He isnt "there for the customers". He is there to make money and satisfy the shareholders. He doesnt need a product - he has a software patent. He could tell all his "customers" to their faces to go fsck themselves, and they would still have to pay him, thanks to US laws.
Sure, its sad, its greedy etc, but its a pretty neat situation for him. Money for nothing.
I think game programmers will always find something cool to do with those spare cycles - we'll probably see them going to improved AI, improved physics models etc. The emphasis will probably shift slightly away from the "cool envelope-pushing graphics == cool game" mindset, toward a "cool game == cool game" mindset. I guess? Today, a "good game programmer" may mean "good 3d programmer"; this will probably change slightly in the future; although games will always still have 3d, less development time will be required to get the 3d stuff working fast.
I was implying that Americans should consider equal opportunities for their *own* black populace, something many American whites seem to delusionally believe already exists.
Also, I never said anything about the US improving third-world countries; I was talking about the racism that serves to hold back ANY people from uplifting themselves (in both the US and 3rd world countries.) This is not a "3rd world issue"; neither it is an issue that doesn't exist within the US. Nowhere did I even imply that the US should help anyone out - I was essentially saying that countries should be trying to sort out their racism problems internally. My whole *point* was that it takes 70 to 100 years to become an industrialized nation, and that people should stop expecting overnight solutions.
While there are obviously many differences, I try to picture how South Africa (where I live) might look 30 years from now by taking a look at America. Its obvious to me that 30 years is not enough to completely reform a country as socially damaged as this one - yet people always somehow seem to think that reform happens overnight.
Despite what many/.ers seem to believe, racism is still alive and rampant in America, and it *shows* -- I am shocked and disgusted by the sheer amount of racism and ignorance displayed on slashdot each time this topic comes up ("pearls to the pigs" comes to mind, from the African Ring of Fire thread.)
I've heard "poor" people on this thread whining about how terrible they had it because they had to 'put together throw away scraps from the University' to get their first computer. You haven't got a clue what "poverty" means. Come walk around in a South African township, and then tell those people living in shacks, who can't even afford the basics such as clothing, blankets, food etc, that they should "lift themselves up out of it by taking the initiative to learn about technology". Get real. Those people aren't there because they are lazy, they are there because they weren't given the opportunity to get any reasonably decent education whatsoever.
It takes money to make money - a university education is an expensive thing. I'm not naive - I actually realize just how incredibly lucky I am to have been born into a wealthy white SA family, with parents who could afford to send us all to University - even though I saved for years to be able to afford my first computer. I am where I am now not just because I worked hard but because I had the opportunities available that many here do not - and America is just the same, despite the fact that racism 'on paper' has been gone for several decades in America, it takes more than one or two generations to reform a system.
Take a closer look at how much of your current success was hard work, and how much was luck (ie opportunities you had that others dont/didnt). Not everyone is as lucky as you.
Um, the technical evolutionary stuff about getting from self-duplicating amino acid chains to elephants and dinosaurs is a piece of cake.. I'm not so sure that explaining the emergence of sentience will necessary follow that easily though.
And I'm sure back in the dark ages (which I'm not sure we've completely left yet, future generations will probably call the 20th century the dark ages) conversations would run something along the lines of "if you're not a witch you dont have to worry".
Whose definition of "clean" do you prefer to go by anyway? You must have a LOT of trust in your government! (And in human nature in general - or perhaps you've never heard of corruption and/or abuse of priviledge/power)
"In this way, the once exciting art of making a game has gone the way of TV, movies, and to a certain extent, books"
I very much agree with you here - I would also include the music industry and comics industry - all industries that started out being fresh and full of creativity, but once the truckloads of money started rolling in, degenerated into mass-market over-commercialized tripe.
However, I tend to shift the blame somewhat away from rich producers, to the consumers themselves - until people start actually demanding quality, producers will continue to churn out the same shit again and again. But the sad part is that the market swallows it up; the people all hand over their money like droids, never actually stopping to think that they could (and should) be asking for more than the hundreds of crappy (x), all clones of each other (where (x) could be songs, comics, movies, tv shows, computer games, whatever.) Maybe its what people want. Or maybe our expectations have been lowered to the point where its what we accept.
Windows does. (Some people call MFC a C++ wrapper, but MFC is more of a terribly designed spaghetti-code application framework, so I don't think it counts)
Anyway, it doesn't matter at all what language the GUI source code is in (I'm willing to bet the majority of GUI's are written in C) --- the point being made was that there are bindings for many languages. You don't "link to" C code to get to the GUI, you link to a dynamic library. A dynamic library isn't "C" or ANY language for that matter, its assembly opcodes - the only "C" there may be the calling convention for the functions, but that doesn't restrict anyone linking to the library to C. You could write BASIC code that links to GTK+.
