Worse, two people that I can think of who I otherwise respect as honorable men -- my dad and the pastor of my church -- both think that Microsoft has a bold vision that is to be emulated and/or has done lots of good for the country overall.
Well, send them this article and let them know what Microsoft really thinks of them - as their utterly ignorant economic sources or pawns.
Back in medieval days there were other names for them - serfs.
Welcome to neo-feudalism folks. But then the guy in the White House says everything is fine, so it must be, huh?
I am not saying that. All I say is that an economy that does not balance the needs of both foreign and domestic customers, as well as the needs of all classes, is an economy that cannot sustain itself.
By selling services to foreign interests, a country increases the domestic price for these services as well. In the end, this stunts the growth of the domestic economy, especially when the service is vital for other companies to compete on the world market.
Yes, the cronies in the outsourcing destination flourish, but at the cost of other people in the economy. And that's a bad idea.
I don't know... Oh yeah! How about developing their own economy in other areas so they could support their own IT services, products, and infrastructure? And in the process bring jobs to many more of their people. But I guess it's too hard for any government to invest in any but the already rich and powerful and try to improve their lives (at the expense of other economic entities - both domestic and foreign) than to actually build an economy that - from the ground up - supports both the lower and upper classes well.
Don't do it! If you have to learn something, at least go to C#. Visual C++.NET would be OK, too. Both of those are better languages all around. And you can still interface to DLL's with either. To almost any programming question VB is NOT the answer.
... but these days, that'll get you on some DoJ watch list really fast (can't have people making drugs or chemical weapons or explosives, you know).
Is chemistry outside of college labs and big industrial concerns going to die out? Or is there some way to let the Feds know you're just doing it for your own curiosity and not engaging in "acts against the state"?
More ammunition for those who want to increase H1-B visas! After all, with the dearth of students, where will the talented individuals industry needs come from?
And what right do YOU have to say that a corporate entity (or any other entity for that matter) should be destroyed simply because you don't like it.
As a citizen, every right. The corporation is chartered by the government as an agency of the citizenry, uses airwaves that belong in joint ownership to the citizenry, and the radio stations are granted the right to use these airwaves only to the extent that the citizenry benefits (see FCC regs, if you don't believe me). Corporations do not emerge from some tabula rasa of nature and, to the extent that they are governmentally created entities, we, as the final arbiters of our government, have (and the original poster in question has) EVERY right to demand that they acquit themselves with some amount of decorum and in the best interest not only of their shareholders, but also in the best interests of the public. Or, if you'd like, we can simply abolish all limited liability financial structures, if that would make you happier.
And the last paragraph sums it up so nicely! I'm glad Warren Buffett is finally recognizing people who so desperately want to be noticed!
Re:What is the purpose of AI?
on
AI Going Nowhere?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
The human mind is not rule-based -- we impose a framework of rules to allow everyone to live together in relative harmony.
So, when you see a cliff, you blindly walk off it? After all, there are no rules disallowing it, and it's not clear that anyone else's "relative harmony" would be disturbed by such a thing.
Humans have many rules that they create and live by themselves - many having to do with self-preservation, self-actualization, and motivation - that have little to do with you simplistic explanation of "no internal rules".
so in many cases the PhD student *has* to do the tinkering
In most cases, the hardware and its limitations can be simulated. The only reason that most robotic AI projects are embedded in hardware is because it makes good eye candy for the science press, funders, etc. If you have a good simulation of the environment and the platform, you no longer need to build the hardware for AI research to proceed.
Also, why does one need to build new platforms each time a project ensues? Many robotic components could be reused so that only processor boards, motive actuators, or sensors would need to be updated. The reuse of firmware would cut down on the amount of programming time, as well. I think a good MS thesis would be to develop a kind of common robotic architecture along with a simulation testbed. This would allow the AI researchers to get back to work and only do last minute tinkering.
Re:Will we ever have *real* AI?
on
AI Going Nowhere?
·
· Score: 2, Funny
My parents had no problem producing a brain; four in fact. Maybe I'll create some myself some day.
action 30pc, comedy 17pc, good v evil 13pc, love/sex/romance 12pc, special effects 10pc, plot 10pc and music 8pc
Didn't Pluto Nash have all of those things, too? And in about the same proportion (well, except for the plot and comedy and action and music and love and special effects things)?
Any society that can release Puto Nash is not ready for this kind of knowledge...
