Warren Spector is a real innovator (or at least seems to always have his name on the most innovative projects) so when I heard he left ION I was pretty sad. But if he's starting his own game house then I hope this is just the start of better days for him.
An additional question you need to ask is: does it matter? A section of code would need to be part of a REALLY heavily-used loop or recursive function before it would have even the slightest effect on performance, unless your target platform is really old.
I've worked with code that needed to be high-performance. For instance: converting texture data in memory, which is a loop executed (texture size) ^ 2 times, and so it gets used a lot. I've tried a lot of things on these loops to speed them up, but things like (!ptr) vs. (ptr == NULL) are so slight I can't even measure their effect on a loop called a million times. So, over the course of a million trips through the loop, the net savings (if there was any) was less than a millisecond. Shaving less than a millisecond off of something that takes ~400ms is an almost worthless "optimization".
I've experimented with other things as well, such as using an unsigned char instead of int if I know the value won't exceed 255, and for me the difference is always too small to matter (or even measure) on today's processors.
Of course, every application is different, and I'm sure in many cases it DOES matter, but I would make sure this is something really, REALLY CPU intensive before I started worrying about (!ptr) vs (ptr == NULL). Code readability is important, and you don't want to make sacrifices just so the menu pops up 1ms faster for the user.
Caution: this post contains generalizations. Most of which are, unfortunately, true.
I won't tax you by asking you to back up any of these claims or cite sources. After all, you're not some huge media company.:)
Bloggers think they're going to be the revolution of the press, and that they'll take the place of the New York Times and Washinton Post, and Newscorp will crumble at their feet.
I certainly don't see any major blogers making any such claims. Blogs will not replace big media in the same way that newspapers did not replace books. They are not out to destroy old media, they are out to destroy the MONOPOLY old media has on information. If you don't like it, stick to television. It has short films and pictures, and not so many viewpoints so you don't have to worry about getting confused.
Not with the half-assed misinformation and melodrama on the vast majority of the political and "news" blogs I've seen (to say nothing of the wild spitting and sputtering in the comments).
Again... are you taking about big blogs like Insty or Jarvis? Or are you taking about tiny blogs that nobody reads? You'll notice the calmer, more even-handed blogs tend to rise above the spittle-spewers, in the same way that CBS News always rated higher than Morton Downey, Jr, The Rush Limbaugh Show, or Donahue.
Not as long as they have no problem with their complete and utter lack of accountability
Oh no! People are publishing without asking permission. Who will contol these people?!?!
Who the fuck should they be accountable TO, I ask you? They are accountable in the sense that if they have no information or false information, people will no longer read them. What other accountability do you need?
of any type, and the vicious, one-sided partisan nature designed solely to incite vitriol in their groupthink audiences.
I can't imagine where you come off calling blogs GROUPTHINK. Visit a thousand blogs and you'll find a thousand different views. Even among those that agree will have different reasons for their views. Are you really suggesting that everyone stating their views for the world to see is inferior to the television / newspaper monopoly?
Not while they do nothing more than constantly pat each other on their virtual backs and reinforce their own worldviews and twisted near-conspiracy theories, ignoring any and all other sides of the story while simultaneously thinking of themselves as "open minded"
This isn't a problem with blogs. This is a problem with every political person since three cavemen voted on who was going to be in charge of widlebeast procurement. News flash: People with strong opinions will express them forcefully.
...and the only revealers of "the truth".
Everyone who has an opinion believes they have the truth. How is this in any way related to blogs? You see lots of closed-minded politial hacks on the editorial pages, the sunday morning political shows, and talk radio.
Which is better: The "truth" as seen by the editor, or the "Truth" as seen by thousands of interested people who want a better life for themselves, and all of whom have varying opinions on how things ought to be done? Blogs run the full spectrum of views from the ararchists over at No-Treason to the collectivists at DNC Underground, and everything in between.
[...] But many, particularly political blogs, have no regard for anything but the furtherance of their own agendas, taking things wildly out of context, and going on vindictive missions to build a one-sided case to paint the target of their ire in the worst possible light, without any consideration for any other motivations or other sides of the stories.
This argument could be used for anything. I never drive through your neighborhood, so wtf should I pay for maintenance on the road that goes past your house, or your fire and police protection?
I would suggest that, in turn, your argument could also be used for anything. If the gov't should buy me Wi-Fi, then why shouldn't it buy me all of my food, clothing, and medicine? All of those are far more critical to survival. In just a few years we'll hear the cry, "Why does the government allow people to go without [food / housing / medicine / clothing] when they are happy to provide Wi-Fi access!" Or perhaps, "This service is only used by rich people anyway. The poor don't have computers or don't need Wi-Fi. This is a tax on the poor to buy services for the rich!"
When it comes to roads, we all benefit from all the roads, even the ones we don't use directly. Even people who own no vehicle or never leave the house benefit directly from a well-maintained road system. The more connected and better maintained the system is, the more useful ALL roads are, and the cheaper it is to buy goods that were delivered using the roads. Unless you live in a shack in the mountains (in which case you probably don't pay taxes) then the road sytem makes your life as it is possible.
Wi-Fi is a tottaly different idea. If I don't have a computer, or if I use my own connectivity, then the Wi-Fi is of no use to me. Wi-Fi is also very new. Road technology isn't likely to change anytime soon. Nobody is going to come out next year with a new road that is twice as fast at half the cost. Wi-Fi is still growing, and I'd hate to see lots of infrastructure built with stuff that will be outdated before the system is in place.
HOWEVER, as much as I am opposed to gov't providing stuff like Wi-Fi, I oppose this bill, although for different reasons than most. I don't think the State gov't should be telling the Local Gov't (like a city) that they can or can not do such-and-such. I would much rather have a city running a Wi-Wi system than a state, and in turn would rather a state run it instead of the Federal gov't. If we DO have to have this sort of thing (and we will, there are more who think like you than there are who think like me) then it is best to make it as local as possible. Being free of big gov't includes the right to fuck things up locally (or at least try something different) without the bigger gov't saying "you can't do that".
