What's going to happen to Microsoft in the next 60 years? (I'll be near death if lucky.) Surely they're going to have to change their operation eventually.
On Windows XP, everything contained within an application window looked better to me. See Qt 4.0 "windowsxp" widgets. I didn't like the titlebar and taskbar however.
Even taking the low average, it sure seems like a 150kg man should be getting 7500mg per day rather than 90mg
Vitamin C, MedlinePlus, NIH:
Vitamin C toxicity is very rare, because the body cannot store the vitamin. However, amounts greater than 2,000 mg/day are not recommended because such high doses can lead to stomach upset and diarrhea.
We used to frequently do the unoriginal ALT-F4 thing in Starcraft Battle.net waiting rooms, which was sort of counter-productive because we were waiting for enough players to join our game before we could start. Annoyed players would often leave too.
I have similar complaints. I checked a few grocery stores looking for a cooking timer, and they all used buttons. So I stayed with my semi-functional timer that has a dial. What is the sense in using buttons to add or subtract time when you could just spin a dial? Whenever something goes digital, it also goes for simple digital inputs which are totally inappropriate for many things. Sometimes I get the idea that I should be the one designing everything...
if I'd macroed, at the very least the server log timestamps for the escrow submissions would have been on even intervals.
I don't think so. I've thought about cheating in the past, and avoiding `fingerprinting' is one of the first things you'll come up with. So while very consistent timing might be indicative of cheating, inconsistent timing could be either cheating or legitimacy.
Consciousness seems to be a mechanism of a part of the brain: it's largely turned off at night, perhaps so memory book-keeping can be done, and then when it's back on it does higher-level decision making, although it gets offered its ideas from a lower-level. Why assume it's isomorphic to a behaviour of a so-called global "brain"?
As to what consciousness specifically is, it doesn't matter for the post. I just want to question the use of the term. Even if a global-level behaviour (based on tangible communication and such) mimicked consciousness, we're still lackey neurons confined to Earth.
(No Kurzweil for me...philosophy is a low, low priority.)
Strictly speaking, isn't the so-called irrelevent DNA important to survival? It takes energy to create useless DNA. But useless DNA might catch mutations that otherwise would effect important DNA (assuming, I guess, that the mutations occur per organism and not per nucleotide).
The hate legislation seems fine to me. The idea isn't that an individual isn't allowed to "hate" a group and communicate that "hate", but rather to prevent and punish the incitement of breaches of peace. People are punished for their actions, not their thoughts.
For example, from
Criminal Code section 318:
318. (1) Every one who advocates or promotes genocide is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years.
(2) In this section, "genocide" means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy in whole or in part any identifiable group, namely,
(a) killing members of the group; or
(b) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction.
People are also responsible for inciting hate even if it wasn't their intent but, I presume, they should have known better. However, an individual can communicate "hate" under various conditions, many of which mention "good faith".
What is hate?
"hate propaganda" means any writing, sign or visible representation that advocates or promotes genocide or the communication of which by any person would constitute an offence under section 319;
Well, that may be a good thing. I'd love a complex and familiar economy, but there is a potential problem in implementing such an economy into a computer game: the most boring thing in MMORPGs is the grind. If transporting goods is a grind then who needs it. But if such an activity were scriptable it might work. However, I don't know what sort of economy emerges when robots do all the boring stuff.
The author doesn't get paid when his stuff is pirated.
The author also doesn't necessarily get paid when his stuff isn't pirated. Take Photoshop for example. It's $500. If people were unable to pirate it then they obviously won't necessarily buy it. They'd probably find a free substitiute, unless they're more serious about the application's domain so they might buy some cheaper inferior substitute. So sometimes there will be no loss, and fewer times the loss will be to someone else, and fewer times than that the loss will be to Adobe. Speculation, but it sounds plausible to me.