That said, "Finalize" in Java and destructors in C# aren't particularly useful. You can't be sure that any managed objects you reference are available during this period, and if you have any unmanaged resources left over, the destructor is a suboptimal place to clean them up, for the 40 second rule and due to the unpredictable time the garbage collector will call these methods. Better to implement IDisposable interface with its "Dispose" method, and provide a "Close" method that calls "Dispose". This give the user more control of cleanup of system resources, but still provides a minimum level of protection for users who fail to protect themselves, since you can fall back on the finalizer if "Dispose" is never called.
After reading this I just have to think how much time we in the computer industry waste continuing to re-invent (and retrain people for) the wheel. Gosh! Nothing like teaching people something that was learned 25 years ago when Smalltalk designers realized this and 35 years after Lisp systems designers did! Do people ever look at legacy systems to figure out how to wisely use these "new fangled" features like GC? Obviously not...
I knew it was over when in a base about Nordic culture was innundated with binaries of jpegs which I am sure were not Viking artifacts or ethnologist and museum lore.
So just where can we find these photographs of the scantily clad Viking maidens engaged in exotic behaviors? I noticed you did not mention which newsgroup! This important information being omitted is probably why your post was not moderated "Informative".
by historical standards, unemployment has remained low during the recent recession...
Overall unemployment has remained relatively low. Unemployment in certain sectors (for instance, IT) is much higher than the overall rate would indicate and matches or exceeds historical downturns.
I saw a rail map once of northeastern LP of Michigan, it staggered the mind how much rail used to be up in that sparsely populated area.
Yes. It was built to carry iron ore from the Mesabi Range. It was often cheaper to distribute the raw ore to the steel mills in Ohio and Pennsylvania via rail after a short boat ride accross upper Lake Michigan/Lake Huron rather than making the long barge journey down the Great Lakes.
The assumption that the existing music and movie industries NEED to be viable any longer is the biggest mistake of all.
Well, they need to be unless you want the economy of California (and probably the rest of the country) to crumble.
In some idealistic Libertarian fantasy land, maybe having established corporations that employ hundreds of thousands of people (and a few million indirectly) crumble makes sense. But in this REAL WORLD(TM), there is no way in hell that any elected official is going to vote against some measure of protection for this industry. Especially when this industry controls the media and their access to the public at large. Get a clue. You may think that the xxAA are evil (they are), but unless we come up with some compromise that allow them to continue to generate dollars and keep their minions employed, we are going to continue to get these Draconian laws, if for no reason than the economic conequences that would happen should these industries collapse.
P.S. No fair issuing "buggy whip" analogies. The buggy whip folks had ample time and opportunity to retool to other leather goods. The rapid increase of technology has not allowed the same luxury to these industries.
Forget about it. The XBox key is 2048 bit RSA key.
It doesn't matter anyhow. How much money could you make if every "secure" system was open to you? How much would you be willing to pay for the information that opens those gates? Do you really think that someonewon't be bribed to disclose the key? Or that a low-level functionary will not re-compile the source for you with some sort of NULL key? Do you really think that temptation will be resisted each time? That it will be detected each time?
The only way to secure the computing structure is to make it so interconnected and intertwined with backup systems that no one will ever be able to prove it secure. Good luck...
This is SO true. I believe that the majority of languages out there today are being designed by morons, for morons. Anyone who is too lazy to learn a new programming paradigm from the roots up is too lazy to program well.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, send them this article and let them know what Microsoft really thinks of them - as their utterly ignorant economic sources or pawns.
Back in medieval days there were other names for them - serfs.
Welcome to neo-feudalism folks. But then the guy in the White House says everything is fine, so it must be, huh?
By selling services to foreign interests, a country increases the domestic price for these services as well. In the end, this stunts the growth of the domestic economy, especially when the service is vital for other companies to compete on the world market.
Yes, the cronies in the outsourcing destination flourish, but at the cost of other people in the economy. And that's a bad idea.
I don't know... Oh yeah! How about developing their own economy in other areas so they could support their own IT services, products, and infrastructure? And in the process bring jobs to many more of their people. But I guess it's too hard for any government to invest in any but the already rich and powerful and try to improve their lives (at the expense of other economic entities - both domestic and foreign) than to actually build an economy that - from the ground up - supports both the lower and upper classes well.
Don't do it! If you have to learn something, at least go to C#. Visual C++.NET would be OK, too. Both of those are better languages all around. And you can still interface to DLL's with either. To almost any programming question VB is NOT the answer.
Since the origin of the POP3 system, where it stood for Meta Language (which is also where the concepts behind ML originated).
Sheesh! I wish you people would learn some history...
Is chemistry outside of college labs and big industrial concerns going to die out? Or is there some way to let the Feds know you're just doing it for your own curiosity and not engaging in "acts against the state"?
More ammunition for those who want to increase H1-B visas! After all, with the dearth of students, where will the talented individuals industry needs come from?
