I'm not too sure how well a first-person perspective will work in a football game. There are a few fundamental differences between first-person on a monitor and a fully immersive virtual reality or real life situation:
In real life you have two directions you control: your body and your head. While you may be running in a straight line in real life, it is trivial to turn your head and shift your eyes to make a quick assessment of the world around you. This would be very difficult in a football game, even with a dual analog controller. Things just happen too fast (probably why the bullet time feature is necessary, ugh).
You lack peripheral vision. Besides no being able to shift viewpoints easily, its like having tunnel vision, being restricted to typically 60 to 90 degrees field-of-vision.
When I play defense in Madden, I usually start as a defensive back to give me the greatest range and attack the ball carrier rather than the QB. However I almost always switch to a closer player when the play moves towards a different area. It's hard enough to tell which player I'm getting control of with an overhead view; I've completely blown plays because I took a player beneath the ball carrier and moved him down (away from the play) instead of up, because I thought I would get control of a different player. This problem must be 10 time worse in first-person, where I can't even see most of my teammates at any one time.
In short, I think this looks like a very cool demo feature, and might be great if I had 10 real human teammates to play with, so I wouldn't worry about switching players. However, that doesn't seem to be the goal, and I bet this mode will not be used much in practice. I've experimented with most every standard camera view possible, and have concluded that while close-up views look cool, it's just not practical if you can't see every player. This may not be quite as realistic, but as indicated above first-person video games have their own realism issues, and are harder to play to boot.
The dynamic expand/collapse for nested comments is possible today. Kuro5hin offers this very feature, using javascript.
I personally don't like it very much. It's not instantaneous, because it doesn't actually load the nested content until you expand the thread, but it works. For, opening new tabs in blogs works best.
I'm actually working on this right now. I tried uisng my roommate's digital camera but the results were awful. So yesterday I started writing a program that takes two text files, a formation and a play, and a resolution, and renders the play and saves to a file, which I will then crop and add to the page.
I've actually got this working for passing plays (running and lead blocking "routes" may take me a bit to work out), and I should have the first images (for Undercuts, Deep Outs and Flood Left SE Iso) up by this afternoon.
One benefit of this method is that my renderings are actually more accurate than the in-game overhead diagrams. The in-game diagram routes are compressed laterally to better fit them into neat little boxes, otherwise most plays would be really small to accomodate really wide passing plays (like many of mine). I don't have this constraint, so my renderings show exactly where the routes are run.
I'm a big fan of the newer Madden titles. In particular, I absolutely LOVE the playbook maker for 2003 (I even have started a website for my personal plays: Monstrous Madden 2003 Playbook, check it out). However, I have a few gripes with this feature (at least on the Gamecube version).
Not enough special options. You cannot run a proper play action pass, draw play, or reverse. An option pitch would be neat as well.
Cannot use custom playbooks for audibles. I've just started using audibles regularly, and this one REALLY frustrates me.
Can't send players in motion.
The problems with the defensive playbook are worse. It's really hard to test defensive plays designed for specific situations, there needs to be a way to set the play for the opposition in practice and testing (applies to offensive plays too). With custom defensive plays, pretty much all minor audibles, such as line and LB shifts, do not work.
A few other things: switching players on defense is my #1 cause of blown plays. I think what is needed is an option to set a delay between when your player icon switches to a new player, and when your control switches, say half a second. That way you wouldn't accidentally move a player in good position the wrong direction because you thought you were selecting someone else. Maybe better AI in player switching is needed as well.
All in all I'm looking forward to 2004. However, I'm worried that the lack of press concerning the playbook editors (one of the reasons I started my site is that there does not seem to be any similar sites sharing custom plays!) means that there will be little improved in this area.
I am kind of surprised that this is even an issue. Madden has a pretty comprehensive set of attributes, such that small players should get mauled by offensive lineman.
On another note, in my custom defenses I often use 6 or 7 DBs, and usually blitz one or two corners. However they come around the side, so they just avoid the O-Line. Runs up the middle go right past them. This is just realistic. I think Madden does quite a good job with unconventional plays actually.
Re:Is this a C# or a .NET problem?
on
Hijacking .NET
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· Score: 1
Except your example doesn't work, reliably at least.
I compiled it using g++, but with a constructor:
hidden() {
frotz = 10;
ozmoo = 20; }
added to initialize the variables. frotz corretly is printed as 10.
But then I switched the ordering of the declarations of frotz and ozmoo in hidden. Now frotz is 20! What is happening?
The cast of this type is a reinterpret_cast in C++, because there is no direct relationship between the classes hidden and hack_o_matic. Therefore the accessor to hack_o_matic just reads the data at the position in memory where a pointer to hack_o_matic expects frotz to be, though it is actually ozmoo.
If you have the code to the class with private members this won't happen, however you're probably out of luck (or in for some reverse engineering of field layout in memory) if you want to do this for classes in pure object libraries in C++.
I checked out your site, you have made an interesting study.