Well, I don't know if they would be considered journalists, and they're certainly not "popular" science journalists, but those in the Nature's weekly podcast and BBC's Naked Science podcast seem to be pretty good. Nature's is full of interviews with scientists who've recently gotten published in the journal, hosted by "Dr. Chris Smith, BSc MB BChir PhD". It's common for an interviewee to comment on how good the question they've just been asked is. I can't extract much information from them ("sodium channels?").
I wonder though of what quality magazines such as Discover and Scientific American are. Discover has covered questionable ideas, relating to the many-worlds hypothesis for example, where by the end of the article it's difficult to make anything of it ("so there may or may not be something there?"). Sigma XI's American Scientist is presumably good; at least it's very detailed and more interesting.
Wouldn't it be easier to force companies to review their own games under contract, and if they lie, fine them? You could fine them proportionally so they don't lie to sell enough copies to pay for the fine and more.
Too bad she didn't describe how video games related to him at all. She made up her mind that it wasn't relevant, but she's not a professional, and we're left having to trust her even more.
I can't remember where I heard it, but sometimes people take "RPG" to be "roll-playing game" rather than "role-playing game". Ie. they're only interested in the numbers, and not so much in the characters. Even if a company were to officially spell it "role-playing game", that's not necessarily what they mean.
Also, Mav, does the electorate want you screwing with their schools? So yeah, this isn't Red China, get some perspective. Would you want people screwing around in your district without voting? Besides, MSN is just going to be used to waste more time in class. School computers get used under more circumstances than lunch-time. When I was in Tech 11 and 12 the majority of the class would waste time thanks to the unengaging teaching and poor Internet control. It would be a miracle a year later if those students even knew the name of the programming language they used.
(However, I wrote and installed software on the lab computers, giving myself power over who could and couldn't play games, getting me in with the 12th graders to play Starcraft and Jedi Knight. Then years later I disabled Deep Freeze on most of the computers and everyone could install any software they wanted. So, uh, I was actually pretty much the problem, ahem. But I'm more concerned about education now...)
Adults also watch TV. This sounds like control-freaks trying to parent the children of strangers. Indeed, we're all somewhat affected by those kids years down the road, but if their parents actually too neglectful then there might not much hope anyway. (I'm reminded of a Surgeon General's report about video game violence, about a decade ago, where it was concluded iirc that video game violence wouldn't appreciably affect children in the absense of neglect and some other conditions). If we're going to trample rights and allocate each other's money for the children, let's make it education.
There is a detailed document out there on the Internet about the situation with guns in Switzerland. One explanation for the disparity between violence and the prevelance of guns versus America is the family system and effort to avoid slums. May also be applicable to your last paragraph.
Television being what it is (consumer hypnosis, not education), it's hard not to conclude that television is really meant to be a significant challenge on the obstacle course preventing serious thinking (and political action) in this brave new world.
Or it could be, say, people giving up something of value for what they consider to be of greater value. It's hard to imagine anyone would put in the effort to manipulate millions and millions of people, without being able to micromanage anything, for a potential pay-off decades and decades down the road.
I would indeed like to study eighteen hours per day, but I don't have the energy. I don't know if I could even manage six hours of meaningful study. That's not to say I watch any TV, but I waste time...well, being here actually.
The Windows registry is incredibly huge, so much that it isn't really appropriate for humans to even directly use. I used Windows for ten years and I only knew the paths to a few things (CD auto-start and RunOnce/etc, and where applications are listed although it's often useless). I would only consider gconf to be like the registry in that they both provide a framework to store data.
Personally I think the idea of a registry for preferences is superior to the sorts of GUIs people use today:
1. options are organized more easily because developers aren't fitting information into a mess of small windows
2. all preferences would be available from one easy place instead of variable locations for applications' config dialogs (Tools or Edit menus usually)
3. consolidation would make it easier to set a lot of preferences in one go if you just got a new account on someone's computer
4. things like saving/loading preferences and carrying them with you would feel more natural (my system has tonnes of hidden config files, some in ~/ and others in sub-directories)
5. discoverability could be better
6. the registry editor window size could be adjusted
7. the registry editor wouldn't be a dialogue with no entry in the task list
8. no application-modal!
