This may come as a shock to some, but the US can't/shouldn't enforce our laws on other countries.
Sure, but in this case "enforcing our laws in other countries" means "letting people in Japan see people speaking freely on American servers". The US isn't forcing Japan to permit people to say this stuff in Japan. If Japan wants to force everyone in Japan onto a state-run ISP that filters content (like is done in most of the Middle East and in repressive regimes), hey, that's between them and their God (or Amaterasu, as the case may be).
Some, like the Consumer Reports / Trade magazine people, are selling information. It's in their interest to at least appear to (and hopefully actually do) research about the products before giving a suggestion.
Yes, and this is an in-person Consumer Reports/ Trade magazine that is selling information that appears to and hopefully actually does research before making a suggestion. Why is this so hard for you to see?
Of course internet support forums exist. And for people who are optimally satisfied with these and don't need anything else, that's great. But some people actually prefer having a human guide them through the process. If you aren't even aware of what forum you should look at, or what the term is for what you're looking for, for example, they're great. You'd also be able to see things in person and make sure you're using them correctly.
The idea is that you can use such stores for things you can't do online, or when you don't have enough knowledge of the subject to competently search for it online.
Once you realize not everyone is exactly like you, it will start to make sense.
I agree. This increase will not harm people like you and me who own one or two domain names. It will however harm people who buy domains in bulk and do not make use of them.
Oh sure, that's a convenient position to take. First, they came for the domainsquatters, and I did not speak up, because I was not a domainsquatter. Then they came for the...
Something I've always wondered about: shouldn't it be easy to find large, established companies that are spamming? Just have some auditor make individual, one-use emails like that, sign up for a service, and then roast them when they violate the privacy policy?
I am NAL, but I'm pretty sure that laws regarding accepting stolen property require that the receiver have some reasonable belief that it's stolen. (For example, your little brother making minimum wage gives you a heavy golden chain that was "on sale".) Someone wanting a house emptied of cheap goods that they don't want to dispose of themselves, is not too unrealistic of a scenario, esp. if the house is unlocked. No, I'm not saying it's okay to take from any house with the doors unlocked, but when there's an ad from someone who appears to know what they're talking about, and knows it's unlocked, a reasonable person might believe they really are being given away and are not accepting stolen property.
They're building a new facility on the opposite coast, just cover up the fact that they never realized they were talking to the government of the wrong Berkeley the whole time?
Guys: just give up. It's not worth spending hundreds of millions of dollars to avoid saying, "oops, we goofed".
Agreed. I find it quaint to describe universities as being "non-profit". Sure, they don't distribute their profits to shareholders, but come on. Remind me how much they charge in tuition? Remind me how often it becomes ABSOLUTELY VITAL to get the latest edition of the calculus book? Remind me last year's budget for dorm renovation? Remind me the cost of goods at campus shops? Remind me the football ticket sales revenues? Remind me how much they get in exchange for letting marketers pollute the campus with their crap?
At least with corporations, if there is serious waste, a "raider" can engineer a hostile takeover, eliminate it, and keep most of the savings from doing so.
Too bad that, instead, we'll just enact a bunch of draconian laws to artificially induce scarcity again...
I don't think so. First, most products capable of being 3D-printed, that already exist today, will be freely reproducible, or some close enough version. Second, if people are designing new products specifically for this device (i.e. they are only profitable to make with 3D printers), and it would not otherwise be designed without IP in that design, the IP laws would only induce scarcity in an object that would otherwise be infinitely scarce.
That's basically right. People really need to "get a grip" as to what a 3D printer is capable of. You can't scan an arbitrary device and make a copy. If it's assembled from mutliple components, you'd have to scan each component (typcially requiring irreversible disassembly or the original device) and assemble it back together. That's why they're working with individual Lego pieces! You'd also be limited on materials by what materials the 3D printer can use.
