Why subsidize when you can own instead? It is just a waste of tax payer money. If you want broadband built, you buy the service of putting cables into the ground from companies, and end up owning the cables, which you can then rent out to ISPs who want access to end customers. To separate concerns and reduce centralization, you place the ownership in city/state owned non-profit businesses created for the purpose of maintenance and fee collecting on said broadband.
What you don't do is give big companies 200 billion dollars in tax relief and tell them to build broadband if they want. Because that way you don't get anything in return. Because once the money has been given out, the companies accepting the subsidies have no reason whatsoever to keep a low price. They can just go ahead and charge as much as the market can bear. And there won't be many competitors because the subsidized will have an unfair competitive advantage.
You mean the ice sheet that has been both increasing and decreasing in the last two decades. (mostly increasing). If you are trying to use that as proof of global warming, then you are really misinformed.
So, I've read this several times, and I can't find you even examining procedural content long enough to dismiss it. I don't know if Eve uses it -- in fact, I very much doubt it -- but it also seems like Eve would be the perfect game for it.
Actually, I did try to imply procedural content and other similar methods with with "you can duplicate the same content with slight changes". Now in hindsight, "slight changes" may have been somewhat badly worde, but my conclusion still stands. All such attempts ends up with everything feeling generic and unsatisfying. That isn't to say that procedural content can't be used to speed up content generation. But without a great amount of work by actual artists/designers, you simply don't get something worthwhile. At least with the current state of technology. We never know what the future brings.
All single server, single instance, MMO games (Eve, Second Life, Muds) lack producer created non-generic content. When there is only a single instance of everything, there simply isn't enough producer time in the world to make up the content needed for everyone. At best, you can duplicate the same content with slight changes, but I have yet to see anyone do that successfully. All such attempts ends up with everything feeling generic and unsatisfying.
Of course, if you are into player created content, the above doesn't matter. But not everyone is.
I pay, they provide a service for me. I don't pay, they don't provide a service for me. I am fine so far. It is when they want to stop me from getting a service from someone else that I have to my middle finger at them. Of course, with the locked market capitalism that is practiced in most countries around the world, it is not strange to see that kind of entitlement.
If you don't like their terms, go elsewhere.
But wasn't that was exactly what you argued against?
Cut back drastically on advertising too, as you don't need to whip people up into a frenzy to get them to theatres in the first week.
As long as you have strong IP laws, you will have lots of advertising. The reason is simple. Strong IP laws allows for increased margin profits. And higher margin profits, increases the optimum amount of advertising for a product to maximize profit.
Do you know why that would kill swarm performance?
It doesn't really. At least, the degrading effect is pretty small once you have decent amount of peers. Remember that peers, still want to get a few later parts for trading. And as every peer will try to get their rare parts to trade you still get a decent amount of spread.
There are very few big factors in torrent speed. On new torrents, what mostly matters is the aggregated upload of all peers, or the original seeder upload.
For all other torrents, the big factor is how many bad sheep you got in a swarm. When you have a swarm where most people try to give back what they take, you get huge download speeds. When you don't, you get lousy speeds. The bittorrent protocol is a prime example that the commons can not only destroy, but also accomplish. A thing to think about the next time someone misuses "the tragedy of the commons" to clank down on the common people.
You mean the 800-1300 AD warming period seen in Europe due to changes in the gulf stream/jet stream, which was not warmer anywhere else on Earth?
Ok, I guess China, Japan, New Zealand and Alaska are in Europe. Or did you actually thing that European data was the only ones we had on the medieval warm period. And at least the Japanese records are further substantiated by actual written observations.
Are you saying that you want climate prediction models solely centered around geographically European data? Seems like a bad idea to me.
Agreed. But fortunately we do have non European data also.
A big problem is that most people have grave misconceptions about what science is. Even those who think they understand it, often fail to remember the truth behind the scientific method. Science is not the search for truth. In fact, it is pretty much the opposite. Science is the search for what isn't true.
The truth is invisible, so we do the next best thing. We look at everything else, and notice what isn't there as possibly being the truth. Einstein's real feat of progress wasn't that he came up with the theory of relativity. What really advanced science was that he pinpointed a weakness in the previously accepted theory of gravity.
The problem is that most people don't like to find out that what they know is wrong. And that is a prerequisite to conducting science. Which is why it is so difficult to conduct. You have to suppress your natural instincts of control and try to let your instincts of curiosity guide you instead.
No, it was right... your version unchecks an item corresponding to a style that is provided by the current font. Mine unchecks an item whose style is not provided.
