We tend to see a fair number of these postings coming through here. What I'm trying to get my head around is how all of these fit together.
It would appear that this posting fits in with a robot's ability to manage its own body. I guess other components are intelligence, being able to sense the environment, being self-sufficient, and so forth.
Does anybody have any good thoughts on how everything is fitting together, and how far we are, in total, from a robot that can be truly useful, say, as a human companion, or for other purposes?
...this doesn't impact the schedule for Elder Scrolls 4, I don't mind what they do.;)
Ever since Elder Scrolls 1, when I could watch the light of my spells travel down the hallways of the dungeons, or watch guards standing in pools if light, while I stood in the shadows, I've been hooked.
OK, so here's my thing. What's the market for homebrew cruise missiles? Naughty kids aiming to get back at their children for giving them an F? Homebrew cruise missile societies? Totalitarian governments?
I'm not entirely sure if the author of this article has ever actually sat down and tried to argue to a Mac-o-phile that they should switch over to something else. Take my wife for example. I could tell her that her Mac is the source of every evil in her life, where Osama bin Laden is actually hiding out, and a terrific source of radioactivity which will summarily fry her ovaries, and she still wouldn't listen to anything I say.
Hence, my critique of these points:
1. See above.
2. Anything which is both cool and cheap at Target is bound to fall apart in less than 2 weeks. It's a basic law of the universe. Plus cool and cheap and Target in the same sentence??
3. I actually have to agree with this one.
4. Umm, see 1. Money just doesn't seem to be a factor for people here.
5. Agnostic.
6. I kind of agree with this, but still can't see even myself switching from a PC to a Mac just for this one thing. Besides, in the total market, how many people are savvy enough to be able to value the risk from Russian hackers at $2000? Certainly not my family.
My 2c.
First things first
on
GPS on Mars?
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· Score: 4, Insightful
I just don't understand why this sort of article comes out when we don't even seem to have the political will to put people back on the moon.
Wouldn't it make far more sense to a) put people back on the moon, b) work out if, in actual practice, astronauts require GPS systems in such a situation and then c) put GPS satellites around the moon? This whole fascination with Mars thing sounds strange to me when we have a much closer, much easier, much less prone to failure environment in which we can perfect things before heading out further into the solar system.
In some ways, I've never understood the quantitative underpinnings of this sort of belief. In the nameless corporation in which I work, if the bug is a priority 1, there's an implicit assumption that you'll damn well stay at work until the thing is fixed, especially if it's customer facing. I myself don't know our average fix time, but I'd be surprised if it's very long at all, especially given the jealous way we guard the reputation of one of our nameless products.
Sure, maybe we sit on bugs silently as well, particularly if they're damaging to the company, but I've never even heard of people actively doing this. Certainly, once it becomes known, the pressure comes down to get it fixed.
So, are there any metrics which quantitatively state that Open Source fix times are better than commercial fix times? Or, is it just part of the mythology at this point?
Geez, my ass already hurts just thinking of sitting through this sucker in the theater.
My wife and I have already spent the GNP of a small African nation going to see these movies (what was it, 5 times for FOTR, 4 for TTT and 3 for ROTK, plus a shyteload of popcorn and hot dogs) and I guess we'll be in the theaters to see this as well.
I myself have no problem giving my money away to this particular cause though. Damn good movies, and they're absolutely worth every last penny.
I don't think it's fair to judge the MPAA based on what they took in. Say, what if they should've earned $10 billion, but only took in $1 billion. Would that be fair? I don't really think so.
No matter how much they make, no matter how bad people think the movies are, it still doesn't give one the right to steal another's intellectual property. Yes, it's all been said before, and yes, the MPAA must accept that illegal activity is part and parcel of running a business, but they're more than welcome to do whatever they need to to enforce the laws of the land. Got a problem with the law? Think movies should be free if they score less than 30% on RottenTomaotes.com? Well, bug your local representative.
At the end of the day, I think the posting is flamebait. Judge this industry by how much they lose, and the actions they take to reduce that loss, not by how much they make.
The first thing that came to my mind when I read this was: "What about IP theft?" I, like many people who think they've had their "big idea," am not too keen on putting it out on the web, where I have no patents or copyright to protect the idea, and where anybody and everybody can come along and put my idea into practice without paying me a dime.
Maybe this is just the paranoia of one inventory, but I wonder how many people would be comfortable doing this sort of thing, and whether this would select any particular sub-population of entrepreneurs by its very nature.
