Not when it comes to black colors, and some blues. Watch the Finding Nemo DVD, and you'll see this glowy blue haze around Marlin in many of the shots (no, not the ocean water, it's something different - looks like an encoding problem). If Pixar doesn't know how to get a DVD authored, I don't know who does...
This is like saying "Programming CPUs has become exceedingly complex because they stick to a 'floating-point' model instead of declaring vectors outright."
I'm not even asking you to do it from scratch yourself - borrow liberly from people like Purcell, and from GPGPU.org, and from BrookGPU and from other stream-processing-on-GPU sources.
When you say that you want a new "driver," I think you should really consider using a wrapper layer like BrookGPU - or just figure out how to do things the way Purcell did them. Don't get frustrated by the complexity. I'm not frustrated by the complexity of SSE2 instructions - I just use a compiler that takes care of that for me. Or I use a wrapper layer like the Intel Performance Primitives. I think you need to do the same.
I simply want to reprogram it for use as a Ray Tracer instead of a polygon rasterizer.
SOMEONE ELSE HAS ALREADY DONE IT.
How many times do I have to say this?
Timothy Purcell at Stanford University did it two years ago.
So stop wishing 'if it were only possible' to do something that people have already done. Read my link, and if you want to be polite, thank me for showing you where to find exactly the kind of information that you were complaining didn't exist.
AKAImBatman: "Gee, thanks Viking Coder for telling me about GPGPU and the Purcell paper."
Viking Coder: "No problem, AKAImBatman."
It's about whether the GPU is programmed to do the math for raytracing or not.
This is a nonsense statement. I'm sorry, but it really is. That's like saying that, "the CPU is programmed to do the math for raytracing or not."
I understand your argument, in that back in the day, a generalized CPU needed an FPU to do mathematics operations that the CPU could do in software......but what you're missing is that the GPU is exactly that missing piece of a CPU that you're looking for, designed for massively parallel applications like graphics.
Hell, I don't even know why you're arguing with me. You said, "Call me when NVidia and ATI open up their specs so I can finally code that real time raytracing engine I've been dreaming of." I've gone to great length to demonstrate to you that you're beeing lazy, since you didn't realize that it already was capable of doing raytracing - and a bunch of people have done it!
But this boost is insignificant compared to what could be achieved with dedicated GPU drivers.
Say something to back this up. This is your opinion, and it happens to be dead wrong. Go read articles on GPGPU, and read up on stream processing. The memory access and the order of operations is totally sufficient for raytracing, and no, graphics drivers aren't going to make a "significant" boost over and above the enhancement from moving from CPU to GPU.
Because, you know, the pixel shaders are the ONLY programs running through the GPU. *sigh*
*sigh* back at you. When you're doing advanced shading (like per-pixel lighting, or such things as ray-tracing, or treating the GPU like a generalized stream processor), the pixel shaders are doing all of the heavy lifting. It's like tsk'ing me for not mentioning the calculations that the chips on your SOUNDBLASTER can do towards getting better frames per second, when you're playing a game. They're insignificant, compared to the video processing.
You know, you might try reading articles that people take the time to tell you about.
simply wasn't general purpose enough to meet the needs of a high performance raytracer
You don't know what you're talking about. Reread the specs, and go and read the Purcell papers that people keep pointing you to. And learn what a stream processor is, so maybe you can understand why the mathematics actually are general purpose enough to meet those needs. Just because you don't understand the capabilities doesn't mean that they don't exist.
not just the vertex shader
They're using pixel shaders to do ray-triangle intersections, i.e. all of the card's pipelines. Do your homework, before you start criticizing the work of an entire industry.
[M]any of these features can be planned for by an artist rather than a coder.
That's naive in the extreme. A coder will always have to be involved. If for no other reason than for optimizing performance, which is honestly no easier than writing a "modern 3D engine" as you described it.
Now, if your point is that dog-slow rendering is "better" than fast rendering, then pick your fight elsewhere. But don't blame the GPU for being fast, especially since it is now just as capable of high-accuracy rendering and the full richness of a software raytracer!
[Raytracing capabilities] streamlines the process and reduces the time it takes to get the product out the door.