I think keeping a deposit equal to the max number of rentals for an account, and doing away with due dates, is a pretty good idea.
I agree (I love Netflix!), although it isn't as simple for them as just eliminating the fees.
New releases cause a huge problem for brick-and-mortar rental places. In the store owner's perfect world, you have one copy each of 2,000 movies, and every night people come in and get the movies they want and leave. But 99% of your customers don't want on of your 2,000 movies. They want one of the three that just came out this week.
Everyone wants to rent the latest movie on a Friday night, and then return it whenever they get around to it. So, when the latest Spielberg hits the shelves, you need to MAKE SURE you have a copy for everyone. People expect to be able to get the latest movies, and will get very pissed if you tell them you're out.
Tonight, you need twenty copies of the latest movie. If you get those twenty back by tomorrow night you can rent them out again. If not, you need twenty more. The problem can get pretty out of control if you let people take the just-released title and keep it for a month. Then instead of twenty copies you need huge numbers of them.
But next month nobody will care. You'll only need two copies, and you need to do something with those exta movies. They cost a lot. It costs a lot to store (storage space is precious!) and ship all those extra copies, and now nobody wants them and you're stuck with them. What's worse, those movies didn't really make you any more money. Having twice as many movies doesn't mean you rented it out twice as often, but instead they kept it twice as long. (Actually, most people returned it in a few days and a few absent-minded jerks like me held onto it for four times as long, but anyway...)
The point is, longer rental times exacerbates the problem outlined above. Netflix gets around this by just making you wait for the latest release, which for whatever reason doesn't bother me. When I see "Long Wait" on Kill Bill 2 in Netflix, I shrug and the next movie in my Queue comes. When I go to the rental store and see 20 empty Kill Bill 2 cases and no copies left for me, I get annoyed. Go figure.
Hibrid cars and regular sedans with good gas mileage are readily available.
Keep in mind these things are being introduced in CALIFORNIA and such - you can see why. In the cold winter you need a lot more power to start your frozen engine, a lot more power to move on difficult surfaces, and diminished battery life due to the cold. Even worse, getting stranded due to a dead battery can be dangerous. Like I said in an earlier post, some of us are spread out in a way Europe doesn't always grasp. The country doesn't look like NY and LA.
But our streets are clogged with huge living-room sized SUVs which get crappy mileage, and also only have to meet truck emmission regulations, not stricter car regulations. Do most people EVER take thieir SUVs off-road? No.
I agree with this, but part of the American spirit (and many of you will hate me for this, but I'm not trying to flame, I'm just saying) can be summed up as follows:
"You can't take away someone's right to be an asshole."
Getting rid of SUVs alone would be a big chunk of oil usage and air pollution gone. And it would be an easy change to make. Will we make it? No. The avaerage American is far to fat, lazy and greedy....
YAWN....
Remember in my original post? "Europeans don't like us, and may not have our best interests at heart". If you are trying to pursuade people into doing something that may cause them grief, you ought to try to pretend you don't lothe them.
At any rate, getting rid of SUVs alone won't do it. Not all of us drive tanks. Even if every SUV was replaced with something reasonable, it wouldn't diminish our usage by anywhere NEAR the levels we are talking about.
And even if it did, that doesn't really diminish petroleum use, because petroleum is used for more than cars. It is broken down into many different products (like fuel to heat homes, or machine lube) which we would still need. Even if we needed 50% less GASOLINE tomorrow, we still need the same levels of some of the other stuff, so we would still need the same level of PETROLEUM.
The problem of non-renewable energy usage is big, complex, and often daunting. It mixes politics, science, engineering, with a good dose of international friction. I'm not sure how you think calling Americans fat, lazy and greedy is going to solve it. At least I hope it makes you feel beter.
What the fuck does "pseudo-libertarian" or Qualcomm have to do with this? This is an engineering problem we're talking about here. I don't care if you grow corn, or hemp, or opium, or red and blue mushrooms that smurfs live in, nothing you grow is going to produce enough energy to offset oil usage.
The point of the article was that biodeisel was a couple of orders of magnitude from being big enough to make a difference. I don't care what your politics are or what you smoke or eat or who you vote for... it won't change this.
I like how nobody will touch this point. The only replies to my post have been 2 AC's that dodge the point and someone else who modds the post down as "overrated".
Maybe you guys need to admit you got nothin' here.
I for one would LOVE to know that we could lift our farm subsidies, and let our agribusiness just grow our fuel from now on. That would solve a lot of economic problems, not just our need for foreign oil. We could put our idle farmers to proper work instead of paying them to NOT grow stuff, we could use all that land that is empty and idle, we would lower our need for foreign oil, lower our need for certain taxes... what an awesome plan!
It isn't a start. Cutting energy production is always tough on the economy. The US went through this in the late 70's, and most people remember how miserable that was.
The US would need to make some serious sacrifices to obey Kyoto. Keep in mind that most of the US lives much, much more sparsely than Europeans. They are not (for the most part) crowded into dense polluted cities. They are spead out over rual areas with clean air, clean water, and blue skies. Now they hear this:
"We MUST reduce emissions now! Before we destroy the planet!"
We've been hearing this sort of thing for three decades now. Eco distaster is always just around the corner. We are always near the tipping point, close to the point of no return. Horror is coming!
But it hasn't. I don't think people are being unreasonable when they conclude that people are crying wolf. Environmental scientists have been wearing a sign that says "THE END IS NEAR" for thirty years, and people are just used to it. Every single weather event is treated as "proof" that we are near cataclyism. Its a bad winter! Its a mild winter! Tsunami! All blamed on global warming.
Despite the dire claims, we have yet to see any REAL environmental disaster. Nothing truly spectacular has happened (not on the scale the doomsayers have been predicting) and now we get Kyoto.