What I'd love somebody to describe is the difference between Linux and Microsoft on the back end, in terms of programming models. What are the open-source initiatives that parallel Java and.NET in terms of server-side enterprise development environments?
I understand that things like MySQL and PHP fill the void, but are there, for example, replacements for things like.NET (yeah, I've heard about Mono, but am more interested in a different approach, rather than an open-source approach to a Microsoft standard), or Enterprise Javabeans?
On the front-end, things seem pretty clear cut to me, but on the back-end, I haven't heard of any independent projects. Are there any open-source standards, or purely open-source implementations of what are effectively closed standards?
I guess this is pretty technically cool, but as a user of a desktop system (aren't we all?) I'm not actually sure of how this would benefit me. Would I, for example, be more efficient in my job using this?
I think there are other assumptions that need to be challenged prior to this sort of thing being built. Namely, that "applications" are the best way to segment functionality within an OS. This sort of system really seems to address the problem of moving between windows to access and work with different information from different applications. I think the problem of having to move between applications ought to be addressed first.
Finally, is anybody aware of any studies of this type of interface that prove me dead wrong? That prove that people are fantastically more efficient using a mechanism like this?
What does the government think will be the terrorist threat here? That Osama will make little nuclear rockets and launch them from a college rocketry club?
I absolutely loved October Sky when I finally saw it the other day. Pity this has left a bad taste in my mouth now.
OK so here's my thing. Does anybody else out there associate the word "fuel" with highly combustible? This whole idea of putting methanol inside my laptop and then firing the whole thing up makes me a little uncomfortable.
I'd start with the overhead lights. Fluoros are the most god-forsaken things ever invented by human kind.
Next comes the offices. If you've got programmers, give them the offices, and let the directors and VPs, who are never in their offices anyway, have the cubes. Programmers need peace and quiet, and the ability to hang a "stay the hell away from me" sign on the door.
Obviously, for any geek worth their stripes, the Saturn V rockets are a pretty awesome piece of history. Well, for this geek at least. It honestly surprises me that they let it come to this in the first place. Does anybody know what the condition of the other 2 is? How was it that this one was not deemed historically significant enough to be taken of?
Although I've lived in the US for a few years now, I've never had the opportunity to go see some of this stuff. Seeing this thing cleaned up and in a permanent display will definitely be worth the price of admission.
Perhaps a troll, but, you know, (s)he's got a point.
I laughed out loud once when I saw on the back of a DVD cover that it contained a "collector's booklet." It had a picture and a track listing. In my view, the only movies that have really got the whole DVD thing right has been the LOTR. Extended editions with extra bits that are actually valuable. Even on the Jaws DVD, which is an absolute classic, the "outtakes" consist of Roy Scheider trying to fire his gun, then swearing. That's it. Umm, yes.
So I totally agree that more storage for the same old crap won't be all that much to cheer about. Hopefully somebody comes up with some more interesting stuff to put on these discs.
I think the important thing here is that, irrespective of whether or not we believe that Microsoft is spreading a little bit of mythology if its own, they're doing something that Linux really isn't capable of doing.
Every day, Microsoft employees are physically in CIO and CEO boardrooms trying to convince executives that Microsoft is a better bet than Linux. Even with a large body of evidence to the contrary, this is something Linux is missing - the financial warchest to use the media and "war buses" to convince people to the contrary.
There's no such thing as reality - there's only what you believe. The best ideas in history of gone down because nobody believed in them. The worst ideas in history have flourished because somebody sold it stronger than anybody else.
So yeah, they may be spreading their own version of the truth, but, as is obvious, I think we should be very, very wary of that truth being accepted as reality.
Yes, free speech against free speech is dangerous. Would it hold up in a court of law? No. But, I think it should hold up in terms of common sense, since it rapidly becomes a circular argument.
From the article:
I am now calling on the Linux community to boycott my creation until its current owners stop accepting money from Microsoft to publish blatantly anti-Linux/pro-Microsoft ads.
Is this not asking that the website block these ads on our behalf, and that they'll be held ransom until such time as they do?
Here, here. If only I'd seen this post before I bought that SUV, and wondered why the hell I'd rolled it on the freeway, rather than having conquered the urban jungle, and then headed out into the Alaska wildlands with my 17 Perfect 10 model girlfriends, I would've saved myself a lot of money.
Plus, Gigli really wasn't the best movie ever made, according to Rolling Stone, nor will I pick up chicks like a magnet picks up nails whenever I drink Bud Light.
