It seems obvious that there is already a fusion between the games industry and universities. Where do the games companies get their programmers from?
After the academics have done the real pioneering work, the other programmers pick it up a decade later. This pattern has been established in AI since the 1950's. Everyone is writing AI chess programs today using the techniques of min-max pruning invented in the 1950's to solve the chess playing problem.
Now getting to a game related problem that has been vexing me:
I contribute some code to a Civilisation clone: Freeciv at www.freeciv.org.
Currently we are badly stumped at trying to create an AI that
1.) Learns from mistakes - maintains a database of losing/winning games. I'm talking something similar to Case Based Reasoning here.
2.) Plays 2D geography well. This problem space is far simpler than RTS games. I need help in basic things like identifying bottlenecks, forming and moving units in cohesion.
The Ogg people have got a good track record. I trust them not to screw around with licenses and produce proprietary versions.
For those who lack the this excellent record of past behaviour, where is the contradiction? I think VP5 will absorb some bug fixes and then suddenly go proprietary exactly like Divx;) did. Stick with Ogg. It's the safer alternative.
I don't know what you are talking about. As long as the Gnu toolchain is installed, Linux apps normally port prefectly well to other Unixes. The least compliant unix variant to port from is OS X. I've never needed to do more than install the requirements for the program, and edit aclocal.m4 before running autoheader;aclocal;autoconf;automake.
Another video codec sounds good, but after the nasty DivX;) experience, I don't trust people who make their codecs open source, and then return to being proprietary.
LGPL is a bastard license at best. GPL or nothing is the only way to go.
Because I found your comment amusing. The only problem with the 71 and 3/4 minutes of silence is that before long people will clamouring for those CDS. What is preferable, N'sync or 72 mins of silence?
Finally, we will see the return of competition to internet browsers. People are finally willing to try alternatives to IE. Hopefully we won't see ghettoization, with IE dominant on windows and Mozilla dominanant everywhere else.
Gross National Product matters. The amount of money per person is IRRELEVANT. You are ignoring a very important and very basic fact - money is not distributed equally.
Those few "elite" institutions are more than enough considering the middle class of India alone is far larger than the entire US. China has of course an even bigger middle class, so both nations can easily educate millions of citizens.
It's also important to note that both these countries posess a large engineering base, a highly educated population, and have already registered *DECADES* of better than 5% growth.
The Chinese economy is far more capitalist than command. No nation on this planet has matched the increase in living standards, literacy and per capita income that the chinese have achieved since the 1950s. Only Japan and South Koera comes close.
There are huge advantages to any nation that can dominate space. Remeber the rush for colonies in the 17 th century when mere continents were up for grabs. In the 21st century, ENTIRE planets can be
up for grabs. Imagine being the sole owner of Mars.
This does not even mention the asteroids composed of almost pure platinum or gold floating around in space. As well as being a planet killer, such an asteroid could be a very good source of raw materials.
Needless to say, there is also the great cientific advances that will come from exploration.
The first contact with an alien civilisation or even the discovery of alien life is also going to be discovered by the most advanced nation in the space race.
Wrong. Absolute size of the economy is all that matters. If per capita was important, Switzerland would have a far better space program than India or China. For that matter, look at the list of nations you provided.
When will I see space launches from those countries any century?
China (and India) for that matter are more interested in a space program for the science benefit than just weapons. Weapons are important, but this is more of an attempt to be recognised as a high tech nation.
1.) A giant big smoking hole where the office used to be would be a good start.
2.) Realistically, after firing all current employees for sheer incompetence, hire new ones at much higher salaries. Make their performance conditional on *not approving* patents. The more rejections for prior art or being obvious, the more pay the examiner is given. Companies should also be liable for bad patents. A company could forfeit over 10% of its assets for a patent granted that was either obvious or prior art. This should stop parasites like Rambus in their tracks.
3.) Remove patent protection entirely for "business methods" and software patents, and sharply reduce all patent terms to 5 yr terms, which can be renewed only 4 times maximum. The companies now have to show their R&D cost for developing the patent, and once their is a profit made the patent cannot be renewed again.
The price for increasing the length of the patents increases, doubling every time it is renewed.