Here is what the average American can plainly see:
The air and water seem pretty good. Weather seems normal.
Kyoto WOULD create a nasty economic downturn. Everyone over 30 can remember the last one, and it wasn't pretty. Worse, the Kyoto downturn would be PERMANENT.
Europeans dislike us, some HATE us, maybe they don't have our best interests at heart with this thing?
Keep in mind you must pursuade these people to do something that is not in their best interests (in the short term). Kyoto would hurt the US more than anyone else, and its citizens see less need for it than anyone else. It's a tough sell. Arguments of "Americans are selfish and stupid" are not likely to pursuade.
I believe estimates state that if 25% of all crop land was hemp, the USA would be self sufficiant. Not to mention, give farmers a "true" cash crop.
Not even close. Keep in mind that if it worked, someone would have attempted it. Getting rich is a strong motivator, and lots of people would love to become the "new oil barrens".
They cite dropping fuel usage as the reason for the loss of revenue, and thus they want more taxes. I might point out that THIS IS THE REASON FOR THE TAX IN THE FIRST PLACE.
"Oh no! People are using too much gas! We need to tax gas and stop them!"
"It's working! people are using less gas! You're brilliant!"
"But now the tax we passed isn't making as much! We must increase taxes!"
I'm sure us small government types would have been laughed at if we had suggested this preposterous scenario when the tax was proposed. Yet here we are.
The tax was, I'm sure, sold as an environmental initiative. Now the gov't has come to depend on the income, and will fight to keep revenue up.
Why make a new tax? This is going to cost a lot more than just the money the government takes from the residents directly, and it will deliver LESS than that ammount of cash into the state's coffers.
Consider:
* Indirect expense: Everyone will now be forced to pay for the GPS system.
* Indirect expense: The service stations need to collect all of these taxes for the government. This will probably require some special equipment, a little training, plus the ongoing expense of running the system. Neat idea of the government: force someone else to collect your taxes for you. Someone has to fill out the paperwork and mail the state a check at the end of the day. Guess who will pay for this overhead in the end?
* Like all taxes, you need to collect it, review it, track down people evading the tax (like the person who leaves the GPS at home unless they plan on buying gas) and then you need to prosecute people who don't pay. This eats up some of the tax money.
* Reviewing the tax isn't going to be easy. You'll need to sort through the data and look for people who seem to be getting 300mpg, or people who only drive from their own house to the gas station. By the way, what about people at the border who never buy gas in the state? People in northern and eastern Cal could just hop over the border when they need fuel and NEVER pay this tax.
* Taxing travel in any way has a pretty direct effect on inflation. If every truck has to pay more to haul stuff around, then all goods that get hauled will end up costing more. Guess who will get to enjoy these new higher prices? Everyone!
There is ALREADY a gas tax in place. If you REALLY need more money, it is far easier AND less expensive to just raise THAT tax.
Or, just MAYBE... (I know I'm wasting my breath here) you could apply that same level of creativity to removing government waste instead of coming up with cumbersome new privacy-inducing ways to tax your citizens.
(from Rob)...I don't think that's the question that we're trying to ask. He says, and I can give you the full thing.. "Open source licenses usually have the same thing, but those are generally free products. You guys have taken in a couple hundred billion. Plus, we can use the code as we like. So you can't claim any kind of equivalence." So I think what he's talking about is the one big glaring thing - that Microsoft in those EULAs does not claim the software is fit for any particular purpose or that it will work, essentially.
Martin: Yeah, I don't think we quite... it won't work. I don't know...
Martin kind of ran aground on that question, but I don't think there is any good way to answer it. This is a real problem (most) software companies have. They refuse to accept (in writing) any level of responsibility for their product once you install it.
Rob's analogy is a good one. No car maker could get away with making customers sign a form relieving the maker of any responsibility. If the brakes fail 100 meters from the dealership, you can bet they will have to make it right, and consider a recall if the incident isn't isolated. Yet software companies (not just Microsoft) routinely act like you are being reckless for trusting their software to do anything.
This problem isn't going to clear up soon, either. If anything, it will get worse before it gets better. Look at the constant debates we've had here on/. about who is to blame when you get infected with trojans / malware / spyware etc. Some say Windows should be more secure. Some argue users should be more careful, or be armed with more knowledge. If MS made even the slightest promise that their software was fit for use, then one of these malware-infected idiots would drag them into court and try to hold them accountable for what happened to their computer.
I honestly don't know how I'd like to see something like THAT turn out, unless there is some way they can BOTH lose.:)
Normally I'm cool to the enviro arguments against development of particular areas. For example, treating every damp puddle as "wetlands" is an annoying habit, IMO.
But this is one place where I really agree with them, and the parent poster. Coastlines are a very fragile area, and a lot happens there. Some lifeforms are ONLY found in these areas. Some live in the deep but come here to spawn or feed. This isn't some nebulous concept like "wetlands" that can be expanded to suit an agenda. Coast is coast. This isn't something nearly devoid of life, like artic tundra. This isn't something plentiful, like forests or (to a lesser extent) rain forests.
Building something along the coast like this would be a massive undertaking. (Think about it, how do you BUILD stuff in the sea? AFAIK, you can't pour concrete underwater, which means you'll have to build stuff elsewhere and then drag it into the ocean. Lots of ships will be churning up a lot of stuff moving massive chunks of block into place.
Building on land is easy compared to building out in the ocean because:
* you don't have anything solid to use for leverage
* your project might sink or people might drown (do NOT accept any help from Kevin Costner, if he offers!)
* You need a lot more than just concrete. Think about what a pain in the ass it is to run powerlines IN WATER
* When you build on land, a sudden thunderstorm means work stops and some materials may become drenched. You may lose some tarps. In the ocen, it can cause massive damage and / or drowning.
* Underground: hardhats and flashlights. Under the sea: Scuba gear.
Now, building along the coast has all of the problems outlined above, PLUS:
* Where will you put this? Everywhere? People who own beachfront property might take issue with your efforts. They paid millions to have a beautiful ocean view and not look at your tug boats and powerlines.