Which is why Pixar and Dreamworks do it. Oh, wait, they don't do it. Maybe that's because it doesn't streamline the process, and it doesn't reduce the time it takes to get the product out the door. Unless you somehow think that those people are wasting tens of millions of dollars with an inefficient process?
Face it, polygons are the way to go.
And even if polygons weren't the way to go, GPUs are definitely the way to go for all computer graphics (raytraced or not). End of story.
First, Why? Most people don't even make movies that are raytraced.
Second, they already are doing raytracing on the GPU. Purcell had one working in 2002. There was a presentation on it, in a course at SIGGRAPH 2003. The GPU is maybe a little faster than the CPU, right now, for raytracing.
"Tweaking OpenGL" is kind of like saying "tweaking the CPU", any more. It's fairly close to a generalized stream processor. And their specs already are open enough to have figured this out. Look at GPGPU and read some more about how people are doing amazing stuff on the GPU today. No need to wait for ATI and NVidia to open up any specs - they already did. Cg and GLSlang are fully up to the task.
And, photon mapping and similar techniques are much more sophisticated than raw raytracing.
Well, for one, I thought it was pretty clear that most of the pirating that's happening is being done by theater owners (or staff), not theater patrons. Night-vision goggles won't do a thing to stop that.
My point is that, it's apparently NOT a waste of their money to do that. They're making enough money off of theater showings that they're willing to go to these lengths to stop people from "media-shifting" and "time-shifting" so they can download movies during opening week. Well, it's like saying that you can only drink Pepsi if you sign an EULA. It's an outrageous offense against consumers' rights. It's legal, sure, but it's offensive.
And there's got to be money to be made (for the movie-makers!) in distributing their movies in new ways, rather than in enforcing their old ways! Do you get what I'm saying?
What if there were only one gas station in the state you lived in, and it was illegal to resell gasoline that you purchased from them? It would be extremely profitable for the gas station, but consumers would be harmed. There would be such an imbalance of supply versus demand that people would go to great lengths to steal and also to protect the product. That's where we're at. I'm saying it would be a better use of everyone's time and money, if the theaters just stopped bilking the consumer for every available penny following an outdated plan.
Theatrical release. Airlines. Pay-per view. Second-run theaters. Theatrical re-release, if they're nominated for enough awards. Distributing to the voting members of awards groups, like the Foreign Press, and the members of AMPAS. Cable networks (HBO, Showtime, etc). DVD and VHS. Director's cut, and/or special edition DVD. Television premiere. Rerun a thousand times on some crappy cable network.
And maybe, just maybe, it also becomes legal to download online, somewhere along the line. (But probably not.)
It's a movie food-chain, and they (the massive media conglomerates) own every single step of the process. Do you have any idea how much money they would charge me (an independant distributor) to license the movie to be released online (for $5 to $15 a download) at the same time as the theatrical release, or maybe even a week later? Infinity dollars. They are completely unwilling to do it, at any price. Yes, they can set the terms, since it's their property - but any time someone is unwilling to sell you their product, no matter what the price, the consumer is harmed. Legal? Yes. Unfortunate? Definitely.
And imagine this... What about the FBI warning (that you often can't skip) at the beginning of every DVD offensive and inconvenient? What if the movie theater warning that you saw gets longer and longer? Like, how's about a five-minute lecture from the heads of the FBI and Interpol about how you'll do hard time in prison for stealing the movie company's IP?
We consume their products, but they act like they own our eyes and minds.
And while we're on the topic of cinema - I've PAID to watch a movie, and then I have to sit there and watch commercials? Literally, commercial advertisements for flavored sugar-water and clothing? That's offensive.
So, where's the study that proves that people are MORE likely to go to theaters or buy DVDs, if they can freely download a movie?
I suppose that the movie studios can do what they want to - but we can lobby to change the laws. I think that IP Laws and IP enforcement have gotten silly beyond imagining, when things like this happen.
It doesn't matter if it was done before or after. What the church says is Divine Law. And yeah, Popes really do think that. Or at least, Catholics and the Catholic church think that of everything the Pope says. That's kind of the point of having a Pope.
Science and logic are just another religion that someone can subscribe to...
Except that science and logic have predictive power, and religion does not.
If religion had predictive power, it would be a part of science and logic.