4.) In general, prevent indefinite extension of copyright and patents. This means that anyone will be able to market Mickey Mouse etc.
>Which is a bad idea, because it corrupts the >medical community. If you want to commit suicide, >go ahead and do it, but don't corrupt MY medical >care.
YOUR medical care is already corrupt. Regardless of your steadfast deliberate ignorance, Euthanasia happens quite often in hospitals. Legalising it helps save the doctors from the legal consequeces rather than the *wink wink* solution we have now.
I think that every person has the right to live or die as they chose, and if they cannot comit suicide unassisted they may very well need help.
legalized softdrugs
>Extremely arguable as to whether the produces >more freedom from the non-drug users who have to >deal with the druggies.
I'm going to argue with you on this, even though I fully agree. I hate people who treat the drugs problem as if it can be dealt with the current methods.
There are only two methods to pursue:
Legalisation
Tough enforcement - This is the method I favour. This involves among others:
1.) Social ostracisation - treating drug users as citizens without any rights. 2.) Execution of dealers as in Malaysia. 3.) Compulsory univeral blood tests and firing based on positive responces.
>legalized abortion
>That doesn't produce all that much freedom for >the child, now does it? If a country had a law >that said you could terminate any child under >five years old at the parent's discretion, would >that make that country have more "freedom"?
Intellectual honesty here. I myself am not in favour of abortion. I much rather prefer dodging the issue and concentrate on preventing pregnancy in the first place.
If I was a woman however, I would state that this was my body, and my choice whether to give birth or not. Your method of claiming this is wrong, and claiming the right to dictate to people what to do with their own bodies is just wrong. I refuse to allow anyone, least of all you, the power to dictate what is right.
The actors for the dragonball film will be important. It should not be DragonballZ in my opinion because the Z fighters are just too strong. I do not believe the audience will find it likely a single being could destroy an entire planet. The scale of destruction in dragonball is just right, as well as allowing a great villain - Piccolo.
The people I'd like to see in the roles for Dragonball
Piccolo - Hugh Jackman
Goku/Gohan - The ideal would have been Bruce Lee/Brandon Lee, now it would have to be Jet Li.
Master Roshi - Patrick Stewart and I want Master Roshi to be a lecherous old man.
The are also people who prefer not to see their code abused by commercial software programmers. If you contribute to GPLed code you ensure that you help the community. Contribute to BSD license and your code might end up stolen by parsitic programmers who never give back to the community.
Arguably better? Funny, in every respect FreeBSD is worse than linux
1) Hardware support
2) Commericial and free software(Linux is the only one on which it is possible to compile most software projects out of cvs). Ever try compiling something not out of ports on a BSD? Linux is the development platform of choice. Ever wonder why?
3) Linux is multiplatform, supporting as many as NetBSD, and usually being better on the same hardware. Linux is usually far superior on Sparcs, Alphas, and PPC hardware. In short, it is unquestionably better than Free and Open as far as running on other hardware goes.
4) Installing binary software. There is no equivalent of apt-get or rpm.
5) Diversity. With linux you get a much wider choice of what to install and use. With the BSD's there is only the ONE TRUE WAY - the UFS filesystem or no other way, their security model or none.
6) Installation - All the linux distros are far better at providing an easy to configure and replicate install than any BSD.
7) Commercial and free support - even a single linux distro like Mandrake has better support than FreeBSD can manage.
As for Marketing Buzz, you are speaking complete nonsense. Linux had no marketing until recently, it was developed after FreeBSD, yet by word of mouth alone it eclipsed all the BSD's in popularity. And significantly, almost all linux users are experienced with unix, yet they chose to reject BSD in favour of linux. Perhaps you do not have the slightest clue what you are talking about.
This is great. Mozilla is surely but steadily marching towards world domination. It's reached the 1.0 milestone, it's available on more platforms than windows, and more programs based on mozilla are appearing.
Ext3 is quite nice, I've moved to it myself
because the root partition until recently
had to be ext2. I still can't help feeling
that ext3 is slower though compared to Reiser.
Slashdot Mirror
It seems obvious that there is already a fusion between the games industry and universities. Where do the games companies get their programmers from?
