Don't worry, I don't expect to have this comment modded up as insightful. It does too much to question the assumptions that most of us base our lives on. Here in the US, that is considered heresy of the worst kind. No, we are all supposed to assume that this is the best way to do things and sincerely question what is going on, not question why some of us have 1,000,000 times more assets than others. So, we scratch our heads, wondering why things keep getting worse, and have no ready explanation, because our media and academic elite are not allowed to point out the obvious.
This goes to show that the "free" market economy is efficient in terms of using and abusing people. However, let's examine efficiency a bit more in depth. The US consumes 40% of the world's oil supply and 23% of the world's natural gas along with 23% of the world's coal. So, while our economy has become very efficient at taking wealth away from not just the majority of American citizens as well as other countries, it is extremely inefficient when it comes to fair distribution of that wealth. To say that our wealth is a sign that the free market is working is absolutely absurd. Even the most screwed up totalitarian regime could manage to have it's citizens living well if they had the huge amount of resources that we have. The fact that we manage to have homeless and starving people shows just how poorly the free market really does work. In other words, capitalism still has not proven itself, other than proving that it can separate large amounts of people from any real prospects of ownership or security. When we can show a completely free market society that does not consume a ton of resources and manages to allow everyone to eat, then I will be convinced that it can really work.
The fact that many of us make careers out of nothing more than manipulation of the public mind shows that we also have our own beauracracy, and that is, the beauracracy of propaganda. Think about how many things in our society depend on advertising, and how much of us subsidize the ability to be manipulated and controlled. Think about how this propaganda is everywhere, from billboards, to junk mail and trash on the streets, to commercials on tv, radio, and in newspaper. And, that is just the tip of the iceberg, that's the propaganda that you actually know is propaganda, much of our propaganda has become so entrenched that it becomes a cultural norm, like the air we breathe. All of this is related to the fact that in a free market economy actually creating something isn't important. If you can get money by manipulation or fraud, then that is perfectly acceptable. So, this is our beauracracy, only it doesn't try to pretend that it's about helping people.
You are assuming that Jim and Joan Sixpack really have control over things like this. The way government works is that Jim and Joan are told which issues to get scared about, not the other way around. They will have control only in the sense that it will be allowed to distract them from the important issues. So, perhaps strict licensing will be enforced so that Jim and Joan will be happy that their rights have been eliminated, while still allowing Jim and Joan's rulers to have use of this technology.
Re:Moving to Zimbabwe soon, michael?
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Indecision 2002
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Yes, and many have died, and the blood, unfortunately, is on our hands.(go educate yourself on how we've been spreading "democracy" in South America) We don't need to have rigged elections, just have only two parties that have issues convenientley divided into "platforms". Then you get to break people up into groups, with each serving their own "special interest". Of course, the real economic agenda is the one that is left off the discussion table. So, you get to talk about the War on Drugs, and you can talk about racism and feminist issues, but you never will talk about how the War on Drugs is primarily against people of color. You can talk about violent crime, and welfare, but never talk about how living in a country where we treat our poor like shit has a direct impact on violent crime. You can talk about the crisis in the middle east, and our dependence on oil, but you can't talk about how our dependence on oil is what is really behind our reasons for being there. You can talk about "free trade" and terrorism, but you can't talk about how our suport of military regimes in other countries (because those regimes trade on our terms) has a direct impact on the creation of future terrorists. So, by separating things into arbitrary boxes, you get to spin your wheels, dazzle the brain-dead public, and leave them wondering why things keep getting worse. As far as freedom goes, we have 25% of the world's jail population. I'll repeat that, one fourth of the world's incarcerated population is here in the US, and that's not including the suspected "terrorists" which are being held without fair trial. Now, I'm sure you're going to say,"So what, those are bad people". Exactly, now you're beginning to understand. Let's jump to China, where one could find themselves shot or imprisoned for speaking out against the government. Guess what the general population of China has to say? Yep, you guessed it,"So what, those are bad people." I have a friend from China, and he's thinking of going back. Why, you ask? Because "free trade" allows our rich to pull all their capital out of the US on a whim and move it around the world. So, there is an economic boom in China, that after a recent trip he tells me parallels the same boom that we had here in the late 90's. When I ask him about freedom, for him it's a non-issue, just salute the party and you are left alone. It's the same way that those who are patriotic, conforming citizens get left alone in this country. Is this to say that China is a great place? Hell no. But it just goes to show how easily people can get used to being treated like shit. It also shows that your intolerance is very similar to the intolerance that is part of a fascist regime. In a truly democratic society, complete restructuring of the government should be a perfectly acceptable option. What I mean by that is completely starting over. In this country, talk such as that is not tolerated. In fact, anything other than status quo is Un-American. What do I believe is at the heart of all this? Simple, it's greed. Capitalism has hijacked our country long ago, and our government serves primarily moneyed interests at the expense of it's people. Multi-billion dollar media corporations, industry, and government all serve each other. Voting doesn't make a huge difference because both parties to a large extent have been bought. Joining special interests does not help because that actually serves to distract people from their own economic interests. The only way to fix this problem is by directly addressing the main issue that is at the heart of many of our problems, which neither party wants to do. The democrats have lost their labor union, welfare, social security stance long ago. Sure, they pay lip service to this, but they are split between what they say they are going to do, and what they are being paid to do by their sponsors. The republicans, on the other hand, are at least somewhat less divided in their motivations, which is why they can quite rightly call the democrats "weak". I know, you're going to point out that other parties exist, but they're a non-issue, since only the well-funded parties get voted into office enough to really acheive something.
Well, it sounds like you're interested. I'd highly recommend that you check out the 'contents' section of that first link. It's quite a long read, in fact, it's a small book, but very informative. If you think what we've done in the Middle East is bad, you might be interested in some of the shit that we've done in South America. In fact, I think that South America is very much a "terrorist" threat, and sadly enough, we'll have it coming.
Here's a choice quote: The methods are not very pretty. What the US-run contra forces did in Nicaragua, or what our terrorist proxies do in El Salvador or Guatemala, isn't only ordinary killing. A major element is brutal, sadistic torture -- beating infants against rocks, hanging women by their feet with their breasts cut off and the skin of their face peeled back so that they'll bleed to death, chopping people's heads off and putting them on stakes. The point is to crush independent nationalism and popular forces that might bring about meaningful democracy.
