This is a symptom of exactly what I was talking about.
Why do you want your music files organized a certain way? The point of iTunes and such software is that you shouldn't need to care how it's organized- you should be able to focus on the task you *actually* want to accomplish: 1) Find specific music. 2) Play said music. 3) Put a subset of your music on an mp3 player. 4) Burn cds of subsets of your music.
Having to organize files is a problem, not part of a solution to a problem- you should simply be able to perform the above tasks without needing to worry about the details. That's the philosophy of software design with systems like iTunes.
That's one of the things that has really pushed me away from Linux and toward MacOS X for everyday usage over the past years- the focus on actually getting something done rather than worrying about the stuff that I have to do first in order to subsequently get something done.
I dunno about that. I'm a tech guy and I like iTunes- but then, the three computers on my desk here are a mac and two windows/linux dual boot machines.
The trick is to let the software do its job without micromanaging it. Focus on what you want to get done rather than the detailed steps of how to get there, and you'll find that it does actually end up being easier and faster.
(Actually, that's generally the problem with open source UIs, I've found. Sure, they provide every possible way to customize every detailed step of the process... but all I want to do is accomplish X! If I want to break things down into algorithmic steps and tweak the parameters of those steps, well, that's what programming is and I do that enough in my job and my side projects. Applications should just work, they shouldn't need to be programmed.)
That's just it. Many of the hacks of existing voting machines don't necessarily have to do with the machine itself- they have to do with grabbing the card and modifying it externally in some fashion. So now you have you worry about physical card security at all times- and you also have the same unsolvable problem that the RIAA is dealing with when it comes to DVDs- you have to have an encrypted card, but you've got to have the key to decryption buried somewhere in the machine...
Why? Because, as it stands now, it's much harder to build something unbreakable than it is to break something. This applies to digital and physical security alike- especially when you have the perpetually weak link- human intereaction- in the mix.
We give the electronic voting makers a lot of crap for making insecure systems, and rightly so- knowing they're insecure, they shouldn't put them on the market to be used in something so important. But it's easy to forget that it really is a hard problem. The fact that they make it harder for themselves with their attempts to cut corners, of course, only makes it worse.
That's true, it's all very relative. I should have specified that I was making the assumptions at highway speeds of 65+ mph, at which point the drag forces begin to significantly impact energy requirements- even on a flat surface, you'll drop speed quite rapidly.
Of course, the point at the end that we both agree on really makes the entire discussion rather moot...
If that were true, maintaining a high speed on the highway would take very little gas. Tangential *forces* are quite high; it's just that the friction of the car's tire against the road surface provides sufficient balancing force that the tire doesn't slip unless you're turning, breaking or accelerating too quickly. Rollers would take the place of the friction force; however, because they'd rotate backward in the process of capturing energy the car would end up needing to apply higher forces to compensate, causing the car to use more energy.
All it would really be is a horribly inefficient way to use a standard car engine to generate electricity.
Except that, were that even the case, that's not the way in which the phrase "begs the question" is used in the summary- the way it's used is, exactly as the GP states, in the sense of raising a question. So the GP's point remains, though I should have guessed some smart-stupid poster would mock a real criticism.
CS people are math guys too, at least many of us are. That doesn't mean we necessarily have the expertise to validate aerospace control algorithms on the fly- that's why the's an entire discipline of aerospace engineers, because you can't expect all the *other* engineers to have sufficient knowledge.
Things like this are built as teams- and team members have to make certain assumptions about the accuracy of the other team members' work. Those algorithms should have been validated before even being handed off to the programmers, and then validated *again* as part of integrated testing.
MMORPGs do not push the database as hard as you seem to be implying. If they did, in fact, hit the database for every action taken in game, there'd be an enormous number of updates- but that's not what they do. The various computers running parts of the world at any given time cache appropriate data and make saves or lookups periodically, or when data and characters need to be handed off from one server to another, allowing macro updates instead of a constant stream of micro updates.
There are still an enormous number of clients hitting those databases at any given time, but I'd venture a guess that an e-commerce site like Amazon *does* have similar DB access concerns (or more so) to an MMORPG like WoW- and with stronger reliability requirements in the face of failures.
Almost all practical research derives in some way from "blue sky physics".