9. it's easier to manually search a more consistent structure, and actual search could make up for the deluge of config options
10. various things like descriptions, hyperlinks, and say "user level" (beginner, the basic options; competant; power-usage; etc) could solve most problems I think people will come up with
Sorry, that's sort of a messy, ad hoc list. But basically I would expect improved structure, consistency, and as such, usability.
Slashdot Mirror
I hadn't considered a difference between Vitamic C via oral route and Vitamin C from within the body.
What's going to happen to Microsoft in the next 60 years? (I'll be near death if lucky.) Surely they're going to have to change their operation eventually.
On Windows XP, everything contained within an application window looked better to me. See Qt 4.0 "windowsxp" widgets. I didn't like the titlebar and taskbar however.
If you were trying to make an AI for a strategy game, giving it the facilities to understand poetry is a waste of resources.
We used to frequently do the unoriginal ALT-F4 thing in Starcraft Battle.net waiting rooms, which was sort of counter-productive because we were waiting for enough players to join our game before we could start. Annoyed players would often leave too.
Isn't that conception of gravity only ("only") a model?
I have similar complaints. I checked a few grocery stores looking for a cooking timer, and they all used buttons. So I stayed with my semi-functional timer that has a dial. What is the sense in using buttons to add or subtract time when you could just spin a dial? Whenever something goes digital, it also goes for simple digital inputs which are totally inappropriate for many things. Sometimes I get the idea that I should be the one designing everything...
Consciousness seems to be a mechanism of a part of the brain: it's largely turned off at night, perhaps so memory book-keeping can be done, and then when it's back on it does higher-level decision making, although it gets offered its ideas from a lower-level. Why assume it's isomorphic to a behaviour of a so-called global "brain"?
As to what consciousness specifically is, it doesn't matter for the post. I just want to question the use of the term. Even if a global-level behaviour (based on tangible communication and such) mimicked consciousness, we're still lackey neurons confined to Earth.
(No Kurzweil for me...philosophy is a low, low priority.)
"Important" isn't exactly the right word...
Strictly speaking, isn't the so-called irrelevent DNA important to survival? It takes energy to create useless DNA. But useless DNA might catch mutations that otherwise would effect important DNA (assuming, I guess, that the mutations occur per organism and not per nucleotide).
Well, what if that sort of behaviour results in a lower price for ad impressions, and as a result everyone will have to do it to keep up.
This article doesn't seem to be in the print version of DDJ.
Well, that may be a good thing. I'd love a complex and familiar economy, but there is a potential problem in implementing such an economy into a computer game: the most boring thing in MMORPGs is the grind. If transporting goods is a grind then who needs it. But if such an activity were scriptable it might work. However, I don't know what sort of economy emerges when robots do all the boring stuff.
Never played Second Life, btw.
The author also doesn't necessarily get paid when his stuff isn't pirated. Take Photoshop for example. It's $500. If people were unable to pirate it then they obviously won't necessarily buy it. They'd probably find a free substitiute, unless they're more serious about the application's domain so they might buy some cheaper inferior substitute. So sometimes there will be no loss, and fewer times the loss will be to someone else, and fewer times than that the loss will be to Adobe. Speculation, but it sounds plausible to me.
Well, I don't know if they would be considered journalists, and they're certainly not "popular" science journalists, but those in the Nature's weekly podcast and BBC's Naked Science podcast seem to be pretty good. Nature's is full of interviews with scientists who've recently gotten published in the journal, hosted by "Dr. Chris Smith, BSc MB BChir PhD". It's common for an interviewee to comment on how good the question they've just been asked is. I can't extract much information from them ("sodium channels?").
