Well, I have actually created my own java-based version of the game (private, because I'm using all the copyrighted images). You are correct, the AI is actually quite simple, because there's a finite and small number of ways to play the game.
You can try to expand and play land-grab. You can try to build to castles. You can try to establish military supremacy. Etc. Each strategy is quite easy to program as there is often an optimal move that is easy to determine.
I like the idea of a commercial online version becoming available, but my friends and I probably won't play it. We have created our own variants that we feel add much more fun and strategy to the game, and it is unlikely that the complex rules we've come up with will be integratable into the commercial release.
When it comes to people and filling taxes, there are an insane number of cheaters out there. How do I know? Well, I worked for a year for Revenue Canada (~Canadian IRS), specifically to track down tax cheaters.
My job involved tracking down cheating building contractors. I only needed two databases for this: the first, their tax return information, and the second, a database compiled as part of the Canadian New Home GST Rebate program.
Aside: the Canadian New Home GST Rebate plan is a plan that gives back to the buyer around a third of the GST (a 7% tax) that went into a home.
To qualify, every contractor who worked on the home must be listed along with their GST number. I simply cross-referenced a contractor's tax return with their GST rebate stats. We caught (and continue to catch) so many idiots who would claim $5,000 in earnings yet had done $1,000,000 or more of work on new homes.
I would consider this a good use of available information by gov't employees, and not quite the same as a big brother gov't.
I'd ask: what are you all planning to do when your jobs go to Russia as soon as you become too expensive for the US corporations? Plan now, because it's starting to happen.
Hopefully you guys are able to weather the storm better than us.
This just seems like another tactic to stall their case. Personally, I believe that there is something more sinister than just a dying company in its death throws here. The longer this goes on, the more damage being done to Linux and open source in general. Obviously, when they finally have to account for any of their claims they will quickly lose, but the longer they can take to prevent that the better (if you support my hypothesis).
My guess is they'll go to court and say "Your honour, you asked us to provide these documents to IBM before the case could continue, however since that ruling we've ammended our suite and would ask that we can push back that date as a result."
I think the ideal type of business that is made for online sales is the type of business that meets a niche market. This fits in nicely with many niche communities (e.g. hobby sites, slashdot, etc) that exist online. If you depend on Google to bring people in, then your store is either too generic, or not advertising correctly.
For example, what do you think would be the most effective advertising for ThinkGeek.com:
...the average computer user isn't going to start becoming computer-savy anytime soon. Even this generation of children are woefully ignorant for the most part. Look at the VCR -- it's been out for ages, and I know that most people still cannot figure out how to program it to record at a certain time or program the clock.
At some point in time, software developers are going to have to come to grips with the fact that their target market isn't going to smarten up, and start building dumber and dumber applications.
The solution to email-bourne viruses isn't to tell people "don't click on attachments." If we want to prevent this, we need to change email programs so that attachments can't do what they are capable of currently. It isn't going to work any other way.
Does that percentage account for people who own the songs they are downloading in some other media format?
Does that percetage account for people who tried to download a song but got a RIAA-hijacked song instead?
What a waste of resources. They are playing at a very losing game. Before Napster there was always IRC, usenet, and FTP -- those are still there. After Napster came Morpheus/Grokster, which may/may not be left alive. But already the file sharing community has moved past into DirectConnect hubs, bit torrent, private WASTE networks, etc. Why do they even bother anymore?
The problem with having a HTPC doing multiple tasks is that it becomes more difficult to integrate the software and yet your wallet gets thinner and thinner.
Last year I found myself with an old AMD 800mhz PC, missing just the monitor (total value probably $100). I also have lots of divx movies. Converting the movies to MPEG, splitting them, and burning them to CDs so that I could watch them in my DVD player was a pain. Watching them on a computer was even worse. So, I hooked up my PC to the TV, put the PC on my wireless network, and now I have a "HTPC". Total cost to me -- $40 for a wireless network card.
Now I'm in the process of installing MythTV on that PC (total cost $200 for a encoder/decoder card), and I'll have an awesome PVR without having to pay any monthly fees.
There's no reason that your wallet needs to get thinner and thinner. If you are interested in a PVR (ie. Tivo), then you actually save piles of money by not having to pay the monthly Tivo fee.
I'm probably beaten to the punch already, but it was always amusing (in a hopeless sort of way) how our Calculus 101 textbook would change every two years. I'm sorry, but I'm pretty sure that the introductory field of Calculus hasn't changed at all over the last 100 years.
All the bastards do is introduce a few new questions at the end of the chapter and call it a new edition.
