I've spent a bit of time looking at using ecological modelling techniques to try to scope out a game design just as you describe. The problem is that you're very likely to get all kinds of wierd interactions between agents that qualify as "emergent behaviour", that although interesting from a maths perspective, would probably not be fun. It's awfully hard to balance a sim (i.e. tune parameters such that the system doesnt just collapse to a single species OR global extinction) like that, let alone allow for humans to rampage through it. To get such a system to work properly will require a hell of a lot more cores than 8, and probably some new algorithms as well.
In this case it was a 10 year old doing a search for a toddler, to "show them some teletubbies". And as for TT being harmful to toddlers, it's probably as harmful as The Faraway Tree, Noddy and The Famous Five.
I recall a time in the late '90s when the top result on Google for "Teletubbies" was a Teletubbie porn site. Now I agree that toddlers don't have credit cards, but I had (and still have) a major problem with something like that. I don't believe that toddlers need to see that kind of stuff. Note that the porn in question was reasonably hardcore.
As I've said before (http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=18614 9&cid=15364163) I suffer from nerve damage, and I expect at least 10 years before my brachial plexus has finished re-wiring itself (hopefully for the better)
Trust me, 19 years to recover is like a godsend to someone whose only other options are a lifetime of suffering or suicide. To say the things you've said just reveal that you haven't got a clue what serious injury is. There are many many people who would love to hear that there is a chance (even if it's an extremely remote one) for a recovery in 20 years, rather than having to live the way they are for the rest of their lives.
In my case I look forward to being able to go fishing with my kids without passing out - only my eldest child can remember me before the infection, and he's told my wife "I wish we had the happy Dad we had before the operation".
It's stories like this that help me to keep on going. It reminds me that there's plenty of pople worse off, and that things can get better.
And now to go and take some more oxycodone...
It's your not being American that's throwing you. When I lived in the US I was very confused until I realised that there is no equivalent of "mateship" north of Tijuana and south of Canada. Anyone that breaks the "rules" or deviates from the "norm" should expect everyone else to turn against them in any way.
Conversely, it seemed pretty much that is you toed the line things were pretty sweet. As I came from a country where freedom is real, and not just a set of imaginary rights on paper, I didn't like it very much.
To answer the question, not unless you live in the USA, or Australia if we get another term of Johnny as PM.
Let me make it clear, I've taken pretty close to every drug you can take in my youth. I know the effects, I've lived the culture, I've seen the highs and lows (including the having done the time). I've also seen (I abused drugs for 20 years) the "extreme case" effects, the people who get aggressive when they smoke hash, the people who go fast on smack, the people who go to sleep when they take speed. I've also seen the people who go permanently psychotic even though they never used very much or for very long. To say that kids have a clue about the pharmacology and chemistry of the things they're dropping is a ridiculous statement, that suggests you're another kid who has decided that drugs are harmless because the "facts" presented by conservative elements are in fact lies. This is a shame, that kids are told lies about drugs, because the truth is enough...
Once you've seen a few people go to the locked ward never to return, or you've seen people dump their "friends" bodies on the beach because the gear was purer than usual you'll see that maybe there were some risks to what they were doing. How many of those kids who are so clued up that you are talking about have had someone kick their door in and start tearing the paneling off the walls loooking for the hidden microphones? Or have beaten there partners half-to-death because they are working with the police and the space aliens to plant ideas in their heads? That's what that class of drugs can and does do when used without a doctor's oversite.
Most posters in this thread seem to be under the misguided impression that Universties are principly teaching institutions. They're not.
Universities are primarily Research Institutes, that also teach to acquire a little extra funding. People who go to University and expect to be taught well will almost always be very very disappointed.
A Student who self-educates (i.e. reads books from that big room full of them - there's one somewhere on your campus, even though you've propbably never been there!), practices skills (does problems from afor-mentioned books), engages in low-level research ("What happens if we super-cool that solution before adding the ether?"), and has (occasional) access to people who can help if they're terribly stuck (tutors, senior undergrads, postgrad students, lecturers, readers etc).
The expectation that the primary purpose of University is teaching is, in my opinion, and based on my experience teaching (and researching!) at University, the second biggest cause of the lowering of standards of both research and graduate quality. Once we had a "full time" teaching load of 6 hours contact (lectures and tutes) a week, with the rest of the week devoted to research and guidance of PhD candidates. Now it's not unusual to have 20 hours or more per week of contact. So it follows that there is no way serious research can be done seriously!!
And because the students expect to be taught (and will not, or cannot, teach themselves), they are very bad at problem solving and basic research. Employers want graduates who can think and apply their knowledge to solve problems. Everything else only needs robots and drones.
Flaming Cane Toads - Used where there is a low fire risk. Simply add petrol, kero or metho to the Cane Toads and light. Groove to the fantastic animated light show!
Cane Toad Races - This happens where bore water is available. The water come out of the ground extremely hot. The contestants line up along the run-off channel, and at the signal everyone places their cane toad into the water at the edge. The toads kick once (twice for an exceptional toad) and then go all stiff, and slowly coast across the channel, whilst being cooked. The winning toad is the first to make it across. Note that bigger toads are started closer to the outlet to provide a "fair" handicapping system.