You are right, I was wrong. But you were still wrong. The second break in your example shouldn't be there.
Anyway, the correct way to do the non-linq version in this case is to break out the inner for loop to a method of its own. Using a flag is simply bad practice and should be avoided. Even using goto to break out of the inner loop would be better than that (although that doesn't say much)
Yes, but it's still operating at a lower level of abstraction. In I7, you can speak in generalities and let the compiler figure out when it needs to make a loop;
Not really. The linq expression is actually contextually equivalent to the I7 example you gave. There simply is no difference in abstraction.
unless you're using the.ForEach() method which destroys readability
So using a Foreach construct in C# loses readability? But if you look at the I7 example, that is exactly what it is doing. Sure, it isn't called.ForEach, but it damn well is a construct to apply something on all items in a list.
Or you could use a foreach loop afterwards instead of using a custom ForEach extension method. It is a matter of taste. Doing it this way is more readable than using the from/where/select syntax variant of Linq.
Besides, your non-Linq example should be like this.
foreach (MenuItem item in styleMenu.Items)
if (item.Checked)
foreach (Style style in currentFont.ProvidedStyles)
if (style == item.CorrespondingStyle){
item.Checked = false;
break;
}
And in cases where it weren't possible to just break out of the inner loop, you should create a method of the inner for loop instead of using an ugly found flag. And you always have this combination of Linq and traditional c#.
foreach (MenuItem item in styleMenu.Items)
if (item.Checked && !currentFont.ProvidedStyles.Contains(item.CorrespondingStyle))
item.Checked = false;
The above is highly readable, and quite compact. Probably my favorite.
Finally, if you notice the properties of the example, it is possible to see that you could use the following shorter version that however is less readable.
Political Correctness is just a new version of Politeness
Political Correctness is not polite. In fact, it is the opposite. PC speak at its core is about deception, and as such is one of the greatest forms of insult to any listener that can read between the lines.
Why English? Programmers come from other nationalities as well and a programming office in France may choose to use French to document their code, name variables and functions etc.
Because English is the language of programming. It is a simple matter of naming convention. Programming libraries use English for methods and properties, so for consistency you use English for your own variables and functions also. And when you do that, you can just as well use English for comments also.
As someone working in a non-English country I can say that I have never seen non-English variables used. I have seen comments written in my own language, but it is the exception rather than the rule. Of course, I can't speak for how it works in a country like France. But I would be surprised if it was much different. Knowing English well is simply something that makes you a better programmer, as it increases your access to reference material ten fold if not more.
then why is the trillions of pounds in fossil fuels companies aiming to disprove them, not succeding?
Because they are up against more trillions of pounds in the financial sector. Who did you think had the most to profit from a carbon trade scheme in the first place? Or did you actually think that AGW was a grass root effort.
If I were a conspiracy theorist I could even go as far as you say that the Climategate scandal was a deliberate backstab on the financial industry that has been losing influence in the last year. But as I said, that is just conspiracy theory. It would make for a nice story though.
One more important thing to note. There aren't many big single track fossil fuel companies left. The smart ones have already moved towards becoming full fletched energy companies. And such companies have quite a bit to win by restricting fossil fuel trade, as they will be able to take profit from the companies that rely more heavily on fossil fuel.
If piracy didn't exist, people would spend pretty much the same amount of money on entertainment.
Of course, it would get shifted somewhat towards buying copies instead of going to concerts or buying new hardware. The main beneficiaries would be those who make money distribution large amounts of copies (big sellers). There is also some profit to be had for the smaller producers who aim at copy distribution.
The losers would be the hardware industry and smaller content producers that make direct sales and provide services, instead of relying of mass production of copies.
consuming
I think you have misunderstood that word. You can't consume intellectual property. Consumption implies a destructive action. Pirating a movie isn't a destructive action as the other party still has the same movie.
There isn't a comparable one on ATI yet, is there?
In the catalyst control center, look under Digital Panel->Attributes and click "Enable GPU Scaling". I don't know what I would have done without that option.
And yet you don't think the people in government who stole the money from us and gave it to the bankers should be in prison???
Depends what you mean by stealing. If you mean taxing is stealing, then you just don't get it. You can't steal what you already own. And the government owns the whole country, every single bit of it, by virtue of having the bigger guns. Taxing is nothing more than collecting rent.
If you are saying that some government employees went above their authority in giving money to the bankers, then you are correct. There are lots of people in the government who should be held accountable for willfully ignoring existing laws and regulations.
but there's no reason to NOT build in the option for people who want it.