After the academics have done the real pioneering work, the other programmers pick it up a decade later. This pattern has been established in AI since the 1950's. Everyone is writing AI chess programs today using the techniques of min-max pruning invented in the 1950's to solve the chess playing problem.
Now getting to a game related problem that has been vexing me:
I contribute some code to a Civilisation clone: Freeciv at www.freeciv.org.
Currently we are badly stumped at trying to create an AI that
1.) Learns from mistakes - maintains a database of losing/winning games. I'm talking something similar to Case Based Reasoning here.
2.) Plays 2D geography well. This problem space is far simpler than RTS games. I need help in basic things like identifying bottlenecks, forming and moving units in cohesion.
The Ogg people have got a good track record. I trust them not to screw around with licenses and produce proprietary versions.
;) did. Stick with Ogg. It's the safer alternative.
For those who lack the this excellent record of past behaviour, where is the contradiction? I think VP5 will absorb some bug fixes and then suddenly go proprietary exactly like Divx
I don't know what you are talking about. As long as the Gnu toolchain is installed, Linux apps normally
port prefectly well to other Unixes. The least compliant unix variant to port from is OS X. I've never needed to do more than install the requirements for the program, and edit aclocal.m4
before running autoheader;aclocal;autoconf;automake.
Another video codec sounds good, but after the nasty DivX ;) experience, I don't trust people who make their codecs open source, and then return to being proprietary.
LGPL is a bastard license at best. GPL or nothing is the only way to go.
Because I found your comment amusing. The only problem with the 71 and 3/4 minutes of silence is that before long people will clamouring for those CDS. What is preferable, N'sync or 72 mins of silence?
Finally, we will see the return of competition to internet browsers. People are finally willing to try alternatives to IE. Hopefully we won't see ghettoization, with IE dominant on windows and Mozilla dominanant everywhere else.
Gross National Product matters. The amount of money per person is IRRELEVANT. You are ignoring a very important and very basic fact - money is not distributed equally.
Those few "elite" institutions are more than enough considering the middle class of India alone is far larger than the entire US. China has of course an even bigger middle class, so both nations can easily educate millions of citizens.
It's also important to note that both these countries posess a large engineering base, a highly educated population, and have already registered *DECADES* of better than 5% growth.
The Chinese economy is far more capitalist than command. No nation on this planet has matched the increase in living standards, literacy and per capita income that the chinese have achieved since the 1950s. Only Japan and South Koera comes close.
There are huge advantages to any nation that can dominate space. Remeber the rush for colonies in the 17 th century when mere continents were up for grabs. In the 21st century, ENTIRE planets can be up for grabs. Imagine being the sole owner of Mars. This does not even mention the asteroids composed of almost pure platinum or gold floating around in space. As well as being a planet killer, such an asteroid could be a very good source of raw materials. Needless to say, there is also the great cientific advances that will come from exploration. The first contact with an alien civilisation or even the discovery of alien life is also going to be discovered by the most advanced nation in the space race.
Wrong. Absolute size of the economy is all that matters. If per capita was important, Switzerland
would have a far better space program than India
or China. For that matter, look at the list of nations you provided.
When will I see space launches from those countries
any century?
China (and India) for that matter are more interested in a space program for the science benefit than just weapons. Weapons are important,
but this is more of an attempt to be recognised as
a high tech nation.
1.) A giant big smoking hole where the office used to be would be a good start.
2.) Realistically, after firing all current employees for sheer incompetence, hire new ones at much higher salaries. Make their performance conditional on *not approving* patents. The more rejections for prior art or being obvious, the more pay the examiner is given. Companies should also be liable for bad patents. A company could forfeit over 10% of its assets for a patent granted that was either obvious or prior art.
This should stop parasites like Rambus in their tracks.
3.) Remove patent protection entirely for "business methods" and software patents, and sharply reduce all patent terms to 5 yr terms, which can be renewed only 4 times maximum. The companies now have to show their R&D cost for developing the patent, and once their is a profit made the patent cannot be renewed again.
The price for increasing the length of the patents
increases, doubling every time it is renewed.
4.) In general, prevent indefinite extension of copyright and patents. This means that anyone will be able to market Mickey Mouse etc.
legalized euthanasia
>Which is a bad idea, because it corrupts the >medical community. If you want to commit suicide, >go ahead and do it, but don't corrupt MY medical >care.