No, we can't immediately predict what will come out of this. But then, when electron spin was first discovered I'd imagine people were saying similar things- and only recently have there been reports that electron spin has been harnassed for storage/computation, which means it will finally come into the realm of practicality.
Not everything needs to have an immediate, obvious payoff to be worthwhile.
The issue isn't the number of possible actions that your character can take. Those are good.
The issue is that those actions have only extremely limited and unrealistic results in the game world. What we need aren't restrictions on what the player can do (returning back to older games), but rather an improvement in how games react dynamically to unexpected user input.
Real life is not a state machine, moving from one state to another on linear paths. Games that try to be as expansive, or more so, than real life need to also not simply be state machines.
Do you understand, at all, the concept of a localization?
If the system is in English-language mode, the program names and descriptors should be in English. It's a fairly simple concept. If you have a localization to another language, I'm all for a name translation as well. I speak English and Japanese- but I'm not for mixing the two within the system, because that's not useful to the average user.
I couldn't care less about where Rendezvous came from. It was, at the time, the name of a network discovery protocol; naming a program "Rendezvous Browser" revealed perfectly, to the target audience, that it browsed available rendezvous services.
On the other hand, Ekiga does not reveal to the target audience the purpose of the program. Nor does Sabayon.
If Ekiga is not a random selection of letters, then at the least it is a poorly chosen selection of letters. Since you're so "pro-everyone" and I'm apparently an arrogant american, would you care to enlighten us as to the origin and meaning of the word? I'm perfectly happy to look into understanding other languages. Knowing a smattering of words here and there, or being fluent in another language, does not meant that choosing program names from those languages is useful when the target audience is expected to be fluent in a single language. Again... localizations exist for a reason here. If you want to use another language... write the localization, and call it that clever word in that language.
Why do so many linux programmers insist on such crazy naming conventions. Sabayon? Changing a perfectly servicable and pragmagic GNOME Meeting to "Ekiga"?
I use linux both at home and at work, so I'm not some anti-linux zealot or something- I think it's a legitimate question to raise. On my mac laptop, I have a handy app for browsing mDNS networks called Rendezvous Browser (since mDNS was once called Rendezvous). The name is simple and describes perfectly what the program does. On the other hand, 90% of the linux applications available have names that look like they were chosen by picking random letters and squishing them together. I'm sure that the programmers think they've very clever by choosing a name that means something in some obscure language- or they just thing the name sounds cool- but that simple lack of meaningful names is detrimental. If I start up a GNOME session and want to use network meeting functionality, how is there any possible way that I could guess that "Ekiga" is the application I'm looking for?
The problem with this is that while you can throw money at pretty graphics, you can't throw money at creative, engaging gameplay. Reusing an existing idea and "upgrading" it with new graphics and models may take a lot of development time and money, but it's just a matter of throwing resources at the problem. It doesn't matter how much money you throw at bad game designers, though- they're not going to create something amazing.
Therefore, the development houses go for what they can be certain of- throw money at a game, sell it based on graphics, make money. It might not make the best games, but there's no denying that they *do* sell.
"Now, of course you can just call C functions, but then what is the point of objective C?"
The point of any programming language is to give the developer the tools they need to efficiently (programmer time + machine resources) accomplish the goal they set out to do. No more, no less.
Not using C functions simply because objective-C has methods is ridiculous; the language has the direct functional call built in for *exactly* the reason you're discussing. I write performance code for simulation data display in Objective-C; it simply requires a little thought into what functions require absolute maximum performance (and can therefore tolerate the lack of flexibility) and what functions (such as GUI functions) are better off with the dynamism that Obj-C methods provide.
I don't care what language you're programming in, but if you completely ignore one of the tools that the language provides you and then claim that the language sucks, it's difficult to lend any credence to your opinion.
Actually, the OS X kernel is a custom hybrid of a mach kernel and the BSD kernel. The BSD stuff is definitely *far* more than just userland tools; the only thing that's really mach is central interior of the kernel; BSD's kernel then sits on top of that.
Stop trying to insult people, verify your facts, and maybe *you'll* learn something.
A security vulnerability for older versions of iTunes isn't exactly iTunes being hit with a critical vulnerability. It's already fixed- in the well-publicized update yesterday.