Oh boy! Hot monkey porn, coming soon to a web site near you! Planet of the Apes, here we come!!!
As a citizen, every right. The corporation is chartered by the government as an agency of the citizenry, uses airwaves that belong in joint ownership to the citizenry, and the radio stations are granted the right to use these airwaves only to the extent that the citizenry benefits (see FCC regs, if you don't believe me). Corporations do not emerge from some tabula rasa of nature and, to the extent that they are governmentally created entities, we, as the final arbiters of our government, have (and the original poster in question has) EVERY right to demand that they acquit themselves with some amount of decorum and in the best interest not only of their shareholders, but also in the best interests of the public. Or, if you'd like, we can simply abolish all limited liability financial structures, if that would make you happier.
You know - just like with a CD recording contract. Don't you folks understand how BIG ENTERTAINMENT BUSINESS (TM) works?
And the last paragraph sums it up so nicely! I'm glad Warren Buffett is finally recognizing people who so desperately want to be noticed!
So, when you see a cliff, you blindly walk off it? After all, there are no rules disallowing it, and it's not clear that anyone else's "relative harmony" would be disturbed by such a thing.
Humans have many rules that they create and live by themselves - many having to do with self-preservation, self-actualization, and motivation - that have little to do with you simplistic explanation of "no internal rules".
In most cases, the hardware and its limitations can be simulated. The only reason that most robotic AI projects are embedded in hardware is because it makes good eye candy for the science press, funders, etc. If you have a good simulation of the environment and the platform, you no longer need to build the hardware for AI research to proceed.
Also, why does one need to build new platforms each time a project ensues? Many robotic components could be reused so that only processor boards, motive actuators, or sensors would need to be updated. The reuse of firmware would cut down on the amount of programming time, as well. I think a good MS thesis would be to develop a kind of common robotic architecture along with a simulation testbed. This would allow the AI researchers to get back to work and only do last minute tinkering.
Nah... You read Slashdot!
Didn't Pluto Nash have all of those things, too? And in about the same proportion (well, except for the plot and comedy and action and music and love and special effects things)?
Any society that can release Puto Nash is not ready for this kind of knowledge...
Sell your trailer and buy a real house!
After reading this I just have to think how much time we in the computer industry waste continuing to re-invent (and retrain people for) the wheel. Gosh! Nothing like teaching people something that was learned 25 years ago when Smalltalk designers realized this and 35 years after Lisp systems designers did! Do people ever look at legacy systems to figure out how to wisely use these "new fangled" features like GC? Obviously not...
So just where can we find these photographs of the scantily clad Viking maidens engaged in exotic behaviors? I noticed you did not mention which newsgroup! This important information being omitted is probably why your post was not moderated "Informative".
How are we going to catch terrorists now!?!??
Overall unemployment has remained relatively low. Unemployment in certain sectors (for instance, IT) is much higher than the overall rate would indicate and matches or exceeds historical downturns.
You use a septic tank for your pool!?!
Yes. It was built to carry iron ore from the Mesabi Range. It was often cheaper to distribute the raw ore to the steel mills in Ohio and Pennsylvania via rail after a short boat ride accross upper Lake Michigan/Lake Huron rather than making the long barge journey down the Great Lakes.
Well, they need to be unless you want the economy of California (and probably the rest of the country) to crumble.
In some idealistic Libertarian fantasy land, maybe having established corporations that employ hundreds of thousands of people (and a few million indirectly) crumble makes sense. But in this REAL WORLD(TM), there is no way in hell that any elected official is going to vote against some measure of protection for this industry. Especially when this industry controls the media and their access to the public at large. Get a clue. You may think that the xxAA are evil (they are), but unless we come up with some compromise that allow them to continue to generate dollars and keep their minions employed, we are going to continue to get these Draconian laws, if for no reason than the economic conequences that would happen should these industries collapse.
P.S. No fair issuing "buggy whip" analogies. The buggy whip folks had ample time and opportunity to retool to other leather goods. The rapid increase of technology has not allowed the same luxury to these industries.
It doesn't matter anyhow. How much money could you make if every "secure" system was open to you? How much would you be willing to pay for the information that opens those gates? Do you really think that someonewon't be bribed to disclose the key? Or that a low-level functionary will not re-compile the source for you with some sort of NULL key? Do you really think that temptation will be resisted each time? That it will be detected each time?
The only way to secure the computing structure is to make it so interconnected and intertwined with backup systems that no one will ever be able to prove it secure. Good luck...
This is SO true. I believe that the majority of languages out there today are being designed by morons, for morons. Anyone who is too lazy to learn a new programming paradigm from the roots up is too lazy to program well.