However, the premise behind many of the voting systems, in particular the rated, ranked and fuzzy systems, is seriously flawed. Each of these systems requires the voter to cast an honest vote, and not a strategic vote. However most people vote strategically rather than honestly.
The best example of this is the case of third party candidates in the US. Voters believe (rightly so under the current system) that voting for a relatively strong third party candidate weakens their favorite first part choice. Someone whose first choice for Nader probably preferred Gore over Bush, likewise with a vote for Perot likely taking away from the older Bush.
In any kind of rated system where absolute rank matters, smart voters will rate "dangerous" candidates (those they dislike that actually stand a chance of winning) lowest, behind even worse candidates that don't actually stand a chance. In the end, most of these systems will be no better than approval voting for the leading candidates, and give distorted views of the approval for lesser candidates.
These reasons are why I beleive Condorcet voting is the best method, because only pairwise matchups and not absolute rating/ranking matter, there is no way to vote stategically that improves the chances of preferred candidates over an honest vote.
I would be interested to see your experiment redone, taking strategic voting tendencies into account. Perhaps a random probability can be assigned to determine whether an individual votes strategically or honestly, or in some combination.
So now xenu.net is the second result. Big deal. Google did have an issue with Scientology censorship in the past, that has been taken care of.
I agree that xenu.net should be one of the top links (which it is), but it has no inherent right to the top spot. As much as I dislike Scientology, I believe it is quite appropriate and sensible that the official site is the first search result.
The point, as far as I see it, is that it is not up to individual developers to make all of these things work together.
Developers like working on their own projects. Period. Nothing will change that. There is a need to get all of these programs to work together as a cohesive system, but that is not the job of most developers.
It is the job of the Distro makers.
As I see it, distros have four main functions:
1. Select from the available body of software the most useful and complete bits (which may vary depending on the goals and target audience of the distro).
2. Make any necessary minor updates or improvements to bring all packages up to standards.
3. Apply developer labor to create or implement desired functionality that does not exist.
4. Combine all software into a cohesive package.
Most quality distros do all of these things, though in different ways an with varying degrees of success. Like the results or not, RedHat took initiative to get KDE and Gnome to work together better. Mandrake is following suit. Most major distros maintain there own kernel branches to include desired patches not in the main branch.
The one thing the could use a bit more effort is #3, in my opinion. For example, if The GIMP can't handle 48 bit color, and that's something customers want, distros should work on implementing it themselves. This kind of approach is already taken with the kernel, as far as mino patches go, but not much more is needed because the Linux kernel is developed so actively. It is the more slow developing, yet important applications that could use a kickstart from the major distros.
The distros are the ones that have the goal of a unified and simple software system, they are the ones who have the more interest in satisfying customers and users directly. The best way to achieve a more unified and workable user experience, in my opinion, is to support the distributions that actually put all of the pieces together. If enough people are willing to pay for a usable desktop Linux, the sooner it will come (though for many of us it is already here).
Um, that's part of the reason why you receive telemarketing calls on your cell.
One of the main reasons telemarketers cannot call cell phones in the US is because the receiver has to pay. With land line phones the receiver pays nothing, so telemarketers are free to waste everyones time. I'd rather pay for the incoming calls I care about while totally eliminating those that I never want to hear.
Not only that, but they probably can't trust their compilers and linkers to get incremental buildds right. I develop using Visual Studio/C++, and in just about any multi-project application changes to core files used throughout the app almost never result in all affected files being rebuilt correctly.
If I'm lucky this leads to compile errors. Sometimes though, it appears to build the EXE correctly but I end up getting run-time errors seemingly unrelated to the changed code. A "Rebuild All" fixes these problems.
I think the problem is that the compiler/linker tries to be clever deciding what files need to be rebuilt. Rather than just looking at timestamps for file modifications, it tries to ignore changes that do not affect synta, like comments and whitespace. Whatever the problem, it manages to screw up a lot, especially with inter-project dependencies.
Thought I'd add my own bit about HDTV over the air in an apartment. Instead of installing a roof-top or other outdoor antenna, you may want to look into a directional antenna.
I live in downtown Minneapolis, and I decided to go with a Silver Sensor directional antenna. They can be a little hard to find, I believe you have to order them in the US, though I found an online site selling them.
It is a bit of a pain to have to move the antenna for each station (depending on your exact situation), but since you only have about six choices anyway it's not that big of a deal. I haven't tried any other antenna's, so I can't guarantee this one works better, but it does the job from inside my living room.
Several months ago I switched from using Word 97 to OpenOffice. I mainly use it at work for logging my daily accomplishments and short-term goals. I use one primary font and highlight certain entries in bold and italics, with about 5 colors other than black also used.
An OpenOffice file is less than one-fifth the size of a comparable Word file.
This is using the same features, quite vanilla, with no versioning. OpenOffice just uses gzipped XML. What is MS doing that takes so much space? As far as I know the bloat is probably due to the fact that Word (I believe) simply serializes the document to a file. This makes it easy for certain features like document display type to persist across sessions, but it mostly bloats the file with unnecessary crap, as well as hopelessly complicating the file "format" they use.