I suspect that this will get easier, since it may lead designers to make "all of one piece" versions of products, and store them in a file format for easier duplication, but it has its limits.
This is based on your experience? I'm aware that in German words, 'v' is pronounced as an 'f'. I also speak German, myself. But in my experience with actual Germans who are speaking English (what I was referring to originally), they turn v's into w's and w's into v's. I don't know why they do it, but they do.
Interesting comments. I don't understand the dice bit, though. What kind of dice set contains all the spots on the Monopoly board and takes you 2-12 spaces forward each time?
As for game mechanics, I remember one time (on my naive suggestion) my family handled money simply by recording player totals on one sheet and adding/subtracting as necessary. It worked about as well, but had the advantage of instantly knowing your total cash at all times.
As for game play, do you have recommendations for how to turn it into a good game, without those 4 flaws?
The only way our planet could healthily support more people at a decent standard of living is for everyone to live peacefully in arcologies or other high-density utopian environments. The only way this will happen is if scientists can genetically modify all future humans to no longer be human: to not fight, to not be greedy or evil, to not be intolerant or force others to yield to their will, etc.
A little pent-up angst there? Arcologies are glorified condos. Make them nice enough and people will want to live in them. Everyone? Of course not. But enough that there could be more people than today but less ecological harm. Remember, people don't need to be prodded to live close to each other. That's why there are cities and why the biggest concentrations of rich people occur in cities of insanely high population density (Tokyo, Monaco, NYC). The challenge is just to harness the good parts of living densely (variety, convenience, returns to scale, etc.) while controlling the bad parts (attractiveness to criminals, incivility, noise, etc.)
Your experience doesn't surprise me, but I don't think it's evidence I'm wrong. I agree that if your speech is good enough, you don't need Powerpoint and in fact, shouldn't use it. If, if, if. If your speech is that good, the question of how to use Powerpoint is pretty moot. But you only debate "how to use powerpoint" when you're not capable of doing that -- hence the dilemma I brought up.
I'd point out it works in reverse too -- there are times when I've gone without a visual aid, thinking I was well-prepared enough (and making eye contact and all), and it bombed. So I think your experience is evidence of preparation, not so much the superiority of working without aids.
And I still think that your physical, flailing body is visually boring. If people are excited, it's because you've gotten them interested in the topic and gotten them to learn, not because they enjoy your gesticulations.
In my experience, what takes the longest is counting out movement spaces. Yeah, there are some tricks to count quicker, but unless everyone's on the up-and-up, they'll have to re-count it.
I agree about free parking.
I disagree about trading immunity to rent. In my mind, that's just a bargaining chip, though I don't see it often.
Anyone ever successfully paid the $2000 hotel rent on boardwalk?:-P
I once had a similar idea: to pull energy right out of the air. Here's what I would do: separate a sealed chamber into two subchambers with a little door between them that could be opened. Have some kind of monitor determine *just* the right time to open it so as to increase the pressure in one side. When the pressure difference is large enough? Have one side expand against the other, drawing out useful work. End result? Both chambers have the same pressure *which is less than atmosopheric*! So to recharge, I just open it up to the atmosphere, and start over again.
Go, me, right?
After a few days of this, I woke up to find a severed horse's head in my bed. A note attached to it said. "You're depressurizing the atmosphere. Stop."
Heh, they should make the FBI agents come in the game with appropriate avatars, i.e. shirts with an FBI-logo texture. And then when they play one of the scripted "give me money for a chance to win" devices, they can "seize" the object.:-P
I remember back when I still played in '03 (I'm probably still counted in the usage stats...) I scripted some listening bugs to eavesdrop on people. Maybe I could sell them to the FBI?
Zelda and Red Steel. My memory of what Zelda was like is unreliable, but I still play RS regularly, so I'll answer there.
