Even my old university has now upgraded their labs to FC5, and they are so cheap that they actually asked if there was a discount on a GPL upgrade license.
One of two things comes to mind:
1) Yes. There's a 30% discount for anyone who doesn't install Windows on any machine.
2) Yes. RMS will personally throw money at you if you use GPL 3.0.
But why did they do it? It wasn't sociopathy...They were out for revenge, and by that point it didn't matter to them whose blood was spilled.
Not sociopathy, as such. But Harris was very likely a psychopath (in the clinical sense, not the popular), and Klebold was depressed.
By the way, everybody who wants to understand what happend at Columbine needs to read that article I linked to.
Psychopathy, in a rough sense, is the state of being born without empathy or with limited empathy. Some get on fine (most turn out to be your average small-time swindler / heartbreaker), but some, like Klebold, have it on a massive scale. Quoting at length from the article:
He is disgusted with the morons around him. These are not the rantings of an angry young man, picked on by jocks until he's not going to take it anymore. These are the rantings of someone with a messianic-grade superiority complex, out to punish the entire human race for its appalling inferiority. It may look like hate, but "It's more about demeaning other people," says Hare.
Harris' pattern of grandiosity, glibness, contempt, lack of empathy, and superiority read like the bullet points on Hare's Psychopathy Checklist and convinced Fuselier and the other leading psychiatrists close to the case that Harris was a psychopath.
It begins to explain Harris' unbelievably callous behavior: his ability to shoot his classmates, then stop to taunt them while they writhed in pain, then finish them off. Because psychopaths are guided by such a different thought process than non-psychopathic humans, we tend to find their behavior inexplicable. But they're actually much easier to predict than the rest of us once you understand them. Psychopaths follow much stricter behavior patterns than the rest of us because they are unfettered by conscience, living solely for their own aggrandizement.
None of his victims means anything to the psychopath. He recognizes other people only as means to obtain what he desires. Not only does he feel no guilt for destroying their lives, he doesn't grasp what they feel. The truly hard-core psychopath doesn't quite comprehend emotions like love or hate or fear, because he has never experienced them directly.
"Because of their inability to appreciate the feelings of others, some psychopaths are capable of behavior that normal people find not only horrific but baffling," Hare writes. "For example, they can torture and mutilate their victims with about the same sense of concern that we feel when we carve a turkey for Thanksgiving dinner."
Though it fits the facts best, most people don't like this explanation. The idea that some people are born without the ability to feel empathy is very, very unsettling. We'd like to believe that everyone is redeemable somehow. But Eric Harris, Ted Bundy, and Jeffrey Dahmer disagree.
Garbage collection is a step backward, IMO, but every language seems to be moving in this direction. I really do believe that resource awareness is crucial to efficient programming. Garbage collection encourages lazy programming habits, which I've seen in quite a few Java developers. Bad habits, once bred, are hard to get rid of.
You're missing the point, which is to make it easier to model a language mathematically. The easier the model is to reason with, the fewer errors you'll have. It frees your mind from petty concerns that arise from having an overly-complex language model.
We'll go back to Lisp to elucidate this, which has always cleaned up after itself. Lisp has a very strict underlying mathematical model. Consider math for a moment. Once you define something, is it ever undefined? If you've stated a truth, is it ever not true?
No. Likewise, in languages with garbage collection, once you create something, it exists, theoretically, forever. In the theoretical language model, memory is infinite. The fact that something cleans up stuff that isn't referenced because we happen to be using state machines rather than true Turing machines and need the memory back is merely a necessity of living in the real world.
There's a beauty and an elegance about "garbage collection" (i.e. the more-mathematical infinite memory model) that you're totally missing out on.
Mathematically speaking, mutable variables are a bad habit. As you say, bad habits, once bred, are hard to get rid of. Can you break this one? You don't have to, just think about it. The point is, I'm challenging you to expand your mind a bit and understand that what you hold dear isn't all there is in the world of programming.
Cyclical relationships, which shouldn't exist in decent code...
Where did this piece of utter tripe come from? Haven't you ever created a circularly-linked list? Must everything in memory be a tree?
Why does it always have to be microsoft? why not OSX? I would love to try that out on my PC for free if it included ads, and I may pira... er buy it in the future.
You bring up a good point. Wouldn't an ad-supported version of an OS drive up piracy rates? Would Microsoft (or Apple), while theoretically being against such things, not care so much because they're getting their pockets lined with ad impression cash?
Also, the arms race between OS vendors and ad-blocking software makers would be interesting to watch. I wonder whether more people would be driven to try to pirate the retail version or to try to block ads on the free version...
I can't wait to have Explorer force me to view an ad for ten seconds before I can access the hard drive.
Or play "Punch the Monkey!!!" on my task bar.