"I find it ironic that people screaming about their IP rights when their sites are chock full of copyrighted images they scanned in, audio files they recorded off of videos and TV, and often buttons and other images they ripped off of other sites"
I find it insulting that you assume the people screaming about IP rights have been stealing IP themselves. I had a web page on geocities (for over 2 years) with nearly ten meg of drawings, paintings, comics, articles and tutorials, all of which I created myself. (Note I say "had" - I might decide to go back to geocities if they fix up their TOS.)
I don't see how one cedes ones right to defend oneself just by using this device. Is there something stopping you from using the techno-bra AND carrying a gun?
Secondly, I don't agree with you that the device is "old-fashioned and sexist": (A) As much as it may hurt your average feminist to admit it, women are on average physically weaker than men, and thus, on average, less capable of defending themselves against attackers. This does NOT imply that all men are stronger than all women, and it does not imply that women are thus incapable of defending themselves - but it does remain a fact that on average a women will have a harder time. (B) You are assuming that a woman will only ever be attacked when alone, and by a single male of perhaps average strength. I don't know about the US of A, but here in crime-rife South Africa, women are often attacked and raped/killed by entire gangs of men (often even when the woman is walking with her boyfriend; the gang just kills him too.) Even a super-ultra-bodybuilding-kungfu-fighting-womanofth e90s-feminist would be helpless (without the techno-bra) in that situation.
You also seem to indirectly imply that all women should carry guns, do body-building, and perhaps learn martial arts. Who says all women want to? Should they have to?
I find your statement a bit unfair, and the logic a bit wrong somehow.
Seems to me you have this choice:
(a) No service at all. (b) Service, with some forced advertising.
Just because somebody willingly accepts the advertising in order to obtain the service does not mean that they "don't value their free time at all". It's a symbiotic relationship.. I give a bit of my time in exchange for a service. You seem to imply some sort of parasitic relationship where only Yahoo is getting something.
The Metcalfe column completely reeked of flamebait. Any half-wit could spot it. The article could just as easily have been a troll-post on comp.os.linux.advocacy, it was so transparent. In fact, I've seen better trolls on c.o.l.a. And Petreley's response, no doubt planned. Generate lots aggravation, lots of publicity, lots of hits, soon everyones talking about the site, terribly controversial, shove loads of ad banners down your throats, etc etc. How many ads do you count on that web page? Those hit statistics go right back to the advertisers, thus raising their premiums.
Don't bother wasting your time on this nonsense. These "journalists" aren't interested at all in maintaining any sort of integrity, so I doubt it's worth even crying "FUD". What are you expecting, a retraction? Yeah right. Metcalfe has gone out of his way to pack the article with invalid logical inferences and statements designed to provoke. Those cheap literary manipulation devices are placed there on purpose. Sure, Petreley may be a linux advocate.. but who's to say this sort of thing is beneath him? This is his job.
Don't fall for this media manipulation, people. It's too transparent and this community is way too smart. This sort of cheap manipulation should only be working for people with IQ's on the other side of the bell curve.
Shucks. This news is going to come as a huge disappointment to all those here in South Africa who have been making phone calls on copper networks for decades. And all those 15 odd years or so I thought I'd been phoning people.
Give a hungry person a fish, blah blah blah. You seem to be recommending the short-term (short-sighted?) "give fish" strategy. I mean, gee, "how could improved education (and thus improved productivity and competition in a global economy) possibly improve the quality of life of the people of a country"? Do you realise how absolutely stupid you sound when you say that? Or are you a troll?
Can't get a cable modem? Goddamn, life must be tough for you.. sh-t, no cable modem.. a fate worse than death, that must be.
If oriental countries have somehow managed to overcome the language problems they have on the Internet, I hardly see "click" languages as being some sort of impossible task. Some click languages(that I'm aware of, eg Xhosa) are by far easier to write down than oriental languages, so if the east could overcome that, I'm sure Africa can. Many people with languages that include clicks (Nelson Mandela for example) can also speak English. And besides that, people who speak with clicks probably form a very small minority of Africans, so they're hardly a reason to keep the Internet out.
