(I warned you my Italian was never good and has gone rsuty over the years. As I used to say in Italiano: "Posso parlare un poco Italiano ma vocabulario mio e limitato, e grammario mio e multo male.:) )
You will find that, at elast in Italy, european and american CS educatiosn are fairly different. Italian computer scientists, in my expereince, were mroe theoretical. Their theory background will amaze you. on tyhe fli pside, they have less practical knowledge and experience with how to put a system together and make it work. Americans tend to have more actual project experience and be faster coders.
When I graduated, I made a list of 30 companies doing things I was interested in and sent them resumes. I ended up being hired b yan Italian firm in Milano and spent the enxt year there.
I didn't worry about the visa, and my advice is not to. If the company wants you then they are in a much better position to help you get one or at least tell you how to go about it yourself.
In re language, in Italy all the computers and computer scientists speak english pretty well. The same may not be true in France. I went over having had 3 semesters of Latin but not Italian. if you cna deal with feeling like an idiot-savant for awhile while you pick it up, IMO the best and easiest way to learn a language is by immersion.
It took me abotu 3 months to learn enough street Italian to get by. Til then, i was very creative, and relied on things like pictures on cans at the market (which led to some very amusing stories I can still tell:) )
Throwing yourself out of your familiar environment and cutting yourself off from your support network is definately an adventure and not for the weak of heart, but I wouldn't trade the experience for anything. It made me a far stronger and more capable person.
And on the flip side, just walking around with the car tape player I just bought m ywife I had to tell no less then 4 different sales people "NO! I DONT WANT THE WARRANTY."
Just shows how much money they make on those, I guess.
Sun believed and invested enough in Linux to buy Cobalt and to put major effort into a Java port. (Yes I know some of the original work was down by Blackdown but Sun has teams wokring on it now side by side with their Windows and Solaris teams.)
IMO there seems to be some segment of the Linux community that over-lap with the conspiracy lunatic fringe. Neither can be happy unelss they can find someway to think everyones "out to get them."
Remember, Sun doesnt make money on Solaris. they nmake money on Sparcs. They are still fundementally a hardware company.
Frankly I think Zander was just expressing some very honest concerns.
Get real. These are hack and slash games and, except for the fqct that they are social and progressive (you gain as you go along) are nto in any fundemental entertainmtn way different from Space Invaders. Its still "bang bang your dead."
True role-play is as rare as it has always been, and gernally still cosnidered as "weird" by the masses.
Which is why it makes no sense to you. You incorrectly state:
"This begs the question, when I buy an album, what am I buying. I don't own the music, I just own the right to listen to it,..."
None can control ones right to listen to something. Once the sound is in the air that sound is PD. (The right to perform is another matter and is limited, don't let that confuse you. Similarly the right to control the space something is performed in, such as the movie theatre charging admission.)
So if thats not what you bought, what did you nuy? The answer is inherent in the word COpyright. You bought ONE COPY of a given eprfromance. You have the right to own that copy, and listen to that copy (or eat it, if that turns you on.) Youy don't have the right o perform with that copy (unelss its a performance copy) which is why you can't play it over the internet for others.
Simialrly you don't own the right o make new copeis of that copy. HOWEVER the courts have recognized a limtied righ to make personal archives. So you can makew a copy for your own use. This means that you cantake that vynal albumn to a friend's house who has the right equiptment and cut a CD off it using a CD-ROm burner.
If you want the record company to do that for you, then yes, you have to pay for it like anyone else because youare buying a new copy from them.
Copyright is simple, really. People who don't WANT to udnerstand it tend to purposefully confuse themselves.
The stock market is liek the weather,as soon as you think you udnerstand it, it will change.
Att he end of the day tehre were two kidsn of tehc stocks, those that were legitimate investments in companeis building the infrastructure of the future, and speculations on moeny making schemes in that infrastructure.
Investemnts in infrastructure companies (for instance, my own Sun stock) have been resiliant and IMO will recover as they haver in the past.
Wild schemes with no profitabiltiy i nsight,ill die.
This is just normal market consolidation. The death of the tech sector, to quote the man, "has been greatly exaggerated."