End of Quote.
I actually have a friend that taught school down in Columbia for 2 years, and told me about the US funded mercenary armies and the brutality they inflicted on the people of Columbia. Of course, here in the news, when we manage to overthrow a democracy, we never mention the fact that we were involved. No, instead we call it a military coup. Where do you think they got the weapons from? The last time I checked these places weren't exactly industrialized. Why overthrow their government? We overthrow governments when they don't give the kind of "free" trade agreements that we want. We give them an offer that they can't refuse, literally..
Anyway, you can check out Chomsky's book on 9-11, titled, of course "9-11". Another guy I suggest reading is Michael Moore, who is more satirical. He recently wrote the book "Stupid White Men", and also check out "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" by investigative journalist Greg Palast. Michael Moore's website is at http://www.michaelmoore.com. I don't agree with Moore's stances on gun control, I think the violence in our country is due to a long standing campaign of fear that has been perpetrated on us by our government, and is also due to vast differences in income, as well as repression. But, I do agree with the rest of Moore's political idealogy.
You're welcome. I'm sorry if I sounded condescending when I recommend that you turn off your tv and do some research. It wasn't until I went to the link in your sig that I realized that I was at least in part preaching to the choir. I hope the links were helpful.
Re:All involved US corporate leaders arrested!
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Saddam's Inbox Hacked
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Unfortunately, you have misunderstood the concept of free trade to mean free trade, when in fact it means the opposite of that. The goal of our free trade program is extortion and control. In this context, it's in the US's best interest to keep Iraq poor and to keep around pretexts that will allow us to invade on a whim. If Iraq were to become a Democratic nation we could no longer count on being able to control their oil and use this oil supply as a means of dictating "free" trade agreements with other countries such as Japan and the UK which desperately depend on this oil supply to keep their economies running. An accurate slogan for the war on terrorism is, "The Empire Strikes Back", but I suppose Lucas already used this one. If you really think that you work harder than someone in a 3rd country, and that this is the reason for our success, then might I suggest we open the borders to people from these countries. What most Americans fail to realize is that much of our unprecedented wealth comes from old-fasioned imperialism and extortionate agreements with 3rd world countries. This gives us cheap labor, natural resources, and a dumping ground for waste. Why don't we just invade these take over these countries and make them states of the US? That's not in our interests, after all, you have to dump waste somewhere, and someone needs to be our slaves... US policy has very little to do with freedom and democracy, and quite a bit to do with economics. The sooner Americans wake up to this fact, the sooner we can keep our betters from creating our own little 3rd world at home and the sooner we can start repairing the damage that we have done abroad.
If you lived in an oppressive country, how would you know it? Would the oppression greet you every day? Or would you sleepily ignore it and think that whoever was oppressed had it coming? Do people in China know they are oppressed? How about stories of 'heroic' children in pre cold war USSR happily reporting their parents to the government? Did they know they were oppressed? How about here, where we have 25% of the world's prison population? Do we know it? If our system of media is backed by huge corporate conglomerates, and our media's main system of revenue is through advertising dollars, how can we trust them to report against big business? If media corporations depend on a subsidy consisting of a steady stream of news that comes from PR branches of both government and large private institutions, how can we trust them to report against the institutions that provide them with 'official' news, which is their life blood? These are just some things to think about...
That's part of an online book by Noam Chomsky. It's not incredibly well referenced, unlike his written works, but it has adequate references. Right now I'm reading one of his 70+ published books, "Manufacturing Consent", which is 400 pages long, with 333 pages of text and 60 pages of references. Anyway, the guy is a professor at MIT, a well known genius in the field of linguistics and computer science, but chances are you won't ever hear his opinion on the news or TV. The section that I referred you to in the online book is about the Gulf War. One question he asks is why we didn't remove him in 1990? There was an Iraqi Democratic opposition that we could have supported, so why didn't we? He answers by stating that this is what we wanted. The majority of Saddam's crimes have been done with our support. Why support him? He gives us good prices on oil, that's why. It's the same reason that we support military regimes in South America over democratic uprisings(and there have been many). We can't get shoes made for workers getting paid one cent a day if these countries form democracies and their people fight for their rights. I could look up a better answer to your question, but I would strongly suggest that you turn off your tv, avoid US media, and start looking at every dissident opinion that you can find. Among all the garbage, you will find some real scholarship (i.e. Chomsky's work), and your eyes will be opened. Use the internet, keep an open mind, be willing to do your own homework, and prepare to be surprised.
Here are a couple more links to get started: http://www.zmag.org/CrisesCurEvts/Iraq/I raqCrisis. htm http://www.betterworldlinks.org/book73e.htm Actually that last link has quite a few references to the question you asked, I just found it, I'd suggest you look at it first. Especially this one... http://www.muslimedia.com/archives/feature s98/sadd am.htm
Actually, according to Chomsky, it's not the media, but advertisers that censor the media. By threatening to pull advertising dollars, they have a huge amount of control over media. Obviously, when it comes to media such as television, they have almost complete control. Also, most of the American press get their news from the arms of Institutions that are set up to feed them with a constant supply of material. So, again, the press is dependant on the government and corporations for quite a bit of official news, and these organizations are obviously quite commited and enthusiastic about making sure the media get the "official" version. When you combine this other effective filters, you get an extremely powerful mechanism that serves a right wing corporate agenda and moneyed interests.
True, but the reason I referred to C++ is that he said that he wanted to write it in C++. If he had asked for a recommended langauge, then I think your point would be quite a bit stronger, and I would have stayed out of that discussion since I won't claim to be an expert on which langauge is best, focusing on writing 3D applications in C/C++ that work on both windows and UNIX(read Solaris, Irix, etc) is more than enough to keep me busy. I specialize in C/C++, with experience in Ada, Perl, Java, IBM 370 Assembly, Intel Assembly, and Basic(not to mention dabbling in Lisp, and others as a student). In my opinion C++ is good enough, it's well supported, and it is the langauge that most standalone 3D programs are written in. Are Lightwave, 3DS Max, or any of the other major 3D animation packages written in anything other than C/C++?? I'm not going to debate choice of langauge with you, you might be right, however, choice of langauge is outside of the original scope of his question, and I won't claim to be an expert on every langague out there, so it would be a waste of both our time. However, if you would like, you can make yourself useful and describe what you think the advantages of another langauge might be, this would actually be constructive.