OpenOffice is a modern word processor, maybe not every bit as feature rich as Word, but pretty close. I don't take modern word processors for granted, I just know that things can be done a hell of a lot better than the examples MS has given.
I thought I would point out a few good uses of computers in schools that I have experienced first hand. I agree that computers can easily do more harm than good, and that more emphasis is needed on fundamentals, but in some cases computers make good educational tools...
1) Physics classes. In my juniour year of HS physics most of our labs used computers. We had macs with peripheral optical and force sensors. We did the traditional rolling cart and air track experiments for learning about kinematics, but velocity, acceleration, forces, etc. were graphed precisely. This allowed us to learn about the relationships between velocity and acceleration, for example, easily for ourselves (for the most part we discussed these properties in class AFTER we observed them for ourselves). We also had software for working with circuit diagrams where you are given partial info about voltage, current and so on at some junctions and had to fill in the remaining values.
2) Art classes. In my advanced drawing and design class we used a mac paint program to design an image which we later painted. The art program allowed for quick "rapid prototyping" and evaluation by our teacher, and let us look at a version of the final image before starting with the paint.
You've completely missed the point. Yes, a CD offers slightly higher sound quality, as well as attractive packaging, lyrics, etc. However the service provided by CD vendors flat out sucks compared to P2P.
With P2P I can try out all of the songs I want for free, even bad quality, cutoff files are usually enough to tell whether I actually like the song. I don't have to take half an hour or more out of my day for the priviledge of driving to Best Buy and paying $13.99 for a piece of plastic.
If CDs were reasonably priced at say $5 each (still enough to turn a profit), yes, they would offer a better deal than P2P, and we may never have seen the likes of Napster, at least at the popularity it achieved in its heyday. But as it is CDs are overpriced and vendors cannot compete with P2P in service aspects.
I spent a while on Google trying to find confirmation of whether the taste tests were truly independent and double-blind and cloud not find anything conclusive. However this does not detract from the fact that a very sweet drink will taste better in small quantities (like a sip).
I'm just making a wild guess here, but I'll bet that if tests were conducted in a way in which participants only had each drink on separate days and had at least 12 ounces before rating it, that the results might be different.
I don't want to make this into some kind of religious argument, I just want to point out that an experiment that makes such assumptions about its measurements (that first sip quality equals full beverage quality) may not be accurate.
I want to point out that the Pepsi Challenge is almost certainly rigged in subtle ways. A real scientific test would be conducted double-blind by an independent group, not by Pepsi employees.
Techniques I've read about (though was not able to really confirm) include having the tester taste Pepsi second (people apparently like the second thing better most of the time, kind of like people listening to stereos tend to think the louder ones sound best), any only taking sips because Pepsi has a sweeter, simpler taste, while Coke is not as sweet and has a more complex taste. I even just read about a claim that Pepsi won their challenge by placing Pepsi under an "M" and Coke under a "Q", and that Coke won its own contest by switching these letters (people like M better?)
Some of these may not be true, but I would never trust the results of a challenge not conducted scientifically. These companies are masterful marketers and not to be trusted.
I'm a little dissappointed that I have not seen any mention of Orson Scott Card. I should start out by saying that I have probably not read as much SF as many here, since I read a lot of fantasy mixed with other fiction, but I think that the Ender Quartet and Ender's Shadow (haven't gotten to Shadow of the Hegemon) contain some of the best writing I have ever experienced, especially in Speaker for the Dead.
Most of these books would not be classified as hard SF, but the depth of the psychologies of the characters is wonderful. There are a lot of very intelligent characters in these books, as well as alien creatures with thought patterns very unlike humans and Card is masterful at taking the reader through their minds.
In addition, the books contain an excellent mix of history and breadth of culture that mixes very well with interaction with alien species and civilizations, contrasting our own culture clashes with differences between advanced civiliations and species.
I just figured it out: the Star Wars MMPORPG was concieved by the Midichlorians to restore order to the Internet. You see, Slashdot is obviously the Death Star of the internet (story posted, millions of webservers screaming in terror, then suddenly silence, and all that).
Giving geeks a new target may save the Internet from the evil power of the/. effect.
No, no, you've got it wrong. Microsoft is a large American business. Dubya would be sure to point out that it must be some of those Lie-nucks terrorists (Look! Lots of them have long beards like Al-Qaeda!) who sabotaged the Windows Source code.
Clearly all open source programmers must be rounded up before such a tragedy can occur...
I find it hard to believe that neither the article or any of the 31 current 5 rated comments even mentions the Condorcet voting system. This system solves essentially all of the various problems that occur in every other method mentioned.
