by any particular syntax. While this could work, it fails the ultimate intent. We want a computer that can both learn and yet not be wrong.
The problem is you can't have that. You can either be syntactically correct, but simplify the model until it works (Physics). Or, you can allow deductions and have to work in the realm of probability (Humans).
Although, I would gladly accept a computer that erred like a human and yet didn't bitch about how it was someone else's fault.
-rant- It's the same every time: Guy on top doesn't deserve the money, the little guy has no say. Bull$h!t. The guy on the bottom doesn't have the balls to quit, create a company, and run it in the way they feel.
And, that is exactly what I am doing. I decided several years ago that I did not like the way I was treated nor the way employees were treated. So, I left. I am about to graduate with a dual-degree (MIS and Accounting). I believe a lot of companies do not invest enough in their employees and believe that if I create such a company, I can grab the best talent and employees in the process.
It boils down to this: you either believe in capitalism or you don't. I am NOT saying that companies should be allowed to do anything they want (lazzi faire capitalism), but there is a reason why some people do get paid more than others: he or she was willing to take a risk and effort do something that this writter wasn't--get off their ass and make something in this world like they want.
You can't both be employeed to be a worker and believe you get to call all the shots. -/rant-
Einstein once commented that the tools necessary to discover a problem are not the same tools necessary to solve it. Humans are notoriously horrible at recognition of statistical patterns; however, when we are good at solving problems, we often over-estimate our ability when his or her skills cannot be used for a purpose, like statistics. In this case, Keplan obviously knows very little about statistics. The first rule of statistics is humans are very poor at recognizing statistical patterns. Human brains are meant to find patterns and we will see what we naturally wish to see even when it is not there.
In a similar vein, Holocron of SWG once came out with some statistic about how the player base was performing. So I popped him a personal message and asked him for the f-stat and autocorrelation of the statistics. I was asking for the fitness and what-external-influence values for the stats he generated. Both are fundamental values easily generated in Excel. His response: "Well, we really just looked over the numbers."
Long story short, anyone who says "I think," "I feel" or "it ought to be about" usually should be immediately dismissed. He or she is using the wrong tools for the wrong purpose. Unfortunately, until a person takes statistics, he or she usually doesn't realize this.
The first thought about this is: What happened to imagination?
The tools we use (like language) influence us in our choices and views. While greater tools can allow greater accomplishments, their purpose is should be to allow a complex process to be addressed simply, not to allow a simple process to be more complex.
In computers, one of the best ways to get a real understanding of computer programming is to debug a program without a debugger. At most, using a couple of print statements to allow some additional helpful information. The advantage to a lack of information is that it requires A) truly understanding how the mechanism works which leads to B) attempting to keep the code human-readable.
In places where a debugger is available, I have seen too often that the tool is use to simply find the problem and move on. After all, if I know that the loop is crashing, break the loop before the end of the run and see why it went too far. This is great for catching simple errors, and I do not knock the debugger for helping me realize that I accidentally incremented the wrong variable. What I do like is that people raised on debuggers generally cannot see anything other than simple operations. It will not explain why mutex is not being freed or many systemic problems; however, because he or she was never forced to think through his or her problems, the symptom of the problem (not the problem itself) is coded around at the location where the problem shows up in the debugger.
I cannot help but think that while this tool will be used to model some nice things, but I think a lot producers fail to realize that most people will happily take some good acting, a reasonable plot line, and intriguing dialog over wiz-bang camera zooms. Thank God for Battlestar Galactic.
First of all, I know for a fact that you can use the instance portals to dupe because I have had it accidently happen to me twice (i.e. trade food to a friend and I got kicked out with the items I traded). Second, the dup bug has never been really repaired. After all of that hooplah, I tripped across another dupe bug that can be done; albeit, it is very hard to reproduce and has very limited dupe options. To my knowledge, it still hasn't been repaired. If my suspicion about how their system works, it can never be repaired.
The truth is that the server and the client can both make decisions on trade/buy/sell of items. If you can get them out of sync far enough, both transactions will occur. Ultimately, the problem with items is that Blizzard trusts the client for item changes, and that is bad.
As for someone who has dealt with Smedley as a customer, I cannot count the number of imcomplete issues about SWG. From missing necessary items to grammatical errors in dialog, the simple truth is their definition of complete is seriously off-base. Numerous aspects of the game were removed simply because they could not get them to work (i.e. corpse runs, battle grounds, etc.). The jetpack was not craftable for two months until SOE finally acknowledged that one part was, indeed, not dropping in the game. Then it was "fixed." Jedi was supposedly always "in the game, ready to be unlocked." Except, when patches came out, we the customers looked inside the executable, as it was often the only way to found out about all the commands the client would take. (Yeah, the documentation was incomplete, fancy that..) The month someone actually unlocked was on the same patch that a series of Jedi action command names appeared in the executable, plus Jedi resources (graphics, items, etc).
The simple truth is: SOE has be shown without a doubt that they release incomplete products. It is beyond dispute. The classic blunder was the boss in EQ that had to be downed to get to the new zone. After four hours combat, the players actually beat it to move to into the new zone to find litterally nothing was there. The boss wasn't supposed to have been beaten. SOE are liars, and generally always have been. I have found no personal understanding that allows me to remove Smedley from this list.
IANAL.. blah, blah, blah..
In general, if a service makes no attempt to censor its contents, it can be considered a distributor and is not responsible for its content; thus, that is why internet news groups do not get ISPs in trouble. If Craig's list makes any attempt to regulate the content (removes postings, states criteria, etc), it is a publisher and is subject to being liable for its content. As for where they stand? That's going to be up to the court.