Building a robot for this or any other competition isn't pure fun, its a good slice of what engineering tends to be. Often there is a lot of tedious work, you run into problems halfway through, and learn the virtue of planning in advance. You find yourself improvising, recreating and being frustrated as your idea falls flat just as often as it works. But in the end, nothing beats the feeling after months or weeks of work to see your robot begin driving and chasing classmates around. From personal experience, these competitions aren't necessarly pure "fun", but they are interesting, and relate material you learn to hands-on activities. You learn teamwork, the design process, often you work with professional engineers and get a little taste of the real world as you call it. If we had more activites like this in schools, we'd have more people interested in engineering, not just battlebots, but in engineering as a whole.
I don't know about some schools, but most will probaly not take funding for the battlebots program straight out of school funds. My school ran a robotics team that participated in BattleBots IQ as well as the FIRST robotics competition, and we had to get ALL of our funding from sponsors, fundraising, and our own pockets.
If you ask me, the schools should start taking some of the funds that go to athletic programs (our engineering team that ran robotics as well as JETS got 75 dollars from the school annually) and putting them into science, math, or at least academic outside programs. Schools often claim that students aren't interested in these activites, but with a little publicity around the school, we found a lot of interest, and had our membership triple every year since our first year.
The point is not supposed to be about demographics, class, race or any other statistic of those who recieve coverage. The point is that news is no longer out to inform, its out to entertain - and we can't blame the media entirely for this, the media is simply a reflection of what the public wants to see.
"Today, everybody expects to be entertained, and they expect to be entertained all the time. Business meetings must be snappy, with bullet lists and animated graphics, so executives aren't bored. Malls and stores must be engaging, so they amuse as well as sell us. Politicians must have pleasing video personalities and tell us only what we want to hear. Schools must be careful not to bore young minds that expect the speed and complexity of television. Students must be amused - everyone must be amused, or they will switch: switch brands, switch channels, switch parties, switch loyalties. This is the intellectual reality of Western society at the end of the century.
"In other centuries, human beings wanted to be saved, or improved, or freed, or educated. But in our century, they want to be entertained. The great fear is not of disease or death, but of boredom. A sense of time on our hands, a sense of nothing to do. A sense that we are not amused."
Yeah, but movie ratings and restrictions are not an action of law, they are simply an action of the movie theaters, and the ratings are done by an organization which has no legal connection.
I'd also like to know exactly where Article 3 clearly gives Congress the power to limit free speech considering that Article 3 refers purely to the judiciary and does not mention Congress. What exactly is contridictory to "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech." The Supreme Court's interpretation of the first amendment has been that speech should be allowed in all except certain special situations, as when it would cause direct harm to others, as well as certain other special situations, and since I don't see video games causing direct harm (at least no conclusive reports supporting any relationship), then I do consider a law such as this unconstitutional.
Well, that really depends on what you define to be ethical. I don't define my personal ethics based on what is legal or what is deemed 'right' by some authority, religous or otherwise. I determine the ethical thing to do to be the thing that simply causes the greatest good for the greatest number of people. In the case of file sharing, if I don't download music, I don't hear new music and don't care enough to try to look for new music, so I also don't purchase new music. However, if I download music, then I also tend to purchase music I've downloaded, resulting in increasing my own personal happiness, as well as giving the record companies some additional profit. So I do consider downloading music to be ethical, because it is beneficial for everyone involved. Legal... well that's a completely different story.
Well, first of all, this was most likely intended to be a throwaway joke to start the article, not an actual serious commentary on the state of the world, if you really have such an insane need to insult Katz, at least try to insult him for something worthwhile.
Second of all, where exactly did you learn that the world doesn't hate us?
"The US is seen more often than not as the only party that can intervene in regional conflicts without taking sides."
Can anyone say Israel? We've been taking sides in their conflicts for quite a while, and when we support their oppositions control of their holy land, yes they will hate us for that.
"The US is seen as a country that loves freedom, and has a lot of opportunity for poor people to improve themselves."
This might be true if you're looking at early 20th century European history, or perhaps Mexico today, but this was never the case in the Middle East. Many nations there have an entire different philosophy which does not respect freedom as a right, but instead something that destroys what they are trying to create.