For those not farmiliar with it, the Condorcet method works roughly like this. Voters rank each candidate. If one candidate wins a majority of the vote in every head-to-head pairing they belong to, they win (i.e. A is ahead of B in 65% of ballots, ahead of C in 90% of ballots, and ahead of D in 51% of ballots). If no candidate win every head to head matchup, there are a couple of methods for deciding the winner that give roughly equal results. Basically the winner is the candidate who wins the most head-to-head matchups between candidates that win at least one head-to-head matchup. A complete description of the Condorcet method along with comparisions to other methods can be found at electionmethods.org.
The only real drawback to the Condorcet system is its complexity, both in that voters must rank every candidate and that the methods used to determine the winner in close races is difficult to understand. Personally I like methods that require voters to understand all of the candidates, so I do not think the ranking process is a drawback.
I also thought that the article failed to mention a serious fault with the Borda count. By allowing the candidate rankings to count as points rather than as head-to-head matchups, voters are encouraged to place viable second best choices last to improve the standing of the first place candidate. In the Condorcet system there is no advantage to this, ranking candidate B second or tenth makes no difference if the race comes down to A vs. B if A is ranked first on your ballot, A wins the head-to head matchup the same either way. In this manner the Condorcet method is the only method I know of that truly makes the voter vote their conscience, rather than voting strategically to elect the lesser of evils (e.g. voting for Gore when you really like Nader but really hate Bush). Instant runoff has the right idea in this sense but is fundamentally flawed, as the article states due to an increase in support for a candidate possibly causing that candidate to lose.
I have been working on projects like this for the last 5 years, 3D applications used to synthesize and analyze relatively large dental simulation models. I am currently working on complete revisions of the first iteration of my departments software, intended to correct many of the design mistakes made with the first versions (and lots of mistakes get made with software designed and implemented by undergrad and grad students). These new versions are designed to be more modular, extendible and portable across multiple platforms, and maybe most importantly have completely redone interfaces.
I think one of the most important concepts in this kind of software is making clear the difference between data and presentation in your interface. This is somewhat of a departure from a lot of software like word processors where what you see is what you have, most things you can do to change how a document looks actually change the document. This is not what you want to do in many CAD-style scientific apps. This means basically throwing the document-view style architecture out the window, because for the most part you won't be using a document metaphor.
What I use might be called a database-workspace-multiview architecture. All of the data objects are stored in a single structure, in my case a hierarchical tree with each object accessable by a name or handle. This named hierarchy makes it easy to group related data objects and add additional metadata later. The most important objects in this core that the user will interact with (depending on the design this structure may also include a lot of internal framework objects) should be exposed to the user in some sort of workspace view. In my software these major data objects may consist of dental patients, which in turn are composed (mainly) of 3D models representing the upper and lower jaws. This workspace allows the user to interact with and modify the data directly.
The other major interface are the views. My software deals mainly with 3D display but also utilizes 2D "slices" of surfaces. The user should be able to create these view on demand. The display settings available for each view should be tied onyl to that view and use metaphors indicating that they only affect display but cannot modify the "database" (e.g. a surface can be shown or hidden by a view, but never deleted). When a user can modify actual data through a view interface it must be with tools that clearly distinguish between visualization mode and modification mode.
To tie all of these things together we created are own messaging framework. We felt this was necessary to ensure future portability and not tie ourselves into Win32 messaging (currently Win32 is the only platform being actively developed). We use essentially two types of messages: commands which are sent to a single target (and work like ordinary functions, but more generically), and notifications, which are broadcast to all objects that want to receive them. Example #1: a project is loaded into the app. Many tools are only available if a complete project is available, so these tools listen for this message and enable themselves when the project is loaded (or a new one is created). Example #2: a section of a 3D surface is trimmed. All tools responsible for rendering surfaces in views listen for the message and redraw their views if the model trimmed was visible in their view.
There are a few other advantages to usingour own messaging system. It enforces good programming habits be requiring a little extra through to go into the interface for various objects. By making it text-based we enable scripting capabilities, anything that can be done through the GUI can be done (or at least simulated in terms of mouse and keyboard input) through scripting. Our core data hierarchy can be easily inspected using debugging dialogs, as can most of the internal metadata, which is stored in primarily text format when possible and streamable to XML.
Basically I think it comes down to good modular design with a UNIX philosophy. Start with core utilities, data structures and algorithms, keeping in mind the importance of algorithms being able to suspend or be canceled in many cases, as well as reporting progress. Layer a messaging/scripting-style interface on top of that, and complete with a GUI that makes the distinction between data and visualization.
A lot of people have argued over the start with two condoms, flip the outside one, then take it off. Even assuming the condoms will not break, this does not work. The man is protected, but the last woman is touching a condom that has touched the side of the outer condom the first woman touched.
Since a requirement is to not pass STDs between women, this solution is invalid.
Ok, I think that I (as well as a lot of other people who read the article misunderstood where the IDs were. I was thinking they were on the the music CDsm not the blank CDs. That would explain why legislation would be required (obviously music labels don't need laws to make them put IDs on their own CDs).