You could not physically be more wrong. Recently, one of the larger television stations refused to air one of MoveOn.orgs advertisements. Political reasons. As we all know, Disney also refused to distribute Fahrenheit 9/11. The list could go on and on. One person's FUD is another person's truth. You can't like free speech when it works for you, and hate it when it doesn't. It's as simple as that. Who decides what's truth here? You? What if Microsoft is actually right? And if you think that's anything other than a rhetorical question, you've missed the point entirely.
No, you don't have to be silent about your disagreeing with one person's representation of the truth, but asking an entire community to boycott a website due to the advertisements which it runs is a dangerous, dangerous slide into the sort of polarity we see in the United States today.
How can they possibly sustain a business selling a player for $50? Oh, I remember, kill the competition with your low-priced alternative, because your Windows and Office products are such cashcows, and then when everybody else is laid waste, jack up the price and add useless features for years and years to come. Oh, and by the way, you need Windows to download the music for your player. Funny that.
Not trying to flamebait or anything, but haven't we seen this type of strategy before?
Well, maybe you're right, but sometimes it pays to be a little crazy.
Say you take Asheron's Call 2. I've played it a lot. Yes, perhaps a little psychotic, but what if they built a computer terminal into that game, that I could then program on? Useful? Maybe. Maybe not. But interesting, nonetheless. Take a more complex example. Say you can build a difficult mathematical problem, and render it in a 3D environment in which its solution can also be found. If the 3D environment is itself fun, then everybody else wins.
What I'm really getting at is that scientists, etc, and more and more turning to private citizens who enjoy doing the grunt work in their spare time. Classifying stars for example, or cataloguing snails in national parks (if my memory of the NPR article serves me). In what ways could that be made more fun, to attract a greater proportion of the population. As a people (in the US at least), we're turning more and more to computerized entertainment to fill our time. I'm just trying to think of ways to take advantage of that time.
If somebody built an environment in which I could build and test rockets, I would definitely do some of the heavy grunt work for places like NASA. So cool. So cool.
Returning to the subject of the post itself, could I earn money as a "gamer" by doing something useful which is itself fun to do?
Slashdot Mirror
It would appear that this posting fits in with a robot's ability to manage its own body. I guess other components are intelligence, being able to sense the environment, being self-sufficient, and so forth.
Does anybody have any good thoughts on how everything is fitting together, and how far we are, in total, from a robot that can be truly useful, say, as a human companion, or for other purposes?
Ever since Elder Scrolls 1, when I could watch the light of my spells travel down the hallways of the dungeons, or watch guards standing in pools if light, while I stood in the shadows, I've been hooked.
If nothing else, at least Microsoft is trying much, much harder at security nowadays.
Seriously. Who buys 'em?
Hence, my critique of these points:
My 2c.
Wouldn't it make far more sense to a) put people back on the moon, b) work out if, in actual practice, astronauts require GPS systems in such a situation and then c) put GPS satellites around the moon? This whole fascination with Mars thing sounds strange to me when we have a much closer, much easier, much less prone to failure environment in which we can perfect things before heading out further into the solar system.
Sure, maybe we sit on bugs silently as well, particularly if they're damaging to the company, but I've never even heard of people actively doing this. Certainly, once it becomes known, the pressure comes down to get it fixed.
So, are there any metrics which quantitatively state that Open Source fix times are better than commercial fix times? Or, is it just part of the mythology at this point?
My wife and I have already spent the GNP of a small African nation going to see these movies (what was it, 5 times for FOTR, 4 for TTT and 3 for ROTK, plus a shyteload of popcorn and hot dogs) and I guess we'll be in the theaters to see this as well.
I myself have no problem giving my money away to this particular cause though. Damn good movies, and they're absolutely worth every last penny.
No matter how much they make, no matter how bad people think the movies are, it still doesn't give one the right to steal another's intellectual property. Yes, it's all been said before, and yes, the MPAA must accept that illegal activity is part and parcel of running a business, but they're more than welcome to do whatever they need to to enforce the laws of the land. Got a problem with the law? Think movies should be free if they score less than 30% on RottenTomaotes.com? Well, bug your local representative.
At the end of the day, I think the posting is flamebait. Judge this industry by how much they lose, and the actions they take to reduce that loss, not by how much they make.
Maybe this is just the paranoia of one inventory, but I wonder how many people would be comfortable doing this sort of thing, and whether this would select any particular sub-population of entrepreneurs by its very nature.