Except all the time and effort that gets wasted into it, instead of on better things.
It could turn a $50 40 hour game into a $50, 100 hour game
Or it could turn an excellent $50 100 hour game into a $50 40 hour game with sucky "game prolonging" multiplayer and an unpolished singleplayer experience.
i spent more time playing mods for NWN than i did with the original content.
NWN is a prime example of a game that sacrificed a lot to add multiplayer and superior modding functionality.
They could offer it and you could ignore it.
Even better. They could not offer it and instead focus on better single player content, while the multiplayer fanatics go and play another game. (it isn't like there is a shortage of multiplayer games on the market)
As long as you're reasonably careful not to download and install unknown programs,
The real problem is the whole user security model of most operating systems. Any operating system operating on the assumption that the user and the program has the same security level is fatally flawed from a security perspective.
If you haven't read and understood the source code of a program, then why do you trust it enough to give it the same security privileges as yourself. From a security perspective you shouldn't. A program should never be given more trust than what is needed for it to perform its task. And for most programs that should be precious little.
People who always vote for the same party. It is simple really. People go on about how votes for third parties doesn't count. But that is a pure lie.
The only vote that doesn't count is the vote that always stay the same, the predictable vote. Because no one has to make an effort to gain that vote. It is simply free.
But what is the point of all this progress when no one but the rich can afford all of it. Because that is the result of copyright and patents. Higher prices and less efficient production. We may get a greater selection, but we can't afford to actually use it.
The definition of what something is worth is what someone else will pay
The worth is at least what someone is willing to pay. (assuming no deception or fraud is involved). It is an important difference, which is the whole point of supply and demand.
Also note that consumers and businesses act in completely different ways concerning worth and willingness to pay. Most of what you learn in school deals with businesses, but completely leaves out the economy of consumers. A business is just interested in making profitable transactions, and as such they fit perfectly within the traditional supply & demand theories.
Consumers on the other hand are different. They won't buy something just because it is worth more than it costs, because they don't aim to make profit with what they buy. The aim to consume it. This leads to a market where there is huge difference between value and cost.
Slashdot Mirror
Why subsidize when you can own instead? It is just a waste of tax payer money. If you want broadband built, you buy the service of putting cables into the ground from companies, and end up owning the cables, which you can then rent out to ISPs who want access to end customers. To separate concerns and reduce centralization, you place the ownership in city/state owned non-profit businesses created for the purpose of maintenance and fee collecting on said broadband.
What you don't do is give big companies 200 billion dollars in tax relief and tell them to build broadband if they want. Because that way you don't get anything in return. Because once the money has been given out, the companies accepting the subsidies have no reason whatsoever to keep a low price. They can just go ahead and charge as much as the market can bear. And there won't be many competitors because the subsidized will have an unfair competitive advantage.
I was not aware people don't have the right to hold whatever opinions they pleased.
People generally are. Companies aren't. And as such when you are acting as an agent of a company, you have less rights.
You can't force someone to associate with someone they abhor.
Companies are not allowed to discriminate while hiring based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.
You mean the ice sheet that has been both increasing and decreasing in the last two decades. (mostly increasing). If you are trying to use that as proof of global warming, then you are really misinformed.
So, I've read this several times, and I can't find you even examining procedural content long enough to dismiss it. I don't know if Eve uses it -- in fact, I very much doubt it -- but it also seems like Eve would be the perfect game for it.
Actually, I did try to imply procedural content and other similar methods with with "you can duplicate the same content with slight changes". Now in hindsight, "slight changes" may have been somewhat badly worde, but my conclusion still stands. All such attempts ends up with everything feeling generic and unsatisfying. That isn't to say that procedural content can't be used to speed up content generation. But without a great amount of work by actual artists/designers, you simply don't get something worthwhile. At least with the current state of technology. We never know what the future brings.
So... what stuff does EVE lack that WOW has?
What you said, although not quite as extreme.
All single server, single instance, MMO games (Eve, Second Life, Muds) lack producer created non-generic content. When there is only a single instance of everything, there simply isn't enough producer time in the world to make up the content needed for everyone. At best, you can duplicate the same content with slight changes, but I have yet to see anyone do that successfully. All such attempts ends up with everything feeling generic and unsatisfying.
Of course, if you are into player created content, the above doesn't matter. But not everyone is.
