My new mall has a policy that it's against the rules to be black in it. So, can my rent-a-cops call real cops and make black people leave and maybe arrest them too? There's a big difference between "policy" and "illegal." When your "policy" becomes "law" then we're back to fiefdoms.
Here's what I don't like about "secure boot" (from this article): "...The end user is not guaranteed that their system will include the signing keys that would be required for them to swap their graphics card for one from another vendor..."
So, given that major OEM's tend to ship as minimal as possible BIOS/UEFI options: If you buy a Dell computer and cannot turn off secure boot, are you limited by hardware signing to Dell branded (and priced) graphics cards and etc?
"I would like to learn more about Artificial Intelligence and Game Theory. I know these are both large areas of study; however, my main interest is in how these affect decisions in the world. This would include politicians, business people, and general society. I'm not looking for a career or anything; this is just a personal interest of mine. Where are good places to start in these areas for somebody new to them? I'm aware of the Stanford on-line classes, but those don't work with my current schedule."
Do you really understand how unwise it is to put those words together in that manner? Don't interfere.
This is just another scarcity that is being encroached on. Scarcity of labor. Once all scarce needs of humans are met by a self-sustaining system then we will be in the "Star Trek Economy" future where you just do what you want and status is what you fight over by being exceptionally good at something. Like providing "status" human-made (not robot made!) food.
Sorry man, didn't mean to put you on a defensive: I was more babbling about love of "geek" stuff!;) If you have a spare Windows license lying around: you can get VirtualBox for a Linux host too! You could try it the other way: see how Aero performs if you have a Vista or 7 license. It's not going to be up-to-par for Windows games I would think but the equivalent compiz:aero should work good enough for you to try? Best part: delete a file when you're done and it's gone!
This is a fairly new machine (obviously!) and when I built it support for a 6870 just wasn't any good. It may have changed but I'm already having the best of all worlds to change. I have 8GB of RAM in it. The host is Windows 7 64-bit, and the guest is Ubuntu 11.04 64-bit. I'm not kidding when I say video performance and performance in general is extremely good: it is. A part of it is because my processor supports hardware virtualization features such as nested-pages. That helps for running programs faster. The video wasn't always as good but is now since VirtualBox added 3D support and therefore the ability to use composited desktops, which again, run perfectly fine. I have a 64GB disk image for Ubuntu - which is plenty because I just use it for web-browsing and programming. My hard drive on the host is 1TB. And it's full of Windows games. When I'm in Ubuntu - at full speed - the CPU (measured from Windows 7) is sitting between 1-3% usage idle. So it's not a resource hog. I give the VM 4GB of RAM. I have a shared machine folder between the guest and host so transferring files is super simple. And here's the best part: when a new version of Ubuntu comes out (or just another distro I'd like to toy with): No reinstall. Put the files I want to transfer to the new version through the machine folder into the host and then back through a different machine folder into a new guest. It's just all around awesome! I get games and trouble-free-whatever-distro(s)-I-want at the same time. What makes it perfect is that the virtualization for the guest is just so darn good. I remember when that wasn't the case. It is now!
I have the opposite situation. My hardware is too new. 6870 Radeon, intel Core i5. Doesn't work right. But, I'm running inside of VirtualBox and it abstracts all that hardware away. It even supports 3D with a guest addition to expose that to OpenGL. My desktop right now in front of me is composited with compiz and plays video, wobbly windows and all just fine.
I know there are barriers when you go to upgrade old hardware: change piece A and you need to change piece B and such, but, really, leave it at a text console as a server or just pick up a cheap $299 laptop that a modern Linux will run just fine with intel video drivers. Intel video drivers over the years surprisingly have given me the fewest issues and they support compiz just fine too.