What Africa really needs more than anything else is better education. There is simply no other way to become productive and competitive in a global economy. Remember, not ever African country is torn apart by civil war, many are reasonably peaceful. The Internet would be an excellent way to help improve education, and whether or not you are aware of it over in the US (I'm assuming you are from the US) there are already distance-learning institutions taking advantage of the Internet to bring education to people in Africa who would normally have found it very difficult (or impossible) to get an education at all. (http://www.unisa.ac.za/ as one example.)
It's probably easy to get a skewed view in the US, where most people already live comfortably and can afford a relatively good education - so the main priority there is to try get faster and better entertainment video pushed into homes over the Net. But in other places, where priorities are a bit different, the Internet *is* being used to help spread education. While "Ring of Fire" might not "herald an African renaissance", it may very well be a very important small step (as one of many) that will lead to a true African renaissance over the next 50 to 100 years.
I'm not sure it ever will. I personally don't see HMD's as "mass-market" devices. Most people don't need much more than what a monitor already provides.
Of course I could very well be very wrong. Technology isn't easy to predict.
I suspect you can pretty much assume (its normal to do so) that the aspect ratio is the "standard", 3/4, so you can calculate the vertical and horizontal FOV from that.
You are making the assumption that by "intelligence" the poster implied consciousness as well. I for one don't see any reason why some sort of 'computer' can't be as intelligent (or more so) than humans, and yet still not have consciousness, with the intelligence based merely on laws of physics of operation of such a computer. I also don't see any reason why an AI entity created by humans should need consciousness before it decides to assimilate its creators.
Consciousness in humans does not create our intelligence - the laws of physics regarding the operation of brain cells does. There is no "black magic" in operation in our heads that somehow causes the laws of physics to be broken.
Consciousness is a side issue. It has no *technical* bearing (only philosophical) on the technology of AI; and has no technical bearing on the dangers of creating AI.
Slashdot Mirror
Hmm .. it just worked for me
:)
c:\>tracert doubleclick.net
(traces to real doubleclick.net)
c:\>edit windows\hosts
(add "127.0.0.1 doubleclick.net")
c:\>tracert doubleclick.net
( 1 10 ms 10 ms 10 ms doubleclick.net [127.0.0.1])
Very cool, I like it. *.doubleclick.net is now broken
Presumable the ultimate goal of this research is to figure out where to build in the NSA backdoor into peoples' brains when they're born.
He isnt "there for the customers". He is there to make money and satisfy the shareholders. He doesnt need a product - he has a software patent. He could tell all his "customers" to their faces to go fsck themselves, and they would still have to pay him, thanks to US laws.
Sure, its sad, its greedy etc, but its a pretty neat situation for him. Money for nothing.
I think game programmers will always find something cool to do with those spare cycles - we'll probably see them going to improved AI, improved physics models etc. The emphasis will probably shift slightly away from the "cool envelope-pushing graphics == cool game" mindset, toward a "cool game == cool game" mindset. I guess? Today, a "good game programmer" may mean "good 3d programmer"; this will probably change slightly in the future; although games will always still have 3d, less development time will be required to get the 3d stuff working fast.
You misunderstood my post completely.
I was implying that Americans should consider equal opportunities for their *own* black populace, something many American whites seem to delusionally believe already exists.
Also, I never said anything about the US improving third-world countries; I was talking about the racism that serves to hold back ANY people from uplifting themselves (in both the US and 3rd world countries.) This is not a "3rd world issue"; neither it is an issue that doesn't exist within the US. Nowhere did I even imply that the US should help anyone out - I was essentially saying that countries should be trying to sort out their racism problems internally. My whole *point* was that it takes 70 to 100 years to become an industrialized nation, and that people should stop expecting overnight solutions.
While there are obviously many differences, I try to picture how South Africa (where I live) might look 30 years from now by taking a look at America. Its obvious to me that 30 years is not enough to completely reform a country as socially damaged as this one - yet people always somehow seem to think that reform happens overnight.
Despite what many
I've heard "poor" people on this thread whining about how terrible they had it because they had to 'put together throw away scraps from the University' to get their first computer. You haven't got a clue what "poverty" means. Come walk around in a South African township, and then tell those people living in shacks, who can't even afford the basics such as clothing, blankets, food etc, that they should "lift themselves up out of it by taking the initiative to learn about technology". Get real. Those people aren't there because they are lazy, they are there because they weren't given the opportunity to get any reasonably decent education whatsoever.
It takes money to make money - a university education is an expensive thing. I'm not naive - I actually realize just how incredibly lucky I am to have been born into a wealthy white SA family, with parents who could afford to send us all to University - even though I saved for years to be able to afford my first computer. I am where I am now not just because I worked hard but because I had the opportunities available that many here do not - and America is just the same, despite the fact that racism 'on paper' has been gone for several decades in America, it takes more than one or two generations to reform a system.