I pay, they provide a service for me. I don't pay, they don't provide a service for me. I am fine so far. It is when they want to stop me from getting a service from someone else that I have to my middle finger at them. Of course, with the locked market capitalism that is practiced in most countries around the world, it is not strange to see that kind of entitlement.
If you don't like their terms, go elsewhere.
But wasn't that was exactly what you argued against?
That's why they invite you to do it
I think you misspelled blackmail.
Cut back drastically on advertising too, as you don't need to whip people up into a frenzy to get them to theatres in the first week.
As long as you have strong IP laws, you will have lots of advertising. The reason is simple. Strong IP laws allows for increased margin profits. And higher margin profits, increases the optimum amount of advertising for a product to maximize profit.
Do you know why that would kill swarm performance?
It doesn't really. At least, the degrading effect is pretty small once you have decent amount of peers. Remember that peers, still want to get a few later parts for trading. And as every peer will try to get their rare parts to trade you still get a decent amount of spread.
There are very few big factors in torrent speed. On new torrents, what mostly matters is the aggregated upload of all peers, or the original seeder upload.
For all other torrents, the big factor is how many bad sheep you got in a swarm. When you have a swarm where most people try to give back what they take, you get huge download speeds. When you don't, you get lousy speeds. The bittorrent protocol is a prime example that the commons can not only destroy, but also accomplish. A thing to think about the next time someone misuses "the tragedy of the commons" to clank down on the common people.
You mean the 800-1300 AD warming period seen in Europe due to changes in the gulf stream/jet stream, which was not warmer anywhere else on Earth?
Ok, I guess China, Japan, New Zealand and Alaska are in Europe. Or did you actually thing that European data was the only ones we had on the medieval warm period. And at least the Japanese records are further substantiated by actual written observations.
Are you saying that you want climate prediction models solely centered around geographically European data? Seems like a bad idea to me.
Agreed. But fortunately we do have non European data also.
A big problem is that most people have grave misconceptions about what science is. Even those who think they understand it, often fail to remember the truth behind the scientific method. Science is not the search for truth. In fact, it is pretty much the opposite. Science is the search for what isn't true.
The truth is invisible, so we do the next best thing. We look at everything else, and notice what isn't there as possibly being the truth. Einstein's real feat of progress wasn't that he came up with the theory of relativity. What really advanced science was that he pinpointed a weakness in the previously accepted theory of gravity.
The problem is that most people don't like to find out that what they know is wrong. And that is a prerequisite to conducting science. Which is why it is so difficult to conduct. You have to suppress your natural instincts of control and try to let your instincts of curiosity guide you instead.
No, it was right... your version unchecks an item corresponding to a style that is provided by the current font. Mine unchecks an item whose style is not provided.
You are right, I was wrong. But you were still wrong. The second break in your example shouldn't be there.
Anyway, the correct way to do the non-linq version in this case is to break out the inner for loop to a method of its own. Using a flag is simply bad practice and should be avoided. Even using goto to break out of the inner loop would be better than that (although that doesn't say much)
Yes, but it's still operating at a lower level of abstraction. In I7, you can speak in generalities and let the compiler figure out when it needs to make a loop;
Not really. The linq expression is actually contextually equivalent to the I7 example you gave. There simply is no difference in abstraction.
unless you're using the .ForEach() method which destroys readability
So using a Foreach construct in C# loses readability? But if you look at the I7 example, that is exactly what it is doing. Sure, it isn't called .ForEach, but it damn well is a construct to apply something on all items in a list.
Or you could use a foreach loop afterwards instead of using a custom ForEach extension method. It is a matter of taste. Doing it this way is more readable than using the from/where/select syntax variant of Linq.
Besides, your non-Linq example should be like this.
And in cases where it weren't possible to just break out of the inner loop, you should create a method of the inner for loop instead of using an ugly found flag. And you always have this combination of Linq and traditional c#.
The above is highly readable, and quite compact. Probably my favorite.
Finally, if you notice the properties of the example, it is possible to see that you could use the following shorter version that however is less readable.
Political Correctness is just a new version of Politeness
Political Correctness is not polite. In fact, it is the opposite. PC speak at its core is about deception, and as such is one of the greatest forms of insult to any listener that can read between the lines.
Why English? Programmers come from other nationalities as well and a programming office in France may choose to use French to document their code, name variables and functions etc.
Because English is the language of programming. It is a simple matter of naming convention. Programming libraries use English for methods and properties, so for consistency you use English for your own variables and functions also. And when you do that, you can just as well use English for comments also.