But of course, the time you took to post this slashdot comment was entirely productive? Saving the world, are we, one comment at a time? Fixing the Energy Crisis (TM) by whining and trolling?
I'm sorry, I really thought my computer was supposed to be useable.
5 passwords to boot and check email on the laptop? What in the world are they *for*? BIOS, system login, email login, maybe one for decrypting if you're receiving encrypted emails all the time. What else?
Security is a balance. Very few security measures only make things more difficult for an attacker- most of them make life make difficult for the person taking them as well. It *is* useful to analyze the threat in any situation, because it helps you make an informed judgement as to how secure something needs to be made, balancing risk versus useability.
Not checking luggage when you fly? What, are you worried about someone snooping through your underwear? Oh, sure, don't put anything important in there if you're worried about that, but really... this truly is on the paranoid side of things.
Seems like this could be used to implement some sort of security feature. Turn on a utility, and when significant movement is detected the computer could send out a signal- in the form of activating an attached alarm, taking a picture with a webcam and emailing it, etc etc. When the owner returns, the utility could be quickly turned back off.
Advertisers pay a certain fee to a website. That fee is either flat, or based on a count of click-throughs. If the fee is flat, then my blocking of the popup has no bearing on the website as a whole. If the fee is non-flat, and a large percentage of the website's visiting population objects to popups and uses software (browser or add-on) that blocks such, then the website will suffer and perhaps look for other adversting sources. Either way, I really have no bearing or guilt on the situation. I use the technology at hand to view the content I want. I signed no contract saying I must view pop-up ads- therefore, I don't at all feel bound to do so.
Websites will adapt to the changing pop-up blocking technology, or fail as a result. Either way, it is not my responsibility, as I don't manage the website.
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This is a symptom of exactly what I was talking about.
Why do you want your music files organized a certain way? The point of iTunes and such software is that you shouldn't need to care how it's organized- you should be able to focus on the task you *actually* want to accomplish: 1) Find specific music. 2) Play said music. 3) Put a subset of your music on an mp3 player. 4) Burn cds of subsets of your music.
Having to organize files is a problem, not part of a solution to a problem- you should simply be able to perform the above tasks without needing to worry about the details. That's the philosophy of software design with systems like iTunes.
That's one of the things that has really pushed me away from Linux and toward MacOS X for everyday usage over the past years- the focus on actually getting something done rather than worrying about the stuff that I have to do first in order to subsequently get something done.
I dunno about that. I'm a tech guy and I like iTunes- but then, the three computers on my desk here are a mac and two windows/linux dual boot machines.
The trick is to let the software do its job without micromanaging it. Focus on what you want to get done rather than the detailed steps of how to get there, and you'll find that it does actually end up being easier and faster.
(Actually, that's generally the problem with open source UIs, I've found. Sure, they provide every possible way to customize every detailed step of the process... but all I want to do is accomplish X! If I want to break things down into algorithmic steps and tweak the parameters of those steps, well, that's what programming is and I do that enough in my job and my side projects. Applications should just work, they shouldn't need to be programmed.)
You missed the "G" in front of the ly for that object. 2.44 Gly is a bit further away than 2.44 ly.
A quaser that close to the earth would be a less than pleasant galactic neighbor.
Um. There's a "Now Playing" option that takes you directly back to the current song from the menu. No real need for navigation.
That's just it. Many of the hacks of existing voting machines don't necessarily have to do with the machine itself- they have to do with grabbing the card and modifying it externally in some fashion. So now you have you worry about physical card security at all times- and you also have the same unsolvable problem that the RIAA is dealing with when it comes to DVDs- you have to have an encrypted card, but you've got to have the key to decryption buried somewhere in the machine...
It really isn't as trivial as it might seem.
Why? Because, as it stands now, it's much harder to build something unbreakable than it is to break something. This applies to digital and physical security alike- especially when you have the perpetually weak link- human intereaction- in the mix.
We give the electronic voting makers a lot of crap for making insecure systems, and rightly so- knowing they're insecure, they shouldn't put them on the market to be used in something so important. But it's easy to forget that it really is a hard problem. The fact that they make it harder for themselves with their attempts to cut corners, of course, only makes it worse.