Take a closer look at how much of your current success was hard work, and how much was luck (ie opportunities you had that others dont/didnt). Not everyone is as lucky as you.
"the rest of the stuff is a piece of cake"
Um, the technical evolutionary stuff about getting from self-duplicating amino acid chains to elephants and dinosaurs is a piece of cake .. I'm not so sure that explaining the emergence of sentience will necessary follow that easily though.
Shouldn't that be "micros~1" not "micro~1"?
"if you're clean, Uncle Sam leaves you alone"
And I'm sure back in the dark ages (which I'm not sure we've completely left yet, future generations will probably call the 20th century the dark ages) conversations would run something along the lines of "if you're not a witch you dont have to worry".
Whose definition of "clean" do you prefer to go by anyway? You must have a LOT of trust in your government! (And in human nature in general - or perhaps you've never heard of corruption and/or abuse of priviledge/power)
"In this way, the once exciting art of making a game has gone the way of TV, movies, and to a certain extent, books"
I very much agree with you here - I would also include the music industry and comics industry - all industries that started out being fresh and full of creativity, but once the truckloads of money started rolling in, degenerated into mass-market over-commercialized tripe.
However, I tend to shift the blame somewhat away from rich producers, to the consumers themselves - until people start actually demanding quality, producers will continue to churn out the same shit again and again. But the sad part is that the market swallows it up; the people all hand over their money like droids, never actually stopping to think that they could (and should) be asking for more than the hundreds of crappy (x), all clones of each other (where (x) could be songs, comics, movies, tv shows, computer games, whatever.) Maybe its what people want. Or maybe our expectations have been lowered to the point where its what we accept.
Windows does. (Some people call MFC a C++ wrapper, but MFC is more of a terribly designed spaghetti-code application framework, so I don't think it counts)
Anyway, it doesn't matter at all what language the GUI source code is in (I'm willing to bet the majority of GUI's are written in C) --- the point being made was that there are bindings for many languages. You don't "link to" C code to get to the GUI, you link to a dynamic library. A dynamic library isn't "C" or ANY language for that matter, its assembly opcodes - the only "C" there may be the calling convention for the functions, but that doesn't restrict anyone linking to the library to C. You could write BASIC code that links to GTK+.
"I find it ironic that people screaming about their IP rights when their sites are chock full of copyrighted images they scanned in, audio files they recorded off of videos and TV, and often buttons and other images they ripped off of other sites"
I find it insulting that you assume the people screaming about IP rights have been stealing IP themselves. I had a web page on geocities (for over 2 years) with nearly ten meg of drawings, paintings, comics, articles and tutorials, all of which I created myself. (Note I say "had" - I might decide to go back to geocities if they fix up their TOS.)
I don't see how one cedes ones right to defend oneself just by using this device. Is there something stopping you from using the techno-bra AND carrying a gun?
h e90s-feminist would be helpless (without the techno-bra) in that situation.
Secondly, I don't agree with you that the device is "old-fashioned and sexist": (A) As much as it may hurt your average feminist to admit it, women are on average physically weaker than men, and thus, on average, less capable of defending themselves against attackers. This does NOT imply that all men are stronger than all women, and it does not imply that women are thus incapable of defending themselves - but it does remain a fact that on average a women will have a harder time. (B) You are assuming that a woman will only ever be attacked when alone, and by a single male of perhaps average strength. I don't know about the US of A, but here in crime-rife South Africa, women are often attacked and raped/killed by entire gangs of men (often even when the woman is walking with her boyfriend; the gang just kills him too.) Even a super-ultra-bodybuilding-kungfu-fighting-womanoft
You also seem to indirectly imply that all women should carry guns, do body-building, and perhaps learn martial arts. Who says all women want to? Should they have to?
I find your statement a bit unfair, and the logic a bit wrong somehow.
.. I give a bit of my time in exchange for a service. You seem to imply some sort of parasitic relationship where only Yahoo is getting something.
Seems to me you have this choice:
(a) No service at all.
(b) Service, with some forced advertising.
Just because somebody willingly accepts the advertising in order to obtain the service does not mean that they "don't value their free time at all". It's a symbiotic relationship
The Metcalfe column completely reeked of flamebait. Any half-wit could spot it. The article could just as easily have been a troll-post on comp.os.linux.advocacy, it was so transparent. In fact, I've seen better trolls on c.o.l.a. And Petreley's response, no doubt planned. Generate lots aggravation, lots of publicity, lots of hits, soon everyones talking about the site, terribly controversial, shove loads of ad banners down your throats, etc etc. How many ads do you count on that web page? Those hit statistics go right back to the advertisers, thus raising their premiums.