Still, it would be pretty easy to get around for any serious commercial infringers. All they need to do is have a lot of different individuals get CD-Rs from lots of different distributors, or better yet smuggle "untainted" CDs from outside countries. Unless the CDs are tracked a lot more closely (violating EU privacy law as I understand it) only really sloppy copiers would get caught.
How will this stop large scale rippers and sellers? Even if they leave the ID on their copies it just identifies the plant the CD was produced in. From what I understood the IDs are not unique to each CD.
Anyway, any large scale operation will obviously have the tools to replace the ID. The article mentioned a lack of ID being a flag, but it would be trivial to make up new IDs, probably even for each CD if desired. This would work even if the CD IDs were all unique and the IDs were tracked for each buyer.
Slashdot Mirror
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In real life you have two directions you control: your body and your head. While you may be running in a straight line in real life, it is trivial to turn your head and shift your eyes to make a quick assessment of the world around you. This would be very difficult in a football game, even with a dual analog controller. Things just happen too fast (probably why the bullet time feature is necessary, ugh).
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You lack peripheral vision. Besides no being able to shift viewpoints easily, its like having tunnel vision, being restricted to typically 60 to 90 degrees field-of-vision.
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When I play defense in Madden, I usually start as a defensive back to give me the greatest range and attack the ball carrier rather than the QB. However I almost always switch to a closer player when the play moves towards a different area. It's hard enough to tell which player I'm getting control of with an overhead view; I've completely blown plays because I took a player beneath the ball carrier and moved him down (away from the play) instead of up, because I thought I would get control of a different player. This problem must be 10 time worse in first-person, where I can't even see most of my teammates at any one time.
In short, I think this looks like a very cool demo feature, and might be great if I had 10 real human teammates to play with, so I wouldn't worry about switching players. However, that doesn't seem to be the goal, and I bet this mode will not be used much in practice. I've experimented with most every standard camera view possible, and have concluded that while close-up views look cool, it's just not practical if you can't see every player. This may not be quite as realistic, but as indicated above first-person video games have their own realism issues, and are harder to play to boot.I personally don't like it very much. It's not instantaneous, because it doesn't actually load the nested content until you expand the thread, but it works. For, opening new tabs in blogs works best.
I'm actually working on this right now. I tried uisng my roommate's digital camera but the results were awful. So yesterday I started writing a program that takes two text files, a formation and a play, and a resolution, and renders the play and saves to a file, which I will then crop and add to the page.
I've actually got this working for passing plays (running and lead blocking "routes" may take me a bit to work out), and I should have the first images (for Undercuts, Deep Outs and Flood Left SE Iso) up by this afternoon.
One benefit of this method is that my renderings are actually more accurate than the in-game overhead diagrams. The in-game diagram routes are compressed laterally to better fit them into neat little boxes, otherwise most plays would be really small to accomodate really wide passing plays (like many of mine). I don't have this constraint, so my renderings show exactly where the routes are run.
- Not enough special options. You cannot run a proper play action pass, draw play, or reverse. An option pitch would be neat as well.
- Cannot use custom playbooks for audibles. I've just started using audibles regularly, and this one REALLY frustrates me.
- Can't send players in motion.
The problems with the defensive playbook are worse. It's really hard to test defensive plays designed for specific situations, there needs to be a way to set the play for the opposition in practice and testing (applies to offensive plays too). With custom defensive plays, pretty much all minor audibles, such as line and LB shifts, do not work.A few other things: switching players on defense is my #1 cause of blown plays. I think what is needed is an option to set a delay between when your player icon switches to a new player, and when your control switches, say half a second. That way you wouldn't accidentally move a player in good position the wrong direction because you thought you were selecting someone else. Maybe better AI in player switching is needed as well.
All in all I'm looking forward to 2004. However, I'm worried that the lack of press concerning the playbook editors (one of the reasons I started my site is that there does not seem to be any similar sites sharing custom plays!) means that there will be little improved in this area.
I am kind of surprised that this is even an issue. Madden has a pretty comprehensive set of attributes, such that small players should get mauled by offensive lineman.
On another note, in my custom defenses I often use 6 or 7 DBs, and usually blitz one or two corners. However they come around the side, so they just avoid the O-Line. Runs up the middle go right past them. This is just realistic. I think Madden does quite a good job with unconventional plays actually.
Except your example doesn't work, reliably at least.
I compiled it using g++, but with a constructor:
hidden()
{
frotz = 10;
ozmoo = 20;
}
added to initialize the variables. frotz corretly is printed as 10.
But then I switched the ordering of the declarations of frotz and ozmoo in hidden. Now frotz is 20! What is happening?
The cast of this type is a reinterpret_cast in C++, because there is no direct relationship between the classes hidden and hack_o_matic. Therefore the accessor to hack_o_matic just reads the data at the position in memory where a pointer to hack_o_matic expects frotz to be, though it is actually ozmoo.
If you have the code to the class with private members this won't happen, however you're probably out of luck (or in for some reverse engineering of field layout in memory) if you want to do this for classes in pure object libraries in C++.