If God had writ all of science and logic for mankind to read in his writings (which was pretty much the case, in people's beliefs, back hundreds of years ago), then science and logic would be a part of religion.
It does matter "how" or "why," the ends do not justify the means. If your God tells you to kill infidels, what logic can you use to get out of that trap?
I believe in a big purple monkey who lives in a tree and controls the universe. From this one simple axiom, I can explain all of modern science and religion. See, the big purple monkey who lives in a tree doesn't want people worshiping him, so he invented all of these religions. He made atoms and all of that stuff so that people can be entertained thinking about stuff, and have jobs and things.
You're being intellectually lazy if you don't follow my one simple axiom to its logical conclusion: THE END OF THE WORLD IS NEIGH!
You can't use logic to disprove any of my beliefs, because it's built on one simple axiom. Who's being "intellectually lazy" now?
Or... Or... Maybe, just maybe, using the word "intellect" in the same argument as belief in God (or the big purple monkey who lives in a tree and controls the universe) isn't what people should do? Maybe, just maybe, science deals with predictive power and things like forming a testable hypothesis, and maybe religion is about faith and compassion, and maybe, just maybe, the two things don't have ANYTHING TO DO WITH ONE ANOTHER.
It is not "intellectually lazy" to cast aspersions on a discipline that has no predictive power.
Astrology starts from one simple axiom: The motions of the planets affects our lives. From that one simple axiom, you can use logic to basically "derive" much of newpaper's philosophical thought.
BUT IT'S ALL A BUNCH OF CRAP.
Without predictive power, a belief system is just that. It doesn't stand up to criticism, and it's not "intellectually lazy" to dismiss the whole thing out of course.
Is religion beautiful and awe inspiring? Sure. But when people start using religion to attack science, they have crossed the line.
As for the "90% of scientists" claim, I think that's a nasty prejudice on the part of scientists, rather than something to be proud of.
And then later you say:
In fact my opinion is that the existence of God is an axiom.
Scientists take as few things for granted (as axioms) as possible. Believing in things that you can't test, can't prove, and give you no predictive power is a dangerous activity for someone who's trying to apply the scientific method.
I have a friend who reasons, "I don't believe in atoms, because God didn't need atoms make the universe." Believing in things that you can't prove weakens your capacity to use logic.
Does that make it bad to believe in God? No, of course not. Neither does it make it a "nasty prejudice" that people don't believe in God.
Hell, to show how stupid your opinion is, let's look at the definition of the word prejudice: An adverse judgment or opinion formed beforehand or without knowledge or examination of the facts.
And then you go on to say that your belief in God is an axiom, A self-evident principle or one that is accepted as true without proof as the basis for argument; a postulate.
What facts are scientists ignoring? What knowledge of God do you posess but they lack? Oh, that's right - you don't need proof. God is an axiom.
Don't you see how shockingly conflicting those two positions are? For the sake of argument, yeah, sure, God exists. But you're essentially saying that, as a scientist, you should just accept things as being true, and you're "nasty" if you don't.
Actually, I've taught several people who were programmers by trade, but didn't understand basic principles. Several. And I've actually succeeded in teaching them. I've never failed. It takes time; you can't do it by "teaching" someone while you're looking over their shoulder commenting on why their code crashed. Now, I really only taught them enough for them to be competent at their job, and to know how to ask for help when they recognized that they needed it. But that should be enough. If all of your co-workers need to be at least as good a programmer as you, in order for things to go well at your job, then either 1) you're the worst programmer there (just kidding), or 2) you haven't divided the responsibilities in the code and in your jobs well enough to Cover Your Ass. *shrug* I recognize this isn't necessarily true for all problems in all languages, but I find generally that there are a few things in a large program that really, really matter, a larger set of things that matter, and a huge set of things that don't really matter. If these people who don't understand limited memory are working on the things that really, really matter, then you're screwed. But I suspect that they're working on things that don't really matter, and that you're sweating the small stuff. Crashes happen. People will recklessly use memory from time to time. Deal with it and move on. *shrug* I mean, yeah, it's frustrating, and it'd be better if they'd learn to not screw things up...
I think the best approach is to have a large body of examplar "good code" for someone to try to learn from, and rigorous Fagan-style code inspections (inspections for everyone, so the knowledge is shared - not just inspections for the "poor" code, just so you can criticize).