Right, how many of those languages have 3D accelerated API's, aren't bloated, and allow for aggressive optimization? Yes, I know Java has a 3D api, but it's too bloated. Ada?? Give me a break, and yes I have written many programs in Ada since it was my universities main langauge. And Simula/Smalltalk?? Yes, you are correct, I did mean object orientation, but I'm not sure if you're trying to make a point other than that you can list a bunch of object oriented languagues, congratulations. As far as premature optimization goes, I think you are only partially correct. You are only correct where it comes to hacking up code to make it run faster. Designing the structure of the program to facilitate optimization and to avoid doing any unneccessary computation inside the rendering loop is important from the outset. Like I said earlier, the slashdot crowd certainly is pedantic.
Nah, not on crack, my guess is that he's an idealistic college student. Basicly what I did was let him indulge his fantasy and gave him tips on writing a 3D rendering engine. It seems clear from his post that he hasn't even done any 3D programming. He never mentions it. So, let him get started, if he's ambitious he'll get a 3D engine finished, which is quite an accomplishment, and learn alot in the process. You know how it is, young, and in college, and everyone tells you that you can achieve anything, and that you're the smartest. What they forget to tell you is that you'll have to spend at least the next 5-10 years of your life working like a dog to achieve just one of those goals, so choose wisely, and try to make it original.
The reason why I am giving him ABC's is because I am inferring from his original post that he has never written an Open GL engine or screensaver, period. If you had any reading comprehension whatsoever, you would have picked up on that too. Nowhere does he list any OpenGL or Direct3D programming in his experience. What he does list is every marketing guys wet dream, a feature list that is almost incomprehensable and so full of buzzwords that it's enough to make you choke. I think that starting with the basics is exactly what he needs. If a someone comes to me and asks me to teach them how to play lead guitar, and I can see that they've never played in their life, then I am doing them a disservice by going straight to the advanced stuff. Start people off on the level that you think they are coming from, not where they think they are. Just about every college student has ambitious ideas. I think that in this guys case, he would be well served by creating an extensible, fast engine, and then moving from there. And, furthermore, why you think timelines, keyframes, and scenegraphs are an important part of writing a screensaver is beyond me. Perhaps you could explain, or maybe give him some advice yourself. I'm not going to design the thing for the guy. I described basica ways to organize his data in a scenegraph, timelines and keyframes, which is really all he needs to get started. After this if he wants to write a scripting language he can use bison and lex, or XML as some others have suggested. Please explain why bison is necessary for a screensaver? Do you know what bison is?
I also think that if the guy isn't strong enough to handle a little adversity on slashdot, there's no way he'll finish. If he's as serious as he says he is, slashdot won't stop him. It's kind of like musicians that can't handle being criticized, they don't last long. A thick skin is a good thing.
Number 9 is fairly simple. It just involves rendering the scene twice from different view points. I would avoid number 7, since java tends to be inherently slow and a memory hog. I agree with 10. As far as 3 goes, I haven't used XML, but have heard good things about it. I wrote a couple of importers, and the VRML parser I wrote used bison and lex, which are also quite useful. I would like to hear your input on the differences between bison/lexx and XML. I think 1 is definitely a must. Not only that, but try to have a generic object that other objects are derived from. The base class will have no form, then derived classes, such as a pyramid or other shape will have their own data stored in the form of trianagles, texture data, etc, to send to the pipeline at render time. I think that point number 6 is admirable but a big undertaking. I really have a feeling this guy is getting in over his head. Unless he's written 10 or 20 Open GL applications he probably doesn't realize how hard it is. I remember being in college, and thinking that knowing alot of math, programming, and knowledge of how 3D applications work as well as writing a few demo 3D engines was all that I needed. Well, it's true, it's all I needed to get an entry level job at the time. However, that was really a starting place, and I definitely had my work cut out for me. It's fun to talk about these projects, but we definitely cannot design this app. If he's getting stuck now, that's not a good sign. I would recommend that he write an application and scrap it. Then rewrite it based on what he learned. After all, this is a labor of love for him, he doesn't have to use the standard design protocol. It's actually easier to put a bunch of test cases in code, than to spend all day theorizing. A rough design is ok and a good thing, but anything more in depth than that is usually more for the management's sake than the programmers. I would much rather spend time revising my code or performing experiments than second guessing myself about a bunch of unknowns.
That first point was supposed to read: 1. Keep all your rendering loops tight. Avoid doing any extraneous operations. Use arrays instead of linked lists(this keeps the data inside your cache). Avoid recursion unless you can be sure that your complier is not pushing and popping the function stack(some compilers are smart and will not create a stack unless you pass data as a parameter).
Ok, I thought I would try to make this stand out a bit, since I specialize in 3D graphics for a living. I am by no means the top guy at my company, but do have experience in design implementation, as well as reading the Open GL reference guide several times. Let's start with general advice: 1. Keep all your rendering loops tight. Avoid doing any extraneous operations such as caching. Use arrays instead of linked lists(this keeps the data inside your cache). Avoid recursion unless you can be sure that your complier is not pushing and popping the function stack(some compilers are smart and will not create a stack unless you pass data as a parameter). 2. Try to perform as much work as possible at startup or while the user is editing. Remember you want to make as many operations as possible a once only thing. The last thing you want to do is put a bunch of crap in your rendering loop. 3. Take advantage of caching on your graphics card by using display lists and vertex buffers. On nvidia cards this alone can speed up your application by 3x. Only use immediate mode rendering when necessary. Keep in mind that most graphics cards use extra memory when you put the data inside a display list, so there are times when display lists can be slower. 4. Perform depth sorting for proper rendering of alpha blended objects. (this is something we failed to do in the initial design of our application, which was written in 1992 before alpha blending was a widely used feature). 5. Try to keep interface code generic, and try to make rendering code specific. It's always a tradeoff between readability and performance. 6. Learn assembly, not because you're going to use it that much, but so that you can spot areas of slowdown. Learning which operations are expensive is crucial. Function calls, random memory access, pointer deferences can all slow your program down. 7. As mentioned in six, optimize your access to memory, pay attention to byte alignment, which will allow you to pack more data into the cache. Also look into AMD and Intel's articles on optimizing for performance. The most crucial aspect is how you access memory. There are new instructions which allow you to load data from memory into cache before it's used. This can often speed computations up significantly in real-time applications. There are also many other tips, but I'll leave up to you to go to AMD and Intel's websites and download the white papers.