I checked out your site, you have made an interesting study.
However, the premise behind many of the voting systems, in particular the rated, ranked and fuzzy systems, is seriously flawed. Each of these systems requires the voter to cast an honest vote, and not a strategic vote. However most people vote strategically rather than honestly.
The best example of this is the case of third party candidates in the US. Voters believe (rightly so under the current system) that voting for a relatively strong third party candidate weakens their favorite first part choice. Someone whose first choice for Nader probably preferred Gore over Bush, likewise with a vote for Perot likely taking away from the older Bush.
In any kind of rated system where absolute rank matters, smart voters will rate "dangerous" candidates (those they dislike that actually stand a chance of winning) lowest, behind even worse candidates that don't actually stand a chance. In the end, most of these systems will be no better than approval voting for the leading candidates, and give distorted views of the approval for lesser candidates.
These reasons are why I beleive Condorcet voting is the best method, because only pairwise matchups and not absolute rating/ranking matter, there is no way to vote stategically that improves the chances of preferred candidates over an honest vote.
I would be interested to see your experiment redone, taking strategic voting tendencies into account. Perhaps a random probability can be assigned to determine whether an individual votes strategically or honestly, or in some combination.
So now xenu.net is the second result. Big deal. Google did have an issue with Scientology censorship in the past, that has been taken care of.
I agree that xenu.net should be one of the top links (which it is), but it has no inherent right to the top spot. As much as I dislike Scientology, I believe it is quite appropriate and sensible that the official site is the first search result.
The point, as far as I see it, is that it is not up to individual developers to make all of these things work together.
Developers like working on their own projects. Period. Nothing will change that. There is a need to get all of these programs to work together as a cohesive system, but that is not the job of most developers.
It is the job of the Distro makers.
As I see it, distros have four main functions:
1. Select from the available body of software the most useful and complete bits (which may vary depending on the goals and target audience of the distro).
2. Make any necessary minor updates or improvements to bring all packages up to standards.
3. Apply developer labor to create or implement desired functionality that does not exist.
4. Combine all software into a cohesive package.
Most quality distros do all of these things, though in different ways an with varying degrees of success. Like the results or not, RedHat took initiative to get KDE and Gnome to work together better. Mandrake is following suit. Most major distros maintain there own kernel branches to include desired patches not in the main branch.
The one thing the could use a bit more effort is #3, in my opinion. For example, if The GIMP can't handle 48 bit color, and that's something customers want, distros should work on implementing it themselves. This kind of approach is already taken with the kernel, as far as mino patches go, but not much more is needed because the Linux kernel is developed so actively. It is the more slow developing, yet important applications that could use a kickstart from the major distros.
The distros are the ones that have the goal of a unified and simple software system, they are the ones who have the more interest in satisfying customers and users directly. The best way to achieve a more unified and workable user experience, in my opinion, is to support the distributions that actually put all of the pieces together. If enough people are willing to pay for a usable desktop Linux, the sooner it will come (though for many of us it is already here).
Um, that's part of the reason why you receive telemarketing calls on your cell.
One of the main reasons telemarketers cannot call cell phones in the US is because the receiver has to pay. With land line phones the receiver pays nothing, so telemarketers are free to waste everyones time. I'd rather pay for the incoming calls I care about while totally eliminating those that I never want to hear.
Not only that, but they probably can't trust their compilers and linkers to get incremental buildds right. I develop using Visual Studio/C++, and in just about any multi-project application changes to core files used throughout the app almost never result in all affected files being rebuilt correctly.
If I'm lucky this leads to compile errors. Sometimes though, it appears to build the EXE correctly but I end up getting run-time errors seemingly unrelated to the changed code. A "Rebuild All" fixes these problems.
I think the problem is that the compiler/linker tries to be clever deciding what files need to be rebuilt. Rather than just looking at timestamps for file modifications, it tries to ignore changes that do not affect synta, like comments and whitespace. Whatever the problem, it manages to screw up a lot, especially with inter-project dependencies.
I live in downtown Minneapolis, and I decided to go with a Silver Sensor directional antenna. They can be a little hard to find, I believe you have to order them in the US, though I found an online site selling them.
It is a bit of a pain to have to move the antenna for each station (depending on your exact situation), but since you only have about six choices anyway it's not that big of a deal. I haven't tried any other antenna's, so I can't guarantee this one works better, but it does the job from inside my living room.
Several months ago I switched from using Word 97 to OpenOffice. I mainly use it at work for logging my daily accomplishments and short-term goals. I use one primary font and highlight certain entries in bold and italics, with about 5 colors other than black also used.
An OpenOffice file is less than one-fifth the size of a comparable Word file.
This is using the same features, quite vanilla, with no versioning. OpenOffice just uses gzipped XML. What is MS doing that takes so much space? As far as I know the bloat is probably due to the fact that Word (I believe) simply serializes the document to a file. This makes it easy for certain features like document display type to persist across sessions, but it mostly bloats the file with unnecessary crap, as well as hopelessly complicating the file "format" they use.