As someone working in a non-English country I can say that I have never seen non-English variables used. I have seen comments written in my own language, but it is the exception rather than the rule. Of course, I can't speak for how it works in a country like France. But I would be surprised if it was much different. Knowing English well is simply something that makes you a better programmer, as it increases your access to reference material ten fold if not more.
then why is the trillions of pounds in fossil fuels companies aiming to disprove them, not succeding?
Because they are up against more trillions of pounds in the financial sector. Who did you think had the most to profit from a carbon trade scheme in the first place? Or did you actually think that AGW was a grass root effort.
If I were a conspiracy theorist I could even go as far as you say that the Climategate scandal was a deliberate backstab on the financial industry that has been losing influence in the last year. But as I said, that is just conspiracy theory. It would make for a nice story though.
One more important thing to note. There aren't many big single track fossil fuel companies left. The smart ones have already moved towards becoming full fletched energy companies. And such companies have quite a bit to win by restricting fossil fuel trade, as they will be able to take profit from the companies that rely more heavily on fossil fuel.
The dirty truth
More like a dirty lie.
If piracy didn't exist, people would spend pretty much the same amount of money on entertainment.
Of course, it would get shifted somewhat towards buying copies instead of going to concerts or buying new hardware. The main beneficiaries would be those who make money distribution large amounts of copies (big sellers). There is also some profit to be had for the smaller producers who aim at copy distribution.
The losers would be the hardware industry and smaller content producers that make direct sales and provide services, instead of relying of mass production of copies.
consuming
I think you have misunderstood that word. You can't consume intellectual property. Consumption implies a destructive action. Pirating a movie isn't a destructive action as the other party still has the same movie.
There isn't a comparable one on ATI yet, is there?
In the catalyst control center, look under Digital Panel->Attributes and click "Enable GPU Scaling". I don't know what I would have done without that option.
And yet you don't think the people in government who stole the money from us and gave it to the bankers should be in prison???
Depends what you mean by stealing. If you mean taxing is stealing, then you just don't get it. You can't steal what you already own. And the government owns the whole country, every single bit of it, by virtue of having the bigger guns. Taxing is nothing more than collecting rent.
If you are saying that some government employees went above their authority in giving money to the bankers, then you are correct. There are lots of people in the government who should be held accountable for willfully ignoring existing laws and regulations.
Those will typically be the uses where writing it in C++ is not that good a solution anyway
That doesn't really narrow it down though.
but there's no reason to NOT build in the option for people who want it.
Except all the time and effort that gets wasted into it, instead of on better things.
It could turn a $50 40 hour game into a $50, 100 hour game
Or it could turn an excellent $50 100 hour game into a $50 40 hour game with sucky "game prolonging" multiplayer and an unpolished singleplayer experience.
i spent more time playing mods for NWN than i did with the original content.
NWN is a prime example of a game that sacrificed a lot to add multiplayer and superior modding functionality.
They could offer it and you could ignore it.
Even better. They could not offer it and instead focus on better single player content, while the multiplayer fanatics go and play another game. (it isn't like there is a shortage of multiplayer games on the market)
As long as you're reasonably careful not to download and install unknown programs,
The real problem is the whole user security model of most operating systems. Any operating system operating on the assumption that the user and the program has the same security level is fatally flawed from a security perspective.
If you haven't read and understood the source code of a program, then why do you trust it enough to give it the same security privileges as yourself. From a security perspective you shouldn't. A program should never be given more trust than what is needed for it to perform its task. And for most programs that should be precious little.
People who always vote for the same party. It is simple really. People go on about how votes for third parties doesn't count. But that is a pure lie.
The only vote that doesn't count is the vote that always stay the same, the predictable vote. Because no one has to make an effort to gain that vote. It is simply free.
But what is the point of all this progress when no one but the rich can afford all of it. Because that is the result of copyright and patents. Higher prices and less efficient production. We may get a greater selection, but we can't afford to actually use it.
Talk about a bad deal for the average consumer.
The definition of what something is worth is what someone else will pay
The worth is at least what someone is willing to pay. (assuming no deception or fraud is involved). It is an important difference, which is the whole point of supply and demand.
Also note that consumers and businesses act in completely different ways concerning worth and willingness to pay. Most of what you learn in school deals with businesses, but completely leaves out the economy of consumers. A business is just interested in making profitable transactions, and as such they fit perfectly within the traditional supply & demand theories.
Consumers on the other hand are different. They won't buy something just because it is worth more than it costs, because they don't aim to make profit with what they buy. The aim to consume it. This leads to a market where there is huge difference between value and cost.