Beneficiaries to ignorance around climate change such as a, not related to the article, Koch Brother's have come out on top in the debate. People won't see this retraction and even if they did they are already biased against it. Besides, put on some shorts: there is no way climate change will change the pursuit of billions of dollars in profits. And the fact is those profits would have to be severely curtailed to make a difference. That's not the way the world works. Forget about it and just be happy you have a decent chance of adapting to climate change with our Western infrastructures in a fairly good position to handle the disruptions. Those people in Africa? Yeah, apparently the answer to them is: fuck off and die of drought.
It's safe! I cringed, squinted my eyes, and prayed while I clicked on it! Then, let out a huge sigh of relief! There, did my community service for the day!
Concerning Mozilla, you are wrong. Mozilla works on making the best web-browser they can. Business wants a web-browser that will never change for as long as possible so they don't have to spend a single cent on upgrading their stupid internal web-applications. See IE6 and every single problem it has hung over web-standards for half a decade or so. Now, business can say: we won't use Mozilla's web-browser because it isn't (stupidly) "stable" enough for us and you know what: who cares. Mozilla's market is not some staid business: let Microsoft deal with the headaches and such that come from serving that market. Mozilla will do just fine serving non-commercial users and users that aren't so short-sighted they'd cut off their own nose. And what does that mean? A decade from now Mozilla: as a web-browser company, will have and continue to have something that is competitive for what they do.
The business world keeps Microsoft in power, not gamers.
I don't doubt you overall, but: for my home computers, the only reason the machine I'm typing this on has Windows 7 installed is because of games. My laptop doesn't have Windows, only my desktop which has the hardware to run the games.
I should have elaborated on my comment a bit. I never said it would be syntactically beautiful: just that you could do it.
For example, back in the Amiga days I implemented a Object-Orientated GUI in AMOS Basic. That was a procedural language. It ended up having lots of stub functions to handle the object part of the implementation and as the language didn't allow variable numbers of arguments to procedures sometimes you had to call the stubs with null values for parameters that weren't needed. Internally, I had no access to direct memory allocation so I had some general purpose arrays. Like GUI(30,10) which was a maximum of 30 objects with a maximum of 10 attributes. In parallel to that array I would use a string array: GUI$(30) for the same number of objects for things like text fields. Then accessing - through the stub functions - objects were given the first number - the index or "object" - and a specified attribute index and the stub functions were basically methods on the object. The Basic interpreter didn't enforce any of the object-orientation: that was all up to me with programming-style and if you didn't follow the style you broke it.
Now that example was not elegant at all but I successfully added functionality that was outside the scope of the language. Ugly as sin though.
You know "fake" isn't the right word. You can implement everything you happen to need from a higher-level language into an expressive lower-level one. That is not always possible the other way around.
I get "local news" from aggregator's such as Reddit. And you know what? Reddit: Politics makes me truly sad every day. The reason I find aggregators so effective is that of all the local news stories across the nation: they find the ones that stick out enough that people, actual people who could be your neighbor, vote them up.
The source is given for every item, I never click on ones that go to blogs. Someday, perhaps, blogs will be effective just not yet.
If I was ever in the position where I was required to submit to a polygraph, and I don't mean this situation at a bank machine, I would gladly comply as long as I was able to add a single question as the first one:
Can this machine tell if I am lying?
Polygraph machines are not lie detectors. What they are are stress detectors. And if you know that little fact you need not be stressed when you are dealing with one. Here is a summary of a polygraph machine's reliability: here.
That one is a "on-rails" shooter as the iPhone compared to a PC is a limited device. But, the upcoming full-release for the PC and consoles is a full not-rails game.
You are correct, and the most notable one I can think of (one I actually played on my Commodore 64) is: Elite. That game was so far ahead of it's time that computers in it's era simply could not do it justice. It's eerily similar to games like Eve Online today.
Heheh, sorry: I never played Decent so it's conveniently missing in my memory: first-person shooter for the win!:D Wolf and Doom were previous to Quake but Quake was first with true 3D that's why I mentioned it! Remember, first playing Quake everyone still used the keyboard-only controls inherited from Wolf and Doom: to have mouselook you had to create an "autoexec.cfg" file with the line "+mouselook" to have it persistent. In the game options there was no option to have mouselook permanently on, that came in later games.