* Careful not to run aground! That can get expensive.
* As mentioned elsewhere: Tsunami
* Lots of business owners depend on people going to the beach. You can say "screw the surfers", but don't exect these folks to let you ruin their livelyhood for a single-digit percentage boost to our power grid.
Here is some of the bad news on why there are no magic-bullet solutions to our energy problems.
...Seriously, we use many different programs with our home-schooled kids, but I am most impressed with these guys. I'm 33 and I actually found their spanish program useful for myself. It DOES use cartoon characters, but it was educational enough that I was able to learn from it, while at the same time practical enough that I didn't feel silly using it.
They're probably more interested in what happens to just their company if just that company has that policy. If it's better for them AND worse for everyone else then it doesn't make it a bad business decision for that company.
This sort of calculation drives a LOT of the annoyances of the 'net. Spam, Popups, Preposterous Terms of Use, and forced registration all have similar effocts: "Hey! This is 20% more annoying for the user / victim but is 0.00001% better for us! Let's do it!"
The internet has proved that you can create a lot of annoying behavior by placing people out of arm's reach of each other.
Libraries aren't free. They are paid for by the citizens in their districts. Think of municipal wireless as an extension of that system.
Oh, I see. Just a bit further down this slope here. No big deal...
We provide public bussing, but that doesn't mean I want the gov't to buy everybody a car. The point I was making is that people who want 'net access can get it, even without this program.
Are you kidding? I seriously can't tell if you're just joking now. There are lots and lots of municipalities that have a government run telco. Mostly in rural areas, these days, because the for-profit phone cos. don't want to bother with them.
If we are talking about the US, then this is news to me. This must be in the south or midwest, because I've been in many places in the northeast and havn't heard of this.
At any rate, we're not talking about rural areas. We're talking about metropolitan Philadelphia. I stand by my assertion that everyone that WANTS phone service HAS phone service, even when the gov't isn't buying it for them. Where I live, basic phone is $5.
I asked a question earlier, and nobody paid attention: If the government should provide this, then is there anything the government shouldn't provide?
Everyone just wants to expand the state powers a *bit*. Just a bit. Just a little more. Just this one more program. In ten years you'll see a slashdot story like: Philadelphia considering providing laptops to disadvantaged citizens. Many of the people who would oppose such a measure right now will come on here in ten years, and I will have the following argument with them:
ME: Whah! Boo hoo!
THEM: Look, we already provide wi-fi access. Wi-fi isn't any good without a way to use it! This will let us get more out of the money we're already spending!
ME: They don't need laptops! Send them to the public library!
THEM: Lots of places offer assistance to disadvantaged citizens. [some huge, wealthy city] is doing this and it sort of worked! Why do you hate the poor?
You don't have to answer the question about where gov't assistance should end. Just decide for yourself and see if you can hold it there in the coming years.
Access to information is coming to be a vital service, and should not be denied to anyone
How is not paying for WIRELESS INTERNET and "not allowing access to information" the same thing? Just because I don't want to pay for wireless access for everyone doesn't mean I'm advocating outlawing the internet for the poor.
I've been using the internet alsomost every single day for the last decade, and I have never, ever used wireless. There are internet cafe's and libraries that provide FREE internet access, and plenty of very low-cost ways to access the internet from home. Equating wireless internet with our road infrastructure is absurd.
We aren't there yet, but the day is coming when digital communications replace the telephone as the preferred communication mechanism.
I agree. So, if it is destined to be so universal, then why do we need the government to buy it for us? The poor have telephone service, and the government didn't buy it for them.
Why stop there? If we can get such great service from the government on this, why not other services? Taxpayer-funded ice cream for the disadvantaged! Subsidized soda machines for people that don't carry loose change! Free spice channel for people too embarrased to call up and order the service themselves! Government ass-wiping for really, really lazy people!
It doesn't matter if this is a good service or not. This isn't food or housing. This is Wi-Fi access for crying out loud. If the government should provide this, then is there anything the government shouldn't provide?
You seem confident it will be a good serve, but even if the service sucks and it turns out to be a huge waste of cash, you'll never get rid of it once it's in place. Rotten businesses go out of business, but rotten government programs just eat more tax money.
I know in the end you people will win. Its human nature to want to believe we can all live in luxury for free, to get things we have not earned or worked for, and to believe that we can make life wonderful but having the government take money from other people and use it to buy us nice things. A little bit at a time, you will get your way, and get all your "free" things from your government.
For my part, I promise to go kicking and screaming all the way.
I'm not against the idea that people should be allwed to do whatever they want to with their bodies, AS LONG AS THEY BEAR RESPOSIBILITY FOR WHAT HAPPENS.
This is completely incompatible with public assistance / welfare. If you have leagal drugs AND a welfare system, then people who work will get taxed so that people who don't work can buy drugs. This is a suicidal thing for any nation to do.
Welfare isn't going anywhere anytime soon, so the only choices are having my money wasted fighting drug dealers or having my money wasted paying people to do drugs. At least with the former there is some incentive to go work for a living.
fascism (noun): A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism.
America has become a facist state? I'm all with you on the "both parties are assholes" thing, but who the fuck modded this post +5 insightful? Fascism does not mean "really annoying" or "extra mean", it is an oppressive system of goverment that in the past has had a penchant for murdering its own citizens on the scale of millions. You demonstate your magnificent ignorance by claiming the US is such.
If this WERE a fascist state, there wouldn't be any "pressure" for people to alter their findings: they would just be rounded up and killed or jailed. Fascist states have murdered people on a horrifying scale, and you using the term to villify your political enemies is a gross abuse of the word.
Also, the Dems and Rebubs are NOT the same party, by any stretch of the imagination. They advocate very divergent positions. Just because you and I disagree with BOTH sets of ideas doesn't mean they are the same ideas.
