Ever try to trick a dog w/the fake stick toss? Even they stop and scan to find evidence. (ours learned the ruse quickly)

spins my gourd that folks are SO EASILY misled by these fairy tales of teachers indoctrinating kids (yet, they can't get them to sit still, stop talking, or return materials on time); fears of giving citizens PSTD with known history (but explaining why 'person. woman. man. camera. tv' is NOT unsettling); or libraries can't be trusted to be run by librarians but the by the government (what were Ben Franklin and Andrew Carnegie thinking?)

look, boy! go get the stick! (no wonder all the anger. can't find it. but it has to be here!)

BTW: Roy and Silo thing is nuts. (not mentioned but peripheral involved) rather listen to John Oliver analyze "Air Bud". a lot less loopy.

Am I wrong for seeing Robert Downey Jr.'s visage floating in my peripheral vision during this short and waiting for the "Brough to you by Stark Industries" caption?

Anyway, just on logistics simplification alone, this is a win.

I have a very hard time believing thresh invented/mainstreamed WASD.

First, well before quake there were games that required mouselook, probably most notably descent and xwing type games. (Joysticks were expensive, uncommon peripherals for the most part). I clearly remember playing both of those games with a keyboard / mouse setup like today, and that feels like it was around 2 years prior to quake's release.

Second, as a diehard quake junkie who practically camped outside the store to get my hands on the game, from the very beginning there were many sites dedicated to qtest (the beta), and the very first thing those pages trafficked were cfg files from all the people arguing which control method was best. (then came skins, maps, quakeworld, mods, machinima, etc). I would say WASD was pretty well established well before Thresh won his ferrari- I dont have any statistical data or anything, and I think its cool that carmack included his .cfg file in later releases, but I highly doubt he was the first to use it / that people used it because they wanted to imitate him.

Form.A sounds a lot like the Stoner virus, I'm assuming one of those was a variant of the other. Some OEM's were unknowingly sending out floppies with that virus on them with peripherals for a while which really helped them spread.

I always thought the Michelangelo virus was a pretty serious one for pre-internet days.

Post internet, the Code Red virus was especially hard to get rid of. It never touched the disk so most scanners had a hard time with it.

I'm fairly certain he is using both at once, which is not a difficult feat. You're already doing that and much more while playing games. I don't see how inputing language and numbers via a 2 analog input system is "insane". From someone who has tested input peripherals, it's just different, like so many systems already out there. You should watch me with a rubik's cube. Peripheral testers use cubes (among other analog devices) to warm up.

It's actually really cool to see this concept in the mainstream, though I'd imagine you may need to practice common positioning. For example, t, h, followed by a vowel will be a pattern that becomes muscle memory, just as w, e, and then r, etc. They're simple algorithms that you don't even realize you're following, but simple take practice.

You know what else is insane? Playing a drum kit using all 4 limbs independently. That's insane! Speed Metal is insane! Me playing Dance Dance Revolution on Challenge is INSANE! Alllllllll of these simple things which are "insane". LOL!!!

@RedSky

Selling assets and, to a certain degree, the reduction of public employment is an unreasonable demand. There's too much controversy about the effects it has, with me being clearly biased to one side.

Privatisation of essential services (healthcare, public transport, electricity, water) is being opposed or even undone in significant parts of Europe, since it generally came with worse service at much higher costs and no accountability whatsoever. Therefore I see it as very reasonable for Syriza to stop the privatisation of their electricity grid and their railroad. There are, of course, unessentials that might be handed over to the private sector, but like Varoufakis said, not in the shape of a fire sale within a crisis. That'll only profit the usual scavengers, not the people.

Similarly, public employment. There's good public employment (essential services, administration) and "bad" public employment. Troika demands included the firing of cleaning personnel, who were replaced by a significantly more expensive private service. And a Greek court decision ruled the firing as flat out illegal. For Syriza to not hire them back would not only have been unreasonable financially as well as socially, it would have been a violation of a court order. Same for thousands of others who were fired illegally, according to a ruling by the Greek Supreme Court.

Troika demands are all too often against Greek or even European law, and while the previous governments were fine with being criminals, Syriza might actually be inclined to uphold the law.


On the issue of reforms, I would argue that the previous governments did bugger all to establish working institutions. Famously, the posts of department heads of the tax collection agency were auctioned for money, even under the last government. Everything is in shambles, with no intent of changing anything that would have undermined the nepotic rules of the five families. Syriza's program has been very clear about the changes they plan to institute, so if it really was the intent of the troika to see meaningful reform the way it is being advocated to their folks at home, they would be in support of Syriza.