Antispetic Antics - Dettol (tm) and other antiseptics are highly toxic to the toads. Kids with water pistols love shooting toads. And the death wriggles (agonised contortions) are even better than the News for seeing gruesome antics, as the toads skin bubbles and peels off, their eyeballs swell and burst etc. We tell the kids that's what the US stockpile of Chemical Weapons can do to people.
"Better Living through Chemistry" - Apart from Cane Toad Licking, some brave souls make a delightful toad sauce, where cane toads are boiled up and the reduced to a creamy mix that (supposedly) is almost as good as acid, except it wears off after an hour or two. I can't say I've ever had the pleasure of trying it, although I do know one lad who claims it's pretty good. He's pretty cosmic though, and I suspect that anything he ingests coiuld bring on psilocin flashbacks.
I've seen people freak from 1 use of speed (rare I admit). All it needs is one relative who had that stay in the special hospital that no-one talks about (so you don't know) for it to be enough that that 5mg pill tips the switch.
Taking something that has the potential to radicaly change brain function while you're still young has the potential for a permanent re-wire. For some people 5 times a year is too many. How many schoolkids know what are the warning signs of a possible problem? How many even have a clue that there is a non-zero chance of a permanent problem?
Speed Kills. So do fast cars. But with a fast car you know in advance what will happen. Take meds without a clue is just performing chemical brain surgery on yourself, if you're one of those 10% of people with a predilection for psychotic illness.
And how I wish this post could be modded +10 vital reading.
Being a Cranky Old Bastard, I was a teenager in the 70's. I (and others of my vinatge) saw people go to hospital for amphetamine psychosis, and they're still there. My friends and I all agree, it doesnt matter how much speed you do, or how much, if you keep using it you'll one day have that switch in your brain thrown, and then you'll be searching for the hidden microphones that send you instructions about all the aliens and secret agents that are trying to control your thoughts.
I find the statement that this class of drugs is basically safe obscene. Taking them under medical supervision is one thing, but self-medicating with speed has a terrible cost down the line.
Don't get me wrong, I was a pretty wild kid, and there arn't many substances that were available back then I didnt try, and a few that I abused badly (and in still pay a price for the aftermath - fortunately not a price that causes functional difficulties except under very particular conditions, and the rainbows are nice) - this is what qualifies me, as I've seen exactly what happens to people who abuse speed. And abusing it doesnt mean boofing large doses, it means using speed without a doctor's supervision.
Look at the "quality" of typical microsoft code, and you think that they will give us tools to make developing parallel code easier?
I've yet to find anything close to Occam or fortran suitable for parallel computing and let's face it, except for a few classes of apps (such as nimrod searches), if you stuff it up it's a total bitch to debug.
I find the idea that Microsoft will give us neat tools for this stuff as likely as using VSS for a long time and not having your code corrupted. After all, writing really efficient || code for apps that require different compute nodes doing different things can be really really hard. that's one really fast equals two really hards.
Whilst I agree that some degree of caution is required (Hilary Rosen - Keep out of Reach of Children. Statements may be harmful is swallowed whole), I don't think we need to act like she's some kind of serial sex-offender.
It is in no way unusual for a CEO to not agree 100% with the decisions that they make on behalf of the company they represent. In fact, if an officer of a company acts in their personal interests they can get in very deep shit - when acting in their role their duty is to act in what they believe to be the company's best interests.
Regardless of people actually getting sued, it was in RIAA's interests to investigate the options for mangaging "unauthourised copying". Discussing the options in no way is the same as acting on them.
For example, I and other local parents often discuss "beating half-to-death and burning down their houses" some delightful people in our neighbourhood who sell smack to 12 and 13 year old kids. We all admit that we'd get quite a kick out of such acts of violence. But we opt to keep the police informed and to educate the kids, as well as keeping a highly visible prescence around the areas the scum hang out. I kinda wear the hat of the "leader" of these parents. Now if someone else decides down the line to implement the "kick 'em half to death" methods, should I be castigated because I discussed such things, along with many other options?
Please note that I am in no way suggesting that sueing 12 year olds and grandmothers the way the RIAA has done is a good thing. It's not. But I do think people need to get a clue before they start castigating this woman for coming out and saying what she really (OK, it's probably what she's been advised is a wise way to say) thinks.
We want to encourage these people to consider non-litigous options, we need to show ways for the music and entertainment industries to work with people and new information technologies, not push them into corners with hate and vitriol.
Most admins I know will only upgrade a kernel if they need to. Unless a kernel upgrade will fix a problem with the hardware I use, or a security problem that matters in the systems and configurations I use, then I don't use it.
Upgrading the kernel on a production system just because a new kernel is released is just silly. Now if you're tracking kernel development, or are actively involved in kernel or driver development then that's a different matter, but surely that's not done on a production enterprise server. If it is then you desperatly need to get a new admin. If you're the admin then I feel sorry for the company you work for.
What the article doesn't say...
on
3D Human Cells Grown
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· Score: 2, Interesting
What the article doesn't mention, is that as well as approving the research grant, Peter Costello also added an additional $300,000AUD from his own funds to the project.