You mention animation, the project that I worked on for the last year tackled this problem:
The project was to integrate animation into an application that was not designed to do this, and to make it generic enough so that the user could animate anything. Here are some simple concepts to get you started in designing an app that allows users to animate in an intuitive manner: 1. Timelines - A timeline is a graphical way of representing time. You can use something that looks similar to a ruler, with time marked in units of usually every second. 2. Keyframes - These are points on this timeline that are specificed by the user. Keyframes always have a time associated with them. If I want to animate positional data, then that keyframe will have a time as well as data about the X,Y,Z position of that object. When the user hits play, the application will interpolate between points on the timeline.
Here's where C++ comes in handy. You can make both timelines and keyframes a class. Then, let's say I want to animate clouds, I can simply create a class called cloud timeline that contains cloudkeyframes. When the user clicks a keyframe, an interface opens up that allows him to edit that data, which in the case of a cloud might be both transparency and position. Then when the user hits play both position and transparency are animated according to the values of the keyframes given. The neat thing is, that a cloud timeline can be derived from positiontimeline, which means that you only have to do the work of creating an interface for animating position and orientation once.
Next, it is important to remember that timelines are a property of some object within the scene. I would say that it you can also keep object data organized in a generic manner. I would recommend using a scene graph. So, what the user would see is a scene represented by a tree, with the root node being the terrain and child nodes being objects on that terrain. You can also pull some neat tricks with scene graphs, such as nested transforms. This would allow you to have an object such as a car, with four wheels, to have wheels that are child nodes of that car. In this way, you could create a timeline for the entire car, and then the wheels could have their own timelines which would animate their rotation. The wheels would not know anything about the fact that they are moving along with the car. There are of course other ways of animation, such as writing your own scripting language, which I have never done. I have written a VRML parser, however, and I can tell you that learning both Bison and Lexx is important if you want to implement a language. There are other types of parsers, but using these compiler tools tends to be more straightforward. In the least it would be good to pick up a book on language designed and construction. The book I studied in College was "Compiler Construction: Principles and Practice" by Kenneth C Louden, but there are others that may be better. Anyway, that's enough rambling, and since most on slashdot are pedantic, please forgive any technical erros, it's Friday night and I wrote this in about 20 minutes.
1. Marijuana is not physicially addictive. In fact, health experts have been so frustrated by this fact that they have invented the term 'psychologically addictive' to demonize this drug. According to the definition, you can also be psychologically addicted to washing your hands, excercising, etc. There has also never been a case of a marijuana overdose, ever. 2. According to US government studies, over 40% of 12th graders use marijuana. This number shoots above 60% by adulthood. If this high of a percentage has used it, where are all the addicts?? In the 60's this number was higher, again, where are all the addicts? 3. There has yet to be any evidence that legality has any affect on susceptibility to addiction. I think it's obvious you've never been in the US. If you had, you would have seen the many blatantly over-emotional commercials demonstrating the purported ill effects of drugs. One of the newest camplaigns flat out says that if you buy drugs you are supporting terrorists, and therefore you are a terrorist as well. Now, I'm going to assume you've been paying attention to world events lately, and that you realize that we're a bit touchy here on the subject of terrorism, and here we have a government calling it's citizens terrorists. THAT's how strong the propaganda is. Murderers get weaker jail sentences than small time drug dealers here, it's really gone that far. Let me ask you a question, what is less expensive, treatment or jail? How exactly does getting raped in prison convince one that life is so wonderful that they don't need drugs?
"Back in the good old days, outlaws would wait until they graduated before they started killin'"... Yeah, right. The only difference between now and then is that rather than dropping out of school and shooting people out in society, they are taking their anger out in school. Most criminals are lucky if they make it to 18, much less start after 18. Think about the age of outlaws in the wild west, and that will give you some perspective. Killing at 15 years old is nothing new, it's just that before it would happen outside of school, and today it happens in school. Uncontrollable rage at 15 is nothing new, and in fact, I would say that you're likely to see just as many adolescents commiting these crimes as men in their 20's. By the time people get to their 20's, their hormones have calmed down enough that they can control themselves, and they are no longer trapped in situations that force them to act out. The only reason that we are surprised as a society, is because we have the irrational belief that we can somehow save everyone. Some people are destined to become fuckups, addicts, criminals, etc., and treating everyone like an addict, fuckup, criminal, is not going to stop that 0.01% from living their destiny.
Interesting, I find it funny that you mention bubble sort. I've been programming for over 2 years in the 'real world', wrote a VRML 2.0 interpreter, OO Animation Package with about 20 objects(20,000 lines of code to start, it will be expanded), a couple of plugin interfaces, etc. And, I must say, that I've had very little need to get into sorting algorithms. So much so that I actually had to go back to my data structures and algorithms to look up bubble sort. Thinking back, I've only had to use a sort algorithm once in the past two years, weird. It's pretty strange how far off the mark most of my CS education was in preparing me for the extremely math intensive world of 3D application development. I would definitely need to re-read a few of my CS books if I wanted to interview.
You know it always amazes me that Microsoft claims that they can't create a modular OS. Someone should tell them that there is this company called Microsoft that has made a technology called COM, which should solve the problem nicely. Uh, oh yeah, nevermind...
Actually my post was in response to my parent, not to what you said. So, what you(DeHat) have just stated is exactly the point that I am trying to make. There is a huge amount of unemployment in the engineering field. When the only jobs advertised are for people with at least 10 years experience, and then the pay is below what even I make, then that says that the prospect for finding a job has all but vanished.
Understood, but our company had layoffs two and a half months ago, and as far as I know, one of the guys laid-off who is a class away from a BSEE and has a BS in CS has not been able to find a job. Networking, yeah, that's great, but it's easier said than done when you work in hard-core scientific programming. Very few of us ever have a chance to talk to customers. I am not a consultant, but a software engineer, and turnover at the company I work at is very low. So, if I did manage to get laid off, who would I network with? Sure, I have a few buddies I went to school with, but that gives me maybe 5, at most 10 people that I can call, and then I'm SOL. And I've been working 60-80 hours a week since the beginning of the year, so how am I supposed to find time to network(last weekend was the first weekend I had off since the end of Feb.)