That's true, it's all very relative. I should have specified that I was making the assumptions at highway speeds of 65+ mph, at which point the drag forces begin to significantly impact energy requirements- even on a flat surface, you'll drop speed quite rapidly.
Of course, the point at the end that we both agree on really makes the entire discussion rather moot...
If that were true, maintaining a high speed on the highway would take very little gas. Tangential *forces* are quite high; it's just that the friction of the car's tire against the road surface provides sufficient balancing force that the tire doesn't slip unless you're turning, breaking or accelerating too quickly. Rollers would take the place of the friction force; however, because they'd rotate backward in the process of capturing energy the car would end up needing to apply higher forces to compensate, causing the car to use more energy.
All it would really be is a horribly inefficient way to use a standard car engine to generate electricity.
Except that, were that even the case, that's not the way in which the phrase "begs the question" is used in the summary- the way it's used is, exactly as the GP states, in the sense of raising a question. So the GP's point remains, though I should have guessed some smart-stupid poster would mock a real criticism.
CS people are math guys too, at least many of us are. That doesn't mean we necessarily have the expertise to validate aerospace control algorithms on the fly- that's why the's an entire discipline of aerospace engineers, because you can't expect all the *other* engineers to have sufficient knowledge.
Things like this are built as teams- and team members have to make certain assumptions about the accuracy of the other team members' work. Those algorithms should have been validated before even being handed off to the programmers, and then validated *again* as part of integrated testing.
MMORPGs do not push the database as hard as you seem to be implying. If they did, in fact, hit the database for every action taken in game, there'd be an enormous number of updates- but that's not what they do. The various computers running parts of the world at any given time cache appropriate data and make saves or lookups periodically, or when data and characters need to be handed off from one server to another, allowing macro updates instead of a constant stream of micro updates.
There are still an enormous number of clients hitting those databases at any given time, but I'd venture a guess that an e-commerce site like Amazon *does* have similar DB access concerns (or more so) to an MMORPG like WoW- and with stronger reliability requirements in the face of failures.
Almost all practical research derives in some way from "blue sky physics".
No, we can't immediately predict what will come out of this. But then, when electron spin was first discovered I'd imagine people were saying similar things- and only recently have there been reports that electron spin has been harnassed for storage/computation, which means it will finally come into the realm of practicality.
Not everything needs to have an immediate, obvious payoff to be worthwhile.
The issue isn't the number of possible actions that your character can take. Those are good.
The issue is that those actions have only extremely limited and unrealistic results in the game world. What we need aren't restrictions on what the player can do (returning back to older games), but rather an improvement in how games react dynamically to unexpected user input.
Real life is not a state machine, moving from one state to another on linear paths. Games that try to be as expansive, or more so, than real life need to also not simply be state machines.
Do you understand, at all, the concept of a localization?
If the system is in English-language mode, the program names and descriptors should be in English. It's a fairly simple concept. If you have a localization to another language, I'm all for a name translation as well. I speak English and Japanese- but I'm not for mixing the two within the system, because that's not useful to the average user.
I couldn't care less about where Rendezvous came from. It was, at the time, the name of a network discovery protocol; naming a program "Rendezvous Browser" revealed perfectly, to the target audience, that it browsed available rendezvous services.
On the other hand, Ekiga does not reveal to the target audience the purpose of the program. Nor does Sabayon.
If Ekiga is not a random selection of letters, then at the least it is a poorly chosen selection of letters. Since you're so "pro-everyone" and I'm apparently an arrogant american, would you care to enlighten us as to the origin and meaning of the word? I'm perfectly happy to look into understanding other languages. Knowing a smattering of words here and there, or being fluent in another language, does not meant that choosing program names from those languages is useful when the target audience is expected to be fluent in a single language. Again... localizations exist for a reason here. If you want to use another language... write the localization, and call it that clever word in that language.
Why do so many linux programmers insist on such crazy naming conventions. Sabayon? Changing a perfectly servicable and pragmagic GNOME Meeting to "Ekiga"?