I don't agree with the Liberal Party's politics. I don't agree with the Economic Rationalism that Costello uses to justify many of his economic decisions as Australia's 2nd most powerful politician.
But I can't help respecting this man. Imagine what the world could be like if all the filthy-rich politicians were to fund things like this with no strings attached. I will never vote for his party, but if he was a Queensland senator (he isnt) I'd have no problems giving him preferences right behind the party of my choice (the preceding ststement will make no sense for people with pseudo-democratic voting systems, like the US. Oh well!).
One of the incredibly cool things is that this research didn't rely on Industry Funding, so it's not going to be held for massive profit by some corporation - rather it's going to be "cheap" as stem cell and genomic treatments go.
30 years ago is 1976. I was at High School then...
Robots on another planet
Like Viking?
Robotic vacuum cleaners
Had them. There were plans in Popular Mechanic
Cloning
Garderners have been doing that for a few thousand years. They call it "Cuttings" or "Layering" by the way.
The Internet
I'm pretty sure that DEC-NET and MIL-NET were connected together by then, but I could be wrong. There was a global network by 1980 for sure.
Video conferencing
it was called "Live via Satellite"
Genetically engineered food crops
Colcichine (sp?) had been used to create new polyploid mutant food crops by then in order to increase yield of grain crops, as well as to make more potent pot.
As someone else posted, less is new than you think. A lot of the packaging is new though.
The previous post highlights what I (and many other citizens of The Rest of The World) see as one of the big problems that the USA has to face some time, the way you say "Your laws only apply in your country" and at the same time "Our laws apply in your country"
The USA does not have a particularly good track record of respecting the sovereignity of other nations.
After all, we are told that the current Iraqi government likes the US/Australian forces, and that "we are on their side".
What are the facts:
How many WMDs have been found?
What concrete evidence of Al Qeada working with Saddam is there?(i.e. devout [and probably misguided] Muslims dealing with Atheist Comunists Barthists)
How many US civilains were killed in 9/11?
How many US Military have been killed in Iraq?
How many Iraqis were killed in 9/11?
How many Iraqi civilians have died in Iraq since the invasion by the "Coalition of the Willing"?
How many of those were at the hands of US or Australian forces?
I have yet to see any really good answers to any of these questions except 2.
Actually, we have had more than one...just one using aircraft. I wonder why that is? Maybe because we here in the US we take security fairly seriously.
I have to point out that in 2000 when I was living in California, I could buy dynamite over the counter without presenting ID. I'm pretty obviously not an American. I could also buy handguns, dets and other nasty things that go bang, as provided by your "constitution".
I may well be that you "take security fairly seriously" now, but it didnt surprise me in the least that 9/11 happened - what suprised me was that you didnt have lots of less spectacular bombings all over the US beforehand. The only reason I can see why you didnt was because the average Muslim/Croat/Serb/Venzualan(sp?)/Native American has too high personal ethics to blow away thousands of innocent civilians, just like US troops took such pains not to kill civilians in Somalia, the Balkans, Granada, Afganistan, and now in Iraq.
Terrorists attacking US citizens - maybe 6000 deaths
US Forces attacking other countries civilians - maybe as few as 20000 deaths
Tea Tree Oil is amazing stuff. We had a melaleucca still when I was a kid, and we used Tea Tree Oil to treat all sorts of things, for both us humans and for our livestock. It's handy for fleas, ticks and lice as well - sprayed into the nooks and crannies of a henhouse it will help keep your fowl healthy.
These days we use it to treat our kids for head lice when they bring them home from school. My wife uses it for fungal infections.
But it would be a very nasty thing to use for deep wound or joint infections, or for septicemea.
As a challenge, get your handy scalpel and open a wound about 5mm deep into the back of your hand. Now rub some tea tree oil into it...
I have to stress how lucky you are. I got a MRSA infection in 1997, following a Bankart Repair (shoulder surgery). Initial tests indicated that Ciproxin would work - but it didnt, as we found after trying it for a few weeks. I can't remember what the final antibiotic was - but it wasnt Vancomycin.
A lot of ignorant people are saying "MRSA is no big deal, vancomycin cures it". Well in my case there was no way that a dose of vancomycin strong enough to get MRSA out of my clavicle, scapula and humerus wasn't going to do some pretty major damage to me. There was a shortage of beds in Intensive Care as well, so it was decided to treat me with some other drug - I was so sick by that time that it's kinda patchy (such as my not remembering exactly what antibiotic cured me), but I recall being told that they were going to treat me with this stuff for 10 days, and hopefully it would work, as it was the ONLY antiobiotic besides vancomycin that my strain would respond to. I was told that if I took this medicine for 14 days it would kill me by shutting down my liver.
After 10 days I was a delightful dayglo yellow colour, but the bug had died. Meanwhile I have to live with the aftermath of septic arthritis, osteomyelitis and periperal neuritis. In practical terms this means my shoulder had the cartlidges (sp?) eaten away and the bone surfaces have an interesting "finish" where they grind together when I move my arm. The nerves that pass through my shoulder were damaged by both the infection and the antibiotic, and I have constant pain which feels kinda like a permanantly dislocating shoulder. I take a lot of oxycodone, and as a result dont crap real well. Every 6 weeks I get a nerve block which gives me a few days (typically 3 to 5) with much lower pain. Getting these injections into the brachial plexus so often carries a real risk of further infection or nerve damage though.