Slashdot Mirror
Don't worry, I don't expect to have this comment modded up as insightful. It does too much to question the assumptions that most of us base our lives on. Here in the US, that is considered heresy of the worst kind. No, we are all supposed to assume that this is the best way to do things and sincerely question what is going on, not question why some of us have 1,000,000 times more assets than others. So, we scratch our heads, wondering why things keep getting worse, and have no ready explanation, because our media and academic elite are not allowed to point out the obvious.
This goes to show that the "free" market economy is efficient in terms of using and abusing people. However, let's examine efficiency a bit more in depth. The US consumes 40% of the world's oil supply and 23% of the world's natural gas along with 23% of the world's coal. So, while our economy has become very efficient at taking wealth away from not just the majority of American citizens as well as other countries, it is extremely inefficient when it comes to fair distribution of that wealth. To say that our wealth is a sign that the free market is working is absolutely absurd. Even the most screwed up totalitarian regime could manage to have it's citizens living well if they had the huge amount of resources that we have. The fact that we manage to have homeless and starving people shows just how poorly the free market really does work. In other words, capitalism still has not proven itself, other than proving that it can separate large amounts of people from any real prospects of ownership or security. When we can show a completely free market society that does not consume a ton of resources and manages to allow everyone to eat, then I will be convinced that it can really work.
The fact that many of us make careers out of nothing more than manipulation of the public mind shows that we also have our own beauracracy, and that is, the beauracracy of propaganda. Think about how many things in our society depend on advertising, and how much of us subsidize the ability to be manipulated and controlled. Think about how this propaganda is everywhere, from billboards, to junk mail and trash on the streets, to commercials on tv, radio, and in newspaper. And, that is just the tip of the iceberg, that's the propaganda that you actually know is propaganda, much of our propaganda has become so entrenched that it becomes a cultural norm, like the air we breathe. All of this is related to the fact that in a free market economy actually creating something isn't important. If you can get money by manipulation or fraud, then that is perfectly acceptable. So, this is our beauracracy, only it doesn't try to pretend that it's about helping people.
You are assuming that Jim and Joan Sixpack really have control over things like this. The way government works is that Jim and Joan are told which issues to get scared about, not the other way around. They will have control only in the sense that it will be allowed to distract them from the important issues. So, perhaps strict licensing will be enforced so that Jim and Joan will be happy that their rights have been eliminated, while still allowing Jim and Joan's rulers to have use of this technology.
Yes, and many have died, and the blood, unfortunately, is on our hands.(go educate yourself on how we've been spreading "democracy" in South America) We don't need to have rigged elections, just have only two parties that have issues convenientley divided into "platforms". Then you get to break people up into groups, with each serving their own "special interest". Of course, the real economic agenda is the one that is left off the discussion table. So, you get to talk about the War on Drugs, and you can talk about racism and feminist issues, but you never will talk about how the War on Drugs is primarily against people of color. You can talk about violent crime, and welfare, but never talk about how living in a country where we treat our poor like shit has a direct impact on violent crime. You can talk about the crisis in the middle east, and our dependence on oil, but you can't talk about how our dependence on oil is what is really behind our reasons for being there. You can talk about "free trade" and terrorism, but you can't talk about how our suport of military regimes in other countries (because those regimes trade on our terms) has a direct impact on the creation of future terrorists. So, by separating things into arbitrary boxes, you get to spin your wheels, dazzle the brain-dead public, and leave them wondering why things keep getting worse. As far as freedom goes, we have 25% of the world's jail population. I'll repeat that, one fourth of the world's incarcerated population is here in the US, and that's not including the suspected "terrorists" which are being held without fair trial. Now, I'm sure you're going to say,"So what, those are bad people". Exactly, now you're beginning to understand. Let's jump to China, where one could find themselves shot or imprisoned for speaking out against the government. Guess what the general population of China has to say? Yep, you guessed it,"So what, those are bad people." I have a friend from China, and he's thinking of going back. Why, you ask? Because "free trade" allows our rich to pull all their capital out of the US on a whim and move it around the world. So, there is an economic boom in China, that after a recent trip he tells me parallels the same boom that we had here in the late 90's. When I ask him about freedom, for him it's a non-issue, just salute the party and you are left alone. It's the same way that those who are patriotic, conforming citizens get left alone in this country. Is this to say that China is a great place? Hell no. But it just goes to show how easily people can get used to being treated like shit. It also shows that your intolerance is very similar to the intolerance that is part of a fascist regime. In a truly democratic society, complete restructuring of the government should be a perfectly acceptable option. What I mean by that is completely starting over. In this country, talk such as that is not tolerated. In fact, anything other than status quo is Un-American.
What do I believe is at the heart of all this? Simple, it's greed. Capitalism has hijacked our country long ago, and our government serves primarily moneyed interests at the expense of it's people. Multi-billion dollar media corporations, industry, and government all serve each other. Voting doesn't make a huge difference because both parties to a large extent have been bought. Joining special interests does not help because that actually serves to distract people from their own economic interests. The only way to fix this problem is by directly addressing the main issue that is at the heart of many of our problems, which neither party wants to do. The democrats have lost their labor union, welfare, social security stance long ago. Sure, they pay lip service to this, but they are split between what they say they are going to do, and what they are being paid to do by their sponsors. The republicans, on the other hand, are at least somewhat less divided in their motivations, which is why they can quite rightly call the democrats "weak". I know, you're going to point out that other parties exist, but they're a non-issue, since only the well-funded parties get voted into office enough to really acheive something.
Well, it sounds like you're interested. I'd highly recommend that you check out the 'contents' section of that first link. It's quite a long read, in fact, it's a small book, but very informative. If you think what we've done in the Middle East is bad, you might be interested in some of the shit that we've done in South America. In fact, I think that South America is very much a "terrorist" threat, and sadly enough, we'll have it coming.
Here's a choice quote:
The methods are not very pretty. What the US-run contra forces did in Nicaragua, or what our terrorist proxies do in El Salvador or Guatemala, isn't only ordinary killing. A major element is brutal, sadistic torture -- beating infants against rocks, hanging women by their feet with their breasts cut off and the skin of their face peeled back so that they'll bleed to death, chopping people's heads off and putting them on stakes. The point is to crush independent nationalism and popular forces that might bring about meaningful democracy.
End of Quote.