And if you employ people who don't "want to grasp" that memory is limited, and the other policies you feel are so important, then you should fire them and hire a qualified coder. Or at the very least, demonstrate to them that their job is dependant upon demonstrating mastery of those topics.
And if you're not in a position to hire and fire people, you should write up a coding standard that explains how to do the day-to-day work that these people do, and convince your boss that the standard should be taught and enforced. Then, go for code inspections, and keep track of the defects that are found. Report them to your boss. *shrug*
Look, you either care about the outcome, or you don't. It sounds like you do care, but it sounds like you've spent months trying to teach, but you keep doing it the same way again and again. The definition of insanity is repeating the same behavior again and again, but expecting different results. You need to try something new.
And, like my signature says, I think that education is the silver bullet. Both for you (find better ways to communicate with your boss and co-workers, and get ideas about how to formalize how code is written so that bad code happens less often), and for your co-workers (learn how to write good VB code, so these problems happen less often), and maybe also for your boss (to understand why it's so smart to better train your workforce, and the benefits of consistently producing good code).
If you've done everything you can to learn more about how to achieve what you want, and to try to educate your boss and co-workers, and it's still frustrating you this much - you should try to find a better job, where the environment will be more conducive to writing the quality of code that you want to work with.
Yeah, it's a fairly common opinion, and I can't really argue against it. For one, it gives you great insight into what could possibly be going wrong with the code you're debugging when it turns out that you've got a corrupted stack, or something else that's "not nice" from a high-level language perspective.
But I must admit, I am one of the walking dead; I learned BASIC, then Pascal, (then COBOL, ha!), then C, C++, etc. I only really learned assembly in school, and that doesn't count.
A fairly obvious indication that schools are churning out people with no actual computer programming experience is the fact that there are no courses in such real-world topics as "Adding Code To A Monolithic Program That You Don't Really Understand," "Learning About A Problem Domain," "How to Merge Branches of Code," and my personal favorite, "DEBUGGING."
Okay, so you're talking about 1/1000th of the programmers out there.
I'm talking about the other 999. You do harm to these people's professional computer programming careers by teaching them Java before you teach them C++.
You either get it, or you don't. It's just that simple.
So, you've never learned anything in school, and you're making the blanket declaration that school is useless for all other people as well? I think that's the load of hog wash.
The huge disconnect here, in my honest opinion, is that the vast majority of Computer Science students are only going after a Computer Science degree because it's the only way to get a job as a computer programmer - but the universities are all treating Computer Science as some form of abstract mathematics. Heck, some universities have Computer Science as a Liberal Arts degree.
Real computer programmers need to understand pointers. Java does not teach you how to effectively use pointers. In fact, it makes it harder to learn pointers, because you learn such bad habits.
Garbage collection is nice, but the majority of computer programmers don't have access to it. Universities should offer Computer Science and (Applied?) Computer Programming degrees, and the AP tests should similarly be targeted for Computer Science (Java, maybe) and Computer Programming (C++, definitely - with exposure to other things as well; Java, Python, Scheme, Lisp, Perl, whatever.)
(1) You can always code better, if you know more about the problem you're coding to.
(2) Every domain will in some ways be impacted by mathematics.
Therefore (by 1 and 2), more math skills will almost always make you better equipped to understand any given problem domain, and will almost always make you a better programmer.
And that's just computer programming; there are parts of Computer Science that have nothing to do with programming computers, but have everything to do with logic and math.
Now, if you're point is that for MOST consumers, they're only good for games, you may have a point. But the other way to look at it is that, since consumers have demanded such amazing video technology, the price to deliver advanced medical visualizations to doctors has dropped dramatically.
What you used to need a $40,000 SGI O2 for, now you can do with a $1000 computer from Best Buy. That computer might actually save your life some day. Pretty amazing, if you think about it.
Slashdot Mirror
Not when it comes to black colors, and some blues. Watch the Finding Nemo DVD, and you'll see this glowy blue haze around Marlin in many of the shots (no, not the ocean water, it's something different - looks like an encoding problem). If Pixar doesn't know how to get a DVD authored, I don't know who does...
I was just going to post this one. I laughed until I cried.