It's the only time I've ever got a letter from a pathologist, as when they did the tests that finally found what antibiotics would work I got a letter in red ink from them saying "See your doctor NOW as you have a LETHAL INFECTION". By that time I had acquired the delightful aroma of rotting meat - leave a raw shoulder roast out in the sun for a few weeks - that was the smell 8 inches from my nose.
I was having the wound scraped clean twice a day, with it being packed with all sorts of things to try to help the wound drain. There was a hole through my shoulder - it was possible to slide a 5mm diameter glass rod from the top of my shoulder, through the center of what used to be a synovial capsule and out the other hole in my armpit.
So don't trivialise MRSA - it's really impacted on my life, apart from nearly killing me. And don't trivialise vancomycin, unless you consider potential organ failure as trivial. MRSA and vancomycin are both very nasty stuff.
I have to say that I'm rather bemused by your posting:
As someone working in new (bio-inspired) AI research with an eye to applications in games, but within an academic setting, I often hear that game developers are not incorporating cutting-edge academic AI into their projects because it's too "risky" (they can't really predict how gamers would react), and because they don't see the point in it.
Ecologically inspired AI is in no way new. I suggest you look at Dana Eckhart's work (rutgers) or Dave Green's (Charles Sturt). If you've actually done much reading then you'll realise that the "ai" solutions are at best quasi-stable where "stable" solutions seem to be arbitrary, and rarely comprise parameter sets which are at all useful. One reason why commercial developers arn't terribly impressed by the eco-models is that few game companies want to invest in an IBM SP machine or a Connection Machine just to find parameter sets that are not fun!.
As a gamer, and as someone who cares what gamers think, I am often surprised by the sorry state of current commercial game AI - it has hardly moved since the 1980s. However, maybe the problem is that no-one really knows what we want from game AI.
No, it's pretty obvious what's wanted from game AI - something that will extend shelf life whilst reducing the amount of difficult to tune error prone tweaking of parameters. Unfortunately AI research is much more interested in the problems of machine learning and complexity theory, which have little if any connection to games marketing.
Academics keep coming up with innovative AI technologies, but what we should we use it for? What do you think? What sort of intelligent behavior would you like to see in games, but don't at present? Which are the most obvious intelligence deficiencies of current NPCs that need to be fixed?
The most likely positive applications of AI research would be machine learning to get NPCs to try not to die. The catch with that is that players will be very annoyed with NPCs that own them and keep getting better.
In particular, the AI methodologies that are used by the ecological modelling community could be used for world design profitably, but IMHO (as someone who has worked in this stuff) trying to get it to work in a fun game that's in the RPG or FPS genres are very very unlikely to work terribly well OR to impress the people who write the cheques if they are being used to try to provide strategic behaviour for the mobs.
The AI research should be used for such things as image pre-processing, experimental design and the other things they're being designed for. Trying to shoehorn these technologies into games just to be able to claim "cutting edge AI" will be an expensive lesson in what makes a game successfull - FUN. Regardless of what the Press may say, no game has ever been a success due to technology, rather the successes have all been that way because they were fun and people played them. AI != Fun except for us mathematical types.
A good example of what I'm taking about are the Creatures games - excellent applications of machine learning AI and sim-LIFE. Fun to some people, but never likely to outsell Doom or Quake.
From my experience, closer to 99% of adults play games, at least in the over 45s group. We have games like Bridge, Canasta, Euchre, Scrabble, Lotto, Bingo and the Horsies.
Then we have the hardcore games like "Beat the Teenage punks with a baseball bat", "Sonic Attack" (a fun game where you play loud Frank Sinatra and Satchmo at the Hip-Hop Death Rappers and watch them squirm), "Report the scum who deal drugs to kids to the police and then bet on how few months they'll be back in the park", "Set fire to the little car with 18inch speakers" etc
We also have of course the Tansactional Analysis school, where everyone plays games, all the time. Watch the deep playing at your local supermarket on pension day if you want to see the most hardcore, foul mouthed role players at "play".
Finally, we also have a lot of PnP RPG players - we were the generation who invented RPGs after all.
As an Australian I would like to clarify a few things:
It seems Australia could be used as a testbed for invasive smart card and biometric technologies, seeing as how the populace on the whole embraces the anti-terrorism-means-restricting-our-rights -mantra.
I don't think the majority of Australians even know what our government is up to these days. The Howard Government has an absolute majority in both Houses, and has been pushing ideologically motivated legislation through in the small am hours, such as the sale of Medicare and the removal of our Unfair Dismissal Laws (gotta love job security...).
As a result it's up to the States to challenge these new laws in the High Court. The challenge is to show that these laws could be considered as unconstitutional. Possibly the best chance is if there is some way that it could be shown that these cards could constitute some kind of barrier to interstate trade, and then it can be shown that the cards act (in some way) as a tax or duty (i.e. raising costs) across borders.