We were desicussing all of this and more with our develoerps at TEN many years ago, as well as presentign the issues at CGDC.
He's wrong though if he says that 'at soem poitn you have to trust the client". The answer is well knmown and predates on-line games, going back to secure database systems.
The answer is a model-view architecture. The model is kept on the server. The client is purely a view of what is going on. Any chaanges on the cleint distort only the player's view, not the actual game.
This modle isn't a panacea in that you are trading ease of solution in teh cheat-space for tougher scalability and latency-hiding issues, but in those at elast the suer isn't your potential enemy.
I know many formally trianed typists who have been typing at keyboards less time then I have that have carpal tunnel.
I show no sign of coming down with it. Classic typing detroys ahdsn and I have no urge to do that to msyelf, though I appreciate that slashdot's lack of a spell checker might make my idosyncracies somewhat difficult for the reader.
If you can find me a typing system or device that is relatively easy to learn and non-repetitive, I might be very interested.
I DO have a twiddler on order for some light weight computing experiments and plan to learn to use it. Maybe that will help.
Ther is a big difference between a remtoe manned vehicle and an autonomous one. Saying things like "the first step towards robots fighting our wars for us" is like saying the 25 cent crane-game machien is the first step towards robots doing our manual labor for us.
All they did is take the pilot out of the plane and put him on the ground folks. Those "operators" are air force pilots (the friend of an in-law of mine was oen of the test pilots.)
I would expect this sort of "machines are gonna kill us" nonsense from the unwashed masses, but I thought Slashdot was supposed to be a techno-literate group.
If you want to undrestand why they are going this direction, go rent an epsiode of Nova called "The Biology Barrier." For awhile now the limiting factor on fighter plane performance has not been what the plane could do, but what the human body inside the plane could stand. Taking the pilot out of the cockpit frees the plane up to perform at maximum.
The problem with trying to look for "perception" or "reasoningmabiltiy" in computers is a failrue in definitions. We really don't knwo what these thinsg are. They are vauge, fuzzy words for "thinsg like we do." As long as theya re nto tightly defiend the debate over whetehr or nto they can be, or have been, reached is endless and meaningless.
IMO perception and reasoning are emergent properties of our neural networks. If we look at the reserach doen i neural networks we see what I believe are simpler, but no less real, properties of a similar kind emerging.
Lets eamine one example: The CMU autonomous driving van. This was a project started under the DARPA Umanned Combat Vehicles project. (They were tryign to build Bolos, for any Kieth Laumer fans out there.) This is a van that a neural network can pilot down a lane on a road under a wide variety of drivign and visability conditions, at about 60mph.
Some interesting things about this project:
(1) they did not "program; the avn to do this. The reserahcers had no strategy in mind. They merely taught the neural network with video input and driving control output. It strategized by itself, this is what neural networks do.
(2) They attnepted traing unde ra number of different conditions. When tehy examiend the rules the system had coemn up with afterward, they found the ruels vaired widely dependign on the trainging conditions BUT the perofrmance of any set of rules seemed to be a constant. (That 60mph).
There is an intersting article they wrote called "Exposing the hidden layer" that ran in Byte about 15 years ago.
SO what cane we say about the autonomous van? Well, it problem solved in a creative way finding its own solutions. It also leraned to pick out key visual elements to drive that solution.
To me, this IS perception and reasoning ability, albeit with a limited scope. I think we tend to mysticize our own abilities way too much. In the end I don't think they are functionally any diffrent, just more complex because of the size and sophistication of our neural nets.
Low pwoer is great. But ATI didn't win because they had the lowest pwoer consumption of any of the options. They won because those chips they sold to motherboard makers were dirt cheap while (barely) 3D capabale and not a total off-brand.
"I wish I could say it is a shame that Netpliance is having to kill the iOpener but well, they sort of deserved it. Netpliance tried to build a piece of hardware at a loss and then make up the money by seeling a service. This is a poor business model..."