However, when you say this:
Clinton may have talked the liberal talk, and Bush may talk the conservative talk, but their policies are virtually indistinguishable.
Since when is the potential to commit a crime also a crime?
I agree with this in principal, but in reality it is very easy to see the difference between someone who has a couple of ounces of as opposed to the guy who has a whole truckload of the stuff.
Distributing something like heroin is hardly a "victimless crime", and I'd rather they go after those selling the drug than rounding up each and every addict and filling up the prisons with them. Go after the big fish, and it will cut off the supply to the little fish.
Whatever metaphor you use, how can this be of any real use? Are terrorists and drug dealers sending out unencrypted messages in plain text that explicitly outline their doings? I have a hard time imagining that there are lots of messages like this:
Dear Fred Smith the drug supplier,
Greetings, it is I, Dave Thompson the drug dealer. I am out of heroin and would like to purchase more. Please meet me in wharehouse #4 at 10pm tonight with more heroin. I will bring $10,000 in cash and you may sell me the heroin so that I may sell it to more kids just outside of school in the afternoons.
...And that law enforcement could bust the whole case wide open if they could just get to those email messages!
Besides, even if a criminal DID send such a message, it is difficult to prove (in court) that they sent it. Try proving davethedrugdealer@yahoo.com is someone in particular. I imagine if dealers WERE going to use the net to communicate, it might look like:
Meet at 10. Bring the stuff - D
So, these guys are looking for more privacy-invading abilities so they can catch stupid and careless criminals who outline their crimes in electronic messages and send valuable data to one another without encryption. You don't need special powers or technology to catch those sorts of criminals. All you need is a couple of minutes and a butterfly net.
Slashdot Mirror
System Shock, the 1994 classic in which he was involved, affected me so much I wrote an entire novel based on the game.
Amazing guy.
Another dangerous criminal apprehended!
I've worked with code that needed to be high-performance. For instance: converting texture data in memory, which is a loop executed (texture size) ^ 2 times, and so it gets used a lot. I've tried a lot of things on these loops to speed them up, but things like (!ptr) vs. (ptr == NULL) are so slight I can't even measure their effect on a loop called a million times. So, over the course of a million trips through the loop, the net savings (if there was any) was less than a millisecond. Shaving less than a millisecond off of something that takes ~400ms is an almost worthless "optimization".
I've experimented with other things as well, such as using an unsigned char instead of int if I know the value won't exceed 255, and for me the difference is always too small to matter (or even measure) on today's processors.
Of course, every application is different, and I'm sure in many cases it DOES matter, but I would make sure this is something really, REALLY CPU intensive before I started worrying about (!ptr) vs (ptr == NULL). Code readability is important, and you don't want to make sacrifices just so the menu pops up 1ms faster for the user.
I won't tax you by asking you to back up any of these claims or cite sources. After all, you're not some huge media company. :)
Bloggers think they're going to be the revolution of the press, and that they'll take the place of the New York Times and Washinton Post, and Newscorp will crumble at their feet.
I certainly don't see any major blogers making any such claims. Blogs will not replace big media in the same way that newspapers did not replace books. They are not out to destroy old media, they are out to destroy the MONOPOLY old media has on information. If you don't like it, stick to television. It has short films and pictures, and not so many viewpoints so you don't have to worry about getting confused.
Not with the half-assed misinformation and melodrama on the vast majority of the political and "news" blogs I've seen (to say nothing of the wild spitting and sputtering in the comments).
Again... are you taking about big blogs like Insty or Jarvis? Or are you taking about tiny blogs that nobody reads? You'll notice the calmer, more even-handed blogs tend to rise above the spittle-spewers, in the same way that CBS News always rated higher than Morton Downey, Jr, The Rush Limbaugh Show, or Donahue.
Not as long as they have no problem with their complete and utter lack of accountability
Oh no! People are publishing without asking permission. Who will contol these people?!?!
Who the fuck should they be accountable TO, I ask you? They are accountable in the sense that if they have no information or false information, people will no longer read them. What other accountability do you need?
of any type, and the vicious, one-sided partisan nature designed solely to incite vitriol in their groupthink audiences.
I can't imagine where you come off calling blogs GROUPTHINK. Visit a thousand blogs and you'll find a thousand different views. Even among those that agree will have different reasons for their views. Are you really suggesting that everyone stating their views for the world to see is inferior to the television / newspaper monopoly?
Not while they do nothing more than constantly pat each other on their virtual backs and reinforce their own worldviews and twisted near-conspiracy theories, ignoring any and all other sides of the story while simultaneously thinking of themselves as "open minded"
This isn't a problem with blogs. This is a problem with every political person since three cavemen voted on who was going to be in charge of widlebeast procurement. News flash: People with strong opinions will express them forcefully.
Everyone who has an opinion believes they have the truth. How is this in any way related to blogs? You see lots of closed-minded politial hacks on the editorial pages, the sunday morning political shows, and talk radio.
Which is better: The "truth" as seen by the editor, or the "Truth" as seen by thousands of interested people who want a better life for themselves, and all of whom have varying opinions on how things ought to be done? Blogs run the full spectrum of views from the ararchists over at No-Treason to the collectivists at DNC Underground, and everything in between.
[...] But many, particularly political blogs, have no regard for anything but the furtherance of their own agendas, taking things wildly out of context, and going on vindictive missions to build a one-sided case to paint the target of their ire in the worst possible light, without any consideration for any other motivations or other sides of the stories.
If the same were true of
I would suggest that, in turn, your argument could also be used for anything. If the gov't should buy me Wi-Fi, then why shouldn't it buy me all of my food, clothing, and medicine? All of those are far more critical to survival. In just a few years we'll hear the cry, "Why does the government allow people to go without [food / housing / medicine / clothing] when they are happy to provide Wi-Fi access!" Or perhaps, "This service is only used by rich people anyway. The poor don't have computers or don't need Wi-Fi. This is a tax on the poor to buy services for the rich!"