You have to realise that our country is structured quite differently to the USA - you have an explicit list of rights in your constitution, we don't. Our constitution is a purely economic document. As a result, as long as an activity doesnt interfere with the economic management of the Commonwealth of Australia, it's States and Territories, then that activity is allowed unless there has been specific legislation passed either by the Federal or State Governments prohibiting that activity.
In some respects this provides us with greater freedoms than countries that rely on explicit Rights have, but it does provide for the kinds of abuse that the Howard Government is committing. Conversely, we don't suffer from Government by Lobbyist and Corporation the way you Americans do. It's a different system.
I'm desperatly hoping that many people will hold a personal opinion that in the interests of the continuation of the Rule of Law we will have to practice widespread Civil Disobedience. (The previous convoluted sentence is to get around another midnight anti-terrorism law which makes it illegal to promote anti-government activity unless it is an honestly and earnestly held belief that is congruent with the popular Australian ethos (that's a gross simplification by the way - even the lawyers can't agree exactly what the safety provision in that Bill actually means...).
You also have to consider that as a percentage of population we've had more people killed by terrorists (Bali Bombings) than you did in New York, so many Australians feel very vulnerable. We do have the world's most populous Muslim nation just a 300km north of us, and this current Government seems to be doing it's best to piss off all 300 or so million of them.
In general most Australians seem to believe that Islam is a religion of hate and violence, rather than that the Wahabists are the problem. As a nation we are really only just realising that this isnt a pure white anglo-saxon country, so issues like "these Muslims are nice people" vs "those ones are crazy" are way beyond the understanding of probably 80% of the population. Just today the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney announced that Islam is a religion of Hate (and that Global warming is not happening!!!) - what hope does the man on the street have?
Slashdot Mirror
I've spent a bit of time looking at using ecological modelling techniques to try to scope out a game design just as you describe. The problem is that you're very likely to get all kinds of wierd interactions between agents that qualify as "emergent behaviour", that although interesting from a maths perspective, would probably not be fun.
It's awfully hard to balance a sim (i.e. tune parameters such that the system doesnt just collapse to a single species OR global extinction) like that, let alone allow for humans to rampage through it. To get such a system to work properly will require a hell of a lot more cores than 8, and probably some new algorithms as well.
Why was this modded as Funny? I too would like links to audio files clearly marked as such.
In this case it was a 10 year old doing a search for a toddler, to "show them some teletubbies". And as for TT being harmful to toddlers, it's probably as harmful as The Faraway Tree, Noddy and The Famous Five.
I recall a time in the late '90s when the top result on Google for "Teletubbies" was a Teletubbie porn site. Now I agree that toddlers don't have credit cards, but I had (and still have) a major problem with something like that. I don't believe that toddlers need to see that kind of stuff. Note that the porn in question was reasonably hardcore.
Trust me, 19 years to recover is like a godsend to someone whose only other options are a lifetime of suffering or suicide. To say the things you've said just reveal that you haven't got a clue what serious injury is. There are many many people who would love to hear that there is a chance (even if it's an extremely remote one) for a recovery in 20 years, rather than having to live the way they are for the rest of their lives.
In my case I look forward to being able to go fishing with my kids without passing out - only my eldest child can remember me before the infection, and he's told my wife "I wish we had the happy Dad we had before the operation".
It's stories like this that help me to keep on going. It reminds me that there's plenty of pople worse off, and that things can get better. And now to go and take some more oxycodone...
Conversely, it seemed pretty much that is you toed the line things were pretty sweet. As I came from a country where freedom is real, and not just a set of imaginary rights on paper, I didn't like it very much.
To answer the question, not unless you live in the USA, or Australia if we get another term of Johnny as PM.
Once you've seen a few people go to the locked ward never to return, or you've seen people dump their "friends" bodies on the beach because the gear was purer than usual you'll see that maybe there were some risks to what they were doing. How many of those kids who are so clued up that you are talking about have had someone kick their door in and start tearing the paneling off the walls loooking for the hidden microphones? Or have beaten there partners half-to-death because they are working with the police and the space aliens to plant ideas in their heads? That's what that class of drugs can and does do when used without a doctor's oversite.
Universities are primarily Research Institutes, that also teach to acquire a little extra funding. People who go to University and expect to be taught well will almost always be very very disappointed.
A Student who self-educates (i.e. reads books from that big room full of them - there's one somewhere on your campus, even though you've propbably never been there!), practices skills (does problems from afor-mentioned books), engages in low-level research ("What happens if we super-cool that solution before adding the ether?"), and has (occasional) access to people who can help if they're terribly stuck (tutors, senior undergrads, postgrad students, lecturers, readers etc).
The expectation that the primary purpose of University is teaching is, in my opinion, and based on my experience teaching (and researching!) at University, the second biggest cause of the lowering of standards of both research and graduate quality. Once we had a "full time" teaching load of 6 hours contact (lectures and tutes) a week, with the rest of the week devoted to research and guidance of PhD candidates. Now it's not unusual to have 20 hours or more per week of contact. So it follows that there is no way serious research can be done seriously!!
And because the students expect to be taught (and will not, or cannot, teach themselves), they are very bad at problem solving and basic research. Employers want graduates who can think and apply their knowledge to solve problems. Everything else only needs robots and drones.