First, the RS demo ads were... a bit fraudulent. You don't swing the wiimote to block *and* swing as you would a real sword. The way it actually works is, it transforms your wiimote swing into horizontal, vertical, or diagonal pre-scripted attacks. It can also detect you raising, lowering, and turning the blade, but that's purely cosmetic.
The part where it shines is blocking. Assuming you hold the nunchuck in your left hand, if you want to block, you just raise your left hand as if to shield yourself. It's a very instinctive reaction to someone swinging a sword at you, which allows them to tighten the required reaction time without making the game much harder. (There are sword combos too, but these are mostly unnecessary and take too long to master.) You can also swing the nunchuck down when the enemy is vulnerable to break his sword, which can win you faster than cutting him up.
What I don't understand is why they don't do more with the sword. As you can see in Wii Sports -- Baseball/boxing, it's very good at detecting vertical tilt. And when pointed in the general direction of the sensor bar, it's trivial to detect horizontal angle. Ditto for stabbing. So, there's quite a bit to work with, even without trying dead reckoning.
Thanks for the example, I'll try to learn from it. (Small aside: The Onion did a parody where Apple streamlines product launches with the "iLaunch" and obviates Steve Jobs.)
My use of "rambling" was facetious. What I mean is, regardless of how good a speaker you are, your body on stage is (except for performace art) visually boring, and the point of the slides is for there to be something more interesting to look at, to supplement your words, even if the words are exciting. My point is that there's difficulty in making the slide visually relevant, without getting too close to "just reading the slides".
Along the lines of the Cingular CEO, I've noticed that there are a lot of really bad presentations at consumer expos. At E3 '06, for example, even some of Nintendo's demos (like Legend of Zelda) were horrible. You'd think given the importance, and (in some cases) the quality of what they're presenting, it would be easy. Worst case, just grab a gamer, get him pumped about it, and have him talk. Go fig.
The arts I mentioned have nothing to do with what art professors teach? Have you ever taken any art classes? Art history classes? I think you will find there are plenty of professors teaching stuff that directly applies to the arts I mentioned. You think CGI doesn't rely on any known art techniques from the generations of artists that came before?
It does, it's just that very little of the actual crew draws on that university education for what they do.
You think there are no classes on computer art and its history or techniques?
Yes, there are, it's just taught by professors who learned virtually everything they teach in the real world, rather than at a university art school.
And my point wasn't about the arts specifically, but about the technology that is behind the arts. Withot those arts, many people simply wouldn't have jobs.
Yes, I agree "art good". I don't agree with your equivocation of anyone having a job related to art, with the art consumers actually view.
Being able to work a problem from a new angle can provide insight into new solutions. Cross training is important.
I agree, but don't think art-for-physicists helps much at all in providing new angles.
Think of a programmer. Would you rather hire a programmer who can code in C, Java, C#, and C++ but does that really really well, or would you rather hire a programmer who can code in C, Java, C#, and C++ well who also understands complex math and can write good documentation.
That would be relevant point if I claimed programmers shouldn't learn math or be able to write competently. I claimed something more along the lines of, "I'd rather hire someone who can program, than someone who has a diploma 'proving' he can program."
This is a horrible troll I'm ashamed to respond to, but I will anyway.
The arts you mentioned have nothing to do with what art professors teach. You're trying to wrap them all under one label and equate them all. "You think art history professors don't teach much of value? Well, gee, I guess you didn't like Toy Story because OBVIOUSLY each and every CGI programmer relied HEAVILY on memorizing obscure medieval artists' names in order to accomplish what they did, duh!"
Anyway, the original point was whether the existence of some extravagant hypothesis about the art-physics connection vindicated a physics major spending less time learning physics. That's wrong.
Slashdot Mirror
...the Japanese do realize that YouTube isn't the entire Internet, right?
Exactly. They need to be in negotiations with AOL, not YouTube.
This may come as a shock to some, but the US can't/shouldn't enforce our laws on other countries.