OpenOffice is a modern word processor, maybe not every bit as feature rich as Word, but pretty close. I don't take modern word processors for granted, I just know that things can be done a hell of a lot better than the examples MS has given.
I thought I would point out a few good uses of computers in schools that I have experienced first hand. I agree that computers can easily do more harm than good, and that more emphasis is needed on fundamentals, but in some cases computers make good educational tools...
1) Physics classes. In my juniour year of HS physics most of our labs used computers. We had macs with peripheral optical and force sensors. We did the traditional rolling cart and air track experiments for learning about kinematics, but velocity, acceleration, forces, etc. were graphed precisely. This allowed us to learn about the relationships between velocity and acceleration, for example, easily for ourselves (for the most part we discussed these properties in class AFTER we observed them for ourselves). We also had software for working with circuit diagrams where you are given partial info about voltage, current and so on at some junctions and had to fill in the remaining values.
2) Art classes. In my advanced drawing and design class we used a mac paint program to design an image which we later painted. The art program allowed for quick "rapid prototyping" and evaluation by our teacher, and let us look at a version of the final image before starting with the paint.
You've completely missed the point. Yes, a CD offers slightly higher sound quality, as well as attractive packaging, lyrics, etc. However the service provided by CD vendors flat out sucks compared to P2P.
With P2P I can try out all of the songs I want for free, even bad quality, cutoff files are usually enough to tell whether I actually like the song. I don't have to take half an hour or more out of my day for the priviledge of driving to Best Buy and paying $13.99 for a piece of plastic.
If CDs were reasonably priced at say $5 each (still enough to turn a profit), yes, they would offer a better deal than P2P, and we may never have seen the likes of Napster, at least at the popularity it achieved in its heyday. But as it is CDs are overpriced and vendors cannot compete with P2P in service aspects.
I spent a while on Google trying to find confirmation of whether the taste tests were truly independent and double-blind and cloud not find anything conclusive. However this does not detract from the fact that a very sweet drink will taste better in small quantities (like a sip).
I'm just making a wild guess here, but I'll bet that if tests were conducted in a way in which participants only had each drink on separate days and had at least 12 ounces before rating it, that the results might be different.
I don't want to make this into some kind of religious argument, I just want to point out that an experiment that makes such assumptions about its measurements (that first sip quality equals full beverage quality) may not be accurate.
I want to point out that the Pepsi Challenge is almost certainly rigged in subtle ways. A real scientific test would be conducted double-blind by an independent group, not by Pepsi employees.
Techniques I've read about (though was not able to really confirm) include having the tester taste Pepsi second (people apparently like the second thing better most of the time, kind of like people listening to stereos tend to think the louder ones sound best), any only taking sips because Pepsi has a sweeter, simpler taste, while Coke is not as sweet and has a more complex taste. I even just read about a claim that Pepsi won their challenge by placing Pepsi under an "M" and Coke under a "Q", and that Coke won its own contest by switching these letters (people like M better?)
Some of these may not be true, but I would never trust the results of a challenge not conducted scientifically. These companies are masterful marketers and not to be trusted.
I'm a little dissappointed that I have not seen any mention of Orson Scott Card. I should start out by saying that I have probably not read as much SF as many here, since I read a lot of fantasy mixed with other fiction, but I think that the Ender Quartet and Ender's Shadow (haven't gotten to Shadow of the Hegemon) contain some of the best writing I have ever experienced, especially in Speaker for the Dead.
Most of these books would not be classified as hard SF, but the depth of the psychologies of the characters is wonderful. There are a lot of very intelligent characters in these books, as well as alien creatures with thought patterns very unlike humans and Card is masterful at taking the reader through their minds.
In addition, the books contain an excellent mix of history and breadth of culture that mixes very well with interaction with alien species and civilizations, contrasting our own culture clashes with differences between advanced civiliations and species.
I just figured it out: the Star Wars MMPORPG was concieved by the Midichlorians to restore order to the Internet. You see, Slashdot is obviously the Death Star of the internet (story posted, millions of webservers screaming in terror, then suddenly silence, and all that).
/. effect.
Giving geeks a new target may save the Internet from the evil power of the
Clearly all open source programmers must be rounded up before such a tragedy can occur...
For those not farmiliar with it, the Condorcet method works roughly like this. Voters rank each candidate. If one candidate wins a majority of the vote in every head-to-head pairing they belong to, they win (i.e. A is ahead of B in 65% of ballots, ahead of C in 90% of ballots, and ahead of D in 51% of ballots). If no candidate win every head to head matchup, there are a couple of methods for deciding the winner that give roughly equal results. Basically the winner is the candidate who wins the most head-to-head matchups between candidates that win at least one head-to-head matchup. A complete description of the Condorcet method along with comparisions to other methods can be found at electionmethods.org.