This is like saying "Programming CPUs has become exceedingly complex because they stick to a 'floating-point' model instead of declaring vectors outright."
I'm not even asking you to do it from scratch yourself - borrow liberly from people like Purcell, and from GPGPU.org, and from BrookGPU and from other stream-processing-on-GPU sources.
When you say that you want a new "driver," I think you should really consider using a wrapper layer like BrookGPU - or just figure out how to do things the way Purcell did them. Don't get frustrated by the complexity. I'm not frustrated by the complexity of SSE2 instructions - I just use a compiler that takes care of that for me. Or I use a wrapper layer like the Intel Performance Primitives. I think you need to do the same.
I simply want to reprogram it for use as a Ray Tracer instead of a polygon rasterizer.
SOMEONE ELSE HAS ALREADY DONE IT.
How many times do I have to say this?
Timothy Purcell at Stanford University did it two years ago.
So stop wishing 'if it were only possible' to do something that people have already done. Read my link, and if you want to be polite, thank me for showing you where to find exactly the kind of information that you were complaining didn't exist.
AKAImBatman: "Gee, thanks Viking Coder for telling me about GPGPU and the Purcell paper."
...but what you're missing is that the GPU is exactly that missing piece of a CPU that you're looking for, designed for massively parallel applications like graphics.
Viking Coder: "No problem, AKAImBatman."
It's about whether the GPU is programmed to do the math for raytracing or not.
This is a nonsense statement. I'm sorry, but it really is. That's like saying that, "the CPU is programmed to do the math for raytracing or not."
I understand your argument, in that back in the day, a generalized CPU needed an FPU to do mathematics operations that the CPU could do in software...
Hell, I don't even know why you're arguing with me. You said, "Call me when NVidia and ATI open up their specs so I can finally code that real time raytracing engine I've been dreaming of." I've gone to great length to demonstrate to you that you're beeing lazy, since you didn't realize that it already was capable of doing raytracing - and a bunch of people have done it!
But this boost is insignificant compared to what could be achieved with dedicated GPU drivers.
Say something to back this up. This is your opinion, and it happens to be dead wrong. Go read articles on GPGPU, and read up on stream processing. The memory access and the order of operations is totally sufficient for raytracing, and no, graphics drivers aren't going to make a "significant" boost over and above the enhancement from moving from CPU to GPU.
Because, you know, the pixel shaders are the ONLY programs running through the GPU. *sigh*
*sigh* back at you. When you're doing advanced shading (like per-pixel lighting, or such things as ray-tracing, or treating the GPU like a generalized stream processor), the pixel shaders are doing all of the heavy lifting. It's like tsk'ing me for not mentioning the calculations that the chips on your SOUNDBLASTER can do towards getting better frames per second, when you're playing a game. They're insignificant, compared to the video processing.
You know, you might try reading articles that people take the time to tell you about.
simply wasn't general purpose enough to meet the needs of a high performance raytracer
You don't know what you're talking about. Reread the specs, and go and read the Purcell papers that people keep pointing you to. And learn what a stream processor is, so maybe you can understand why the mathematics actually are general purpose enough to meet those needs. Just because you don't understand the capabilities doesn't mean that they don't exist.
not just the vertex shader
They're using pixel shaders to do ray-triangle intersections, i.e. all of the card's pipelines. Do your homework, before you start criticizing the work of an entire industry.
[M]any of these features can be planned for by an artist rather than a coder.
That's naive in the extreme. A coder will always have to be involved. If for no other reason than for optimizing performance, which is honestly no easier than writing a "modern 3D engine" as you described it.
Now, if your point is that dog-slow rendering is "better" than fast rendering, then pick your fight elsewhere. But don't blame the GPU for being fast, especially since it is now just as capable of high-accuracy rendering and the full richness of a software raytracer!
[Raytracing capabilities] streamlines the process and reduces the time it takes to get the product out the door.
Which is why Pixar and Dreamworks do it. Oh, wait, they don't do it. Maybe that's because it doesn't streamline the process, and it doesn't reduce the time it takes to get the product out the door. Unless you somehow think that those people are wasting tens of millions of dollars with an inefficient process?
Face it, polygons are the way to go.
And even if polygons weren't the way to go, GPUs are definitely the way to go for all computer graphics (raytraced or not). End of story.
