There's a reason I don't buy them. I'm not a moron
Yes - it's much better to spend 5 times as much up front to have a system that will be games-functional for about half the time.
Whether or not a console is stupid depends on the type of games you prefer, the amount of money you have, and how much you play. For many people, buying a gaming-class computer would be retarded - even if they use it for other things.
If there is anything that history has shown us, it's that to the reaction of a dominant force, there is the counterreaction of resistence. And that does not make the world 'more stable'.
First off, you didn't pay attention to what I was saying - you're arguing against someone that is not me. But I don't care about that. What I care about is the common idiocy you seem to be subscribing to.
A lot of people seem to be under the impression that the US has taken it upon itself to be a superpower, or imperialist. To say this is to reveal ignorance of what real imperialism looks like, but more importantly it reveals a terrible wrongness about the nature of power.
The US cannot just abdicate power and leave no power. Power cannot be destroyed - someone, some country will have it. Every power will do wrong - or will have, by inaction, abdicated power to someone who will do that wrong for them. All that there is to be decided is who gets the power.
Right now I'm much happier to see power concentrated in a country that, while flawed, is a secular, liberal democracy. It would take no courage, and only do harm, for the US the isolate itself from world affairs and try to bury its power.
Action is bound to produce mistakes, but to abandon power for this cause is to trade death and scorn for genocide and a clear conscience.
The US would certainly do well to keep in mind that they are not invulnerable - but that's not what I'm suggesting. I'm not suggesting that America's invulnerable might means it should be able to do whatever it wants.
Here's the central question: How likely is it that the US would use this newfound biological weapon as part of some offensive?
Before you answer, think about it in the context of power in different spheres.
Wouldn't you say that America's current base of power in other spheres (such as conventional weapons) makes it much less likely that it would use this new biological weapon? Could you see how another country (say Syria) might be more likely to leverage this new advantage to overcome their own disadvantages (again, perhaps in conventional weapons)?
I'm not saying I wholeheartedly approve of America developing a nasty weapon that would be a true abomination if used. All I'm saying is that it's perfectly logical to evaluate that development differently than we would if done somewhere else - not because Americans are better people, but because of how the development fits in with their current situation.
When power in different spheres is distributed consistently, the world is stable.
What does this mean? It means that the world is stable when economic and military power are aligned. When they are not aligned, countries attempt to use one to get the other. For example, a country with a big military, no money, and a rich undefended neighbor is a recipe for trouble.
Similarly, a country with nuclear or biological weapons and poverty in other spheres is dangerous. The US maintaining supremacy in many different spheres is something that adds to stability.
Or is it that if the US does it this means it is "good" research, but if someone else does it then it is "bad" research.
In 1820, it may have taken 20 years to get a headstart in fields like cotton ginning and steam-shipping. Now, 20 years is 5 product lifetimes. I think hardware patents should be 5 years, and 3 years for software/business method type patents.
Companies that truly innovate will still have plenty of time to exploit their advantage in the market (witness Palm or Amazon - you can build a real advantage in a short space of time). Entities that want to sit on patents will be SOL (that's not Sony of Latvia).
The patent the article concerns, valid or not, should have expired a long time ago.
But perhaps there's also room in the marketplace for an MMORPG that would appeal to me and other non-OCD types. The OCD market you suggest (and I've witnessed some of its consituents) is certainly a hard one to ignore. It's like writing a book to help compulsive-self-help-book-buyers.
I understand your frustration with having to do more and more (and eventually way too much) to get a new level. But it sort of has to be that way.
A level number is meaningful in two ways:
1. It distinguishes you from other players (both in terms of fighting each other, and in interacting with the game world). 2. It often releases new game content (skills, accessible areas, or play modes)
For the first, the level inflation would be meaningless. Other players at 60,000,000 XP will be at the same level as you whether they levelled at regular or exponential intervals - because you did too.
For the second, the level inflation would be disastrous. Imagine your play as a graph - with time on the x-axis and level on the y-axis. This line goes up sharply at first, and then levels off. The developers must ensure there is a certain amount of content to be doled out for each level under this line. With the slowing scale, this is manageable.
With a linear scale, it is not. New content would have to be doled out at increasingly large intervals (negating the change altogether), or diminishingly smaller amounts per level (making each level-up less satisfying than the last).