Hmm. So game consoles have a bad bsuienss model? (They sell the concole at a loss to sell the software.) Tell that to the milliosn of VERY happy investors in Sony. The classic example of all of this is Razor Baldes, wher the same mdoel is used and have been hugely financially successful.
The problem isn't the mdoel. The problem is greedy people who took unreasonable advanatge of it. (Go look in a mirror.) If you wanted them to survive, maybe you should have helped them MAKE money rather then lose it.
I dont care if theyw ere your firend or your enemey.
The simple principle remains. Take the profit out of an endevour and the endevour will cease. You can't expect others to pay for your stealing. They won't any more then you would in reverse.
"This will be a sad note to all of those who have yet to buy the unit that cost $400 to produce for a fraction of that amount. Get'm while you can, cuz they don't make'm no more..."
And so Slashdot users mourn the passing of a device they were instrumental in killing.
Blaing the failure of this device on "inferior ISP service" is questionable at best. Certainly all the money this company lost producing a loss-leader device that Slashdot promoted using in a way that produced a loss for the company didn't hel pthem survive.
There is a parallel here. Noone produces things for YOUR benefit folks. If you take away the profitability, you take away the product.
Consider that carefully when you think about your feelins on the protection of commercial intelelctual property.
Do you want to live in a world with no writers and no movie makers?
Slashdot Mirror
It's just too damn hard to write obfuscated code!!
;)
Ciao, amico mio.
:) )
(I warned you my Italian was never good and has gone rsuty over the years. As I used to say in Italiano: "Posso parlare un poco Italiano ma vocabulario mio e limitato, e grammario mio e multo male.
You will find that, at elast in Italy, european and american CS educatiosn are fairly different. Italian computer scientists, in my expereince, were mroe theoretical. Their theory background will amaze you. on tyhe fli pside, they have less practical knowledge and experience with how to put a system together and make it work. Americans tend to have more actual project experience and be faster coders.
When I graduated, I made a list of 30 companies doing things I was interested in and sent them resumes. I ended up being hired b yan Italian firm in Milano and spent the enxt year there.
:) )
I didn't worry about the visa, and my advice is not to. If the company wants you then they are in a much better position to help you get one or at least tell you how to go about it yourself.
In re language, in Italy all the computers and computer scientists speak english pretty well. The same may not be true in France. I went over having had 3 semesters of Latin but not Italian. if you cna deal with feeling like an idiot-savant for awhile while you pick it up, IMO the best and easiest way to learn a language is by immersion.
It took me abotu 3 months to learn enough street Italian to get by. Til then, i was very creative, and relied on things like pictures on cans at the market (which led to some very amusing stories I can still tell
Throwing yourself out of your familiar environment and cutting yourself off from your support network is definately an adventure and not for the weak of heart, but I wouldn't trade the experience for anything. It made me a far stronger and more capable person.
'nuff said
import cmdr.taco.need.to.learn.how.to.import.from.*
packages
For the record,
"Fair use" is a copyright conmcept, not a trademark concept.
As usual, Cmdr Taco displays his "amazing grasp" of intellectual property law.
.. what makes you think they won't rip off you?
Something to think about when considering "alternative" shopping exercises.
And on the flip side, just walking around with the car tape player I just bought m ywife I had to tell no less then 4 different sales people "NO! I DONT WANT THE WARRANTY."
Just shows how much money they make on those, I guess.
My wife is ready never to go back to Best Buy.
Sun believed and invested enough in Linux to buy Cobalt and to put major effort into a Java port. (Yes I know some of the original work was down by Blackdown but Sun has teams wokring on it now side by side with their Windows and Solaris teams.)
IMO there seems to be some segment of the Linux community that over-lap with the conspiracy lunatic fringe. Neither can be happy unelss they can find someway to think everyones "out to get them."
Remember, Sun doesnt make money on Solaris. they nmake money on Sparcs. They are still fundementally a hardware company.
Frankly I think Zander was just expressing some very honest concerns.
EQ and AC ?
Get real. These are hack and slash games and, except for the fqct that they are social and progressive (you gain as you go along) are nto in any fundemental entertainmtn way different from Space Invaders. Its still "bang bang your dead."