Two points:
First, Why? Most people don't even make movies that are raytraced.
Second, they already are doing raytracing on the GPU. Purcell had one working in 2002. There was a presentation on it, in a course at SIGGRAPH 2003. The GPU is maybe a little faster than the CPU, right now, for raytracing.
"Tweaking OpenGL" is kind of like saying "tweaking the CPU", any more. It's fairly close to a generalized stream processor. And their specs already are open enough to have figured this out. Look at GPGPU and read some more about how people are doing amazing stuff on the GPU today. No need to wait for ATI and NVidia to open up any specs - they already did. Cg and GLSlang are fully up to the task.
And, photon mapping and similar techniques are much more sophisticated than raw raytracing.
Well, for one, I thought it was pretty clear that most of the pirating that's happening is being done by theater owners (or staff), not theater patrons. Night-vision goggles won't do a thing to stop that.
My point is that, it's apparently NOT a waste of their money to do that. They're making enough money off of theater showings that they're willing to go to these lengths to stop people from "media-shifting" and "time-shifting" so they can download movies during opening week. Well, it's like saying that you can only drink Pepsi if you sign an EULA. It's an outrageous offense against consumers' rights. It's legal, sure, but it's offensive.
And there's got to be money to be made (for the movie-makers!) in distributing their movies in new ways, rather than in enforcing their old ways! Do you get what I'm saying?
What if there were only one gas station in the state you lived in, and it was illegal to resell gasoline that you purchased from them? It would be extremely profitable for the gas station, but consumers would be harmed. There would be such an imbalance of supply versus demand that people would go to great lengths to steal and also to protect the product. That's where we're at. I'm saying it would be a better use of everyone's time and money, if the theaters just stopped bilking the consumer for every available penny following an outdated plan.
Theatrical release. Airlines. Pay-per view. Second-run theaters. Theatrical re-release, if they're nominated for enough awards. Distributing to the voting members of awards groups, like the Foreign Press, and the members of AMPAS. Cable networks (HBO, Showtime, etc). DVD and VHS. Director's cut, and/or special edition DVD. Television premiere. Rerun a thousand times on some crappy cable network.
And maybe, just maybe, it also becomes legal to download online, somewhere along the line. (But probably not.)
It's a movie food-chain, and they (the massive media conglomerates) own every single step of the process. Do you have any idea how much money they would charge me (an independant distributor) to license the movie to be released online (for $5 to $15 a download) at the same time as the theatrical release, or maybe even a week later? Infinity dollars. They are completely unwilling to do it, at any price. Yes, they can set the terms, since it's their property - but any time someone is unwilling to sell you their product, no matter what the price, the consumer is harmed. Legal? Yes. Unfortunate? Definitely.
And imagine this... What about the FBI warning (that you often can't skip) at the beginning of every DVD offensive and inconvenient? What if the movie theater warning that you saw gets longer and longer? Like, how's about a five-minute lecture from the heads of the FBI and Interpol about how you'll do hard time in prison for stealing the movie company's IP?
We consume their products, but they act like they own our eyes and minds.
And while we're on the topic of cinema - I've PAID to watch a movie, and then I have to sit there and watch commercials? Literally, commercial advertisements for flavored sugar-water and clothing? That's offensive.
So, where's the study that proves that people are MORE likely to go to theaters or buy DVDs, if they can freely download a movie?
I suppose that the movie studios can do what they want to - but we can lobby to change the laws. I think that IP Laws and IP enforcement have gotten silly beyond imagining, when things like this happen.
It doesn't matter if it was done before or after. What the church says is Divine Law. And yeah, Popes really do think that. Or at least, Catholics and the Catholic church think that of everything the Pope says. That's kind of the point of having a Pope.
Science and logic are just another religion that someone can subscribe to...
Except that science and logic have predictive power, and religion does not.
If religion had predictive power, it would be a part of science and logic.
If God had writ all of science and logic for mankind to read in his writings (which was pretty much the case, in people's beliefs, back hundreds of years ago), then science and logic would be a part of religion.
It does matter "how" or "why," the ends do not justify the means. If your God tells you to kill infidels, what logic can you use to get out of that trap?