When it comes to roads, we all benefit from all the roads, even the ones we don't use directly. Even people who own no vehicle or never leave the house benefit directly from a well-maintained road system. The more connected and better maintained the system is, the more useful ALL roads are, and the cheaper it is to buy goods that were delivered using the roads. Unless you live in a shack in the mountains (in which case you probably don't pay taxes) then the road sytem makes your life as it is possible.
Wi-Fi is a tottaly different idea. If I don't have a computer, or if I use my own connectivity, then the Wi-Fi is of no use to me. Wi-Fi is also very new. Road technology isn't likely to change anytime soon. Nobody is going to come out next year with a new road that is twice as fast at half the cost. Wi-Fi is still growing, and I'd hate to see lots of infrastructure built with stuff that will be outdated before the system is in place.
HOWEVER, as much as I am opposed to gov't providing stuff like Wi-Fi, I oppose this bill, although for different reasons than most. I don't think the State gov't should be telling the Local Gov't (like a city) that they can or can not do such-and-such. I would much rather have a city running a Wi-Wi system than a state, and in turn would rather a state run it instead of the Federal gov't. If we DO have to have this sort of thing (and we will, there are more who think like you than there are who think like me) then it is best to make it as local as possible. Being free of big gov't includes the right to fuck things up locally (or at least try something different) without the bigger gov't saying "you can't do that".
I agree (I love Netflix!), although it isn't as simple for them as just eliminating the fees.
New releases cause a huge problem for brick-and-mortar rental places. In the store owner's perfect world, you have one copy each of 2,000 movies, and every night people come in and get the movies they want and leave. But 99% of your customers don't want on of your 2,000 movies. They want one of the three that just came out this week.
Everyone wants to rent the latest movie on a Friday night, and then return it whenever they get around to it. So, when the latest Spielberg hits the shelves, you need to MAKE SURE you have a copy for everyone. People expect to be able to get the latest movies, and will get very pissed if you tell them you're out.
Tonight, you need twenty copies of the latest movie. If you get those twenty back by tomorrow night you can rent them out again. If not, you need twenty more. The problem can get pretty out of control if you let people take the just-released title and keep it for a month. Then instead of twenty copies you need huge numbers of them.
But next month nobody will care. You'll only need two copies, and you need to do something with those exta movies. They cost a lot. It costs a lot to store (storage space is precious!) and ship all those extra copies, and now nobody wants them and you're stuck with them. What's worse, those movies didn't really make you any more money. Having twice as many movies doesn't mean you rented it out twice as often, but instead they kept it twice as long. (Actually, most people returned it in a few days and a few absent-minded jerks like me held onto it for four times as long, but anyway...)
The point is, longer rental times exacerbates the problem outlined above. Netflix gets around this by just making you wait for the latest release, which for whatever reason doesn't bother me. When I see "Long Wait" on Kill Bill 2 in Netflix, I shrug and the next movie in my Queue comes. When I go to the rental store and see 20 empty Kill Bill 2 cases and no copies left for me, I get annoyed. Go figure.
Keep in mind these things are being introduced in CALIFORNIA and such - you can see why. In the cold winter you need a lot more power to start your frozen engine, a lot more power to move on difficult surfaces, and diminished battery life due to the cold. Even worse, getting stranded due to a dead battery can be dangerous. Like I said in an earlier post, some of us are spread out in a way Europe doesn't always grasp. The country doesn't look like NY and LA.
But our streets are clogged with huge living-room sized SUVs which get crappy mileage, and also only have to meet truck emmission regulations, not stricter car regulations. Do most people EVER take thieir SUVs off-road? No.
I agree with this, but part of the American spirit (and many of you will hate me for this, but I'm not trying to flame, I'm just saying) can be summed up as follows:
"You can't take away someone's right to be an asshole."
Getting rid of SUVs alone would be a big chunk of oil usage and air pollution gone. And it would be an easy change to make. Will we make it? No. The avaerage American is far to fat, lazy and greedy....
YAWN....
Remember in my original post? "Europeans don't like us, and may not have our best interests at heart". If you are trying to pursuade people into doing something that may cause them grief, you ought to try to pretend you don't lothe them.
At any rate, getting rid of SUVs alone won't do it. Not all of us drive tanks. Even if every SUV was replaced with something reasonable, it wouldn't diminish our usage by anywhere NEAR the levels we are talking about.
And even if it did, that doesn't really diminish petroleum use, because petroleum is used for more than cars. It is broken down into many different products (like fuel to heat homes, or machine lube) which we would still need. Even if we needed 50% less GASOLINE tomorrow, we still need the same levels of some of the other stuff, so we would still need the same level of PETROLEUM.
The problem of non-renewable energy usage is big, complex, and often daunting. It mixes politics, science, engineering, with a good dose of international friction. I'm not sure how you think calling Americans fat, lazy and greedy is going to solve it. At least I hope it makes you feel beter.
The point of the article was that biodeisel was a couple of orders of magnitude from being big enough to make a difference. I don't care what your politics are or what you smoke or eat or who you vote for... it won't change this.
I like how nobody will touch this point. The only replies to my post have been 2 AC's that dodge the point and someone else who modds the post down as "overrated".
Maybe you guys need to admit you got nothin' here.
I for one would LOVE to know that we could lift our farm subsidies, and let our agribusiness just grow our fuel from now on. That would solve a lot of economic problems, not just our need for foreign oil. We could put our idle farmers to proper work instead of paying them to NOT grow stuff, we could use all that land that is empty and idle, we would lower our need for foreign oil, lower our need for certain taxes... what an awesome plan!
If only it worked...
The US would need to make some serious sacrifices to obey Kyoto. Keep in mind that most of the US lives much, much more sparsely than Europeans. They are not (for the most part) crowded into dense polluted cities. They are spead out over rual areas with clean air, clean water, and blue skies. Now they hear this:
"We MUST reduce emissions now! Before we destroy the planet!"