The whole SCO case really is just one level of lies built onto another, just as Linus claims. My wife is in law school specializing in intellectual property law, and even she couldn't make any sense out of what I told her about the case. Bascially my explination went something like this, "Even if this were true, which it isn't, that would imply this, which isn't true, but even if that was true,...."
They've dug such a web of lies and confusion, and I think that is actually helping them keep their garbage claims going for so long!
My wife is a geneticist. Those in her field are facing a similar IP battle as those of us in the computer world. That's why she decided to actually do something about it, and 2 years ago enrolled in law school. She isn't a lawyer yet, but already she's working with institutions such as the Canadian Health Law Institute as a legal advisor for genetic patenting issues. Hell, she already is on a first name basis with many of our elected officials (who, by the way, are very open to advice in this area). Soon she'll be in a position to actually affect the way genetic patents will go in the future.
But you want to know something? In her class of 120 law students, 3 come from a science background (none from comp sci). Most hold art or business degrees, and if you look at the website for most big law firms, you'll see that this is true for almost all of their IP lawyers as well. That's a pretty telling sign that there's a huge need for lawyers with a background that is based in science.
When she's done school, I'm going to follow in her footsteps. I'll be going for a law degree, and with my comp sci background perhaps I, too, could make a difference when it comes to stopping this madness.
Yes, there are many valid and (apparantly no so) common sense points listed there. I do have a problem with one of them though: "If you aren't qualified, don't apply."
Who's definition of "qualified" are we using here. Sure, if all you know is visual basic and you are applying for an embedded assembly/C position, then perhaps you could be called unqualified. However, who's to say that my 4 years of C++ experience don't meet what you are looking for when you say "8+ years of C++"? Sure, I don't know ada, but I bet that my 10 years of professional programming experience will allow me to pick up that language and become productive within a week.
As many have pointed out, HR often puts out bogus requirements (15 years of Java experience required). Since that pretty much automatically disqualifies everyone, in theory no one should apply. Guess what though...many people will still apply and someone is getting that job.
Don't limit yourself because you are missing the required experience and/or particular skill.
This won't spell the end to software development
on
Perens on Patents
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Software development will not be limited to "the big boys" by patents. It will be limited to "the big boys" in countries that respect patents. This is just history repeating itself. The US went through this cycle with British patents already (where they were completely ignored and innovation blossomed), and other countries will do the same now to US and similar international patents.
I've always wanted to post this in an "offshoring"/. article, but have always arrived late to the game.
Firstly, a disclaimer: good on India. I hold nothing against them for accepting, with open arms, North American tech jobs as fast as CEOs rush to send them over.
That being said, I believe we (ie. North Americans) are being fucking morons about this. We are willingly shipping them high skilled jobs so Mr. CEO can report a quick profit the next quarter. In the mean time, we are losing an entire generation of "junior" positions. I believe that will spell the end of software development in North America.
My current job is that of a software architect. It is a high-skill job requiring very specialised knowledge in the area where we make software. I got to my current job by starting as a junior programmer at this company. After 3 years I was bumped up to "intermediate" developer. After 3 more it was a bump to "senior" developer. Now they think I know enough to design the systems I build.
Two years ago my company opened an office in Bangalore (we have offices across the globe). All new hiring has been through that office, and they ship the programmers from India to various other offices for training on projects. In another years time, programmers in that India office will have performed enough implimentations to be considered "intermediate" developers. In a few more years they'll be senior, and in a few more they'll be in my position.
As this is going on in India, all our own new grads will be working at Starbucks serving lattes, and will be left out of the loop.
All for the sake of a quick stock boost. Good on India, shame on us!
Here in Alberta, Canada, I was initially using Shaw cable but received "the call" pretty quick. I changed to Telus DSL and it appears they either don't care/don't monitor usage. I easily use 100 GIGS up & down each month and have never received notice.
The funny thing is that they do advertise a cap, but just don't enforce it.
I work for a company that makes billing software for tier 1 telcos. My job is to tweak performance of the billing system and environment as we deploy into the client's production environment.
My team has an internal 17 TB database we use to test performance against, and every one of our clients has at least a 15 TB database. I can list four of our clients who maintain at least a 40 TB database. Not one of our clients is listed on that list (nor are we).
What's happening in India is great, and I'm happy to see such a poor country starting to pick itself up. However, I'm amazed that American companies are getting in line to setup shop there. Sure, the savings is a huge incentive, but at the same time you are allowing them to soak up all your IP, all your American business methods, essentially training them how to run a successful company.
That's great until the day that Indians realize that there's nothing stopping them from setting up their own companies to compete direct against the American ones. I'm actually surprised it hasn't started happening already.