I believe in a big purple monkey who lives in a tree and controls the universe. From this one simple axiom, I can explain all of modern science and religion. See, the big purple monkey who lives in a tree doesn't want people worshiping him, so he invented all of these religions. He made atoms and all of that stuff so that people can be entertained thinking about stuff, and have jobs and things.
You're being intellectually lazy if you don't follow my one simple axiom to its logical conclusion: THE END OF THE WORLD IS NEIGH!
You can't use logic to disprove any of my beliefs, because it's built on one simple axiom. Who's being "intellectually lazy" now?
Or... Or... Maybe, just maybe, using the word "intellect" in the same argument as belief in God (or the big purple monkey who lives in a tree and controls the universe) isn't what people should do? Maybe, just maybe, science deals with predictive power and things like forming a testable hypothesis, and maybe religion is about faith and compassion, and maybe, just maybe, the two things don't have ANYTHING TO DO WITH ONE ANOTHER.
Your lack of faith in science is amazing.
It is not "intellectually lazy" to cast aspersions on a discipline that has no predictive power.
Astrology starts from one simple axiom: The motions of the planets affects our lives. From that one simple axiom, you can use logic to basically "derive" much of newpaper's philosophical thought.
BUT IT'S ALL A BUNCH OF CRAP.
Without predictive power, a belief system is just that. It doesn't stand up to criticism, and it's not "intellectually lazy" to dismiss the whole thing out of course.
Is religion beautiful and awe inspiring? Sure. But when people start using religion to attack science, they have crossed the line.
As for the "90% of scientists" claim, I think that's a nasty prejudice on the part of scientists, rather than something to be proud of.
And then later you say:
In fact my opinion is that the existence of God is an axiom.
Scientists take as few things for granted (as axioms) as possible. Believing in things that you can't test, can't prove, and give you no predictive power is a dangerous activity for someone who's trying to apply the scientific method.
I have a friend who reasons, "I don't believe in atoms, because God didn't need atoms make the universe." Believing in things that you can't prove weakens your capacity to use logic.
Does that make it bad to believe in God? No, of course not. Neither does it make it a "nasty prejudice" that people don't believe in God.
Hell, to show how stupid your opinion is, let's look at the definition of the word prejudice: An adverse judgment or opinion formed beforehand or without knowledge or examination of the facts.
And then you go on to say that your belief in God is an axiom, A self-evident principle or one that is accepted as true without proof as the basis for argument; a postulate.
What facts are scientists ignoring? What knowledge of God do you posess but they lack? Oh, that's right - you don't need proof. God is an axiom.
Don't you see how shockingly conflicting those two positions are? For the sake of argument, yeah, sure, God exists. But you're essentially saying that, as a scientist, you should just accept things as being true, and you're "nasty" if you don't.
Absurd.
Actually, I've taught several people who were programmers by trade, but didn't understand basic principles. Several. And I've actually succeeded in teaching them. I've never failed. It takes time; you can't do it by "teaching" someone while you're looking over their shoulder commenting on why their code crashed. Now, I really only taught them enough for them to be competent at their job, and to know how to ask for help when they recognized that they needed it. But that should be enough. If all of your co-workers need to be at least as good a programmer as you, in order for things to go well at your job, then either 1) you're the worst programmer there (just kidding), or 2) you haven't divided the responsibilities in the code and in your jobs well enough to Cover Your Ass. *shrug* I recognize this isn't necessarily true for all problems in all languages, but I find generally that there are a few things in a large program that really, really matter, a larger set of things that matter, and a huge set of things that don't really matter. If these people who don't understand limited memory are working on the things that really, really matter, then you're screwed. But I suspect that they're working on things that don't really matter, and that you're sweating the small stuff. Crashes happen. People will recklessly use memory from time to time. Deal with it and move on. *shrug* I mean, yeah, it's frustrating, and it'd be better if they'd learn to not screw things up...
I think the best approach is to have a large body of examplar "good code" for someone to try to learn from, and rigorous Fagan-style code inspections (inspections for everyone, so the knowledge is shared - not just inspections for the "poor" code, just so you can criticize).
And if you employ people who don't "want to grasp" that memory is limited, and the other policies you feel are so important, then you should fire them and hire a qualified coder. Or at the very least, demonstrate to them that their job is dependant upon demonstrating mastery of those topics.