I think the focus needs to shift in RPG's away from leveling at all. Progression should be made mostly outside of computer. Want to kill dragons instead of rats? Then you're going to have to get good at playing the game. You (the person outside the computer) are going to have to gain new skills.
Whether the actual skills required to have your character succeed involve manual dexterity, fast thinking, good memory, or knowledge of the game world doesn't matter - and perhaps it could vary by class.
A lot of the fun of a game is getting better at the game (like I'm good at Super Monkey Ball) - where you are able to do things you just couldn't do before. Levelling is one way to have that happen, but it's artificial and ultimately unsatisfying - especially in a competitive setting where the winner is determined primarily by time/luck/cheating (rather than skill/focus).
If progress was based on progressing the skill of the player, imagine how much more satisfying it would be. Ever wonder why the first month of an MMORPG is satisfying? Because that's when YOU are gaining the skill to play,instead of your character.
There's definitely going to be a difficult period as robots replace large sectors of the work force. In the end, though, it's for everyone's good. I think.
At some point, the entire situation changes such that money and working are not so intimately entwined. At some point, robot workers will provide a surplus of all the things people need to live, and gradually this surplus will proceed to more luxury type items.
I love capitalism, but I don't think that it will be eternally the center of our economy. I believe that robots are the future - program them well and let them lead the way.
I've never tried an X10 camera on a plane - they're a little heavy (I've never bothered to disassemble one). The framerate should be fine - TV standard. The range on an X10 isn't spectacular, and degrades/chops with a moving source. Still, you'd get reasonable video if you kept the plane quite close. When I've done a plane mount, it's usually much more interesting to have a straight-down cam then a pilot cam - it would be hard to fly like this I'd think.
In any case, it's probably best to get a smaller, more efficient camera if you're actually going to try a plane mount.
I've found it's a lot quicker to build this kind of thing using relays for the switching. It means you don't have to do any thinking, and the switching speed is certainly fast enough for the application. I still used transistors to fire the relays - but it's still an extremely quick project.
Using relays also means the project can be re-used with different hardware much more easily - just change what's hooked up to the relays.
I also recommend the "UserPort" driver, which simply yields parallel port control to userland applications. Much simpler than monkeying about with special drivers.
If you do plan on doing it, you'll be happy to note that the X10 cameras run a long time off of a regular 9-volt battery. You'll be unhappy to note that the viewing angle on an X10 camera is far from perfect for driving.
Remote control plane? That's the ticket - and you can get a cheap RC plane for $60.
I agree - many applications aren't suited to web apps. However, for some applications, a web client is pretty close to optimal. In addition, in many situations, the benefits in terms of portability are extremely important.
For many businesses, web clients are a good choice, and will continue to be so. For some medium sized shops, they are the holy grail - short-staffed, skin-of-teeth IT staff can keep applications running without managing installs of anything on client machines. Web apps are easy to write, and many people have gotten good at writing them. They force developers to avoid many types of mistakes.
Web clients are saving companies millions of dollars - and are likely here to stay for a good while.
You have to be careful to remember that what's happening to you isn't happening to everyone. For many companies, the portability and zero client maintenance of a web client make it the better option. For others, a richer client may make more sense. For some the web services model has a lot to offer. For others, it's a boondoggle that doesn't improve manageability or user experience.
I haven't met anyone who's company is moving away from web clients. On the other hand, I can think of many, many companies that are moving towards web clients away from client/server, client/sneaker, or client/nothing type architectures.
But talking about the industry as a whole is silly - there is no industry as a whole. Computers are deployed in hundreds of industries, each of which is in a different place in technology and has different needs from that technology. I'd suggest that ComputerWorld likely has as good a perspective on this as any - and all their observations certainly square with my experience (in my little niches).
That's why he spends a lot of the article talking about architectures rather than individual machine performance - it's architecture that's key to scalability. The article is right on in this regard.
DB is the bottleneck for most websites... Java did considerably better than PHP in terms of both
This may well be true (though I haven't looked at benchmarks lately). Still, it isn't a problem inherent to script languages - just something to be fixed....like charting in a web page (well, in a.PNG), things can get messy. Yeah, you can do that in C, but what's the point ?