Sure, but in this case "enforcing our laws in other countries" means "letting people in Japan see people speaking freely on American servers". The US isn't forcing Japan to permit people to say this stuff in Japan. If Japan wants to force everyone in Japan onto a state-run ISP that filters content (like is done in most of the Middle East and in repressive regimes), hey, that's between them and their God (or Amaterasu, as the case may be).
Some, like the Consumer Reports / Trade magazine people, are selling information. It's in their interest to at least appear to (and hopefully actually do) research about the products before giving a suggestion.
Yes, and this is an in-person Consumer Reports/ Trade magazine that is selling information that appears to and hopefully actually does research before making a suggestion. Why is this so hard for you to see?
You are unbelievably slow.
*sigh* You really are slow.
Of course internet support forums exist. And for people who are optimally satisfied with these and don't need anything else, that's great. But some people actually prefer having a human guide them through the process. If you aren't even aware of what forum you should look at, or what the term is for what you're looking for, for example, they're great. You'd also be able to see things in person and make sure you're using them correctly.
The idea is that you can use such stores for things you can't do online, or when you don't have enough knowledge of the subject to competently search for it online.
Once you realize not everyone is exactly like you, it will start to make sense.
I agree. This increase will not harm people like you and me who own one or two domain names. It will however harm people who buy domains in bulk and do not make use of them.
...
Oh sure, that's a convenient position to take. First, they came for the domainsquatters, and I did not speak up, because I was not a domainsquatter. Then they came for the
Hm, guess that doesn't scale.
Something I've always wondered about: shouldn't it be easy to find large, established companies that are spamming? Just have some auditor make individual, one-use emails like that, sign up for a service, and then roast them when they violate the privacy policy?
I think some consumers actually like using oil, though.
I am NAL, but I'm pretty sure that laws regarding accepting stolen property require that the receiver have some reasonable belief that it's stolen. (For example, your little brother making minimum wage gives you a heavy golden chain that was "on sale".) Someone wanting a house emptied of cheap goods that they don't want to dispose of themselves, is not too unrealistic of a scenario, esp. if the house is unlocked. No, I'm not saying it's okay to take from any house with the doors unlocked, but when there's an ad from someone who appears to know what they're talking about, and knows it's unlocked, a reasonable person might believe they really are being given away and are not accepting stolen property.
Berkeley County, South Carolina?
They're building a new facility on the opposite coast, just cover up the fact that they never realized they were talking to the government of the wrong Berkeley the whole time?
Guys: just give up. It's not worth spending hundreds of millions of dollars to avoid saying, "oops, we goofed".
Why did you think a reference to Germans pronouncing "evil" was a reference to Germans speaking German?
Agreed. I find it quaint to describe universities as being "non-profit". Sure, they don't distribute their profits to shareholders, but come on. Remind me how much they charge in tuition? Remind me how often it becomes ABSOLUTELY VITAL to get the latest edition of the calculus book? Remind me last year's budget for dorm renovation? Remind me the cost of goods at campus shops? Remind me the football ticket sales revenues? Remind me how much they get in exchange for letting marketers pollute the campus with their crap?
At least with corporations, if there is serious waste, a "raider" can engineer a hostile takeover, eliminate it, and keep most of the savings from doing so.
Too bad that, instead, we'll just enact a bunch of draconian laws to artificially induce scarcity again...
I don't think so. First, most products capable of being 3D-printed, that already exist today, will be freely reproducible, or some close enough version. Second, if people are designing new products specifically for this device (i.e. they are only profitable to make with 3D printers), and it would not otherwise be designed without IP in that design, the IP laws would only induce scarcity in an object that would otherwise be infinitely scarce.
That's basically right. People really need to "get a grip" as to what a 3D printer is capable of. You can't scan an arbitrary device and make a copy. If it's assembled from mutliple components, you'd have to scan each component (typcially requiring irreversible disassembly or the original device) and assemble it back together. That's why they're working with individual Lego pieces! You'd also be limited on materials by what materials the 3D printer can use.
