The Semantics Differentiation of Minds and Machines
Saturday, January 21, 2006, 12:52 AM - Theory
In Slashdot today:"In Dr David Ellerman's book Intellectual Trespassing as a Way of Life there are a number of interesting essays. But there is one particular essay, entitled "The Semantics Differentiation of Minds and Machines" that caught my attention and which should be of interest to Slashdot readers. In that essay Dr Ellerman claims that "after several decades of debate, a definitive differentiation between minds and machines seems to be emerging into view." In particular, Dr Ellerman argues that the distinction between minds and machines is that while machines (i.e., computers) make excellent symbol manipulation devices, only minds have the additional capacity to ascribe semantics to symbols." Read the rest of John's review.
Isn't that the difference between intelligence and memory? Read the rest of the review by John David Funge
daryy
Tuesday, July 28, 2009, 06:30 AM
Still reading? Okay good lets talk about your first crafting profession
Pick a crafting profession that sounds fun to you. Dont worry, its going to make you money (except maybe Alchemy Im sorry I *still* havent seen proof that you can make lots of money off of Alchemy). What your going to do is drop the gathering profession that doesnt complement your new crafting profession. For example, if you want to take engineering, drop skinning and keep your mining. The one profession I do not recommend you take at level 40 (besides Alchemy) is Enchanting. Enchanting is a great profession but its not for the faint of heart, and its a ! to level up. If you are dying to be an enchanter now, welcome to the poor house otherwise try to hold off until youre level 60 (well be discussing that in the next phase).
Now that youre level 40, it should be very easy to powerlevel your new profession to a certain point. Do everything possible to farm your own mats while leveling, it will save you a ton of money. This is important because you need your money for
SCHEMATICS, PLANS, FORMULAS, RECIPES, ETC!!! These are what separate you from all of the other people taking up crafting professions. I see twenty new threads every day asking how do you make money in leatherworking or whatever, and people usually reply you dont take herbalism its a goldmine. Im going to let you in on a little secret.
It takes hard work and a LOT of time and gold to make money in crafting!Good service and price forwow gold and Logo Design good site. wow orandWoW gold kaufenandWoW oroandWOW soldi You will NOT be rich from a crafting profession just by learning what the trainers provide! You have to spend gold on schematics/formulas/plans/etc to make the stuff that people really want to buy. Im not saying that every plan on the AH is going to be a moneymaker, but the ones that ARE moneymakers youre going to have to pony up the cash. Dont bother farming for them its a waste of effort just pay a reasonable amount for it on the AH.
Guess what? Youve just put yourself above probably 75% of the other crafters out there! Why? Because 75% of WoW players either dont have the gold to buy plans, or they refuse to spend money on them because people price gouge on the AH. Now instead of competing with 1000 engineers, you are competing with 250 of themand out of that 250 there will be quite a few that arent as aggressive in making money like you, you sly dog!
Its important to remember that crafting professions are a long term investment. Unlike gathering, you actually have to spend money for crafting professions to make money. On my server sniper scope schematics go for 100 gold. 100 gold is a ton of money, but as soon as you pay it off (you can make 2-3 gold profit off of each scope), youve got another weapon in your arsenal of moneymaking!
The questions I get asked all the damn time (people even create alts on Malygos to bug me during my Molten Core run lol) is what items sell for a profit, how much do you sell them for, etc. And the answer is find out for yourself. Make a spreadsheet or list of everything you know how to make. Then for each item list out how much RAW material it takes to make that item. What do I mean by raw material? Its the total amount of uncrafted items you need to eventually make the item. For instance:
Hi Impact Bombs x 8 = Mithril Bar x16 + Solid Stone x16 + Mageweave x4
Notice that Hi Impact Bombs really take Mithril Casings, Solid Blasting Powder, and Unstable Triggersbut the RAW material list is as stated aboveget it?
Ok now that you have that for every item you can make, figure out the UNIT PRICE for each raw material. UNIT PRICE is how much it costs if you buy one Mithril Bar on the AH. Dont look at the prices for just one Mithril Bar though look at how much a stack costs and divide by 20.
Got that? Great! Next step is to find out how much you can sell each item for. Do a search on the AH to see what the going prices areit might take you a few days to get an accurate number due to the Retard Factor of people putting up items for ridiculously low or high prices. If the items just dont show up on the AH, determine if anyone would actually *buy* the item first, and if you think they would just take a guess of how much you could sell it for.
You know what the final step is right? I sure hope so. You know how much it costs to make the item, you know how much you can sell the item fordo some simple subtraction to see if you can make a PROFIT off of your items! You will be surprised how many items will make a profit. The obvious choices are items needed for quests, items that need to be purchased several times (such as armor kits, sharpening stones, scopes, potions, etc), and blue items.
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