"The US is seen as a country that is very rich, but also very generous with that wealth if another country needs it because of natural disaster."
Once again, the US is not respected for wealth in many countries, instead we are hated for the type of wealth driven culture that we create. When we have corporations that invade their nations with capatilistic ideas and promote wealth as the ultimate goal. Look at Iran, while there is one more liberal fundamentalist party which supports capitilism and too an extent, some freedoms, there are also major parties which are completely against economic or social freedom for the effect it may have on their religious culture.
I'm not attempting to make any judgement on the right or wrong of their judgements of our culture, but yes they do hate us, and in their eyes, they have very good reasons for hating us. Sitting around pretending that everyone appreciates what we do for the world is delusional. Just look at any amount of recent history (Somolia,Iran) and you'll see how much some cultures hate us.
>Do they have a right to make certain no one is playing the shareware game, unless they have paid an arbitrary sum?
Well, I think most people will agree that if someone has the right to a piece of software, they also have the right to put whatever restrictions on it they wish, in this case letting you play it and in most cases pay if you wish to pay.
>Should the exotic car dealer be allowed to forbid you from loaning your Ferrari to a friend (not that he would have to, it would have to be a damn good friend)?If the exotic car dealer has no rights once the car has left his possession, how can a software author? Can the author be certain, that the pirated copy they are trying to prevent, isn't just a legit copy that was loaned to another person?
Well, the point of loaning a Ferrari to your friend is that you own the rights to the Ferrari and are lending it to your friend, denying yourself the ability to use the car in exchange for him being able to use it. I assume when you use the word 'loan' what you actually mean is 'copy'. So in the case of software you are giving someone a copy of your software, giving both you and your friend the ability to use the software simultaneously. That would equate to, once you purchased a Ferrari, being able to copy it for no charge and give these copies out to anyone you wanted. If we could actually do this, then I can't see any product staying in the market for long.
> People with vested interests have decided they want to make a profit this way, and when normal human *non-pathological* nature gets in their way, they buy a bunch of laws.
I think part of the point of the article is that the shareware system isn't working very well in many cases, so I don't know how many shareware vendors are going around 'buying up laws'. The people who are lobbying congress are those using a pay-first program, which is the complete opposite from the shareware system.
I think that this post is a prime example of using 'rationality', in this case a completely unrelated analogy, to justify behavior that you know denies others rights which they are entilted. The best thing you can do, if you dislike the vendor or their product so very much, is to not use the product. If you do need or want the product, most people agree the moral thing to do would be to not pirate software from a company whose products you enjoy.
Any system, no matter what software or OS you decide to use, still has a possiblity of error simply because it is a somewhat complicated high-level system. When you turn more and more over to software, then you inevitably create a greater likelyhood of error somewhere along the line. The best thing to do to prevent the error resulting in a more serious problem is to have backups, either much more low-level software, or, even better, manual controls for everything that would need to be used in case of an emergency. At the very least have manual controls for basic navigation so if the problem is serious the vessel isn't stranded.
The best idea is just to have manual systems for everything that can be controlled manually, so the ship could continue functioning at somewhat normal level while the problem is solved. Humans may not be foolproof, but when the system crashes, they're all we have.
Yes, money or fear of poverty is a great motivator to get someone working, but a drive for money is not what produces creative insight. If you want to find a great new idea, you look towards people that have an interest in what they do beyond money. Great songwriters are those who love writing music, great actors are those who love acting, and great programmers are those who love programming. Look at all the people in college today going into compsci or any other industry simply for the money and tell me how many creative, revolutionary ideas are going to come out of them. IF you want money, you work a 9-5 and make yourself a living, if you want make something new and innovative, you do what you love.
So far, the largest dot com I've seen that's been able to pull it off to moderate success has been IGN.com. They spent years building up a large fan base, and after the internet economy collapsed they begin to offer IGNinsider accounts for 25 bucks a year, with additional articles, a printable mag, and other various extras. While there was enormous uproar of people who wanted to keep the internet free(as in beer) they've actually been doing pretty well, and are slowly pulling other content under the premium veil, most recently the popular message boards, and attempting to lure more people in. Regardless of whether IGN survives, I'd expect many sites with an article/review oriented aspect to do the same thing that IGN did in the coming months/years. As for those that offered a free service that was essentially pretty pointless like this Blue Mtn. company did, you can give people something that don't really need, but you can't get them to buy something they don't really need.