True role-play is as rare as it has always been, and gernally still cosnidered as "weird" by the masses.
I don't shovel snow.
I basicly work on what I want.
I get my computer stuff cheap and can fidn any computer part or book I want rigth aroudn the corner.
I don't have to live in the south. (No offense to the Chapel hill guy, but I speant 2 years in Tallahasse FL and was happy to get north again.)
In my mid 30s I make 6 figures plus all kinds of benefits, own two porperties and am worth (on paper) about 3/4 of a million dollars.
If the people here could drive, I'd be pretty damn all around happy.
Ofcourse, they can't drive in the Midwest, either.
What's so difficuilt about that?
Honestly the willful and purposful ignorance around here is enough to try a saint's patience.
Arguing by redefing the words is just fooling yourself.
Which is why it makes no sense to you. You incorrectly state:
..."
"This begs the question, when I buy an album, what am I buying. I don't own the music, I just own the right to listen to it,
None can control ones right to listen to something. Once the sound is in the air that sound is PD. (The right to perform is another matter and is limited, don't let that confuse you. Similarly the right to control the space something is performed in, such as the movie theatre charging admission.)
So if thats not what you bought, what did you nuy? The answer is inherent in the word COpyright. You bought ONE COPY of a given eprfromance. You have the right to own that copy, and listen to that copy (or eat it, if that turns you on.) Youy don't have the right o perform with that copy (unelss its a performance copy) which is why you can't play it over the internet for others.
Simialrly you don't own the right o make new copeis of that copy. HOWEVER the courts have recognized a limtied righ to make personal archives. So you can makew a copy for your own use. This means that you cantake that vynal albumn to a friend's house who has the right equiptment and cut a CD off it using a CD-ROm burner.
If you want the record company to do that for you, then yes, you have to pay for it like anyone else because youare buying a new copy from them.
Copyright is simple, really. People who don't WANT to udnerstand it tend to purposefully confuse themselves.
If you actually read their stuff, the only "multi-platform" support .NET has or is ever likely to is Win NT/98/CE.
Win-something the only platforms MS ever wants to encourage anyoen to use.
The stock market is liek the weather,as soon as you think you udnerstand it, it will change.
Att he end of the day tehre were two kidsn of tehc stocks, those that were legitimate investments in companeis building the infrastructure of the future, and speculations on moeny making schemes in that infrastructure.
Investemnts in infrastructure companies (for instance, my own Sun stock) have been resiliant and IMO will recover as they haver in the past.
Wild schemes with no profitabiltiy i nsight,ill die.
This is just normal market consolidation. The death of the tech sector, to quote the man, "has been greatly exaggerated."
We were desicussing all of this and more with our develoerps at TEN many years ago, as well as presentign the issues at CGDC.
He's wrong though if he says that 'at soem poitn you have to trust the client". The answer is well knmown and predates on-line games, going back to secure database systems.
The answer is a model-view architecture. The model is kept on the server. The client is purely a view of what is going on. Any chaanges on the cleint distort only the player's view, not the actual game.
This modle isn't a panacea in that you are trading ease of solution in teh cheat-space for tougher scalability and latency-hiding issues, but in those at elast the suer isn't your potential enemy.
Might help you, would harm me.
I know many formally trianed typists who have been typing at keyboards less time then I have that have carpal tunnel.
I show no sign of coming down with it. Classic typing detroys ahdsn and I have no urge to do that to msyelf, though I appreciate that slashdot's lack of a spell checker might make my idosyncracies somewhat difficult for the reader.
If you can find me a typing system or device that is relatively easy to learn and non-repetitive, I might be very interested.
I DO have a twiddler on order for some light weight computing experiments and plan to learn to use it. Maybe that will help.
See the now defunct DARPA Unmanned COmbat Vehicles Project.
It was aimed directly at making intelligent autonomous tanks, ala Kieth Laumer's bolo books.
A lot of the neural network stuff we see in practice now and the vestiges of neural network reserach still going on got started under that project.
Ther is a big difference between a remtoe manned vehicle and an autonomous one. Saying things like "the first step towards robots fighting our wars for us" is like saying the 25 cent crane-game machien is the first step towards robots doing our manual labor for us.