The only real drawback to the Condorcet system is its complexity, both in that voters must rank every candidate and that the methods used to determine the winner in close races is difficult to understand. Personally I like methods that require voters to understand all of the candidates, so I do not think the ranking process is a drawback.
I also thought that the article failed to mention a serious fault with the Borda count. By allowing the candidate rankings to count as points rather than as head-to-head matchups, voters are encouraged to place viable second best choices last to improve the standing of the first place candidate. In the Condorcet system there is no advantage to this, ranking candidate B second or tenth makes no difference if the race comes down to A vs. B if A is ranked first on your ballot, A wins the head-to head matchup the same either way. In this manner the Condorcet method is the only method I know of that truly makes the voter vote their conscience, rather than voting strategically to elect the lesser of evils (e.g. voting for Gore when you really like Nader but really hate Bush). Instant runoff has the right idea in this sense but is fundamentally flawed, as the article states due to an increase in support for a candidate possibly causing that candidate to lose.
I have been working on projects like this for the last 5 years, 3D applications used to synthesize and analyze relatively large dental simulation models. I am currently working on complete revisions of the first iteration of my departments software, intended to correct many of the design mistakes made with the first versions (and lots of mistakes get made with software designed and implemented by undergrad and grad students). These new versions are designed to be more modular, extendible and portable across multiple platforms, and maybe most importantly have completely redone interfaces.
I think one of the most important concepts in this kind of software is making clear the difference between data and presentation in your interface. This is somewhat of a departure from a lot of software like word processors where what you see is what you have, most things you can do to change how a document looks actually change the document. This is not what you want to do in many CAD-style scientific apps. This means basically throwing the document-view style architecture out the window, because for the most part you won't be using a document metaphor.
What I use might be called a database-workspace-multiview architecture. All of the data objects are stored in a single structure, in my case a hierarchical tree with each object accessable by a name or handle. This named hierarchy makes it easy to group related data objects and add additional metadata later. The most important objects in this core that the user will interact with (depending on the design this structure may also include a lot of internal framework objects) should be exposed to the user in some sort of workspace view. In my software these major data objects may consist of dental patients, which in turn are composed (mainly) of 3D models representing the upper and lower jaws. This workspace allows the user to interact with and modify the data directly.
The other major interface are the views. My software deals mainly with 3D display but also utilizes 2D "slices" of surfaces. The user should be able to create these view on demand. The display settings available for each view should be tied onyl to that view and use metaphors indicating that they only affect display but cannot modify the "database" (e.g. a surface can be shown or hidden by a view, but never deleted). When a user can modify actual data through a view interface it must be with tools that clearly distinguish between visualization mode and modification mode.
To tie all of these things together we created are own messaging framework. We felt this was necessary to ensure future portability and not tie ourselves into Win32 messaging (currently Win32 is the only platform being actively developed). We use essentially two types of messages: commands which are sent to a single target (and work like ordinary functions, but more generically), and notifications, which are broadcast to all objects that want to receive them. Example #1: a project is loaded into the app. Many tools are only available if a complete project is available, so these tools listen for this message and enable themselves when the project is loaded (or a new one is created). Example #2: a section of a 3D surface is trimmed. All tools responsible for rendering surfaces in views listen for the message and redraw their views if the model trimmed was visible in their view.
There are a few other advantages to usingour own messaging system. It enforces good programming habits be requiring a little extra through to go into the interface for various objects. By making it text-based we enable scripting capabilities, anything that can be done through the GUI can be done (or at least simulated in terms of mouse and keyboard input) through scripting. Our core data hierarchy can be easily inspected using debugging dialogs, as can most of the internal metadata, which is stored in primarily text format when possible and streamable to XML.
Basically I think it comes down to good modular design with a UNIX philosophy. Start with core utilities, data structures and algorithms, keeping in mind the importance of algorithms being able to suspend or be canceled in many cases, as well as reporting progress. Layer a messaging/scripting-style interface on top of that, and complete with a GUI that makes the distinction between data and visualization.
A lot of people have argued over the start with two condoms, flip the outside one, then take it off. Even assuming the condoms will not break, this does not work. The man is protected, but the last woman is touching a condom that has touched the side of the outer condom the first woman touched.
Since a requirement is to not pass STDs between women, this solution is invalid.
Ok, I think that I (as well as a lot of other people who read the article misunderstood where the IDs were. I was thinking they were on the the music CDsm not the blank CDs. That would explain why legislation would be required (obviously music labels don't need laws to make them put IDs on their own CDs).
Still, it would be pretty easy to get around for any serious commercial infringers. All they need to do is have a lot of different individuals get CD-Rs from lots of different distributors, or better yet smuggle "untainted" CDs from outside countries. Unless the CDs are tracked a lot more closely (violating EU privacy law as I understand it) only really sloppy copiers would get caught.
Anyway, any large scale operation will obviously have the tools to replace the ID. The article mentioned a lack of ID being a flag, but it would be trivial to make up new IDs, probably even for each CD if desired. This would work even if the CD IDs were all unique and the IDs were tracked for each buyer.