Carmack used to lead the 3D Engine sector around. A bit of history, Quake, is the grand-daddy that started it all: first true-3D Game. And it was Carmack. Now, Epic Games went on to win the "licensing" war and that is why practically every game today has a bit of Unreal Engine 3 in it. Carmack however, is still one of the smartest cookies around: he has the ability to keep on pumping out revolution after revolution. And now that Zenimax has folded id Software into it: Carmack doesn't have to worry about those pesky "business" aspects anymore and can just concentrate on where he shines: code.
I was observing the core of the issue. Unfortunately I didn't give the implied conclusion: Copyright in specific and intellectual property in general is about adding scarcity to things that do not inherently suffer from it. Especially in the Information Age.
Now, with that said: there is a future problem for content industries. Technology and content are becoming commoditized. Rendering technologies, places like Pixar, are becoming more and more realistic. And those technologies will eventually have Free implementations. Also, Free content, right now predominately in operating systems, is beginning to spread to other areas: props, character models, textures, sounds, music, and scripts: anything imaginable to make a story whether interactive or not. Eventually, using nothing more than creative commons material and lots of computer rendering power any individual or small group of individuals will be able to match the creative quality of today's Hollywood. There will be a collapse eventually for movies, fictional books, and music. It can only be held off.
Until then, I also will continue to buy all my games, and books - I don't really buy any new music nowadays: for that I'm satisfied. And the reason I will: because in the now I want to enjoy quality entertainment - if not for the current work then as you say for the next. But above all that: I do see the end for for-profit content approaching unless giving away your effort is made illegal for everyone.
Slashdot Mirror
My new mall has a policy that it's against the rules to be black in it. So, can my rent-a-cops call real cops and make black people leave and maybe arrest them too? There's a big difference between "policy" and "illegal." When your "policy" becomes "law" then we're back to fiefdoms.
Here's what I don't like about "secure boot" (from this article): "...The end user is not guaranteed that their system will include the signing keys that would be required for them to swap their graphics card for one from another vendor ..."
So, given that major OEM's tend to ship as minimal as possible BIOS/UEFI options: If you buy a Dell computer and cannot turn off secure boot, are you limited by hardware signing to Dell branded (and priced) graphics cards and etc?
"I would like to learn more about Artificial Intelligence and Game Theory. I know these are both large areas of study; however, my main interest is in how these affect decisions in the world. This would include politicians, business people, and general society. I'm not looking for a career or anything; this is just a personal interest of mine. Where are good places to start in these areas for somebody new to them? I'm aware of the Stanford on-line classes, but those don't work with my current schedule."
Do you really understand how unwise it is to put those words together in that manner? Don't interfere.
This is just another scarcity that is being encroached on. Scarcity of labor. Once all scarce needs of humans are met by a self-sustaining system then we will be in the "Star Trek Economy" future where you just do what you want and status is what you fight over by being exceptionally good at something. Like providing "status" human-made (not robot made!) food.
Sorry man, didn't mean to put you on a defensive: I was more babbling about love of "geek" stuff! ;) If you have a spare Windows license lying around: you can get VirtualBox for a Linux host too! You could try it the other way: see how Aero performs if you have a Vista or 7 license. It's not going to be up-to-par for Windows games I would think but the equivalent compiz:aero should work good enough for you to try? Best part: delete a file when you're done and it's gone!