Well, I'm a CS student at Virginia Tech as well, currently in my second year, so I know what you're talking about in reference to the math intensive curriculum they give here, but I disagree. A good math basis is extremely important for anyone planning on going anywhere in with Computer Science. What exactly does math teach you? It's not as much the nitty gritty calculus stuff that's important as it is the skills you learn from doing math - being able to analyze problems, problem solving, and the most important skill a CS person can have, thinking logically. It's skills like those that make you a good programmer.
In terms of them teaching C++, you're going to learn C++ at first at most schools you go to, and after you learn C++ and the basics of programming, you can use those skills to pick up new languages quite easily. If you really do have an interest in doing well in CS, put some outside effort into it, do some pet projects in other languages.
And also, I'd say Virginia Tech has one of the best CS programs in the nation, so if you aren't getting anything out of your classes there, you might want to rethink your choice of majors.
Well, at least now if I recieve 50 porn emails, those emails will be specifically targeted to my porn needs, ensuring that I'll be able to find the porn I want faster and with greater reliability. When a company that destroys your privacy has your best interests in mind it really warms your heart.
I think Lessig is trying to apply prior situations to current situations in a way that will not work at all. When talking about cable TV or the player piano rolls, Congress had the ability to restrict use or distribution of these products without too much difficulty. Also, both cable and piano rolls required resources to produce and distribute.
P2P sharing is a completely different idea though, in the digital world, it becomes much harder to track distribution of products, and much easier to distribute, thus making it much harder for Congress to regulate P2P. If one tried to force a P2P service to pay those industries whose products it distributes, how would one keep track of all the media and account for it with the volume that goes over each network, or even the bigger problem, how would a service stay in business when it has to pay for transactions when there will most likely be other services out there which will not comply for various reasons. It's not possible for Congress to simply legislate on the internet, any legislation enacted in the spirit which Lessig is talking about would require a complete overhaul of how we interact with the internet in some way, most likely infringing on free speech as well.
As every type of media becomes digital and easily able to be distributed, its not possible for Congress to deal with digital mediums as it did with player pianos. I'm afraid that this is one situation where we are going to have actually tread new ground instead of relying on previous cases. I'm not sure exactly how we should legislate internet distribution, or even if we should, but I know that any effective or meaningfull legislation won't be based on any previous copyright ideas.
With a system like ebay where the transactions are completely up to the seller and the buyer, it's bound to have these types of scams running all the time. Unless some company develops a more secure way of conducting internet auctions, I never plan on spending more than I can afford to lose, it's always a gamble, even if that person you're buying from has 25 smiley faces ratings underneath his name.
I don't claim to be an expert in statistics, but looking over the article in the post, I can find some glaring errors in the way the study was done. First of all, 1.1 million people is an enormous amount to be used in a study, a random sampling of 1500-2500 is the norm, because under the Central Limit Theorem (the same idea used in biology and other sciences in doing studies on populations) this provides about 95% accuracy in predicting the entire population, no matter what the size of the population. If you want to conduct a well done study with about 1500-2500 random people from throughout the US, you usually need to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to ensure a truly random and accurate sample. If you wanted to maintain that kind of accuracy for 1.1 million people, it would cost tens of billions of dollars, which an organization such as the American Cancer Society (who strangely provided the data) does not have available. So my conclusion would be that the sample the ACS gathered is not representative of the population in any way, and wouldn't hold any water if given a thorough lookover.
Also, the fact that the American Cancer Society provided the data, and the fact that the data is over a decade old both suggest that the data is either skewed in one direction or another, or is not consistent with current times.
From a basic statistical standpoint, I'd say this theory is complete crap.
I think the main problem this guy has with his predictions is not being able to differentiate between technology advances and advances in the way we think. In order to develop things such as actual computer AI, time travel or FTL travel we would need a revolution in the way we think about the world. Changing the face of science is not the same as doubling the speed of a PC.
While we may be advancing technology at an extremely rapid pace right now, true knowledge advances require creativity and intuition in addition to genius, not just X years of lab work, and so are far and few between.