I understand that things like MySQL and PHP fill the void, but are there, for example, replacements for things like .NET (yeah, I've heard about Mono, but am more interested in a different approach, rather than an open-source approach to a Microsoft standard), or Enterprise Javabeans?
On the front-end, things seem pretty clear cut to me, but on the back-end, I haven't heard of any independent projects. Are there any open-source standards, or purely open-source implementations of what are effectively closed standards?
I think there are other assumptions that need to be challenged prior to this sort of thing being built. Namely, that "applications" are the best way to segment functionality within an OS. This sort of system really seems to address the problem of moving between windows to access and work with different information from different applications. I think the problem of having to move between applications ought to be addressed first.
Finally, is anybody aware of any studies of this type of interface that prove me dead wrong? That prove that people are fantastically more efficient using a mechanism like this?
I absolutely loved October Sky when I finally saw it the other day. Pity this has left a bad taste in my mouth now.
I assume these things are perfectly safe to use?
Next comes the offices. If you've got programmers, give them the offices, and let the directors and VPs, who are never in their offices anyway, have the cubes. Programmers need peace and quiet, and the ability to hang a "stay the hell away from me" sign on the door.
Although I've lived in the US for a few years now, I've never had the opportunity to go see some of this stuff. Seeing this thing cleaned up and in a permanent display will definitely be worth the price of admission.
I have to admit I'm not quite clear on what this is about. A textbook, huh? About what? Math? The first 9 chapters are "mostly" about Math?
I laughed out loud once when I saw on the back of a DVD cover that it contained a "collector's booklet." It had a picture and a track listing. In my view, the only movies that have really got the whole DVD thing right has been the LOTR. Extended editions with extra bits that are actually valuable. Even on the Jaws DVD, which is an absolute classic, the "outtakes" consist of Roy Scheider trying to fire his gun, then swearing. That's it. Umm, yes.
So I totally agree that more storage for the same old crap won't be all that much to cheer about. Hopefully somebody comes up with some more interesting stuff to put on these discs.
Every day, Microsoft employees are physically in CIO and CEO boardrooms trying to convince executives that Microsoft is a better bet than Linux. Even with a large body of evidence to the contrary, this is something Linux is missing - the financial warchest to use the media and "war buses" to convince people to the contrary.
There's no such thing as reality - there's only what you believe. The best ideas in history of gone down because nobody believed in them. The worst ideas in history have flourished because somebody sold it stronger than anybody else.
So yeah, they may be spreading their own version of the truth, but, as is obvious, I think we should be very, very wary of that truth being accepted as reality.
Yes, free speech against free speech is dangerous. Would it hold up in a court of law? No. But, I think it should hold up in terms of common sense, since it rapidly becomes a circular argument.
From the article: I am now calling on the Linux community to boycott my creation until its current owners stop accepting money from Microsoft to publish blatantly anti-Linux/pro-Microsoft ads.
Is this not asking that the website block these ads on our behalf, and that they'll be held ransom until such time as they do?
Plus, Gigli really wasn't the best movie ever made, according to Rolling Stone, nor will I pick up chicks like a magnet picks up nails whenever I drink Bud Light.
Who'da'thunk it?
No, you don't have to be silent about your disagreeing with one person's representation of the truth, but asking an entire community to boycott a website due to the advertisements which it runs is a dangerous, dangerous slide into the sort of polarity we see in the United States today.
Not trying to flamebait or anything, but haven't we seen this type of strategy before?
Dejavu is such a wonderful thing.
Say you take Asheron's Call 2. I've played it a lot. Yes, perhaps a little psychotic, but what if they built a computer terminal into that game, that I could then program on? Useful? Maybe. Maybe not. But interesting, nonetheless. Take a more complex example. Say you can build a difficult mathematical problem, and render it in a 3D environment in which its solution can also be found. If the 3D environment is itself fun, then everybody else wins.
What I'm really getting at is that scientists, etc, and more and more turning to private citizens who enjoy doing the grunt work in their spare time. Classifying stars for example, or cataloguing snails in national parks (if my memory of the NPR article serves me). In what ways could that be made more fun, to attract a greater proportion of the population. As a people (in the US at least), we're turning more and more to computerized entertainment to fill our time. I'm just trying to think of ways to take advantage of that time.
If somebody built an environment in which I could build and test rockets, I would definitely do some of the heavy grunt work for places like NASA. So cool. So cool.
Returning to the subject of the post itself, could I earn money as a "gamer" by doing something useful which is itself fun to do?