And if you're not in a position to hire and fire people, you should write up a coding standard that explains how to do the day-to-day work that these people do, and convince your boss that the standard should be taught and enforced. Then, go for code inspections, and keep track of the defects that are found. Report them to your boss. *shrug*
Look, you either care about the outcome, or you don't. It sounds like you do care, but it sounds like you've spent months trying to teach, but you keep doing it the same way again and again. The definition of insanity is repeating the same behavior again and again, but expecting different results. You need to try something new.
And, like my signature says, I think that education is the silver bullet. Both for you (find better ways to communicate with your boss and co-workers, and get ideas about how to formalize how code is written so that bad code happens less often), and for your co-workers (learn how to write good VB code, so these problems happen less often), and maybe also for your boss (to understand why it's so smart to better train your workforce, and the benefits of consistently producing good code).
If you've done everything you can to learn more about how to achieve what you want, and to try to educate your boss and co-workers, and it's still frustrating you this much - you should try to find a better job, where the environment will be more conducive to writing the quality of code that you want to work with.
Yeah, it's a fairly common opinion, and I can't really argue against it. For one, it gives you great insight into what could possibly be going wrong with the code you're debugging when it turns out that you've got a corrupted stack, or something else that's "not nice" from a high-level language perspective.
But I must admit, I am one of the walking dead; I learned BASIC, then Pascal, (then COBOL, ha!), then C, C++, etc. I only really learned assembly in school, and that doesn't count.
A fairly obvious indication that schools are churning out people with no actual computer programming experience is the fact that there are no courses in such real-world topics as "Adding Code To A Monolithic Program That You Don't Really Understand," "Learning About A Problem Domain," "How to Merge Branches of Code," and my personal favorite, "DEBUGGING."
Okay, so you're talking about 1/1000th of the programmers out there.
I'm talking about the other 999. You do harm to these people's professional computer programming careers by teaching them Java before you teach them C++.
You either get it, or you don't. It's just that simple.
So, you've never learned anything in school, and you're making the blanket declaration that school is useless for all other people as well? I think that's the load of hog wash.
The huge disconnect here, in my honest opinion, is that the vast majority of Computer Science students are only going after a Computer Science degree because it's the only way to get a job as a computer programmer - but the universities are all treating Computer Science as some form of abstract mathematics. Heck, some universities have Computer Science as a Liberal Arts degree.
Real computer programmers need to understand pointers. Java does not teach you how to effectively use pointers. In fact, it makes it harder to learn pointers, because you learn such bad habits.
Garbage collection is nice, but the majority of computer programmers don't have access to it. Universities should offer Computer Science and (Applied?) Computer Programming degrees, and the AP tests should similarly be targeted for Computer Science (Java, maybe) and Computer Programming (C++, definitely - with exposure to other things as well; Java, Python, Scheme, Lisp, Perl, whatever.)
(1) You can always code better, if you know more about the problem you're coding to.
(2) Every domain will in some ways be impacted by mathematics.
Therefore (by 1 and 2), more math skills will almost always make you better equipped to understand any given problem domain, and will almost always make you a better programmer.
And that's just computer programming; there are parts of Computer Science that have nothing to do with programming computers, but have everything to do with logic and math.
they're only good for games
Guess again. Medical volume visualization.
Now, if you're point is that for MOST consumers, they're only good for games, you may have a point. But the other way to look at it is that, since consumers have demanded such amazing video technology, the price to deliver advanced medical visualizations to doctors has dropped dramatically.
What you used to need a $40,000 SGI O2 for, now you can do with a $1000 computer from Best Buy. That computer might actually save your life some day. Pretty amazing, if you think about it.
Jeez - my remote control for my DVD player has been doing this forever! I push FF to accelerate watching, and I tap FF to skip to the next chapter.
I've hated that feature since day one - and I hate it even more now that Microsoft is trying to patent it! *wink*
Maybe a nibble. =)
Also, there have been several OpenGL renderers for things like BMRT, but they were never for rendering final frames of a movie.
Again, maybe a nibble from my hat. =)
So, you're saying that Blue Sky Studios isn't a professional studio?
In general, you're right - nobody does ray tracing for final renders, but Blue Sky is the exception that proves the rule.