Cane Toad Golf - fairly obvious
Flaming Cane Toads - Used where there is a low fire risk. Simply add petrol, kero or metho to the Cane Toads and light. Groove to the fantastic animated light show!
Cane Toad Races - This happens where bore water is available. The water come out of the ground extremely hot. The contestants line up along the run-off channel, and at the signal everyone places their cane toad into the water at the edge. The toads kick once (twice for an exceptional toad) and then go all stiff, and slowly coast across the channel, whilst being cooked. The winning toad is the first to make it across. Note that bigger toads are started closer to the outlet to provide a "fair" handicapping system.
Antispetic Antics - Dettol (tm) and other antiseptics are highly toxic to the toads. Kids with water pistols love shooting toads. And the death wriggles (agonised contortions) are even better than the News for seeing gruesome antics, as the toads skin bubbles and peels off, their eyeballs swell and burst etc. We tell the kids that's what the US stockpile of Chemical Weapons can do to people.
"Better Living through Chemistry" - Apart from Cane Toad Licking, some brave souls make a delightful toad sauce, where cane toads are boiled up and the reduced to a creamy mix that (supposedly) is almost as good as acid, except it wears off after an hour or two. I can't say I've ever had the pleasure of trying it, although I do know one lad who claims it's pretty good. He's pretty cosmic though, and I suspect that anything he ingests coiuld bring on psilocin flashbacks.
Taking something that has the potential to radicaly change brain function while you're still young has the potential for a permanent re-wire. For some people 5 times a year is too many. How many schoolkids know what are the warning signs of a possible problem? How many even have a clue that there is a non-zero chance of a permanent problem?
Speed Kills. So do fast cars. But with a fast car you know in advance what will happen. Take meds without a clue is just performing chemical brain surgery on yourself, if you're one of those 10% of people with a predilection for psychotic illness.
Being a Cranky Old Bastard, I was a teenager in the 70's. I (and others of my vinatge) saw people go to hospital for amphetamine psychosis, and they're still there. My friends and I all agree, it doesnt matter how much speed you do, or how much, if you keep using it you'll one day have that switch in your brain thrown, and then you'll be searching for the hidden microphones that send you instructions about all the aliens and secret agents that are trying to control your thoughts.
I find the statement that this class of drugs is basically safe obscene. Taking them under medical supervision is one thing, but self-medicating with speed has a terrible cost down the line.
Don't get me wrong, I was a pretty wild kid, and there arn't many substances that were available back then I didnt try, and a few that I abused badly (and in still pay a price for the aftermath - fortunately not a price that causes functional difficulties except under very particular conditions, and the rainbows are nice) - this is what qualifies me, as I've seen exactly what happens to people who abuse speed. And abusing it doesnt mean boofing large doses, it means using speed without a doctor's supervision.
I've yet to find anything close to Occam or fortran suitable for parallel computing and let's face it, except for a few classes of apps (such as nimrod searches), if you stuff it up it's a total bitch to debug.
I find the idea that Microsoft will give us neat tools for this stuff as likely as using VSS for a long time and not having your code corrupted. After all, writing really efficient || code for apps that require different compute nodes doing different things can be really really hard. that's one really fast equals two really hards.
It is in no way unusual for a CEO to not agree 100% with the decisions that they make on behalf of the company they represent. In fact, if an officer of a company acts in their personal interests they can get in very deep shit - when acting in their role their duty is to act in what they believe to be the company's best interests.
Regardless of people actually getting sued, it was in RIAA's interests to investigate the options for mangaging "unauthourised copying". Discussing the options in no way is the same as acting on them.
For example, I and other local parents often discuss "beating half-to-death and burning down their houses" some delightful people in our neighbourhood who sell smack to 12 and 13 year old kids. We all admit that we'd get quite a kick out of such acts of violence. But we opt to keep the police informed and to educate the kids, as well as keeping a highly visible prescence around the areas the scum hang out. I kinda wear the hat of the "leader" of these parents. Now if someone else decides down the line to implement the "kick 'em half to death" methods, should I be castigated because I discussed such things, along with many other options?
Please note that I am in no way suggesting that sueing 12 year olds and grandmothers the way the RIAA has done is a good thing. It's not. But I do think people need to get a clue before they start castigating this woman for coming out and saying what she really (OK, it's probably what she's been advised is a wise way to say) thinks.
We want to encourage these people to consider non-litigous options, we need to show ways for the music and entertainment industries to work with people and new information technologies, not push them into corners with hate and vitriol.
Upgrading the kernel on a production system just because a new kernel is released is just silly. Now if you're tracking kernel development, or are actively involved in kernel or driver development then that's a different matter, but surely that's not done on a production enterprise server. If it is then you desperatly need to get a new admin. If you're the admin then I feel sorry for the company you work for.
I don't agree with the Liberal Party's politics. I don't agree with the Economic Rationalism that Costello uses to justify many of his economic decisions as Australia's 2nd most powerful politician.
But I can't help respecting this man. Imagine what the world could be like if all the filthy-rich politicians were to fund things like this with no strings attached. I will never vote for his party, but if he was a Queensland senator (he isnt) I'd have no problems giving him preferences right behind the party of my choice (the preceding ststement will make no sense for people with pseudo-democratic voting systems, like the US. Oh well!).