The point of doing it in C is to do it well (and it's really not hard, I do this fairly regularly). Neither Java nor PHP is a good language to do image processing in. Either may perform acceptibly, but they're just not as good at it as C. And there is nothing wrong with mixing languages in this fashion when the relative strengths are so disparate.
In any case, most developers are going to be using an opaque third party tool for charts, and the calling language (if it's even being called by something on the server at all) is going to be irrelevant.
Using a tool for web development doesn't mean it needs to be the only tool in the process. If my PHP database connector is written in C, it's not like the system suffers some horrible everything-is-not-the-same meltdown.
Basically, the article was on target: in the architecture shown, the differences between a scripting language, Java, or even CGI needn't affect horizontal scalability - and this (and database scalability of course) are the only things that matter in the end.
In terms of server counts required, we're back to a straight performance question - and that's another article.
Storing session state in a database only works when you have a small amount of session state to store
I think developers need to commit to smaller session footprints on servers anyway. Our goal here is to have nothing but security information stored on the server - and I think that's very reasonable. Make everything else come on the request.
We see a lot fewer bugs this way, and everything becomes easier to maintain. The database can handle the login information fine (thus far at least - our applications are all very data intensive to begin with), and being in the database means session info is easy to manage.
To me, having another a session quasi-database replicated around the cluster seems like an ill-fated enterprise.
Web development, though, is like that I guess. It's always difficult to picture what works for applications different than your own. The 100,000 lookers at site A call for a different setup than 10,000 workers at site B might need.
The country where I quite want to be.
on
Is Bluetooth Dead?
·
· Score: 1
With your mountains so lofty, and cell coverage so great. Finland, Finland, Finland - bet there's even good rates.
The experts in your article agree with my point perfectly. Either you're not understanding the point, or you've changed your mind.
The article you mention talks about maximizing friction? Why? Because road/tire friction is what moves your car forward. It's something you want to maximize, rather than avoid in order to save gas. I'm glad you now understand this, because you had it completely, idiot backwards before. Can't you see this?
I can assure you that the the friction averted by "rolling" is made up for at the axel. Why else do you need bearings?
Of course friction is important to minimize at the axel. It's a completely different issue than tire/road friction. That you're trying to grasp at this signals that you've given up your original argument - I'm glad, because it was retarded.
And yes, underinflated tires increase fuel consumption.
I never disputed that, idiot. I only disputed your interpretation (ie, that the lack of efficiency is due to increased friction).
Well, first off, we need to clear something up. Wheels certainly do reduce friction costs on motion, but not by reducing surface area. They do so by turning. The bit of rubber touching the road shouldn't be moving much relative to the road. The force from friction is precisely what's moving the car forward. A car is supposed to have great friction between wheel and road - again that's how it moves. This also explains why "braking" relies mainly on "stopping the turning" than "increasing surface area".
The problems with under-inflated tires are to do with the unpleasant mechanics involved in deforming the tire and such.
Why are aircraft round instead of square?
Friction is about rubbing. A large part of aerodynamic drag is about pushing air. These are completely different things.
how friction increases with relative velocity
It doesn't, so it's probably just as well that the article doesn't explain that. Friction is typically highest at zero relative motion.
You've really got to watch Project Grizzly to get a feel for this guy. He's a hard working, confident kind of guy. He's also a bit of a nutbar, and not always practical.
For example, he tested his bear-proof suits with swinging logs, baseball bats, and firearms - but failed to ensure he could walk in the suit before going out for a live test with bears.
He very well could have a great thing here, but I think we need to rely on someone else to come up with reasonable feasibility tests.
Slashdot Mirror
There's a reason I don't buy them. I'm not a moron
Yes - it's much better to spend 5 times as much up front to have a system that will be games-functional for about half the time.
Whether or not a console is stupid depends on the type of games you prefer, the amount of money you have, and how much you play. For many people, buying a gaming-class computer would be retarded - even if they use it for other things.
I can get suitable relays for a buck each - so that's 5 bucks (Canadian). Not too bad - but it is an expense.
If there is anything that history has shown us, it's that to the reaction of a dominant force, there is the counterreaction of resistence. And that does not make the world 'more stable'.