Reminds me of that old saying "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach him how to fish and you feed him for life." That system works great -- unless you too are a fisherman.
I see a lot of "this isn't so bad" comments, but you really need to take things one step further.
So $5 per month gets added to our ISP bill (it won't be a tiny amount), and now the music industry is happy. Now it's the movie industry's turn -- let's add another $5. Oops, software association is losing their money too -- $5. Almost forgot ebook publishers -- $2.
And if past performance on our CD-levy is anything to go by, that rate will just keep rising. Every year the "levy" we pay on blank CDs keep climbing. What's to stop them from hiking the "levy" on ISPs each year?
It said small, independent film producers were forced to either accept the terms set by the major movie studios or be excluded from well over 80 percent of the distribution market.
Simple blackmail...send out a screener, and lose 80% of your market instantly.
Yeah, that will sure break up the big studio domination of the industry!
I used to believe there was some sinister motive behind Darl et al. I, like many here, thought I could see a microsoft shadow behind SCO.
Now it's obvious what we are seeing is the ramblings of a crazy man. Out and out sheer lunacy. Someone probably showed him a line or two from BSD source and said "look, we have the same in our code -- they're stealing!"
Okay, had I bothered to keep reading rather than get blinded by rage over this thing I would have seen the bit about another clause aimed at camcorder rips.
If you actually read the article, it is quite clear that this is specifically meant to target those who share movies that are not yet released in theaters. However, the following line contradicts this:
"this legislation will go a long way toward targeting one of the most serious contributors to piracy right now, which is the practice of camcording motion pictures. It's the first time the U.S. Senate has had legislation that specifically addresses the threat of camcording."
How does this address the "threat" of comcording, since this is normally done post-release.
Another nitpick about this is the complaint that no copyright violation is needed...the movie just has to be in a shared folder. Well, if no one downloads the movie, how the hell can the verify what is in that shared file???
Slashdot Mirror
Well, I have actually created my own java-based version of the game (private, because I'm using all the copyrighted images). You are correct, the AI is actually quite simple, because there's a finite and small number of ways to play the game.
You can try to expand and play land-grab. You can try to build to castles. You can try to establish military supremacy. Etc. Each strategy is quite easy to program as there is often an optimal move that is easy to determine.
I like the idea of a commercial online version becoming available, but my friends and I probably won't play it. We have created our own variants that we feel add much more fun and strategy to the game, and it is unlikely that the complex rules we've come up with will be integratable into the commercial release.
When it comes to people and filling taxes, there are an insane number of cheaters out there. How do I know? Well, I worked for a year for Revenue Canada (~Canadian IRS), specifically to track down tax cheaters.
My job involved tracking down cheating building contractors. I only needed two databases for this: the first, their tax return information, and the second, a database compiled as part of the Canadian New Home GST Rebate program.
Aside: the Canadian New Home GST Rebate plan is a plan that gives back to the buyer around a third of the GST (a 7% tax) that went into a home.
To qualify, every contractor who worked on the home must be listed along with their GST number. I simply cross-referenced a contractor's tax return with their GST rebate stats. We caught (and continue to catch) so many idiots who would claim $5,000 in earnings yet had done $1,000,000 or more of work on new homes.
I would consider this a good use of available information by gov't employees, and not quite the same as a big brother gov't.
I'd ask: what are you all planning to do when your jobs go to Russia as soon as you become too expensive for the US corporations? Plan now, because it's starting to happen.
Hopefully you guys are able to weather the storm better than us.
This just seems like another tactic to stall their case. Personally, I believe that there is something more sinister than just a dying company in its death throws here. The longer this goes on, the more damage being done to Linux and open source in general. Obviously, when they finally have to account for any of their claims they will quickly lose, but the longer they can take to prevent that the better (if you support my hypothesis).
My guess is they'll go to court and say "Your honour, you asked us to provide these documents to IBM before the case could continue, however since that ruling we've ammended our suite and would ask that we can push back that date as a result."
I think the ideal type of business that is made for online sales is the type of business that meets a niche market. This fits in nicely with many niche communities (e.g. hobby sites, slashdot, etc) that exist online. If you depend on Google to bring people in, then your store is either too generic, or not advertising correctly.
For example, what do you think would be the most effective advertising for ThinkGeek.com:
1. A google addword for "xyz geek term" or
2. A banner add on slashdot
...the average computer user isn't going to start becoming computer-savy anytime soon. Even this generation of children are woefully ignorant for the most part. Look at the VCR -- it's been out for ages, and I know that most people still cannot figure out how to program it to record at a certain time or program the clock.