One of the incredibly cool things is that this research didn't rely on Industry Funding, so it's not going to be held for massive profit by some corporation - rather it's going to be "cheap" as stem cell and genomic treatments go.
Peter Costello, I salute you!
Robots on another planet
Like Viking?
Robotic vacuum cleaners
Had them. There were plans in Popular Mechanic
Cloning
Garderners have been doing that for a few thousand years. They call it "Cuttings" or "Layering" by the way.
The Internet
I'm pretty sure that DEC-NET and MIL-NET were connected together by then, but I could be wrong. There was a global network by 1980 for sure.
Video conferencing
it was called "Live via Satellite"
Genetically engineered food crops
Colcichine (sp?) had been used to create new polyploid mutant food crops by then in order to increase yield of grain crops, as well as to make more potent pot.
As someone else posted, less is new than you think. A lot of the packaging is new though.
I knew I should have have DRM fitted to my nick.
The USA does not have a particularly good track record of respecting the sovereignity of other nations.
After all, we are told that the current Iraqi government likes the US/Australian forces, and that "we are on their side".
What are the facts:
How many WMDs have been found?
What concrete evidence of Al Qeada working with Saddam is there?(i.e. devout [and probably misguided] Muslims dealing with Atheist Comunists Barthists)
How many US civilains were killed in 9/11?
How many US Military have been killed in Iraq?
How many Iraqis were killed in 9/11?
How many Iraqi civilians have died in Iraq since the invasion by the "Coalition of the Willing"?
How many of those were at the hands of US or Australian forces?
I have yet to see any really good answers to any of these questions except 2.
I have to point out that in 2000 when I was living in California, I could buy dynamite over the counter without presenting ID. I'm pretty obviously not an American. I could also buy handguns, dets and other nasty things that go bang, as provided by your "constitution".
I may well be that you "take security fairly seriously" now, but it didnt surprise me in the least that 9/11 happened - what suprised me was that you didnt have lots of less spectacular bombings all over the US beforehand. The only reason I can see why you didnt was because the average Muslim/Croat/Serb/Venzualan(sp?)/Native American has too high personal ethics to blow away thousands of innocent civilians, just like US troops took such pains not to kill civilians in Somalia, the Balkans, Granada, Afganistan, and now in Iraq.
Terrorists attacking US citizens - maybe 6000 deaths
US Forces attacking other countries civilians - maybe as few as 20000 deaths
These days we use it to treat our kids for head lice when they bring them home from school. My wife uses it for fungal infections.
But it would be a very nasty thing to use for deep wound or joint infections, or for septicemea.
As a challenge, get your handy scalpel and open a wound about 5mm deep into the back of your hand. Now rub some tea tree oil into it...
A lot of ignorant people are saying "MRSA is no big deal, vancomycin cures it". Well in my case there was no way that a dose of vancomycin strong enough to get MRSA out of my clavicle, scapula and humerus wasn't going to do some pretty major damage to me. There was a shortage of beds in Intensive Care as well, so it was decided to treat me with some other drug - I was so sick by that time that it's kinda patchy (such as my not remembering exactly what antibiotic cured me), but I recall being told that they were going to treat me with this stuff for 10 days, and hopefully it would work, as it was the ONLY antiobiotic besides vancomycin that my strain would respond to. I was told that if I took this medicine for 14 days it would kill me by shutting down my liver.
After 10 days I was a delightful dayglo yellow colour, but the bug had died. Meanwhile I have to live with the aftermath of septic arthritis, osteomyelitis and periperal neuritis. In practical terms this means my shoulder had the cartlidges (sp?) eaten away and the bone surfaces have an interesting "finish" where they grind together when I move my arm. The nerves that pass through my shoulder were damaged by both the infection and the antibiotic, and I have constant pain which feels kinda like a permanantly dislocating shoulder. I take a lot of oxycodone, and as a result dont crap real well. Every 6 weeks I get a nerve block which gives me a few days (typically 3 to 5) with much lower pain. Getting these injections into the brachial plexus so often carries a real risk of further infection or nerve damage though.
It's the only time I've ever got a letter from a pathologist, as when they did the tests that finally found what antibiotics would work I got a letter in red ink from them saying "See your doctor NOW as you have a LETHAL INFECTION". By that time I had acquired the delightful aroma of rotting meat - leave a raw shoulder roast out in the sun for a few weeks - that was the smell 8 inches from my nose.
I was having the wound scraped clean twice a day, with it being packed with all sorts of things to try to help the wound drain. There was a hole through my shoulder - it was possible to slide a 5mm diameter glass rod from the top of my shoulder, through the center of what used to be a synovial capsule and out the other hole in my armpit.
So don't trivialise MRSA - it's really impacted on my life, apart from nearly killing me. And don't trivialise vancomycin, unless you consider potential organ failure as trivial. MRSA and vancomycin are both very nasty stuff.
As someone working in new (bio-inspired) AI research with an eye to applications in games, but within an academic setting, I often hear that game developers are not incorporating cutting-edge academic AI into their projects because it's too "risky" (they can't really predict how gamers would react), and because they don't see the point in it.