No thanks. I've been sticking with Free Software lately because I like it better for research, but if this advertising crap ever happens, I might just become a convert to the philosophy.
Give Zonk a break. He covers games. There's not much useful out there right now.
Anyway, from the article:
The Wii, meanwhile, is simply inscrutable: a scant, featureless rectangle with an eerie blue glow. At a stretch, you might confuse it for an external DVD-R drive.
So it looks like something you could put a DVD into. Isn't something similar what he thought was cool about the Sega Genesis?
The article is just a useless rant against nothing.
Does anyone here have any idea of the worth of an alogrithm that would automatically segment the entire human body for virtual exploratory surgery within reasonable timeframes?
Ha ha, conspiracy theory. Great stuff.
They have the technology. I saw a demo of it in class and had the segmentation algorithm explained to me. Yes, I'm a graduate student at BYU.
Can't seem to find any papers or articles about the process, though I noticed it's being patented so there may not be a lot available (?)
Having taken a vision class from Dr. Barrett (CS 750 at BYU), I can fill in some details. I might be able to dig up the paper later. I think you can find it in the latest SIGGRAPH proceedings - dunno if Citeseer has indexed it yet.
It's a segmentation algorithm that works well and fast in 3D images. It uses a graph-cut algorithm to classify voxels as inside or outside whatever you're trying to isolate. You (the doctor) lay down "seed" voxels with a mouse, clicky-clicky, and a few seconds later, the algorithm has isolated the structure. For example, say you want to isolate bone. Hold down the mouse button and move it over the bone. Hold down the other and move it over non-bone. If the algorithm makes a mistake, make some more seed voxels.
This is nothing new so far - the CV folks have been segmenting with graph-cut for ages. The problem is that it's very, very slow - minutes for a single segmentation. Barrett and Armstrong have developed a hierarchical version of the algorithm that uses watershed regions to presegment, and merges them as it runs. Doing graph-cut on large regions is a lot faster than doing it on single voxels. Their stuff is the first interactive speed, seeded 3D segmentation algorithm that produces quality results.
I saw the demo in class. It was really rather impressive, if you're familiar with the subject area.
I hear the worst part about them is refilling the bits after they run out. The cells are large and clunky and you have to wear special gloves to do it. Even worse, it actually takes many times more bits to create a cell than the cell stores, meaning that it's more economic just to get them from the pump!
This is not a new idea, nor is it new technology... This has been a long time coming.
The prices finally fell to where it's economically feasible.
Personally, I like Intel's idea better (embedding the flash memory in the drive controller), because it should work just fine with existing drives. It might also be upgradeable, but I'm not holding my breath.
So if i were to ever create a female avatar I wouldn't be running around with a frity name like daisy-sunshine, but instead I'd go for something more macho as to not deceive anyone.
You'd have the fear factor going for you then, too. Women named "Butch" are just scary.
I've played a female character once, ages ago, on a MUD. I can't for the life of me remember why - probably thought it was funny. I definitely put one over on one of my best friends...
Anyway, when I first logged on, some high-level male character was in the guild. He dumped a bunch of gold on me, a nice suit of armor, a great sword, kissed me, and took off. It was weird.
And no, I didn't like it.:p Well, I did. Not the kissing part, the equipment part. But it seems like, online, men expect something sensual from you if they give you favors. I suppose it's not that unlike life in that respect.
All MS products are really just betas that are tested on end users.
Maybe this is why they're charging - so they actually get something from the people who would download the beta and keep using it rather than buying the full version, or dissuade them from downloading the beta at all.
They must be assuming those people are pretty cheap. They might be right.
See... it was all just an honest mistake. You know we have all accidently tried to force feed people adware at one time or another, it's a natural human thing to do.
I heard there are places in San Fansisco where people get together to do just that. And then they send each other infected emails for kicks.
It's the same facade the U.S. uses when pretending that the Iraqi government is actually in charge of Iraq.
You'd think, if that were true, that the Iraqi Prime Minister would have condemned Hezbollah's actions against Israel by now rather than painting Israel as the agressor two speeches in a row.
But then, that might just be a clever facade, right?
However, I'm curious about your beef with servlets. From my own perspective, they're simple enough to work with easily yet complex/powerful enough to handle a lot of uses. Do you have a specific gripe about them? Or did you just lump them in with the others?
I like servlets themselves just fine. They're a great idea. It's the servlet containers I think are designed by Satan.
Java sucks *and* it's closed source. I'll stick to C, Python and Perl thank you.