This is a fairly new machine (obviously!) and when I built it support for a 6870 just wasn't any good. It may have changed but I'm already having the best of all worlds to change. I have 8GB of RAM in it. The host is Windows 7 64-bit, and the guest is Ubuntu 11.04 64-bit. I'm not kidding when I say video performance and performance in general is extremely good: it is. A part of it is because my processor supports hardware virtualization features such as nested-pages. That helps for running programs faster. The video wasn't always as good but is now since VirtualBox added 3D support and therefore the ability to use composited desktops, which again, run perfectly fine. I have a 64GB disk image for Ubuntu - which is plenty because I just use it for web-browsing and programming. My hard drive on the host is 1TB. And it's full of Windows games. When I'm in Ubuntu - at full speed - the CPU (measured from Windows 7) is sitting between 1-3% usage idle. So it's not a resource hog. I give the VM 4GB of RAM. I have a shared machine folder between the guest and host so transferring files is super simple. And here's the best part: when a new version of Ubuntu comes out (or just another distro I'd like to toy with): No reinstall. Put the files I want to transfer to the new version through the machine folder into the host and then back through a different machine folder into a new guest. It's just all around awesome! I get games and trouble-free-whatever-distro(s)-I-want at the same time. What makes it perfect is that the virtualization for the guest is just so darn good. I remember when that wasn't the case. It is now!
I have the opposite situation. My hardware is too new. 6870 Radeon, intel Core i5. Doesn't work right. But, I'm running inside of VirtualBox and it abstracts all that hardware away. It even supports 3D with a guest addition to expose that to OpenGL. My desktop right now in front of me is composited with compiz and plays video, wobbly windows and all just fine.
I know there are barriers when you go to upgrade old hardware: change piece A and you need to change piece B and such, but, really, leave it at a text console as a server or just pick up a cheap $299 laptop that a modern Linux will run just fine with intel video drivers. Intel video drivers over the years surprisingly have given me the fewest issues and they support compiz just fine too.
If you had read the article you would have seen that nVidia's binary blob already supports it and Ati's isn't far behind.
It doesn't matter. It's too late.
Beneficiaries to ignorance around climate change such as a, not related to the article, Koch Brother's have come out on top in the debate. People won't see this retraction and even if they did they are already biased against it. Besides, put on some shorts: there is no way climate change will change the pursuit of billions of dollars in profits. And the fact is those profits would have to be severely curtailed to make a difference. That's not the way the world works. Forget about it and just be happy you have a decent chance of adapting to climate change with our Western infrastructures in a fairly good position to handle the disruptions. Those people in Africa? Yeah, apparently the answer to them is: fuck off and die of drought.
Because really it does seem fast for due process.. Like, really. Like, Japanese Conviction Rate fast...
It's safe! I cringed, squinted my eyes, and prayed while I clicked on it! Then, let out a huge sigh of relief! There, did my community service for the day!
Wouldn't the fact that everyone is infringing on the patent have something to say about "being obvious to someone skilled in the field.."?
Concerning Mozilla, you are wrong. Mozilla works on making the best web-browser they can. Business wants a web-browser that will never change for as long as possible so they don't have to spend a single cent on upgrading their stupid internal web-applications. See IE6 and every single problem it has hung over web-standards for half a decade or so. Now, business can say: we won't use Mozilla's web-browser because it isn't (stupidly) "stable" enough for us and you know what: who cares. Mozilla's market is not some staid business: let Microsoft deal with the headaches and such that come from serving that market. Mozilla will do just fine serving non-commercial users and users that aren't so short-sighted they'd cut off their own nose. And what does that mean? A decade from now Mozilla: as a web-browser company, will have and continue to have something that is competitive for what they do.
The business world keeps Microsoft in power, not gamers.
I don't doubt you overall, but: for my home computers, the only reason the machine I'm typing this on has Windows 7 installed is because of games. My laptop doesn't have Windows, only my desktop which has the hardware to run the games.
I should have elaborated on my comment a bit. I never said it would be syntactically beautiful: just that you could do it.
For example, back in the Amiga days I implemented a Object-Orientated GUI in AMOS Basic. That was a procedural language. It ended up having lots of stub functions to handle the object part of the implementation and as the language didn't allow variable numbers of arguments to procedures sometimes you had to call the stubs with null values for parameters that weren't needed. Internally, I had no access to direct memory allocation so I had some general purpose arrays. Like GUI(30,10) which was a maximum of 30 objects with a maximum of 10 attributes. In parallel to that array I would use a string array: GUI$(30) for the same number of objects for things like text fields. Then accessing - through the stub functions - objects were given the first number - the index or "object" - and a specified attribute index and the stub functions were basically methods on the object. The Basic interpreter didn't enforce any of the object-orientation: that was all up to me with programming-style and if you didn't follow the style you broke it.