I suspect that this will get easier, since it may lead designers to make "all of one piece" versions of products, and store them in a file format for easier duplication, but it has its limits.
This is based on your experience? I'm aware that in German words, 'v' is pronounced as an 'f'. I also speak German, myself. But in my experience with actual Germans who are speaking English (what I was referring to originally), they turn v's into w's and w's into v's. I don't know why they do it, but they do.
Hypercorrecting Germans and Indians already pronounce it that way.
And ditto for any citizen of the Roman Empire who has been cryonically preserved.
Interesting comments. I don't understand the dice bit, though. What kind of dice set contains all the spots on the Monopoly board and takes you 2-12 spaces forward each time?
As for game mechanics, I remember one time (on my naive suggestion) my family handled money simply by recording player totals on one sheet and adding/subtracting as necessary. It worked about as well, but had the advantage of instantly knowing your total cash at all times.
As for game play, do you have recommendations for how to turn it into a good game, without those 4 flaws?
The only way our planet could healthily support more people at a decent standard of living is for everyone to live peacefully in arcologies or other high-density utopian environments. The only way this will happen is if scientists can genetically modify all future humans to no longer be human: to not fight, to not be greedy or evil, to not be intolerant or force others to yield to their will, etc.
A little pent-up angst there? Arcologies are glorified condos. Make them nice enough and people will want to live in them. Everyone? Of course not. But enough that there could be more people than today but less ecological harm. Remember, people don't need to be prodded to live close to each other. That's why there are cities and why the biggest concentrations of rich people occur in cities of insanely high population density (Tokyo, Monaco, NYC). The challenge is just to harness the good parts of living densely (variety, convenience, returns to scale, etc.) while controlling the bad parts (attractiveness to criminals, incivility, noise, etc.)
Your experience doesn't surprise me, but I don't think it's evidence I'm wrong. I agree that if your speech is good enough, you don't need Powerpoint and in fact, shouldn't use it. If, if, if. If your speech is that good, the question of how to use Powerpoint is pretty moot. But you only debate "how to use powerpoint" when you're not capable of doing that -- hence the dilemma I brought up.
I'd point out it works in reverse too -- there are times when I've gone without a visual aid, thinking I was well-prepared enough (and making eye contact and all), and it bombed. So I think your experience is evidence of preparation, not so much the superiority of working without aids.
And I still think that your physical, flailing body is visually boring. If people are excited, it's because you've gotten them interested in the topic and gotten them to learn, not because they enjoy your gesticulations.
In my experience, what takes the longest is counting out movement spaces. Yeah, there are some tricks to count quicker, but unless everyone's on the up-and-up, they'll have to re-count it.
:-P
I agree about free parking.
I disagree about trading immunity to rent. In my mind, that's just a bargaining chip, though I don't see it often.
Anyone ever successfully paid the $2000 hotel rent on boardwalk?
I once had a similar idea: to pull energy right out of the air. Here's what I would do: separate a sealed chamber into two subchambers with a little door between them that could be opened. Have some kind of monitor determine *just* the right time to open it so as to increase the pressure in one side. When the pressure difference is large enough? Have one side expand against the other, drawing out useful work. End result? Both chambers have the same pressure *which is less than atmosopheric*! So to recharge, I just open it up to the atmosphere, and start over again.
:-/
Go, me, right?
After a few days of this, I woke up to find a severed horse's head in my bed. A note attached to it said. "You're depressurizing the atmosphere. Stop."
That settled it for me
Heh, they should make the FBI agents come in the game with appropriate avatars, i.e. shirts with an FBI-logo texture. And then when they play one of the scripted "give me money for a chance to win" devices, they can "seize" the object. :-P
I remember back when I still played in '03 (I'm probably still counted in the usage stats...) I scripted some listening bugs to eavesdrop on people. Maybe I could sell them to the FBI?