Slashdot Mirror
Building a robot for this or any other competition isn't pure fun, its a good slice of what engineering tends to be. Often there is a lot of tedious work, you run into problems halfway through, and learn the virtue of planning in advance. You find yourself improvising, recreating and being frustrated as your idea falls flat just as often as it works. But in the end, nothing beats the feeling after months or weeks of work to see your robot begin driving and chasing classmates around. From personal experience, these competitions aren't necessarly pure "fun", but they are interesting, and relate material you learn to hands-on activities. You learn teamwork, the design process, often you work with professional engineers and get a little taste of the real world as you call it. If we had more activites like this in schools, we'd have more people interested in engineering, not just battlebots, but in engineering as a whole.
I don't know about some schools, but most will probaly not take funding for the battlebots program straight out of school funds. My school ran a robotics team that participated in BattleBots IQ as well as the FIRST robotics competition, and we had to get ALL of our funding from sponsors, fundraising, and our own pockets.
If you ask me, the schools should start taking some of the funds that go to athletic programs (our engineering team that ran robotics as well as JETS got 75 dollars from the school annually) and putting them into science, math, or at least academic outside programs. Schools often claim that students aren't interested in these activites, but with a little publicity around the school, we found a lot of interest, and had our membership triple every year since our first year.
The point is not supposed to be about demographics, class, race or any other statistic of those who recieve coverage. The point is that news is no longer out to inform, its out to entertain - and we can't blame the media entirely for this, the media is simply a reflection of what the public wants to see.
"Today, everybody expects to be entertained, and they expect to be entertained all the time. Business meetings must be snappy, with bullet lists and animated graphics, so executives aren't bored. Malls and stores must be engaging, so they amuse as well as sell us. Politicians must have pleasing video personalities and tell us only what we want to hear. Schools must be careful not to bore young minds that expect the speed and complexity of television. Students must be amused - everyone must be amused, or they will switch: switch brands, switch channels, switch parties, switch loyalties. This is the intellectual reality of Western society at the end of the century.
"In other centuries, human beings wanted to be saved, or improved, or freed, or educated. But in our century, they want to be entertained. The great fear is not of disease or death, but of boredom. A sense of time on our hands, a sense of nothing to do. A sense that we are not amused."
-Michael Crichton, Timeline
Yeah, but movie ratings and restrictions are not an action of law, they are simply an action of the movie theaters, and the ratings are done by an organization which has no legal connection.
I'd also like to know exactly where Article 3 clearly gives Congress the power to limit free speech considering that Article 3 refers purely to the judiciary and does not mention Congress. What exactly is contridictory to "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech." The Supreme Court's interpretation of the first amendment has been that speech should be allowed in all except certain special situations, as when it would cause direct harm to others, as well as certain other special situations, and since I don't see video games causing direct harm (at least no conclusive reports supporting any relationship), then I do consider a law such as this unconstitutional.
Well, that really depends on what you define to be ethical. I don't define my personal ethics based on what is legal or what is deemed 'right' by some authority, religous or otherwise. I determine the ethical thing to do to be the thing that simply causes the greatest good for the greatest number of people. In the case of file sharing, if I don't download music, I don't hear new music and don't care enough to try to look for new music, so I also don't purchase new music. However, if I download music, then I also tend to purchase music I've downloaded, resulting in increasing my own personal happiness, as well as giving the record companies some additional profit. So I do consider downloading music to be ethical, because it is beneficial for everyone involved. Legal... well that's a completely different story.
Well, first of all, this was most likely intended to be a throwaway joke to start the article, not an actual serious commentary on the state of the world, if you really have such an insane need to insult Katz, at least try to insult him for something worthwhile.
Second of all, where exactly did you learn that the world doesn't hate us?
"The US is seen more often than not as the only party that can intervene in regional conflicts without taking sides."
Can anyone say Israel? We've been taking sides in their conflicts for quite a while, and when we support their oppositions control of their holy land, yes they will hate us for that.
"The US is seen as a country that loves freedom, and has a lot of opportunity for poor people to improve themselves."
This might be true if you're looking at early 20th century European history, or perhaps Mexico today, but this was never the case in the Middle East. Many nations there have an entire different philosophy which does not respect freedom as a right, but instead something that destroys what they are trying to create.