Naw. Here's the real deal, from someone who knows quite a few languages:
- Java is adequate for just about every programming task - Java's generics are mostly adequate - Java's GUI support is good once you let Swing twist your head into a fleshy knot - Java's library support is above average - Java's floating-point performance is quite good, especially with HotSpot - The HotSpot runtime is freakin' amazing at what it does - The Java language is wordy, which mostly has to do with strict typing (and lately, from adding generics) - Server-side Java (JSPs, servlets, etc.) is unnecessarily complicated and probably designed by Satan himself
Windows users [like me] just don't run Linux, e.g. not an issue.
Mac users [like me] just can't fathom why anyone would want to run anything else; i.e. not an issue.
Grammar fascist time. Now, you didn't make the original mistake, but you perpetuated it, and now you're on my "bad" list. (Snakes in your stocking this year, boy, and I'm not talking about the kind you hang over the fireplace.) "E.g." means "for example," and "i.e." means "in other words." (Translated, of course.) The way I remember is to consider how stupid I'd sound using it wrongly.
Okay, not really. Mentally substitute "for egzample" whenever you use "e.g." to see if it works.
I've also got a great mnemonic device that involves skinning purple hamsters for remembering how to use "who" and "whom" correctly if anyone is interested.
Humans are descended from those same primates. And lawyers/politicians/managers are descended from snakes.
I'm trying to figure out the chain of evolutionarily pressuring events that caused them to grow arms and legs, wear expensive suits, and reach into people's pockets.
On a more serious note, do these articles about where certain traits might have come from strike anyone else as the modern equivalent of "just so" stories? ("And that's how the leopard got its spots. The End.")
Slashdot Mirror
One of two things comes to mind:
1) Yes. There's a 30% discount for anyone who doesn't install Windows on any machine.
2) Yes. RMS will personally throw money at you if you use GPL 3.0.
More like the Howard Dean, I thought.
Not sociopathy, as such. But Harris was very likely a psychopath (in the clinical sense, not the popular), and Klebold was depressed.
By the way, everybody who wants to understand what happend at Columbine needs to read that article I linked to.
Psychopathy, in a rough sense, is the state of being born without empathy or with limited empathy. Some get on fine (most turn out to be your average small-time swindler / heartbreaker), but some, like Klebold, have it on a massive scale. Quoting at length from the article:
Though it fits the facts best, most people don't like this explanation. The idea that some people are born without the ability to feel empathy is very, very unsettling. We'd like to believe that everyone is redeemable somehow. But Eric Harris, Ted Bundy, and Jeffrey Dahmer disagree.
You're missing the point, which is to make it easier to model a language mathematically. The easier the model is to reason with, the fewer errors you'll have. It frees your mind from petty concerns that arise from having an overly-complex language model.
We'll go back to Lisp to elucidate this, which has always cleaned up after itself. Lisp has a very strict underlying mathematical model. Consider math for a moment. Once you define something, is it ever undefined? If you've stated a truth, is it ever not true?
No. Likewise, in languages with garbage collection, once you create something, it exists, theoretically, forever. In the theoretical language model, memory is infinite. The fact that something cleans up stuff that isn't referenced because we happen to be using state machines rather than true Turing machines and need the memory back is merely a necessity of living in the real world.
There's a beauty and an elegance about "garbage collection" (i.e. the more-mathematical infinite memory model) that you're totally missing out on.
Mathematically speaking, mutable variables are a bad habit. As you say, bad habits, once bred, are hard to get rid of. Can you break this one? You don't have to, just think about it. The point is, I'm challenging you to expand your mind a bit and understand that what you hold dear isn't all there is in the world of programming.
Where did this piece of utter tripe come from? Haven't you ever created a circularly-linked list? Must everything in memory be a tree?
You bring up a good point. Wouldn't an ad-supported version of an OS drive up piracy rates? Would Microsoft (or Apple), while theoretically being against such things, not care so much because they're getting their pockets lined with ad impression cash?
Also, the arms race between OS vendors and ad-blocking software makers would be interesting to watch. I wonder whether more people would be driven to try to pirate the retail version or to try to block ads on the free version...
I can't wait to have Explorer force me to view an ad for ten seconds before I can access the hard drive.
Or play "Punch the Monkey!!!" on my task bar.
No thanks. I've been sticking with Free Software lately because I like it better for research, but if this advertising crap ever happens, I might just become a convert to the philosophy.
Anyway, from the article:
So it looks like something you could put a DVD into. Isn't something similar what he thought was cool about the Sega Genesis?
The article is just a useless rant against nothing.
He's like Harrison Ford.
Indiana Jones: Han Solo with a whip (and a cool fedora)
Blade Runner: Han Solo retiring replicants
The Fugitive: Han Solo on the run
Air Force One: President Han Solo
Indiana Jones 4: Han Solo in diapers
Ha ha, conspiracy theory. Great stuff.
They have the technology. I saw a demo of it in class and had the segmentation algorithm explained to me. Yes, I'm a graduate student at BYU.
Nice try baiting the moderators, though.