We've been hearing this sort of thing for three decades now. Eco distaster is always just around the corner. We are always near the tipping point, close to the point of no return. Horror is coming!
But it hasn't. I don't think people are being unreasonable when they conclude that people are crying wolf. Environmental scientists have been wearing a sign that says "THE END IS NEAR" for thirty years, and people are just used to it. Every single weather event is treated as "proof" that we are near cataclyism. Its a bad winter! Its a mild winter! Tsunami! All blamed on global warming.
Despite the dire claims, we have yet to see any REAL environmental disaster. Nothing truly spectacular has happened (not on the scale the doomsayers have been predicting) and now we get Kyoto.
Here is what the average American can plainly see:
- The air and water seem pretty good. Weather seems normal.
- Kyoto WOULD create a nasty economic downturn. Everyone over 30 can remember the last one, and it wasn't pretty. Worse, the Kyoto downturn would be PERMANENT.
- Europeans dislike us, some HATE us, maybe they don't have our best interests at heart with this thing?
Keep in mind you must pursuade these people to do something that is not in their best interests (in the short term). Kyoto would hurt the US more than anyone else, and its citizens see less need for it than anyone else. It's a tough sell. Arguments of "Americans are selfish and stupid" are not likely to pursuade.Not even close. Keep in mind that if it worked, someone would have attempted it. Getting rich is a strong motivator, and lots of people would love to become the "new oil barrens".
I say we let these two settle this thing in a duel. Hand grenades at 2 paces.
"Oh no! People are using too much gas! We need to tax gas and stop them!"
"It's working! people are using less gas! You're brilliant!"
"But now the tax we passed isn't making as much! We must increase taxes!"
I'm sure us small government types would have been laughed at if we had suggested this preposterous scenario when the tax was proposed. Yet here we are.
The tax was, I'm sure, sold as an environmental initiative. Now the gov't has come to depend on the income, and will fight to keep revenue up.
Consider:
* Indirect expense: Everyone will now be forced to pay for the GPS system.
* Indirect expense: The service stations need to collect all of these taxes for the government. This will probably require some special equipment, a little training, plus the ongoing expense of running the system. Neat idea of the government: force someone else to collect your taxes for you. Someone has to fill out the paperwork and mail the state a check at the end of the day. Guess who will pay for this overhead in the end?
* Like all taxes, you need to collect it, review it, track down people evading the tax (like the person who leaves the GPS at home unless they plan on buying gas) and then you need to prosecute people who don't pay. This eats up some of the tax money.
* Reviewing the tax isn't going to be easy. You'll need to sort through the data and look for people who seem to be getting 300mpg, or people who only drive from their own house to the gas station. By the way, what about people at the border who never buy gas in the state? People in northern and eastern Cal could just hop over the border when they need fuel and NEVER pay this tax.
* Taxing travel in any way has a pretty direct effect on inflation. If every truck has to pay more to haul stuff around, then all goods that get hauled will end up costing more. Guess who will get to enjoy these new higher prices? Everyone!
There is ALREADY a gas tax in place. If you REALLY need more money, it is far easier AND less expensive to just raise THAT tax.
Or, just MAYBE... (I know I'm wasting my breath here) you could apply that same level of creativity to removing government waste instead of coming up with cumbersome new privacy-inducing ways to tax your citizens.
Martin: Yeah, I don't think we quite ... it won't work. I don't know ...
Martin kind of ran aground on that question, but I don't think there is any good way to answer it. This is a real problem (most) software companies have. They refuse to accept (in writing) any level of responsibility for their product once you install it.
Rob's analogy is a good one. No car maker could get away with making customers sign a form relieving the maker of any responsibility. If the brakes fail 100 meters from the dealership, you can bet they will have to make it right, and consider a recall if the incident isn't isolated. Yet software companies (not just Microsoft) routinely act like you are being reckless for trusting their software to do anything.
This problem isn't going to clear up soon, either. If anything, it will get worse before it gets better. Look at the constant debates we've had here on /. about who is to blame when you get infected with trojans / malware / spyware etc. Some say Windows should be more secure. Some argue users should be more careful, or be armed with more knowledge. If MS made even the slightest promise that their software was fit for use, then one of these malware-infected idiots would drag them into court and try to hold them accountable for what happened to their computer.
I honestly don't know how I'd like to see something like THAT turn out, unless there is some way they can BOTH lose. :)
But this is one place where I really agree with them, and the parent poster. Coastlines are a very fragile area, and a lot happens there. Some lifeforms are ONLY found in these areas. Some live in the deep but come here to spawn or feed. This isn't some nebulous concept like "wetlands" that can be expanded to suit an agenda. Coast is coast. This isn't something nearly devoid of life, like artic tundra. This isn't something plentiful, like forests or (to a lesser extent) rain forests.
Building something along the coast like this would be a massive undertaking. (Think about it, how do you BUILD stuff in the sea? AFAIK, you can't pour concrete underwater, which means you'll have to build stuff elsewhere and then drag it into the ocean. Lots of ships will be churning up a lot of stuff moving massive chunks of block into place.
Building on land is easy compared to building out in the ocean because:
* you don't have anything solid to use for leverage
* your project might sink or people might drown (do NOT accept any help from Kevin Costner, if he offers!)
* You need a lot more than just concrete. Think about what a pain in the ass it is to run powerlines IN WATER
* When you build on land, a sudden thunderstorm means work stops and some materials may become drenched. You may lose some tarps. In the ocen, it can cause massive damage and / or drowning.
* Underground: hardhats and flashlights. Under the sea: Scuba gear.
Now, building along the coast has all of the problems outlined above, PLUS:
* Where will you put this? Everywhere? People who own beachfront property might take issue with your efforts. They paid millions to have a beautiful ocean view and not look at your tug boats and powerlines.
* Careful not to run aground! That can get expensive.