I wonder though of what quality magazines such as Discover and Scientific American are. Discover has covered questionable ideas, relating to the many-worlds hypothesis for example, where by the end of the article it's difficult to make anything of it ("so there may or may not be something there?"). Sigma XI's American Scientist is presumably good; at least it's very detailed and more interesting.
Wouldn't it be easier to force companies to review their own games under contract, and if they lie, fine them? You could fine them proportionally so they don't lie to sell enough copies to pay for the fine and more.
Too bad she didn't describe how video games related to him at all. She made up her mind that it wasn't relevant, but she's not a professional, and we're left having to trust her even more.
I can't remember where I heard it, but sometimes people take "RPG" to be "roll-playing game" rather than "role-playing game". Ie. they're only interested in the numbers, and not so much in the characters. Even if a company were to officially spell it "role-playing game", that's not necessarily what they mean.
That's about what I was going to say.
Also, Mav, does the electorate want you screwing with their schools? So yeah, this isn't Red China, get some perspective. Would you want people screwing around in your district without voting? Besides, MSN is just going to be used to waste more time in class. School computers get used under more circumstances than lunch-time. When I was in Tech 11 and 12 the majority of the class would waste time thanks to the unengaging teaching and poor Internet control. It would be a miracle a year later if those students even knew the name of the programming language they used.
(However, I wrote and installed software on the lab computers, giving myself power over who could and couldn't play games, getting me in with the 12th graders to play Starcraft and Jedi Knight. Then years later I disabled Deep Freeze on most of the computers and everyone could install any software they wanted. So, uh, I was actually pretty much the problem, ahem. But I'm more concerned about education now...)
Adults also watch TV. This sounds like control-freaks trying to parent the children of strangers. Indeed, we're all somewhat affected by those kids years down the road, but if their parents actually too neglectful then there might not much hope anyway. (I'm reminded of a Surgeon General's report about video game violence, about a decade ago, where it was concluded iirc that video game violence wouldn't appreciably affect children in the absense of neglect and some other conditions). If we're going to trample rights and allocate each other's money for the children, let's make it education.
There is a detailed document out there on the Internet about the situation with guns in Switzerland. One explanation for the disparity between violence and the prevelance of guns versus America is the family system and effort to avoid slums. May also be applicable to your last paragraph.
Or it could be, say, people giving up something of value for what they consider to be of greater value. It's hard to imagine anyone would put in the effort to manipulate millions and millions of people, without being able to micromanage anything, for a potential pay-off decades and decades down the road.
I would indeed like to study eighteen hours per day, but I don't have the energy. I don't know if I could even manage six hours of meaningful study. That's not to say I watch any TV, but I waste time...well, being here actually.
The Windows registry is incredibly huge, so much that it isn't really appropriate for humans to even directly use. I used Windows for ten years and I only knew the paths to a few things (CD auto-start and RunOnce/etc, and where applications are listed although it's often useless). I would only consider gconf to be like the registry in that they both provide a framework to store data.
Personally I think the idea of a registry for preferences is superior to the sorts of GUIs people use today:
1. options are organized more easily because developers aren't fitting information into a mess of small windows
2. all preferences would be available from one easy place instead of variable locations for applications' config dialogs (Tools or Edit menus usually)
3. consolidation would make it easier to set a lot of preferences in one go if you just got a new account on someone's computer
4. things like saving/loading preferences and carrying them with you would feel more natural (my system has tonnes of hidden config files, some in ~/ and others in sub-directories)
5. discoverability could be better
6. the registry editor window size could be adjusted
7. the registry editor wouldn't be a dialogue with no entry in the task list
8. no application-modal!
9. it's easier to manually search a more consistent structure, and actual search could make up for the deluge of config options
10. various things like descriptions, hyperlinks, and say "user level" (beginner, the basic options; competant; power-usage; etc) could solve most problems I think people will come up with
Sorry, that's sort of a messy, ad hoc list. But basically I would expect improved structure, consistency, and as such, usability.