First off, you didn't pay attention to what I was saying - you're arguing against someone that is not me. But I don't care about that. What I care about is the common idiocy you seem to be subscribing to.
A lot of people seem to be under the impression that the US has taken it upon itself to be a superpower, or imperialist. To say this is to reveal ignorance of what real imperialism looks like, but more importantly it reveals a terrible wrongness about the nature of power.
The US cannot just abdicate power and leave no power. Power cannot be destroyed - someone, some country will have it. Every power will do wrong - or will have, by inaction, abdicated power to someone who will do that wrong for them. All that there is to be decided is who gets the power.
Right now I'm much happier to see power concentrated in a country that, while flawed, is a secular, liberal democracy. It would take no courage, and only do harm, for the US the isolate itself from world affairs and try to bury its power.
Action is bound to produce mistakes, but to abandon power for this cause is to trade death and scorn for genocide and a clear conscience.
The US would certainly do well to keep in mind that they are not invulnerable - but that's not what I'm suggesting. I'm not suggesting that America's invulnerable might means it should be able to do whatever it wants.
Here's the central question: How likely is it that the US would use this newfound biological weapon as part of some offensive?
Before you answer, think about it in the context of power in different spheres.
Wouldn't you say that America's current base of power in other spheres (such as conventional weapons) makes it much less likely that it would use this new biological weapon? Could you see how another country (say Syria) might be more likely to leverage this new advantage to overcome their own disadvantages (again, perhaps in conventional weapons)?
I'm not saying I wholeheartedly approve of America developing a nasty weapon that would be a true abomination if used. All I'm saying is that it's perfectly logical to evaluate that development differently than we would if done somewhere else - not because Americans are better people, but because of how the development fits in with their current situation.
So by this argument the world was a "safe" place in 1910 because the UK was all dominant in its position of power.
History tells us otherwise.
Yes, history does tell us otherwise. The UK was not "all dominant" in 1910. You're reasoning from a false premise.
When power in different spheres is distributed consistently, the world is stable.
What does this mean? It means that the world is stable when economic and military power are aligned. When they are not aligned, countries attempt to use one to get the other. For example, a country with a big military, no money, and a rich undefended neighbor is a recipe for trouble.
Similarly, a country with nuclear or biological weapons and poverty in other spheres is dangerous. The US maintaining supremacy in many different spheres is something that adds to stability.
Or is it that if the US does it this means it is "good" research, but if someone else does it then it is "bad" research.
Yes. And perhaps now you understand why.
Jumpman
Combat
Star Control II
The Incredible Machine
Life and Death
I think he should also add some famously bad games, and some otherwise important games:
E.T. (Atari 2600)
Black & White
(many more)
In 1820, it may have taken 20 years to get a headstart in fields like cotton ginning and steam-shipping. Now, 20 years is 5 product lifetimes. I think hardware patents should be 5 years, and 3 years for software/business method type patents.
Companies that truly innovate will still have plenty of time to exploit their advantage in the market (witness Palm or Amazon - you can build a real advantage in a short space of time). Entities that want to sit on patents will be SOL (that's not Sony of Latvia).
The patent the article concerns, valid or not, should have expired a long time ago.
But perhaps there's also room in the marketplace for an MMORPG that would appeal to me and other non-OCD types. The OCD market you suggest (and I've witnessed some of its consituents) is certainly a hard one to ignore. It's like writing a book to help compulsive-self-help-book-buyers.
I understand your frustration with having to do more and more (and eventually way too much) to get a new level. But it sort of has to be that way.
A level number is meaningful in two ways:
1. It distinguishes you from other players (both in terms of fighting each other, and in interacting with the game world).
2. It often releases new game content (skills, accessible areas, or play modes)
For the first, the level inflation would be meaningless. Other players at 60,000,000 XP will be at the same level as you whether they levelled at regular or exponential intervals - because you did too.
For the second, the level inflation would be disastrous. Imagine your play as a graph - with time on the x-axis and level on the y-axis. This line goes up sharply at first, and then levels off. The developers must ensure there is a certain amount of content to be doled out for each level under this line. With the slowing scale, this is manageable.
With a linear scale, it is not. New content would have to be doled out at increasingly large intervals (negating the change altogether), or diminishingly smaller amounts per level (making each level-up less satisfying than the last).