Ecologically inspired AI is in no way new. I suggest you look at Dana Eckhart's work (rutgers) or Dave Green's (Charles Sturt). If you've actually done much reading then you'll realise that the "ai" solutions are at best quasi-stable where "stable" solutions seem to be arbitrary, and rarely comprise parameter sets which are at all useful. One reason why commercial developers arn't terribly impressed by the eco-models is that few game companies want to invest in an IBM SP machine or a Connection Machine just to find parameter sets that are not fun!.
As a gamer, and as someone who cares what gamers think, I am often surprised by the sorry state of current commercial game AI - it has hardly moved since the 1980s. However, maybe the problem is that no-one really knows what we want from game AI.
No, it's pretty obvious what's wanted from game AI - something that will extend shelf life whilst reducing the amount of difficult to tune error prone tweaking of parameters. Unfortunately AI research is much more interested in the problems of machine learning and complexity theory, which have little if any connection to games marketing.
Academics keep coming up with innovative AI technologies, but what we should we use it for? What do you think? What sort of intelligent behavior would you like to see in games, but don't at present? Which are the most obvious intelligence deficiencies of current NPCs that need to be fixed?
The most likely positive applications of AI research would be machine learning to get NPCs to try not to die. The catch with that is that players will be very annoyed with NPCs that own them and keep getting better.
In particular, the AI methodologies that are used by the ecological modelling community could be used for world design profitably, but IMHO (as someone who has worked in this stuff) trying to get it to work in a fun game that's in the RPG or FPS genres are very very unlikely to work terribly well OR to impress the people who write the cheques if they are being used to try to provide strategic behaviour for the mobs.
The AI research should be used for such things as image pre-processing, experimental design and the other things they're being designed for. Trying to shoehorn these technologies into games just to be able to claim "cutting edge AI" will be an expensive lesson in what makes a game successfull - FUN. Regardless of what the Press may say, no game has ever been a success due to technology, rather the successes have all been that way because they were fun and people played them. AI != Fun except for us mathematical types.
A good example of what I'm taking about are the Creatures games - excellent applications of machine learning AI and sim-LIFE. Fun to some people, but never likely to outsell Doom or Quake.
Then we have the hardcore games like "Beat the Teenage punks with a baseball bat", "Sonic Attack" (a fun game where you play loud Frank Sinatra and Satchmo at the Hip-Hop Death Rappers and watch them squirm), "Report the scum who deal drugs to kids to the police and then bet on how few months they'll be back in the park", "Set fire to the little car with 18inch speakers" etc
We also have of course the Tansactional Analysis school, where everyone plays games, all the time. Watch the deep playing at your local supermarket on pension day if you want to see the most hardcore, foul mouthed role players at "play".
Finally, we also have a lot of PnP RPG players - we were the generation who invented RPGs after all.
It seems Australia could be used as a testbed for invasive smart card and biometric technologies, seeing as how the populace on the whole embraces the anti-terrorism-means-restricting-our-rights -mantra.
I don't think the majority of Australians even know what our government is up to these days. The Howard Government has an absolute majority in both Houses, and has been pushing ideologically motivated legislation through in the small am hours, such as the sale of Medicare and the removal of our Unfair Dismissal Laws (gotta love job security...).
As a result it's up to the States to challenge these new laws in the High Court. The challenge is to show that these laws could be considered as unconstitutional. Possibly the best chance is if there is some way that it could be shown that these cards could constitute some kind of barrier to interstate trade, and then it can be shown that the cards act (in some way) as a tax or duty (i.e. raising costs) across borders.
You have to realise that our country is structured quite differently to the USA - you have an explicit list of rights in your constitution, we don't. Our constitution is a purely economic document. As a result, as long as an activity doesnt interfere with the economic management of the Commonwealth of Australia, it's States and Territories, then that activity is allowed unless there has been specific legislation passed either by the Federal or State Governments prohibiting that activity.
In some respects this provides us with greater freedoms than countries that rely on explicit Rights have, but it does provide for the kinds of abuse that the Howard Government is committing. Conversely, we don't suffer from Government by Lobbyist and Corporation the way you Americans do. It's a different system.
I'm desperatly hoping that many people will hold a personal opinion that in the interests of the continuation of the Rule of Law we will have to practice widespread Civil Disobedience. (The previous convoluted sentence is to get around another midnight anti-terrorism law which makes it illegal to promote anti-government activity unless it is an honestly and earnestly held belief that is congruent with the popular Australian ethos (that's a gross simplification by the way - even the lawyers can't agree exactly what the safety provision in that Bill actually means...).
You also have to consider that as a percentage of population we've had more people killed by terrorists (Bali Bombings) than you did in New York, so many Australians feel very vulnerable. We do have the world's most populous Muslim nation just a 300km north of us, and this current Government seems to be doing it's best to piss off all 300 or so million of them.
In general most Australians seem to believe that Islam is a religion of hate and violence, rather than that the Wahabists are the problem. As a nation we are really only just realising that this isnt a pure white anglo-saxon country, so issues like "these Muslims are nice people" vs "those ones are crazy" are way beyond the understanding of probably 80% of the population. Just today the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney announced that Islam is a religion of Hate (and that Global warming is not happening!!!) - what hope does the man on the street have?