At some point in time, software developers are going to have to come to grips with the fact that their target market isn't going to smarten up, and start building dumber and dumber applications.
The solution to email-bourne viruses isn't to tell people "don't click on attachments." If we want to prevent this, we need to change email programs so that attachments can't do what they are capable of currently. It isn't going to work any other way.
"90% of files transmitted were copyrighted files."
Does that percentage include traffic to Canadian computers, where such downloads are legal?
Does that percentage account for people who own the songs they are downloading in some other media format?
Does that percetage account for people who tried to download a song but got a RIAA-hijacked song instead?
What a waste of resources. They are playing at a very losing game. Before Napster there was always IRC, usenet, and FTP -- those are still there. After Napster came Morpheus/Grokster, which may/may not be left alive. But already the file sharing community has moved past into DirectConnect hubs, bit torrent, private WASTE networks, etc. Why do they even bother anymore?
Rather than rehash what I said about this already, i'll just link to my previous post regarding outsourcing.
Nobody ever talks about how this will affect our industry 10-20 years down the road!
Last year I found myself with an old AMD 800mhz PC, missing just the monitor (total value probably $100). I also have lots of divx movies. Converting the movies to MPEG, splitting them, and burning them to CDs so that I could watch them in my DVD player was a pain. Watching them on a computer was even worse. So, I hooked up my PC to the TV, put the PC on my wireless network, and now I have a "HTPC". Total cost to me -- $40 for a wireless network card.
Now I'm in the process of installing MythTV on that PC (total cost $200 for a encoder/decoder card), and I'll have an awesome PVR without having to pay any monthly fees.
There's no reason that your wallet needs to get thinner and thinner. If you are interested in a PVR (ie. Tivo), then you actually save piles of money by not having to pay the monthly Tivo fee.
This isn't a case where the cafes wanted to use guards and cameras, but where the city council mandated that each cafe use guards and cameras.
That is damn scary.
I'm probably beaten to the punch already, but it was always amusing (in a hopeless sort of way) how our Calculus 101 textbook would change every two years. I'm sorry, but I'm pretty sure that the introductory field of Calculus hasn't changed at all over the last 100 years.
All the bastards do is introduce a few new questions at the end of the chapter and call it a new edition.
The whole SCO case really is just one level of lies built onto another, just as Linus claims. My wife is in law school specializing in intellectual property law, and even she couldn't make any sense out of what I told her about the case. Bascially my explination went something like this, "Even if this were true, which it isn't, that would imply this, which isn't true, but even if that was true, ...."
They've dug such a web of lies and confusion, and I think that is actually helping them keep their garbage claims going for so long!
My wife is a geneticist. Those in her field are facing a similar IP battle as those of us in the computer world. That's why she decided to actually do something about it, and 2 years ago enrolled in law school. She isn't a lawyer yet, but already she's working with institutions such as the Canadian Health Law Institute as a legal advisor for genetic patenting issues. Hell, she already is on a first name basis with many of our elected officials (who, by the way, are very open to advice in this area). Soon she'll be in a position to actually affect the way genetic patents will go in the future.
But you want to know something? In her class of 120 law students, 3 come from a science background (none from comp sci). Most hold art or business degrees, and if you look at the website for most big law firms, you'll see that this is true for almost all of their IP lawyers as well. That's a pretty telling sign that there's a huge need for lawyers with a background that is based in science.
When she's done school, I'm going to follow in her footsteps. I'll be going for a law degree, and with my comp sci background perhaps I, too, could make a difference when it comes to stopping this madness.
Or did you expect this to just go away by itself?
Yes, there are many valid and (apparantly no so) common sense points listed there. I do have a problem with one of them though: "If you aren't qualified, don't apply."
Who's definition of "qualified" are we using here. Sure, if all you know is visual basic and you are applying for an embedded assembly/C position, then perhaps you could be called unqualified. However, who's to say that my 4 years of C++ experience don't meet what you are looking for when you say "8+ years of C++"? Sure, I don't know ada, but I bet that my 10 years of professional programming experience will allow me to pick up that language and become productive within a week.
As many have pointed out, HR often puts out bogus requirements (15 years of Java experience required). Since that pretty much automatically disqualifies everyone, in theory no one should apply. Guess what though...many people will still apply and someone is getting that job.
Don't limit yourself because you are missing the required experience and/or particular skill.
Software development will not be limited to "the big boys" by patents. It will be limited to "the big boys" in countries that respect patents. This is just history repeating itself. The US went through this cycle with British patents already (where they were completely ignored and innovation blossomed), and other countries will do the same now to US and similar international patents.