YOUR medical care is already corrupt. Regardless of your steadfast deliberate ignorance, Euthanasia happens quite often in hospitals. Legalising it helps save the doctors from the legal consequeces rather than the *wink wink* solution we have now.
I think that every person has the right to live or die as they chose, and if they cannot comit suicide unassisted they may very well need help.
legalized softdrugs
>Extremely arguable as to whether the produces >more freedom from the non-drug users who have to >deal with the druggies.
I'm going to argue with you on this, even though I fully agree. I hate people who treat the drugs problem as if it can be dealt with the current methods.
There are only two methods to pursue:
Legalisation
Tough enforcement - This is the method I favour. This involves among others:
1.) Social ostracisation - treating drug users as citizens without any rights.
2.) Execution of dealers as in Malaysia.
3.) Compulsory univeral blood tests and firing based on positive responces.
>legalized abortion
>That doesn't produce all that much freedom for >the child, now does it? If a country had a law >that said you could terminate any child under >five years old at the parent's discretion, would >that make that country have more "freedom"?
Intellectual honesty here. I myself am not in favour of abortion. I much rather prefer dodging the issue and concentrate on preventing pregnancy in the first place.
If I was a woman however, I would state that this was my body, and my choice whether to give birth or not. Your method of claiming this is wrong, and claiming the right to dictate to people what to do with their own bodies is just wrong. I refuse to allow anyone, least of all you, the power to dictate what is right.
The actors for the dragonball film will be important. It should not be DragonballZ in my opinion because the Z fighters are just too strong. I do not believe the audience will find it likely a single being could destroy an entire planet. The scale of destruction in dragonball is just right, as well as allowing a great villain - Piccolo.
The people I'd like to see in the roles for Dragonball
Piccolo - Hugh Jackman
Goku/Gohan - The ideal would have been Bruce Lee/Brandon Lee, now it would have to be Jet Li.
Master Roshi - Patrick Stewart and I want Master Roshi to be a lecherous old man.
Krillin: Jackie Chan
The are also people who prefer not to see their code abused by commercial software programmers. If you contribute to GPLed code you ensure that you help the community. Contribute to BSD license and your code might end up stolen by parsitic programmers who never give back to the community.
Arguably better? Funny, in every respect FreeBSD is worse than linux
1) Hardware support
2) Commericial and free software(Linux is the only
one on which it is possible to compile most software projects out of cvs). Ever try compiling
something not out of ports on a BSD? Linux is the
development platform of choice. Ever wonder why?
3) Linux is multiplatform, supporting as many as
NetBSD, and usually being better on the same hardware. Linux is usually far superior on Sparcs,
Alphas, and PPC hardware. In short, it is unquestionably better than Free and Open as far as
running on other hardware goes.
4) Installing binary software. There is no equivalent of apt-get or rpm.
5) Diversity. With linux you get a much wider choice of what to install and use. With the BSD's
there is only the ONE TRUE WAY - the UFS filesystem or no other way, their security model or none.
6) Installation - All the linux distros are far better at providing an easy to configure and replicate install than any BSD.
7) Commercial and free support - even a single linux distro like Mandrake has better support than
FreeBSD can manage.
As for Marketing Buzz, you are speaking complete nonsense. Linux had no marketing until recently,
it was developed after FreeBSD, yet by word of mouth alone it eclipsed all the BSD's in popularity. And significantly, almost all linux users are experienced with unix, yet they chose to reject BSD in favour of linux. Perhaps you do not have the slightest clue what you are talking about.
This is great. Mozilla is surely but steadily marching towards world domination. It's reached
the 1.0 milestone, it's available on more platforms
than windows, and more programs based on mozilla
are appearing.
Ever try compiling the kernel? Reiserfs is noticeably faster than ext3 for that task.
The last entry
52 You Were Doomed From The Start 1.7281 1.42
Ext3 is quite nice, I've moved to it myself
because the root partition until recently
had to be ext2. I still can't help feeling
that ext3 is slower though compared to Reiser.
Anyone else got comments on performance?
I'm looking forward to this. If they pull this off,
hopefully others will follow the example.