I actually have a friend that taught school down in Columbia for 2 years, and told me about the US funded mercenary armies and the brutality they inflicted on the people of Columbia. Of course, here in the news, when we manage to overthrow a democracy, we never mention the fact that we were involved. No, instead we call it a military coup. Where do you think they got the weapons from? The last time I checked these places weren't exactly industrialized. Why overthrow their government? We overthrow governments when they don't give the kind of "free" trade agreements that we want. We give them an offer that they can't refuse, literally..
Anyway, you can check out Chomsky's book on 9-11, titled, of course "9-11". Another guy I suggest reading is Michael Moore, who is more satirical. He recently wrote the book "Stupid White Men", and also check out "The Best Democracy Money
Can Buy" by investigative journalist Greg Palast. Michael Moore's website is at http://www.michaelmoore.com. I don't agree with Moore's stances on gun control, I think the violence in our country is due to a long standing campaign of fear that has been perpetrated on us by our government, and is also due to vast differences in income, as well as repression. But, I do agree with the rest of Moore's political idealogy.
You're welcome. I'm sorry if I sounded condescending when I recommend that you turn off your tv and do some research. It wasn't until I went to the link in your sig that I realized that I was at least in part preaching to the choir. I hope the links were helpful.
Unfortunately, you have misunderstood the concept of free trade to mean free trade, when in fact it means the opposite of that. The goal of our free trade program is extortion and control. In this context, it's in the US's best interest to keep Iraq poor and to keep around pretexts that will allow us to invade on a whim. If Iraq were to become a Democratic nation we could no longer count on being able to control their oil and use this oil supply as a means of dictating "free" trade agreements with other countries such as Japan and the UK which desperately depend on this oil supply to keep their economies running. An accurate slogan for the war on terrorism is, "The Empire Strikes Back", but I suppose Lucas already used this one. If you really think that you work harder than someone in a 3rd country, and that this is the reason for our success, then might I suggest we open the borders to people from these countries. What most Americans fail to realize is that much of our unprecedented wealth comes from old-fasioned imperialism and extortionate agreements with 3rd world countries. This gives us cheap labor, natural resources, and a dumping ground for waste. Why don't we just invade these take over these countries and make them states of the US? That's not in our interests, after all, you have to dump waste somewhere, and someone needs to be our slaves... US policy has very little to do with freedom and democracy, and quite a bit to do with economics. The sooner Americans wake up to this fact, the sooner we can keep our betters from creating our own little 3rd world at home and the sooner we can start repairing the damage that we have done abroad.
If you lived in an oppressive country, how would you know it? Would the oppression greet you every day? Or would you sleepily ignore it and think that whoever was oppressed had it coming? Do people in China know they are oppressed? How about stories of 'heroic' children in pre cold war USSR happily reporting their parents to the government? Did they know they were oppressed? How about here, where we have 25% of the world's prison population? Do we know it? If our system of media is backed by huge corporate conglomerates, and our media's main system of revenue is through advertising dollars, how can we trust them to report against big business? If media corporations depend on a subsidy consisting of a steady stream of news that comes from PR branches of both government and large private institutions, how can we trust them to report against the institutions that provide them with 'official' news, which is their life blood? These are just some things to think about...
http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/sam/sam-2-07.html
I raqCrisis. htm
Actually that last link has quite a few references to the question you asked, I just found it, I'd suggest you look at it first. Especially this one...e s98/sadd am.htm
That's part of an online book by Noam Chomsky. It's not incredibly well referenced, unlike his written works, but it has adequate references. Right now I'm reading one of his 70+ published books, "Manufacturing Consent", which is 400 pages long, with 333 pages of text and 60 pages of references. Anyway, the guy is a professor at MIT, a well known genius in the field of linguistics and computer science, but chances are you won't ever hear his opinion on the news or TV. The section that I referred you to in the online book is about the Gulf War. One question he asks is why we didn't remove him in 1990? There was an Iraqi Democratic opposition that we could have supported, so why didn't we? He answers by stating that this is what we wanted. The majority of Saddam's crimes have been done with our support. Why support him? He gives us good prices on oil, that's why. It's the same reason that we support military regimes in South America over democratic uprisings(and there have been many). We can't get shoes made for workers getting paid one cent a day if these countries form democracies and their people fight for their rights. I could look up a better answer to your question, but I would strongly suggest that you turn off your tv, avoid US media, and start looking at every dissident opinion that you can find. Among all the garbage, you will find some real scholarship (i.e. Chomsky's work), and your eyes will be opened. Use the internet, keep an open mind, be willing to do your own homework, and prepare to be surprised.
Here are a couple more links to get started:
http://www.zmag.org/CrisesCurEvts/Iraq/
http://www.betterworldlinks.org/book73e.htm
http://www.muslimedia.com/archives/featur
Actually, according to Chomsky, it's not the media, but advertisers that censor the media. By threatening to pull advertising dollars, they have a huge amount of control over media. Obviously, when it comes to media such as television, they have almost complete control. Also, most of the American press get their news from the arms of Institutions that are set up to feed them with a constant supply of material. So, again, the press is dependant on the government and corporations for quite a bit of official news, and these organizations are obviously quite commited and enthusiastic about making sure the media get the "official" version. When you combine this other effective filters, you get an extremely powerful mechanism that serves a right wing corporate agenda and moneyed interests.
True, but the reason I referred to C++ is that he said that he wanted to write it in C++. If he had asked for a recommended langauge, then I think your point would be quite a bit stronger, and I would have stayed out of that discussion since I won't claim to be an expert on which langauge is best, focusing on writing 3D applications in C/C++ that work on both windows and UNIX(read Solaris, Irix, etc) is more than enough to keep me busy. I specialize in C/C++, with experience in Ada, Perl, Java, IBM 370 Assembly, Intel Assembly, and Basic(not to mention dabbling in Lisp, and others as a student). In my opinion C++ is good enough, it's well supported, and it is the langauge that most standalone 3D programs are written in. Are Lightwave, 3DS Max, or any of the other major 3D animation packages written in anything other than C/C++?? I'm not going to debate choice of langauge with you, you might be right, however, choice of langauge is outside of the original scope of his question, and I won't claim to be an expert on every langague out there, so it would be a waste of both our time. However, if you would like, you can make yourself useful and describe what you think the advantages of another langauge might be, this would actually be constructive.