Interventions by the troika have crashed the health care system, the educational system and the pension system. Public pension funds were practically wiped out during the first haircut in 2012, creating a hole of about 20 billion Euros in the next five years.

I would like to address the issue of taxation specifically. Luxembourg adopted as a business model to be an enabler of tax evasion, even worse than Switzerland. In charge at that time was none other than Jean-Claude Juncker, who was just elected President of the European Commission. He's directly involved in tax evasion on a scale of hundreds of billions of Euros every year. How is the troika to have any credibility in this matter with him in charge?

Similarly, German politicians are particularly vocal about corruption and bribery in Greece. Well, who are the biggest sources of bribery in Greece? German corporations. Just last week there was another report of a major German arms manufacturer who paid outrageous bribes to officials in Greece. As much as I support the fight against corruption and bribery, some humility would suit them well.


As for the GDP growth in Greece: I think it's a fluke. The deflation skewers the numbers to a point where I can't take them seriously until the complete dataset is available. Might be growth, might not be. Definatly not enough to fight off a humanitarian crisis.

Surpluses. If everyone was a zealous as Germany, the deficit would in fact be considerably narrower, which is a good thing. Unfortunatly, it would have been a race to the bottom. Germany could only suppress wage growth, and subsequently domestic demand, so radically, because the other members of the Eurozone were eager to expand. They ran higher-than-average growth, which allowed Germany to undercut them without going into deflation. Nowadays, Germany still has below-target wage growth, so the only way for Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy to gain competetiveness against Germany is to go into deflation. That's where we are in Europe: half a continent in deflation. With all its side effects of mass unemployment (11%+ in Europe, after lots of trickery), falling demand, falling investment, etc. Not good. Keynes' idea of an International Clearing Union might work better, especially since we already use similar concepts within nations to balance regions.

Bond yields of Germany could not have spiked at the same time as those of the rest of the Eurozone. The legal requirements for pension funds, insurance funds, etc demand a high percentage of safe bonds, and when the peripheral countries were declared unsafe, they had nowhere to go but Germany. Also, a bet against France is quite a risk, but a bet against Germany is downright foolish. Still, supply of safe bonds is tight right now, given the cuts all over the place. French yields are at historic lows, German yield is negative. Even Italian and Spanish yields were in the green as soon as Draghi said the ECB would do whatever it takes.

The current spike in Greek yields strikes me as a bet that there will be a face-off between the troika and Greece, with very few positive outcomes for the Greek economy in the short run.

QE: 100% agreement. Fistful of cash to citizens would not have solved any of the core issues of the Eurozone (highly unequal ULCs, systemic tax evasion, tax competition/undercutting, no European institutions, etc), but it would have been infinitely better than anything they did. If they were to put it on the table right now as a means to combat deflation, I'd say go for it. Take the helicopters airborne, as long as it's bottom-up and not trickle-down. Though to reliably increase inflation there would have to be widescale increases in wages. Not going to happen. Maybe if Podemos wins in Spain later his year.

Same for the last paragraph. The ECB could have stuffed the EIB to the brim, which in return could have funded highly beneficial and much needed projects, like a proper European electricity grid. Won't happen though. Debt is bad, even monetised debt during a deflation used purely for investments.

Traffic accidents would be virtually eliminated. The insurance industry probably has the most to lose when it comes to self driving cars, without a risk to insure against they can't make any money.

Regarding features like this, I've just got a new Golf with adaptive cruise control. This measures the distance between you and the car in front and maintains a pre set gap up to a set speed. They have a lane assist option too, like the video here but I don't have that and I'm really glad. The cruise control is teaching me to not react when a car slows down in front of me or pulls into the lane in front of me because the car is doing it for me.

I've noticed I'm letting my eyes wander for longer when looking at the radio, or flicking through options on the display. It's not intentional, taking my eyes off the road is dangerous. I know that. But I can steer between white lines using my peripheral vision so as long as nothing really bad happens the car will save me, so the temptation to look at something just a little longer creeps in subliminally. I don't want to be doing it, and I try not to. Thing is, if you're driving a long way it's pretty certain you're not going to have the self control to be 100% focussed on the road every millisecond.

I can't wait for driverless cars. I can't help but think that features like this being drip fed us are not really that helpful. It's just teaching us to pay less attention when actually the cars aren't that clever yet.