I think the focus needs to shift in RPG's away from leveling at all. Progression should be made mostly outside of computer. Want to kill dragons instead of rats? Then you're going to have to get good at playing the game. You (the person outside the computer) are going to have to gain new skills.
Whether the actual skills required to have your character succeed involve manual dexterity, fast thinking, good memory, or knowledge of the game world doesn't matter - and perhaps it could vary by class.
A lot of the fun of a game is getting better at the game (like I'm good at Super Monkey Ball) - where you are able to do things you just couldn't do before. Levelling is one way to have that happen, but it's artificial and ultimately unsatisfying - especially in a competitive setting where the winner is determined primarily by time/luck/cheating (rather than skill/focus).
If progress was based on progressing the skill of the player, imagine how much more satisfying it would be. Ever wonder why the first month of an MMORPG is satisfying? Because that's when YOU are gaining the skill to play,instead of your character.
There's definitely going to be a difficult period as robots replace large sectors of the work force. In the end, though, it's for everyone's good. I think.
At some point, the entire situation changes such that money and working are not so intimately entwined. At some point, robot workers will provide a surplus of all the things people need to live, and gradually this surplus will proceed to more luxury type items.
I love capitalism, but I don't think that it will be eternally the center of our economy. I believe that robots are the future - program them well and let them lead the way.
I've never tried an X10 camera on a plane - they're a little heavy (I've never bothered to disassemble one). The framerate should be fine - TV standard. The range on an X10 isn't spectacular, and degrades/chops with a moving source. Still, you'd get reasonable video if you kept the plane quite close. When I've done a plane mount, it's usually much more interesting to have a straight-down cam then a pilot cam - it would be hard to fly like this I'd think.
In any case, it's probably best to get a smaller, more efficient camera if you're actually going to try a plane mount.
I've found it's a lot quicker to build this kind of thing using relays for the switching. It means you don't have to do any thinking, and the switching speed is certainly fast enough for the application. I still used transistors to fire the relays - but it's still an extremely quick project.
Using relays also means the project can be re-used with different hardware much more easily - just change what's hooked up to the relays.
I also recommend the "UserPort" driver, which simply yields parallel port control to userland applications. Much simpler than monkeying about with special drivers.
Surprisingly not exciting.
If you do plan on doing it, you'll be happy to note that the X10 cameras run a long time off of a regular 9-volt battery. You'll be unhappy to note that the viewing angle on an X10 camera is far from perfect for driving.
Remote control plane? That's the ticket - and you can get a cheap RC plane for $60.
clients totally suck for a lot of applications
I agree - many applications aren't suited to web apps. However, for some applications, a web client is pretty close to optimal. In addition, in many situations, the benefits in terms of portability are extremely important.
For many businesses, web clients are a good choice, and will continue to be so. For some medium sized shops, they are the holy grail - short-staffed, skin-of-teeth IT staff can keep applications running without managing installs of anything on client machines. Web apps are easy to write, and many people have gotten good at writing them. They force developers to avoid many types of mistakes.
Web clients are saving companies millions of dollars - and are likely here to stay for a good while.
You have to be careful to remember that what's happening to you isn't happening to everyone. For many companies, the portability and zero client maintenance of a web client make it the better option. For others, a richer client may make more sense. For some the web services model has a lot to offer. For others, it's a boondoggle that doesn't improve manageability or user experience.
I haven't met anyone who's company is moving away from web clients. On the other hand, I can think of many, many companies that are moving towards web clients away from client/server, client/sneaker, or client/nothing type architectures.
But talking about the industry as a whole is silly - there is no industry as a whole. Computers are deployed in hundreds of industries, each of which is in a different place in technology and has different needs from that technology. I'd suggest that ComputerWorld likely has as good a perspective on this as any - and all their observations certainly square with my experience (in my little niches).
Scaling != performance
...like charting in a web page (well, in a .PNG), things can get messy. Yeah, you can do that in C, but what's the point ?
That's why he spends a lot of the article talking about architectures rather than individual machine performance - it's architecture that's key to scalability. The article is right on in this regard.