Right, how many of those languages have 3D accelerated API's, aren't bloated, and allow for aggressive optimization? Yes, I know Java has a 3D api, but it's too bloated. Ada?? Give me a break, and yes I have written many programs in Ada since it was my universities main langauge. And Simula/Smalltalk?? Yes, you are correct, I did mean object orientation, but I'm not sure if you're trying to make a point other than that you can list a bunch of object oriented languagues, congratulations. As far as premature optimization goes, I think you are only partially correct. You are only correct where it comes to hacking up code to make it run faster. Designing the structure of the program to facilitate optimization and to avoid doing any unneccessary computation inside the rendering loop is important from the outset. Like I said earlier, the slashdot crowd certainly is pedantic.
Nah, not on crack, my guess is that he's an idealistic college student. Basicly what I did was let him indulge his fantasy and gave him tips on writing a 3D rendering engine. It seems clear from his post that he hasn't even done any 3D programming. He never mentions it. So, let him get started, if he's ambitious he'll get a 3D engine finished, which is quite an accomplishment, and learn alot in the process. You know how it is, young, and in college, and everyone tells you that you can achieve anything, and that you're the smartest. What they forget to tell you is that you'll have to spend at least the next 5-10 years of your life working like a dog to achieve just one of those goals, so choose wisely, and try to make it original.
The reason why I am giving him ABC's is because I am inferring from his original post that he has never written an Open GL engine or screensaver, period. If you had any reading comprehension whatsoever, you would have picked up on that too. Nowhere does he list any OpenGL or Direct3D programming in his experience. What he does list is every marketing guys wet dream, a feature list that is almost incomprehensable and so full of buzzwords that it's enough to make you choke. I think that starting with the basics is exactly what he needs. If a someone comes to me and asks me to teach them how to play lead guitar, and I can see that they've never played in their life, then I am doing them a disservice by going straight to the advanced stuff. Start people off on the level that you think they are coming from, not where they think they are. Just about every college student has ambitious ideas. I think that in this guys case, he would be well served by creating an extensible, fast engine, and then moving from there. And, furthermore, why you think timelines, keyframes, and scenegraphs are an important part of writing a screensaver is beyond me. Perhaps you could explain, or maybe give him some advice yourself. I'm not going to design the thing for the guy. I described basica ways to organize his data in a scenegraph, timelines and keyframes, which is really all he needs to get started. After this if he wants to write a scripting language he can use bison and lex, or XML as some others have suggested. Please explain why bison is necessary for a screensaver? Do you know what bison is?
I also think that if the guy isn't strong enough to handle a little adversity on slashdot, there's no way he'll finish. If he's as serious as he says he is, slashdot won't stop him. It's kind of like musicians that can't handle being criticized, they don't last long. A thick skin is a good thing.
Oops, I meant to say, It's fun to talk about these projects, but we definitely cannot design this app for him.
Number 9 is fairly simple. It just involves rendering the scene twice from different view points. I would avoid number 7, since java tends to be inherently slow and a memory hog. I agree with 10. As far as 3 goes, I haven't used XML, but have heard good things about it. I wrote a couple of importers, and the VRML parser I wrote used bison and lex, which are also quite useful. I would like to hear your input on the differences between bison/lexx and XML. I think 1 is definitely a must. Not only that, but try to have a generic object that other objects are derived from. The base class will have no form, then derived classes, such as a pyramid or other shape will have their own data stored in the form of trianagles, texture data, etc, to send to the pipeline at render time. I think that point number 6 is admirable but a big undertaking. I really have a feeling this guy is getting in over his head. Unless he's written 10 or 20 Open GL applications he probably doesn't realize how hard it is. I remember being in college, and thinking that knowing alot of math, programming, and knowledge of how 3D applications work as well as writing a few demo 3D engines was all that I needed. Well, it's true, it's all I needed to get an entry level job at the time. However, that was really a starting place, and I definitely had my work cut out for me. It's fun to talk about these projects, but we definitely cannot design this app. If he's getting stuck now, that's not a good sign. I would recommend that he write an application and scrap it. Then rewrite it based on what he learned. After all, this is a labor of love for him, he doesn't have to use the standard design protocol. It's actually easier to put a bunch of test cases in code, than to spend all day theorizing. A rough design is ok and a good thing, but anything more in depth than that is usually more for the management's sake than the programmers. I would much rather spend time revising my code or performing experiments than second guessing myself about a bunch of unknowns.
That first point was supposed to read:
1. Keep all your rendering loops tight. Avoid doing any extraneous operations. Use arrays instead of linked lists(this keeps the data inside your cache). Avoid recursion unless you can be sure that your complier is not pushing and popping the function stack(some compilers are smart and will not create a stack unless you pass data as a parameter).
Ok, I thought I would try to make this stand out a bit, since I specialize in 3D graphics for a living. I am by no means the top guy at my company, but do have experience in design implementation, as well as reading the Open GL reference guide several times. Let's start with general advice:
1. Keep all your rendering loops tight. Avoid doing any extraneous operations such as caching. Use arrays instead of linked lists(this keeps the data inside your cache). Avoid recursion unless you can be sure that your complier is not pushing and popping the function stack(some compilers are smart and will not create a stack unless you pass data as a parameter).
2. Try to perform as much work as possible at startup or while the user is editing. Remember you want to make as many operations as possible a once only thing. The last thing you want to do is put a bunch of crap in your rendering loop.
3. Take advantage of caching on your graphics card by using display lists and vertex buffers. On nvidia cards this alone can speed up your application by 3x. Only use immediate mode rendering when necessary. Keep in mind that most graphics cards use extra memory when you put the data inside a display list, so there are times when display lists can be slower.
4. Perform depth sorting for proper rendering of alpha blended objects. (this is something we failed to do in the initial design of our application, which was written in 1992 before alpha blending was a widely used feature).
5. Try to keep interface code generic, and try to make rendering code specific. It's always a tradeoff between readability and performance.
6. Learn assembly, not because you're going to use it that much, but so that you can spot areas of slowdown. Learning which operations are expensive is crucial. Function calls, random memory access, pointer deferences can all slow your program down.
7. As mentioned in six, optimize your access to memory, pay attention to byte alignment, which will allow you to pack more data into the cache. Also look into AMD and Intel's articles on optimizing for performance. The most crucial aspect is how you access memory. There are new instructions which allow you to load data from memory into cache before it's used. This can often speed computations up significantly in real-time applications. There are also many other tips, but I'll leave up to you to go to AMD and Intel's websites and download the white papers.