This is what gets my blood boiling about corporations today.
"Well, this guy in India/China/Mexico is willing to work for less than you. Can't compete with those wages? Oh, too bad!"
Compare to:
"Well, this CD costs much less in India/China/Mexico. We can't compete with those prices. STOP! THIEF! SUE! BLOODY MURDER!!!!"
I've always wanted to post this in an "offshoring" /. article, but have always arrived late to the game.
Firstly, a disclaimer: good on India. I hold nothing against them for accepting, with open arms, North American tech jobs as fast as CEOs rush to send them over.
That being said, I believe we (ie. North Americans) are being fucking morons about this. We are willingly shipping them high skilled jobs so Mr. CEO can report a quick profit the next quarter. In the mean time, we are losing an entire generation of "junior" positions. I believe that will spell the end of software development in North America.
My current job is that of a software architect. It is a high-skill job requiring very specialised knowledge in the area where we make software. I got to my current job by starting as a junior programmer at this company. After 3 years I was bumped up to "intermediate" developer. After 3 more it was a bump to "senior" developer. Now they think I know enough to design the systems I build.
Two years ago my company opened an office in Bangalore (we have offices across the globe). All new hiring has been through that office, and they ship the programmers from India to various other offices for training on projects. In another years time, programmers in that India office will have performed enough implimentations to be considered "intermediate" developers. In a few more years they'll be senior, and in a few more they'll be in my position.
As this is going on in India, all our own new grads will be working at Starbucks serving lattes, and will be left out of the loop.
All for the sake of a quick stock boost. Good on India, shame on us!
Here in Alberta, Canada, I was initially using Shaw cable but received "the call" pretty quick. I changed to Telus DSL and it appears they either don't care/don't monitor usage. I easily use 100 GIGS up & down each month and have never received notice.
The funny thing is that they do advertise a cap, but just don't enforce it.
I work for a company that makes billing software for tier 1 telcos. My job is to tweak performance of the billing system and environment as we deploy into the client's production environment.
My team has an internal 17 TB database we use to test performance against, and every one of our clients has at least a 15 TB database. I can list four of our clients who maintain at least a 40 TB database. Not one of our clients is listed on that list (nor are we).
What's happening in India is great, and I'm happy to see such a poor country starting to pick itself up. However, I'm amazed that American companies are getting in line to setup shop there. Sure, the savings is a huge incentive, but at the same time you are allowing them to soak up all your IP, all your American business methods, essentially training them how to run a successful company.
That's great until the day that Indians realize that there's nothing stopping them from setting up their own companies to compete direct against the American ones. I'm actually surprised it hasn't started happening already.
Reminds me of that old saying "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach him how to fish and you feed him for life." That system works great -- unless you too are a fisherman.
I see a lot of "this isn't so bad" comments, but you really need to take things one step further.
So $5 per month gets added to our ISP bill (it won't be a tiny amount), and now the music industry is happy. Now it's the movie industry's turn -- let's add another $5. Oops, software association is losing their money too -- $5. Almost forgot ebook publishers -- $2.
And if past performance on our CD-levy is anything to go by, that rate will just keep rising. Every year the "levy" we pay on blank CDs keep climbing. What's to stop them from hiking the "levy" on ISPs each year?
This could turn into a mess quickly.
It said small, independent film producers were forced to either accept the terms set by the major movie studios or be excluded from well over 80 percent of the distribution market.
Simple blackmail...send out a screener, and lose 80% of your market instantly.
Yeah, that will sure break up the big studio domination of the industry!
I used to believe there was some sinister motive behind Darl et al. I, like many here, thought I could see a microsoft shadow behind SCO.
Now it's obvious what we are seeing is the ramblings of a crazy man. Out and out sheer lunacy. Someone probably showed him a line or two from BSD source and said "look, we have the same in our code -- they're stealing!"
Okay, had I bothered to keep reading rather than get blinded by rage over this thing I would have seen the bit about another clause aimed at camcorder rips.
If you actually read the article, it is quite clear that this is specifically meant to target those who share movies that are not yet released in theaters. However, the following line contradicts this:
"this legislation will go a long way toward targeting one of the most serious contributors to piracy right now, which is the practice of camcording motion pictures. It's the first time the U.S. Senate has had legislation that specifically addresses the threat of camcording."
How does this address the "threat" of comcording, since this is normally done post-release.
Another nitpick about this is the complaint that no copyright violation is needed...the movie just has to be in a shared folder. Well, if no one downloads the movie, how the hell can the verify what is in that shared file???