Now that example was not elegant at all but I successfully added functionality that was outside the scope of the language. Ugly as sin though.
You know "fake" isn't the right word. You can implement everything you happen to need from a higher-level language into an expressive lower-level one. That is not always possible the other way around.
I get "local news" from aggregator's such as Reddit. And you know what? Reddit: Politics makes me truly sad every day. The reason I find aggregators so effective is that of all the local news stories across the nation: they find the ones that stick out enough that people, actual people who could be your neighbor, vote them up.
The source is given for every item, I never click on ones that go to blogs. Someday, perhaps, blogs will be effective just not yet.
If I was ever in the position where I was required to submit to a polygraph, and I don't mean this situation at a bank machine, I would gladly comply as long as I was able to add a single question as the first one:
Can this machine tell if I am lying?
Polygraph machines are not lie detectors. What they are are stress detectors. And if you know that little fact you need not be stressed when you are dealing with one. Here is a summary of a polygraph machine's reliability: here.
yet another red warning light that the revolution needs to happen and happen soon.
The revolution happened. We lost.
Pissed me off too, I missed it because it wasn't even televised.
Perhaps you mean the iPhone version of: Rage?
That one is a "on-rails" shooter as the iPhone compared to a PC is a limited device. But, the upcoming full-release for the PC and consoles is a full not-rails game.
In China they arrest you for content, in the USA they just ignore you. You have equal effect in both but more freedom to mouth off in one.
You are correct, and the most notable one I can think of (one I actually played on my Commodore 64) is: Elite. That game was so far ahead of it's time that computers in it's era simply could not do it justice. It's eerily similar to games like Eve Online today.
Heheh, sorry: I never played Decent so it's conveniently missing in my memory: first-person shooter for the win! :D Wolf and Doom were previous to Quake but Quake was first with true 3D that's why I mentioned it! Remember, first playing Quake everyone still used the keyboard-only controls inherited from Wolf and Doom: to have mouselook you had to create an "autoexec.cfg" file with the line "+mouselook" to have it persistent. In the game options there was no option to have mouselook permanently on, that came in later games.
Carmack used to lead the 3D Engine sector around. A bit of history, Quake, is the grand-daddy that started it all: first true-3D Game. And it was Carmack. Now, Epic Games went on to win the "licensing" war and that is why practically every game today has a bit of Unreal Engine 3 in it. Carmack however, is still one of the smartest cookies around: he has the ability to keep on pumping out revolution after revolution. And now that Zenimax has folded id Software into it: Carmack doesn't have to worry about those pesky "business" aspects anymore and can just concentrate on where he shines: code.
I was observing the core of the issue. Unfortunately I didn't give the implied conclusion: Copyright in specific and intellectual property in general is about adding scarcity to things that do not inherently suffer from it. Especially in the Information Age.
Now, with that said: there is a future problem for content industries. Technology and content are becoming commoditized. Rendering technologies, places like Pixar, are becoming more and more realistic. And those technologies will eventually have Free implementations. Also, Free content, right now predominately in operating systems, is beginning to spread to other areas: props, character models, textures, sounds, music, and scripts: anything imaginable to make a story whether interactive or not. Eventually, using nothing more than creative commons material and lots of computer rendering power any individual or small group of individuals will be able to match the creative quality of today's Hollywood. There will be a collapse eventually for movies, fictional books, and music. It can only be held off.
Until then, I also will continue to buy all my games, and books - I don't really buy any new music nowadays: for that I'm satisfied. And the reason I will: because in the now I want to enjoy quality entertainment - if not for the current work then as you say for the next. But above all that: I do see the end for for-profit content approaching unless giving away your effort is made illegal for everyone.