"The US is seen as a country that is very rich, but also very generous with that wealth if another country needs it because of natural disaster."
Once again, the US is not respected for wealth in many countries, instead we are hated for the type of wealth driven culture that we create. When we have corporations that invade their nations with capatilistic ideas and promote wealth as the ultimate goal. Look at Iran, while there is one more liberal fundamentalist party which supports capitilism and too an extent, some freedoms, there are also major parties which are completely against economic or social freedom for the effect it may have on their religious culture.
I'm not attempting to make any judgement on the right or wrong of their judgements of our culture, but yes they do hate us, and in their eyes, they have very good reasons for hating us. Sitting around pretending that everyone appreciates what we do for the world is delusional. Just look at any amount of recent history (Somolia,Iran) and you'll see how much some cultures hate us.
>Do they have a right to make certain no one is playing the shareware game, unless they have paid an arbitrary sum?
Well, I think most people will agree that if someone has the right to a piece of software, they also have the right to put whatever restrictions on it they wish, in this case letting you play it and in most cases pay if you wish to pay.
>Should the exotic car dealer be allowed to forbid you from loaning your Ferrari to a friend (not that he would have to, it would have to be a damn good friend)?If the exotic car dealer has no rights once the car has left his possession, how can a software author? Can the author be certain, that the pirated copy they are trying to prevent, isn't just a legit copy that was loaned to another person?
Well, the point of loaning a Ferrari to your friend is that you own the rights to the Ferrari and are lending it to your friend, denying yourself the ability to use the car in exchange for him being able to use it. I assume when you use the word 'loan' what you actually mean is 'copy'. So in the case of software you are giving someone a copy of your software, giving both you and your friend the ability to use the software simultaneously. That would equate to, once you purchased a Ferrari, being able to copy it for no charge and give these copies out to anyone you wanted. If we could actually do this, then I can't see any product staying in the market for long.
> People with vested interests have decided they want to make a profit this way, and when normal human *non-pathological* nature gets in their way, they buy a bunch of laws.
I think part of the point of the article is that the shareware system isn't working very well in many cases, so I don't know how many shareware vendors are going around 'buying up laws'. The people who are lobbying congress are those using a pay-first program, which is the complete opposite from the shareware system.
I think that this post is a prime example of using 'rationality', in this case a completely unrelated analogy, to justify behavior that you know denies others rights which they are entilted. The best thing you can do, if you dislike the vendor or their product so very much, is to not use the product. If you do need or want the product, most people agree the moral thing to do would be to not pirate software from a company whose products you enjoy.
Any system, no matter what software or OS you decide to use, still has a possiblity of error simply because it is a somewhat complicated high-level system. When you turn more and more over to software, then you inevitably create a greater likelyhood of error somewhere along the line. The best thing to do to prevent the error resulting in a more serious problem is to have backups, either much more low-level software, or, even better, manual controls for everything that would need to be used in case of an emergency. At the very least have manual controls for basic navigation so if the problem is serious the vessel isn't stranded.
The best idea is just to have manual systems for everything that can be controlled manually, so the ship could continue functioning at somewhat normal level while the problem is solved. Humans may not be foolproof, but when the system crashes, they're all we have.
Yes, money or fear of poverty is a great motivator to get someone working, but a drive for money is not what produces creative insight. If you want to find a great new idea, you look towards people that have an interest in what they do beyond money. Great songwriters are those who love writing music, great actors are those who love acting, and great programmers are those who love programming. Look at all the people in college today going into compsci or any other industry simply for the money and tell me how many creative, revolutionary ideas are going to come out of them. IF you want money, you work a 9-5 and make yourself a living, if you want make something new and innovative, you do what you love.
So far, the largest dot com I've seen that's been able to pull it off to moderate success has been IGN.com. They spent years building up a large fan base, and after the internet economy collapsed they begin to offer IGNinsider accounts for 25 bucks a year, with additional articles, a printable mag, and other various extras. While there was enormous uproar of people who wanted to keep the internet free(as in beer) they've actually been doing pretty well, and are slowly pulling other content under the premium veil, most recently the popular message boards, and attempting to lure more people in.