And to anyone who's going to say 'if you take your eyes off the road you're a bad driver, you should be able to keep concentrating, blah blah blah', you don't understand how the mind works. Your body adapts to the situation you're in. When I drive an auto I don't go for the clutch all the time, my body adjusts. It's not a conscious thing, it's automatic. it's the same with these driver aids, your body learns to take advantage of them.

Does this guy think that if he says ONE thing that is correct (or at least sounds correct) that people should believe everything every other thing he says on that topic? It sure seems that way to me.

For example... if you trace back the neurons in the CNS to their origin you get... sensory neurons (often from the peripheral nervous system)! (i.e. the things you see, hear, feel, taste, listen with, as well as get your balance and sense of position etc). Yet he jumps from tracing the origin of neurons to a philosopher who died hundreds of years ago and had no real knowledge of how neurotransmission worked.

And yes of course, not every neuron originates from a typical sensory fiber; there are inter-neurons and various control centers in the brain, however even those are not working in isolation, they are getting input from other parts of the brain (e.g. the hypothalamus).

Descartes believed in dualism, a distinction between mind and body, and people are free to believe in that idea, but it is simply that... a belief - much like religion. I get the feeling that a lot of theory that came out of that time was heavily influenced by the fact you could often get executed for not being a strong member of your church/faith, but that could just be me.

It's kind of weird because Descartes is also known as the man for stripping down philosophy into known truths.

I'm a fan of portrait view when the subject matter requires height rather than width, but this video requires more peripheral. YEESH!

Things are ugly enough as it is.

It used to be that if spooks needed your passphrase, they'd sneak in an put a bug in your keyboard... but if they have the private keys to sign replacement firmware for your keyboard then they don't even need to sneak in any more (actually I'm not sure my keyboard even needs signed firmware).

I think someone cleverer than me could probably contrive a defense against that particular attack, but I'm not in the habit of checking the integrity of my peripherals, or working in a tempest shielded room.

I think strong crypto is probably safe, but in the real world the crypto is hardly ever the weakest link.

I'd be in favor of religious people having no special rights or restrictions when it comes to dress code. With masks, either individuals have a right to wear masks or they don't depending on local laws. There are obvious reasons for this, it makes people hard to identify if the commit crimes, and getting away with illegal stuff is very often the reason to wear a mask in first place. That's why the klan do it after all, they're just Christians. Determining if adult mask wearing should be legal is a hard question, but not for religious reasons.

Wearing a hat or a scarf is a completely different matter. Absolutely no one that I have ever heard of objects to secular scarf wearing. It's completely appropriate granny wear. It would be bigoted to start objecting only if it's a religious symbol. Such people would have to object to all religious dress and jewelry to be intellectually consistent.

The only good objection I've ever heard is that maybe you shouldn't obscure your peripheral vision while driving. There, public safety might outweigh the right to dress how you want. It all depends on how big the effect is.

This is probably not the case. He wants to be able to "see the boxes." Rather, as a typographer he would have to have been a master of stippling. It's not so much that his "vision is blurry" any more so than your peripheral vision is blurry. It's just that he only has peripheral vision to work with. You can still see these details with enough zoom, which is what the computer affords him. I suppose he could also do it with traditional optics (e.g. a jeweler's loop), but that would probably make the actual painting part pretty awkward.

holodeck pls

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/Illumiroom/

http://hothardware.com/News/BOOM-Team-Fortress-2-Oculus-Rift-And-An-Omnidirectional-Treadmill-Equals-Big-Fun/

http://pinso.co.uk/2012/12/microsoft-holodeck/

or, in microsoft speak 'A data-holding subsystem holding instructions executable by a logic subsystem is provided. The instructions are configured to output a primary image to a primary display for display by the primary display, and output a peripheral image to an environmental display for projection by the environmental display on an environmental surface of a display environment so that the peripheral image appears as an extension of the primary image.'

whatevs

God is clearly not a static foundation on which humanity bases their morals. Any cursory examination of Christian history shows that interpretations of what a Godly foundation for a life advicates have varied wildly at least from era to era, if not person to person.

There has not only overriding agreement of right and wrong between Christians throughout the ages, but also between cultures regardless of religion. Every culture has basically the same laws; don't lie, don't cheat, don't kill, don't steal etc. This is pointing to the fact that God didn't just tell us what is moral and immoral in the bible, He wrote it on our hearts. However, you are right in that actions speak louder than words. If you want to look at Christian history, it's very plain that calling yourself a Christian doesn't make you a moral person. Jesus said you will know a tree by its fruits, and a lot of Christian fruit in history has been rotten. There has also been quite a bit of good fruit as well. However, you can't pin down whether God gave a moral law to the actions of sinful human beings when the bible actually predicts the massive apostasy and moral inconsistency that you are describing. Take a look at Matthew 24, for instance.