Don't bother wasting your time on this nonsense. These "journalists" aren't interested at all in maintaining any sort of integrity, so I doubt it's worth even crying "FUD". What are you expecting, a retraction? Yeah right. Metcalfe has gone out of his way to pack the article with invalid logical inferences and statements designed to provoke. Those cheap literary manipulation devices are placed there on purpose. Sure, Petreley may be a linux advocate
Don't fall for this media manipulation, people. It's too transparent and this community is way too smart. This sort of cheap manipulation should only be working for people with IQ's on the other side of the bell curve.
"copper is useless in Africa"
Shucks. This news is going to come as a huge disappointment to all those here in South Africa who have been making phone calls on copper networks for decades. And all those 15 odd years or so I thought I'd been phoning people.
.. blah blah blah, you know the rest. Figure it out. Here's a hint: think "long-term" (20 to 100 years).
Give a hungry person a fish, blah blah blah. You seem to be recommending the short-term (short-sighted?) "give fish" strategy. I mean, gee, "how could improved education (and thus improved productivity and competition in a global economy) possibly improve the quality of life of the people of a country"? Do you realise how absolutely stupid you sound when you say that? Or are you a troll?
Can't get a cable modem? Goddamn, life must be tough for you
Spoilt brat.
If oriental countries have somehow managed to overcome the language problems they have on the Internet, I hardly see "click" languages as being some sort of impossible task. Some click languages(that I'm aware of, eg Xhosa) are by far easier to write down than oriental languages, so if the east could overcome that, I'm sure Africa can. Many people with languages that include clicks (Nelson Mandela for example) can also speak English. And besides that, people who speak with clicks probably form a very small minority of Africans, so they're hardly a reason to keep the Internet out.
What Africa really needs more than anything else is better education. There is simply no other way to become productive and competitive in a global economy. Remember, not ever African country is torn apart by civil war, many are reasonably peaceful. The Internet would be an excellent way to help improve education, and whether or not you are aware of it over in the US (I'm assuming you are from the US) there are already distance-learning institutions taking advantage of the Internet to bring education to people in Africa who would normally have found it very difficult (or impossible) to get an education at all. (http://www.unisa.ac.za/ as one example.)
It's probably easy to get a skewed view in the US, where most people already live comfortably and can afford a relatively good education - so the main priority there is to try get faster and better entertainment video pushed into homes over the Net. But in other places, where priorities are a bit different, the Internet *is* being used to help spread education. While "Ring of Fire" might not "herald an African renaissance", it may very well be a very important small step (as one of many) that will lead to a true African renaissance over the next 50 to 100 years.
I read a lengthy explanation on Mindcrafts website .. the "rematch" will actually consist of (IIRC) three seperate sets of tests.
In the first set, they would try to reproduce the results of the initial set of tests.
The second involved the Linux experts tweaking the Linux box to its max using any fixes/patches etc available at the time of the original tests.
The third involved the Linux experts tweaking the Linux box to its max using anything and everything available right now.
I dont have the URL, unfortunately; its on my (Linux) home machine.
I'm not sure it ever will. I personally don't see HMD's as "mass-market" devices. Most people don't need much more than what a monitor already provides.
Of course I could very well be very wrong. Technology isn't easy to predict.
I suspect you can pretty much assume (its normal to do so) that the aspect ratio is the "standard", 3/4, so you can calculate the vertical and horizontal FOV from that.
On a "3/4/5" triangle then you get
vertical FOV = (3/5)*38.5 = 23.1 deg
horizont FOV = (4/5)*38.5 = 30.8 deg
Two if you count anything visual (the interface, sound visualisation etc) as a medium
You are making the assumption that by "intelligence" the poster implied consciousness as well. I for one don't see any reason why some sort of 'computer' can't be as intelligent (or more so) than humans, and yet still not have consciousness, with the intelligence based merely on laws of physics of operation of such a computer. I also don't see any reason why an AI entity created by humans should need consciousness before it decides to assimilate its creators.
Consciousness in humans does not create our intelligence - the laws of physics regarding the operation of brain cells does. There is no "black magic" in operation in our heads that somehow causes the laws of physics to be broken.
Consciousness is a side issue. It has no *technical* bearing (only philosophical) on the technology of AI; and has no technical bearing on the dangers of creating AI.