You mention animation, the project that I worked on for the last year tackled this problem:
The project was to integrate animation into an application that was not designed to do this, and to make it generic enough so that the user could animate anything. Here are some simple concepts to get you started in designing an app that allows users to animate in an intuitive manner:
1. Timelines - A timeline is a graphical way of representing time. You can use something that looks similar to a ruler, with time marked in units of usually every second.
2. Keyframes - These are points on this timeline that are specificed by the user. Keyframes always have a time associated with them. If I want to animate positional data, then that keyframe will have a time as well as data about the X,Y,Z position of that object. When the user hits play, the application will interpolate between points on the timeline.
Here's where C++ comes in handy. You can make both timelines and keyframes a class. Then, let's say I want to animate clouds, I can simply create a class called cloud timeline that contains cloudkeyframes. When the user clicks a keyframe, an interface opens up that allows him to edit that data, which in the case of a cloud might be both transparency and position. Then when the user hits play both position and transparency are animated according to the values of the keyframes given. The neat thing is, that a cloud timeline can be derived from positiontimeline, which means that you only have to do the work of creating an interface for animating position and orientation once.
Next, it is important to remember that timelines are a property of some object within the scene. I would say that it you can also keep object data organized in a generic manner. I would recommend using a scene graph. So, what the user would see is a scene represented by a tree, with the root node being the terrain and child nodes being objects on that terrain. You can also pull some neat tricks with scene graphs, such as nested transforms. This would allow you to have an object such as a car, with four wheels, to have wheels that are child nodes of that car. In this way, you could create a timeline for the entire car, and then the wheels could have their own timelines which would animate their rotation. The wheels would not know anything about the fact that they are moving along with the car. There are of course other ways of animation, such as writing your own scripting language, which I have never done. I have written a VRML parser, however, and I can tell you that learning both Bison and Lexx is important if you want to implement a language. There are other types of parsers, but using these compiler tools tends to be more straightforward. In the least it would be good to pick up a book on language designed and construction. The book I studied in College was "Compiler Construction: Principles and Practice" by Kenneth C Louden, but there are others that may be better. Anyway, that's enough rambling, and since most on slashdot are pedantic, please forgive any technical erros, it's Friday night and I wrote this in about 20 minutes.
1. Marijuana is not physicially addictive. In fact, health experts have been so frustrated by this fact that they have invented the term 'psychologically addictive' to demonize this drug. According to the definition, you can also be psychologically addicted to washing your hands, excercising, etc. There has also never been a case of a marijuana overdose, ever. 2. According to US government studies, over 40% of 12th graders use marijuana. This number shoots above 60% by adulthood. If this high of a percentage has used it, where are all the addicts?? In the 60's this number was higher, again, where are all the addicts? 3. There has yet to be any evidence that legality has any affect on susceptibility to addiction. I think it's obvious you've never been in the US. If you had, you would have seen the many blatantly over-emotional commercials demonstrating the purported ill effects of drugs. One of the newest camplaigns flat out says that if you buy drugs you are supporting terrorists, and therefore you are a terrorist as well. Now, I'm going to assume you've been paying attention to world events lately, and that you realize that we're a bit touchy here on the subject of terrorism, and here we have a government calling it's citizens terrorists. THAT's how strong the propaganda is. Murderers get weaker jail sentences than small time drug dealers here, it's really gone that far. Let me ask you a question, what is less expensive, treatment or jail? How exactly does getting raped in prison convince one that life is so wonderful that they don't need drugs?
"Back in the good old days, outlaws would wait until they graduated before they started killin'"... Yeah, right. The only difference between now and then is that rather than dropping out of school and shooting people out in society, they are taking their anger out in school. Most criminals are lucky if they make it to 18, much less start after 18. Think about the age of outlaws in the wild west, and that will give you some perspective. Killing at 15 years old is nothing new, it's just that before it would happen outside of school, and today it happens in school. Uncontrollable rage at 15 is nothing new, and in fact, I would say that you're likely to see just as many adolescents commiting these crimes as men in their 20's. By the time people get to their 20's, their hormones have calmed down enough that they can control themselves, and they are no longer trapped in situations that force them to act out. The only reason that we are surprised as a society, is because we have the irrational belief that we can somehow save everyone. Some people are destined to become fuckups, addicts, criminals, etc., and treating everyone like an addict, fuckup, criminal, is not going to stop that 0.01% from living their destiny.
Interesting, I find it funny that you mention bubble sort. I've been programming for over 2 years in the 'real world', wrote a VRML 2.0 interpreter, OO Animation Package with about 20 objects(20,000 lines of code to start, it will be expanded), a couple of plugin interfaces, etc. And, I must say, that I've had very little need to get into sorting algorithms. So much so that I actually had to go back to my data structures and algorithms to look up bubble sort. Thinking back, I've only had to use a sort algorithm once in the past two years, weird. It's pretty strange how far off the mark most of my CS education was in preparing me for the extremely math intensive world of 3D application development. I would definitely need to re-read a few of my CS books if I wanted to interview.
You know it always amazes me that Microsoft claims that they can't create a modular OS. Someone should tell them that there is this company called Microsoft that has made a technology called COM, which should solve the problem nicely. Uh, oh yeah, nevermind...
Actually my post was in response to my parent, not to what you said. So, what you(DeHat) have just stated is exactly the point that I am trying to make. There is a huge amount of unemployment in the engineering field. When the only jobs advertised are for people with at least 10 years experience, and then the pay is below what even I make, then that says that the prospect for finding a job has all but vanished.
Understood, but our company had layoffs two and a half months ago, and as far as I know, one of the guys laid-off who is a class away from a BSEE and has a BS in CS has not been able to find a job. Networking, yeah, that's great, but it's easier said than done when you work in hard-core scientific programming. Very few of us ever have a chance to talk to customers. I am not a consultant, but a software engineer, and turnover at the company I work at is very low. So, if I did manage to get laid off, who would I network with? Sure, I have a few buddies I went to school with, but that gives me maybe 5, at most 10 people that I can call, and then I'm SOL. And I've been working 60-80 hours a week since the beginning of the year, so how am I supposed to find time to network(last weekend was the first weekend I had off since the end of Feb.)