Is there a foundation for static morality without a God to give it to you? Of course there isn't. And again I'll ask where or when we were guaranteed any such thing.

Well, it seems you agree with Ravi after all. This is exactly his point, and mine. There is no foundation for morality (or meaning, etc) without God and therefore atheism is incoherent. Atheism leads to nihilism which is inconsistent with your own experience.

But lets say that we do deserve such certainty, it still begs the question of why this foundation for morality of yours seems to have a curiously diverse array of outcomes in terms of moral norms over the millennia.

It has a diverse array of outcomes because human nature is corrupt and we can only imperfectly follow Gods laws. It also has nothing to do with what we deserve, but what is true.

Oh wait, I forgot. Your take on this whole thing is actually the only correct one, because of a personal relevation from God - of course. I guess we can now ignore all those other people who felt they had the same thing, because they just weren't lucky enough to benefit from the secure foundation of morality you have found.

It's not my take, it's what Jesus taught us:

John 14:6

Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

So your argument is with Jesus and not with me. You ask Him whether this is true or not.

And yes, spending 20 minutes detailing how Hitler and Stalin may have used certain limited aspects of atheistic thought processes to reach conclusions that are clearly not necessary outcomes of such premises, not by a long shot, and then using that to discredit an entire world view - is indeed Reducto ad Hitlerum in every possible sense of the term.

As TheGenk said, that's weak man.

Hitler is debatable but Stalins regime was atheistic at its core and that isn't debatable. Atheism wasn't peripheral to it, it was the foundation. Stalin brutally imposed atheism on the populace, and killed millions of Christians who refused to deny Christ. Don't take my word for it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Christians_in_the_Soviet_Union

The history of Christianity in the Soviet Union was not limited to repression and secularization. Soviet policy toward religion was based on the ideology of Marxism-Leninism, which made atheism the official doctrine of the Soviet Union. Marxism-Leninism has consistently advocated the control, suppression, and the elimination of religion.[1]

The state was committed to the destruction of religion,[2][3] and destroyed churches, mosques and temples, ridiculed, harassed and executed religious leaders, flooded the schools and media with atheistic propaganda, and generally promoted 'scientific atheism' as the truth that society should accept.[4][5]

Religious beliefs and practices persisted among the majority of the population,[4] in the domestic and private spheres but also in the scattered public spaces allowed by a state that recognised its failure to eradicate religion and the political dangers of an unrelenting culture war.[2][6]

Not that this will prove anything for years to come, like I said Science and the medical industry moves SLOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWW. When everyone could just be partaking in the most extraordinary human experience that a human can possibly have.

Wiley Online Library has a medical document titled: A critical review of reports of endogenous psychedelic N, N-dimethyltryptamines in humans: 1955–2010

Conclusion: "The answer to the question, ‘Are the tryptamine psychedelic
substances DMT, HDMT and MDMT present in the human body?’
is most likely yes. We believe that the preponderance of the mass
spectral evidence proves, to a scientific certainty, that DMT and
HDMT are indeed endogenous and can be measured in human
body fluids."

Even I was apprehensive as to whether it actually is endogenous. Now I just ask, Why, why, why? Science, baby.

At least there are some in the industry that believe it ought to be known. And for anyone that has ever ingested the grand daddy of psychedelics, of neuromodulation I am sure they were bought and sold on the idea that DMT is a huge discovery:

"Data regarding their peripheral dynamics – concentrations, circadian
variation, and metabolism – as assessed by rigorous
analytic methods applied to biological samples represent the
most accessible approach to beginning to determine their
possible role in human psychophysiology and should be
pursued."

"finally provide us an answer to the question: ‘Why do humans
produce endogenous psychedelics?’ The research thus far is
limited but there are many possibilities awaiting further
inquiry."

Obviously, there simply just is not enough data to suggest how consciousness is affected by these chemicals. Not enough funding, fear of funding, not enough profits to be made. When actually, if they figure out what this stuff is and does it would probably blast open vault door and reveal the secrets of the brain.Or we can just have the status quo and look forward to the next Iphone to cram our heads full of consumer bullshit.