DB is the bottleneck for most websites... Java did considerably better than PHP in terms of both
This may well be true (though I haven't looked at benchmarks lately). Still, it isn't a problem inherent to script languages - just something to be fixed.
The point of doing it in C is to do it well (and it's really not hard, I do this fairly regularly). Neither Java nor PHP is a good language to do image processing in. Either may perform acceptibly, but they're just not as good at it as C. And there is nothing wrong with mixing languages in this fashion when the relative strengths are so disparate.
In any case, most developers are going to be using an opaque third party tool for charts, and the calling language (if it's even being called by something on the server at all) is going to be irrelevant.
Using a tool for web development doesn't mean it needs to be the only tool in the process. If my PHP database connector is written in C, it's not like the system suffers some horrible everything-is-not-the-same meltdown.
Basically, the article was on target: in the architecture shown, the differences between a scripting language, Java, or even CGI needn't affect horizontal scalability - and this (and database scalability of course) are the only things that matter in the end.
In terms of server counts required, we're back to a straight performance question - and that's another article.
Storing session state in a database only works when you have a small amount of session state to store
I think developers need to commit to smaller session footprints on servers anyway. Our goal here is to have nothing but security information stored on the server - and I think that's very reasonable. Make everything else come on the request.
We see a lot fewer bugs this way, and everything becomes easier to maintain. The database can handle the login information fine (thus far at least - our applications are all very data intensive to begin with), and being in the database means session info is easy to manage.
To me, having another a session quasi-database replicated around the cluster seems like an ill-fated enterprise.
Web development, though, is like that I guess. It's always difficult to picture what works for applications different than your own. The 100,000 lookers at site A call for a different setup than 10,000 workers at site B might need.
With your mountains so lofty, and cell coverage so great. Finland, Finland, Finland - bet there's even good rates.
Even very remote mountain valleys have reception
There's no such thing as "very remote" in Switzerland - not in a North American sense of the word.
It costs money to cover area. Look at the people per square kilometer, and it's pretty clear why the US (or Canada) isn't completely covered.
United Kingdom: 244
Switzerland: 177
United States: 29
Canada: 3.2
I thought I knew more about it than I do. Just from the few links I looked at, there's a lot of stuff there I didn't ever think about.
Mostly I was just really in the mood for a flame war today. Oh well - maybe next time.
Ask the experts before calling me an idiot.
The experts in your article agree with my point perfectly. Either you're not understanding the point, or you've changed your mind.
The article you mention talks about maximizing friction? Why? Because road/tire friction is what moves your car forward. It's something you want to maximize, rather than avoid in order to save gas. I'm glad you now understand this, because you had it completely, idiot backwards before. Can't you see this?
I can assure you that the the friction averted by "rolling" is made up for at the axel. Why else do you need bearings?
Of course friction is important to minimize at the axel. It's a completely different issue than tire/road friction. That you're trying to grasp at this signals that you've given up your original argument - I'm glad, because it was retarded.
And yes, underinflated tires increase fuel consumption.
I never disputed that, idiot. I only disputed your interpretation (ie, that the lack of efficiency is due to increased friction).
Why? Inflated tires have a larger surface area.
Well, first off, we need to clear something up. Wheels certainly do reduce friction costs on motion, but not by reducing surface area. They do so by turning. The bit of rubber touching the road shouldn't be moving much relative to the road. The force from friction is precisely what's moving the car forward. A car is supposed to have great friction between wheel and road - again that's how it moves. This also explains why "braking" relies mainly on "stopping the turning" than "increasing surface area".
The problems with under-inflated tires are to do with the unpleasant mechanics involved in deforming the tire and such.
Why are aircraft round instead of square?
Friction is about rubbing. A large part of aerodynamic drag is about pushing air. These are completely different things.
how friction increases with relative velocity
It doesn't, so it's probably just as well that the article doesn't explain that. Friction is typically highest at zero relative motion.
You've really got to watch Project Grizzly to get a feel for this guy. He's a hard working, confident kind of guy. He's also a bit of a nutbar, and not always practical.
For example, he tested his bear-proof suits with swinging logs, baseball bats, and firearms - but failed to ensure he could walk in the suit before going out for a live test with bears.
He very well could have a great thing here, but I think we need to rely on someone else to come up with reasonable feasibility tests.