Having taken a vision class from Dr. Barrett (CS 750 at BYU), I can fill in some details. I might be able to dig up the paper later. I think you can find it in the latest SIGGRAPH proceedings - dunno if Citeseer has indexed it yet.
It's a segmentation algorithm that works well and fast in 3D images. It uses a graph-cut algorithm to classify voxels as inside or outside whatever you're trying to isolate. You (the doctor) lay down "seed" voxels with a mouse, clicky-clicky, and a few seconds later, the algorithm has isolated the structure. For example, say you want to isolate bone. Hold down the mouse button and move it over the bone. Hold down the other and move it over non-bone. If the algorithm makes a mistake, make some more seed voxels.
This is nothing new so far - the CV folks have been segmenting with graph-cut for ages. The problem is that it's very, very slow - minutes for a single segmentation. Barrett and Armstrong have developed a hierarchical version of the algorithm that uses watershed regions to presegment, and merges them as it runs. Doing graph-cut on large regions is a lot faster than doing it on single voxels. Their stuff is the first interactive speed, seeded 3D segmentation algorithm that produces quality results.
I saw the demo in class. It was really rather impressive, if you're familiar with the subject area.
I hear the worst part about them is refilling the bits after they run out. The cells are large and clunky and you have to wear special gloves to do it. Even worse, it actually takes many times more bits to create a cell than the cell stores, meaning that it's more economic just to get them from the pump!
What a waste.
The prices finally fell to where it's economically feasible.
Personally, I like Intel's idea better (embedding the flash memory in the drive controller), because it should work just fine with existing drives. It might also be upgradeable, but I'm not holding my breath.
You'd have the fear factor going for you then, too. Women named "Butch" are just scary.
I've played a female character once, ages ago, on a MUD. I can't for the life of me remember why - probably thought it was funny. I definitely put one over on one of my best friends...
:p Well, I did. Not the kissing part, the equipment part. But it seems like, online, men expect something sensual from you if they give you favors. I suppose it's not that unlike life in that respect.
Anyway, when I first logged on, some high-level male character was in the guild. He dumped a bunch of gold on me, a nice suit of armor, a great sword, kissed me, and took off. It was weird.
And no, I didn't like it.
Corporate greed, maybe. And shortsighted (perhaps greedy also?) entrepreneurs in India who thought they could make a buck by underselling everyone.
"Corporate greed and shortsighted entrepreneurs in India contain the seeds of their own destruction" isn't nearly so nippy, though.
Maybe this is why they're charging - so they actually get something from the people who would download the beta and keep using it rather than buying the full version, or dissuade them from downloading the beta at all.
They must be assuming those people are pretty cheap. They might be right.
I heard there are places in San Fansisco where people get together to do just that. And then they send each other infected emails for kicks.
It's just sick.
You'd think, if that were true, that the Iraqi Prime Minister would have condemned Hezbollah's actions against Israel by now rather than painting Israel as the agressor two speeches in a row.
But then, that might just be a clever facade, right?
They've finally caught up to Ubuntu.
I'd love to have a language that's as easy and fun as Python and not much slower than Java. I'd be in heaven.
I like servlets themselves just fine. They're a great idea. It's the servlet containers I think are designed by Satan.
Naw. Here's the real deal, from someone who knows quite a few languages:
- Java is adequate for just about every programming task
- Java's generics are mostly adequate
- Java's GUI support is good once you let Swing twist your head into a fleshy knot
- Java's library support is above average
- Java's floating-point performance is quite good, especially with HotSpot
- The HotSpot runtime is freakin' amazing at what it does
- The Java language is wordy, which mostly has to do with strict typing (and lately, from adding generics)
- Server-side Java (JSPs, servlets, etc.) is unnecessarily complicated and probably designed by Satan himself
Hope that helps.
I eat live puppies for breakfast.
Mac users [like me] just can't fathom why anyone would want to run anything else; i.e. not an issue.
Grammar fascist time. Now, you didn't make the original mistake, but you perpetuated it, and now you're on my "bad" list. (Snakes in your stocking this year, boy, and I'm not talking about the kind you hang over the fireplace.) "E.g." means "for example," and "i.e." means "in other words." (Translated, of course.) The way I remember is to consider how stupid I'd sound using it wrongly.
Okay, not really. Mentally substitute "for egzample" whenever you use "e.g." to see if it works.
I've also got a great mnemonic device that involves skinning purple hamsters for remembering how to use "who" and "whom" correctly if anyone is interested.
I'm trying to figure out the chain of evolutionarily pressuring events that caused them to grow arms and legs, wear expensive suits, and reach into people's pockets.
On a more serious note, do these articles about where certain traits might have come from strike anyone else as the modern equivalent of "just so" stories? ("And that's how the leopard got its spots. The End.")