* As mentioned elsewhere: Tsunami
* Lots of business owners depend on people going to the beach. You can say "screw the surfers", but don't exect these folks to let you ruin their livelyhood for a single-digit percentage boost to our power grid.
Here is some of the bad news on why there are no magic-bullet solutions to our energy problems.
This sort of calculation drives a LOT of the annoyances of the 'net. Spam, Popups, Preposterous Terms of Use, and forced registration all have similar effocts: "Hey! This is 20% more annoying for the user / victim but is 0.00001% better for us! Let's do it!"
The internet has proved that you can create a lot of annoying behavior by placing people out of arm's reach of each other.
Oh, I see. Just a bit further down this slope here. No big deal...
We provide public bussing, but that doesn't mean I want the gov't to buy everybody a car. The point I was making is that people who want 'net access can get it, even without this program.
Are you kidding? I seriously can't tell if you're just joking now. There are lots and lots of municipalities that have a government run telco. Mostly in rural areas, these days, because the for-profit phone cos. don't want to bother with them.
If we are talking about the US, then this is news to me. This must be in the south or midwest, because I've been in many places in the northeast and havn't heard of this.
At any rate, we're not talking about rural areas. We're talking about metropolitan Philadelphia. I stand by my assertion that everyone that WANTS phone service HAS phone service, even when the gov't isn't buying it for them. Where I live, basic phone is $5.
I asked a question earlier, and nobody paid attention: If the government should provide this, then is there anything the government shouldn't provide?
Everyone just wants to expand the state powers a *bit*. Just a bit. Just a little more. Just this one more program. In ten years you'll see a slashdot story like: Philadelphia considering providing laptops to disadvantaged citizens. Many of the people who would oppose such a measure right now will come on here in ten years, and I will have the following argument with them:
ME: Whah! Boo hoo!
THEM: Look, we already provide wi-fi access. Wi-fi isn't any good without a way to use it! This will let us get more out of the money we're already spending!
ME: They don't need laptops! Send them to the public library!
THEM: Lots of places offer assistance to disadvantaged citizens. [some huge, wealthy city] is doing this and it sort of worked! Why do you hate the poor?
You don't have to answer the question about where gov't assistance should end. Just decide for yourself and see if you can hold it there in the coming years.
How is not paying for WIRELESS INTERNET and "not allowing access to information" the same thing? Just because I don't want to pay for wireless access for everyone doesn't mean I'm advocating outlawing the internet for the poor.
I've been using the internet alsomost every single day for the last decade, and I have never, ever used wireless. There are internet cafe's and libraries that provide FREE internet access, and plenty of very low-cost ways to access the internet from home. Equating wireless internet with our road infrastructure is absurd.
We aren't there yet, but the day is coming when digital communications replace the telephone as the preferred communication mechanism.
I agree. So, if it is destined to be so universal, then why do we need the government to buy it for us? The poor have telephone service, and the government didn't buy it for them.
Why stop there? If we can get such great service from the government on this, why not other services? Taxpayer-funded ice cream for the disadvantaged! Subsidized soda machines for people that don't carry loose change! Free spice channel for people too embarrased to call up and order the service themselves! Government ass-wiping for really, really lazy people!
It doesn't matter if this is a good service or not. This isn't food or housing. This is Wi-Fi access for crying out loud. If the government should provide this, then is there anything the government shouldn't provide?
You seem confident it will be a good serve, but even if the service sucks and it turns out to be a huge waste of cash, you'll never get rid of it once it's in place. Rotten businesses go out of business, but rotten government programs just eat more tax money.
I know in the end you people will win. Its human nature to want to believe we can all live in luxury for free, to get things we have not earned or worked for, and to believe that we can make life wonderful but having the government take money from other people and use it to buy us nice things. A little bit at a time, you will get your way, and get all your "free" things from your government.
For my part, I promise to go kicking and screaming all the way.
(Unless maybe I can get in on some of the free ice cream)
This is completely incompatible with public assistance / welfare. If you have leagal drugs AND a welfare system, then people who work will get taxed so that people who don't work can buy drugs. This is a suicidal thing for any nation to do.
Welfare isn't going anywhere anytime soon, so the only choices are having my money wasted fighting drug dealers or having my money wasted paying people to do drugs. At least with the former there is some incentive to go work for a living.
America has become a facist state? I'm all with you on the "both parties are assholes" thing, but who the fuck modded this post +5 insightful? Fascism does not mean "really annoying" or "extra mean", it is an oppressive system of goverment that in the past has had a penchant for murdering its own citizens on the scale of millions. You demonstate your magnificent ignorance by claiming the US is such.
If this WERE a fascist state, there wouldn't be any "pressure" for people to alter their findings: they would just be rounded up and killed or jailed. Fascist states have murdered people on a horrifying scale, and you using the term to villify your political enemies is a gross abuse of the word.
Also, the Dems and Rebubs are NOT the same party, by any stretch of the imagination. They advocate very divergent positions. Just because you and I disagree with BOTH sets of ideas doesn't mean they are the same ideas.
However, when you say this:
Clinton may have talked the liberal talk, and Bush may talk the conservative talk, but their policies are virtually indistinguishable.
Then I am in agreement with you. See also: This.
I agree with this in principal, but in reality it is very easy to see the difference between someone who has a couple of ounces of as opposed to the guy who has a whole truckload of the stuff.
Distributing something like heroin is hardly a "victimless crime", and I'd rather they go after those selling the drug than rounding up each and every addict and filling up the prisons with them. Go after the big fish, and it will cut off the supply to the little fish.
Besides, even if a criminal DID send such a message, it is difficult to prove (in court) that they sent it. Try proving davethedrugdealer@yahoo.com is someone in particular. I imagine if dealers WERE going to use the net to communicate, it might look like:
So, these guys are looking for more privacy-invading abilities so they can catch stupid and careless criminals who outline their crimes in electronic messages and send valuable data to one another without encryption. You don't need special powers or technology to catch those sorts of criminals. All you need is a couple of minutes and a butterfly net.