Regardless of whether IGN survives, I'd expect many sites with an article/review oriented aspect to do the same thing that IGN did in the coming months/years. As for those that offered a free service that was essentially pretty pointless like this Blue Mtn. company did, you can give people something that don't really need, but you can't get them to buy something they don't really need.
Well, I'm a CS student at Virginia Tech as well, currently in my second year, so I know what you're talking about in reference to the math intensive curriculum they give here, but I disagree. A good math basis is extremely important for anyone planning on going anywhere in with Computer Science. What exactly does math teach you? It's not as much the nitty gritty calculus stuff that's important as it is the skills you learn from doing math - being able to analyze problems, problem solving, and the most important skill a CS person can have, thinking logically. It's skills like those that make you a good programmer.
In terms of them teaching C++, you're going to learn C++ at first at most schools you go to, and after you learn C++ and the basics of programming, you can use those skills to pick up new languages quite easily. If you really do have an interest in doing well in CS, put some outside effort into it, do some pet projects in other languages.
And also, I'd say Virginia Tech has one of the best CS programs in the nation, so if you aren't getting anything out of your classes there, you might want to rethink your choice of majors.
Well, at least now if I recieve 50 porn emails, those emails will be specifically targeted to my porn needs, ensuring that I'll be able to find the porn I want faster and with greater reliability. When a company that destroys your privacy has your best interests in mind it really warms your heart.
I think Lessig is trying to apply prior situations to current situations in a way that will not work at all. When talking about cable TV or the player piano rolls, Congress had the ability to restrict use or distribution of these products without too much difficulty. Also, both cable and piano rolls required resources to produce and distribute.
P2P sharing is a completely different idea though, in the digital world, it becomes much harder to track distribution of products, and much easier to distribute, thus making it much harder for Congress to regulate P2P. If one tried to force a P2P service to pay those industries whose products it distributes, how would one keep track of all the media and account for it with the volume that goes over each network, or even the bigger problem, how would a service stay in business when it has to pay for transactions when there will most likely be other services out there which will not comply for various reasons. It's not possible for Congress to simply legislate on the internet, any legislation enacted in the spirit which Lessig is talking about would require a complete overhaul of how we interact with the internet in some way, most likely infringing on free speech as well.
As every type of media becomes digital and easily able to be distributed, its not possible for Congress to deal with digital mediums as it did with player pianos. I'm afraid that this is one situation where we are going to have actually tread new ground instead of relying on previous cases. I'm not sure exactly how we should legislate internet distribution, or even if we should, but I know that any effective or meaningfull legislation won't be based on any previous copyright ideas.
With a system like ebay where the transactions are completely up to the seller and the buyer, it's bound to have these types of scams running all the time. Unless some company develops a more secure way of conducting internet auctions, I never plan on spending more than I can afford to lose, it's always a gamble, even if that person you're buying from has 25 smiley faces ratings underneath his name.
I don't claim to be an expert in statistics, but looking over the article in the post, I can find some glaring errors in the way the study was done. First of all, 1.1 million people is an enormous amount to be used in a study, a random sampling of 1500-2500 is the norm, because under the Central Limit Theorem (the same idea used in biology and other sciences in doing studies on populations) this provides about 95% accuracy in predicting the entire population, no matter what the size of the population. If you want to conduct a well done study with about 1500-2500 random people from throughout the US, you usually need to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to ensure a truly random and accurate sample. If you wanted to maintain that kind of accuracy for 1.1 million people, it would cost tens of billions of dollars, which an organization such as the American Cancer Society (who strangely provided the data) does not have available. So my conclusion would be that the sample the ACS gathered is not representative of the population in any way, and wouldn't hold any water if given a thorough lookover.
Also, the fact that the American Cancer Society provided the data, and the fact that the data is over a decade old both suggest that the data is either skewed in one direction or another, or is not consistent with current times.
From a basic statistical standpoint, I'd say this theory is complete crap.
I think the main problem this guy has with his predictions is not being able to differentiate between technology advances and advances in the way we think. In order to develop things such as actual computer AI, time travel or FTL travel we would need a revolution in the way we think about the world. Changing the face of science is not the same as doubling the speed of a PC.
While we may be advancing technology at an extremely rapid pace right now, true knowledge advances require creativity and intuition in addition to genius, not just X years of lab work, and so are far and few between.