Zelda and Red Steel. My memory of what Zelda was like is unreliable, but I still play RS regularly, so I'll answer there.
... a bit fraudulent. You don't swing the wiimote to block *and* swing as you would a real sword. The way it actually works is, it transforms your wiimote swing into horizontal, vertical, or diagonal pre-scripted attacks. It can also detect you raising, lowering, and turning the blade, but that's purely cosmetic.
First, the RS demo ads were
The part where it shines is blocking. Assuming you hold the nunchuck in your left hand, if you want to block, you just raise your left hand as if to shield yourself. It's a very instinctive reaction to someone swinging a sword at you, which allows them to tighten the required reaction time without making the game much harder. (There are sword combos too, but these are mostly unnecessary and take too long to master.) You can also swing the nunchuck down when the enemy is vulnerable to break his sword, which can win you faster than cutting him up.
What I don't understand is why they don't do more with the sword. As you can see in Wii Sports -- Baseball/boxing, it's very good at detecting vertical tilt. And when pointed in the general direction of the sensor bar, it's trivial to detect horizontal angle. Ditto for stabbing. So, there's quite a bit to work with, even without trying dead reckoning.
Thanks for the example, I'll try to learn from it. (Small aside: The Onion did a parody where Apple streamlines product launches with the "iLaunch" and obviates Steve Jobs.)
My use of "rambling" was facetious. What I mean is, regardless of how good a speaker you are, your body on stage is (except for performace art) visually boring, and the point of the slides is for there to be something more interesting to look at, to supplement your words, even if the words are exciting. My point is that there's difficulty in making the slide visually relevant, without getting too close to "just reading the slides".
Along the lines of the Cingular CEO, I've noticed that there are a lot of really bad presentations at consumer expos. At E3 '06, for example, even some of Nintendo's demos (like Legend of Zelda) were horrible. You'd think given the importance, and (in some cases) the quality of what they're presenting, it would be easy. Worst case, just grab a gamer, get him pumped about it, and have him talk. Go fig.
The arts I mentioned have nothing to do with what art professors teach? Have you ever taken any art classes? Art history classes? I think you will find there are plenty of professors teaching stuff that directly applies to the arts I mentioned. You think CGI doesn't rely on any known art techniques from the generations of artists that came before?
It does, it's just that very little of the actual crew draws on that university education for what they do.
You think there are no classes on computer art and its history or techniques?
Yes, there are, it's just taught by professors who learned virtually everything they teach in the real world, rather than at a university art school.
And my point wasn't about the arts specifically, but about the technology that is behind the arts. Withot those arts, many people simply wouldn't have jobs.
Yes, I agree "art good". I don't agree with your equivocation of anyone having a job related to art, with the art consumers actually view.
Being able to work a problem from a new angle can provide insight into new solutions. Cross training is important.
I agree, but don't think art-for-physicists helps much at all in providing new angles.
Think of a programmer. Would you rather hire a programmer who can code in C, Java, C#, and C++ but does that really really well, or would you rather hire a programmer who can code in C, Java, C#, and C++ well who also understands complex math and can write good documentation.
That would be relevant point if I claimed programmers shouldn't learn math or be able to write competently. I claimed something more along the lines of, "I'd rather hire someone who can program, than someone who has a diploma 'proving' he can program."
This is a horrible troll I'm ashamed to respond to, but I will anyway.
The arts you mentioned have nothing to do with what art professors teach. You're trying to wrap them all under one label and equate them all. "You think art history professors don't teach much of value? Well, gee, I guess you didn't like Toy Story because OBVIOUSLY each and every CGI programmer relied HEAVILY on memorizing obscure medieval artists' names in order to accomplish what they did, duh!"
Anyway, the original point was whether the existence of some extravagant hypothesis about the art-physics connection vindicated a physics major spending less time learning physics. That's wrong.