All they did is take the pilot out of the plane and put him on the ground folks. Those "operators" are air force pilots (the friend of an in-law of mine was oen of the test pilots.)
I would expect this sort of "machines are gonna kill us" nonsense from the unwashed masses, but I thought Slashdot was supposed to be a techno-literate group.
If you want to undrestand why they are going this direction, go rent an epsiode of Nova called "The Biology Barrier." For awhile now the limiting factor on fighter plane performance has not been what the plane could do, but what the human body inside the plane could stand. Taking the pilot out of the cockpit frees the plane up to perform at maximum.
The problem with trying to look for "perception" or "reasoningmabiltiy" in computers is a failrue in definitions. We really don't knwo what these thinsg are. They are vauge, fuzzy words for "thinsg like we do." As long as theya re nto tightly defiend the debate over whetehr or nto they can be, or have been, reached is endless and meaningless.
IMO perception and reasoning are emergent properties of our neural networks. If we look at the reserach doen i neural networks we see what I believe are simpler, but no less real, properties of a similar kind emerging.
Lets eamine one example: The CMU autonomous driving van. This was a project started under the DARPA Umanned Combat Vehicles project. (They were tryign to build Bolos, for any Kieth Laumer fans out there.) This is a van that a neural network can pilot down a lane on a road under a wide variety of drivign and visability conditions, at about 60mph.
Some interesting things about this project:
(1) they did not "program; the avn to do this. The reserahcers had no strategy in mind. They merely taught the neural network with video input and driving control output. It strategized by itself, this is what neural networks do.
(2) They attnepted traing unde ra number of different conditions. When tehy examiend the rules the system had coemn up with afterward, they found the ruels vaired widely dependign on the trainging conditions BUT the perofrmance of any set of rules seemed to be a constant. (That 60mph).
There is an intersting article they wrote called "Exposing the hidden layer" that ran in Byte about 15 years ago.
SO what cane we say about the autonomous van? Well, it problem solved in a creative way finding its own solutions. It also leraned to pick out key visual elements to drive that solution.
To me, this IS perception and reasoning ability, albeit with a limited scope. I think we tend to mysticize our own abilities way too much. In the end I don't think they are functionally any diffrent, just more complex because of the size and sophistication of our neural nets.
Low pwoer is great. But ATI didn't win because they had the lowest pwoer consumption of any of the options. They won because those chips they sold to motherboard makers were dirt cheap while (barely) 3D capabale and not a total off-brand.
"I wish I could say it is a shame that Netpliance is having to kill the iOpener but well, they sort of deserved it. Netpliance tried to build a piece of hardware at a loss and then make up the money by seeling a service. This is a poor business model ..."
Hmm. So game consoles have a bad bsuienss model? (They sell the concole at a loss to sell the software.) Tell that to the milliosn of VERY happy investors in Sony. The classic example of all of this is Razor Baldes, wher the same mdoel is used and have been hugely financially successful.
The problem isn't the mdoel. The problem is greedy people who took unreasonable advanatge of it. (Go look in a mirror.) If you wanted them to survive, maybe you should have helped them MAKE money rather then lose it.
I dont care if theyw ere your firend or your enemey.
The simple principle remains. Take the profit out of an endevour and the endevour will cease. You can't expect others to pay for your stealing. They won't any more then you would in reverse.
"This will be a sad note to all of those who have yet to buy the unit that cost $400 to produce for a fraction of that amount. Get'm while you can, cuz they don't make'm no more..."
And so Slashdot users mourn the passing of a device they were instrumental in killing.
Blaing the failure of this device on "inferior ISP service" is questionable at best. Certainly all the money this company lost producing a loss-leader device that Slashdot promoted using in a way that produced a loss for the company didn't hel pthem survive.
There is a parallel here. Noone produces things for YOUR benefit folks. If you take away the profitability, you take away the product.
Consider that carefully when you think about your feelins on the protection of commercial intelelctual property.
Do you want to live in a world with no writers and no movie makers?