I use linux both at home and at work, so I'm not some anti-linux zealot or something- I think it's a legitimate question to raise. On my mac laptop, I have a handy app for browsing mDNS networks called Rendezvous Browser (since mDNS was once called Rendezvous). The name is simple and describes perfectly what the program does. On the other hand, 90% of the linux applications available have names that look like they were chosen by picking random letters and squishing them together. I'm sure that the programmers think they've very clever by choosing a name that means something in some obscure language- or they just thing the name sounds cool- but that simple lack of meaningful names is detrimental. If I start up a GNOME session and want to use network meeting functionality, how is there any possible way that I could guess that "Ekiga" is the application I'm looking for?
The problem with this is that while you can throw money at pretty graphics, you can't throw money at creative, engaging gameplay. Reusing an existing idea and "upgrading" it with new graphics and models may take a lot of development time and money, but it's just a matter of throwing resources at the problem. It doesn't matter how much money you throw at bad game designers, though- they're not going to create something amazing.
Therefore, the development houses go for what they can be certain of- throw money at a game, sell it based on graphics, make money. It might not make the best games, but there's no denying that they *do* sell.
"Now, of course you can just call C functions, but then what is the point of objective C?"
The point of any programming language is to give the developer the tools they need to efficiently (programmer time + machine resources) accomplish the goal they set out to do. No more, no less.
Not using C functions simply because objective-C has methods is ridiculous; the language has the direct functional call built in for *exactly* the reason you're discussing. I write performance code for simulation data display in Objective-C; it simply requires a little thought into what functions require absolute maximum performance (and can therefore tolerate the lack of flexibility) and what functions (such as GUI functions) are better off with the dynamism that Obj-C methods provide.
I don't care what language you're programming in, but if you completely ignore one of the tools that the language provides you and then claim that the language sucks, it's difficult to lend any credence to your opinion.
Actually, the OS X kernel is a custom hybrid of a mach kernel and the BSD kernel. The BSD stuff is definitely *far* more than just userland tools; the only thing that's really mach is central interior of the kernel; BSD's kernel then sits on top of that.
Stop trying to insult people, verify your facts, and maybe *you'll* learn something.
A security vulnerability for older versions of iTunes isn't exactly iTunes being hit with a critical vulnerability. It's already fixed- in the well-publicized update yesterday.
Video games, total waste of time, you say.
But of course, the time you took to post this slashdot comment was entirely productive? Saving the world, are we, one comment at a time? Fixing the Energy Crisis (TM) by whining and trolling?
Move along, please, nothing to see here.
I'm sorry, I really thought my computer was supposed to be useable.
5 passwords to boot and check email on the laptop? What in the world are they *for*? BIOS, system login, email login, maybe one for decrypting if you're receiving encrypted emails all the time. What else?
Security is a balance. Very few security measures only make things more difficult for an attacker- most of them make life make difficult for the person taking them as well. It *is* useful to analyze the threat in any situation, because it helps you make an informed judgement as to how secure something needs to be made, balancing risk versus useability.
Not checking luggage when you fly? What, are you worried about someone snooping through your underwear? Oh, sure, don't put anything important in there if you're worried about that, but really... this truly is on the paranoid side of things.
Tell AMD that 2.7 GHz is "5 years ago", then.
Even Intel is finally figuring out that pushing the whole clock speed = performance myth is starting to cause problems.
I realize you have an irrational need to bash Apple products, but please, try to do so in an informed fashion.
Seems like this could be used to implement some sort of security feature. Turn on a utility, and when significant movement is detected the computer could send out a signal- in the form of activating an attached alarm, taking a picture with a webcam and emailing it, etc etc. When the owner returns, the utility could be quickly turned back off.
Oooh, a troll! Well, maybe I'll feed it anyway.
Advertisers pay a certain fee to a website. That fee is either flat, or based on a count of click-throughs. If the fee is flat, then my blocking of the popup has no bearing on the website as a whole. If the fee is non-flat, and a large percentage of the website's visiting population objects to popups and uses software (browser or add-on) that blocks such, then the website will suffer and perhaps look for other adversting sources. Either way, I really have no bearing or guilt on the situation. I use the technology at hand to view the content I want. I signed no contract saying I must view pop-up ads- therefore, I don't at all feel bound to do so.
Websites will adapt to the changing pop-up blocking technology, or fail as a result. Either way, it is not my responsibility, as I don't manage the website.
Are you implying that Slashdot commentary had credibility to begin with?