Microsoft's problem is probably that they are a weird combination of duct tape programmers and architecture astronauts. They create a massive complex architecture which they can't complete and then ship it. Google seem to be able to deliver. But they use Java, Python and C++. All heavily OO. I wonder if they use templates, multiple inheritance etc.
Duct tape programmers may be invaluable tools in Joels world of overpervasive market economy and the corporate, but in some areas of application duct tape just does not cut it.
I agree but would add one thing. In mission critical apps, simplicity is extremely important. These guys don't go for the "classes constructed entirely from multiple inheritance from templates" approach either.
Obviously our disagreement is really about emphasis. I respect what you are trying to say, I started with your position myself. Nuclear does seem like a panacea. But it realistically takes 10 yrs to build a reactor. And you would have to build something like 400 reactors to just replace the current fossil fuel power stations. You would have to have 800 new reactors or something to have a decent electric economy (electric cars etc). These reactors have to be built and operated by highly trained people. Who don't exist right now. The workforce alone would take five years to train before you could get a decent building program going. Not to mention the stubborn opposition. It seems that when you take it all into account it would be 20 yrs before we had more than a handful of new reactors online. And you have to build electric cars, because you are moving to an electric transport system. And what about the cost of the carbon emissions over those 20 years while we wait.
Contrast this with the alternative. In those 20yrs you could have built an almost infinite number of wind turbines, solar panels insulated houses, ethanol cars etc etc.
Wind turbines, solar, etc can also be built, installed and maintained by people with already existing skill sets (laid off auto and construction workers). They don't require lengthy approval processes. Retrofitting existing houses with insulation, double paned windows etc is even easier. There were 1.4 million houses built in the US in 97 and 18 million cars. Half of that effort can be diverted to these low tech solutions. You can be reducing carbon output today. Ethanol (not corn ethanol...), can be produced by today's farmers right now, can be used to fuel existing cars (ie even 20 yr clunkers) right now with trivial modifications. It is all low tech and easy and genuinely clean (there is no way to dispose of nuclear waste).
Also I don't believe nuclear is any cheaper than wind. For one thing the cost of waste management and the real cost of security is not included in the calculations, and the "time" cost while we wait 20yrs. And there is the finite possibility of a major disaster, which would have the effect of shutting down all the reactors anyway, which I'm sure is not included in the cost.
And I believe that we may need more reactors but I am slightly scared by the prospect. I would even concede that the safety systems can probably handle most normal failures. But there is always the "Black Swan".
I have never seen an analysis of say if A.Q. loaded a 737 with 40,000 lbs of high explosive and flew it into a reactor. Ok I haven't really looked..
And the other problem that has not (and never will be) addressed is waste disposal.
So I would really like us to build huge arrays of offshore windmills, solar panels, thermal solar, geo-thermal, insulate houses, re-design cities and transport systems, high efficiency ethanol cars, low loss transmission lines etc etc, before we spend any effort on new reactors. They may be necessary, but they need to be a last resort when all other possibilities have been exhausted. The nuclear lobby should be able to easily prove that they are necessary. I haven't seen a convincing case.
All I have to go on is the article, which as you say is hyperbolous. I think we essentially agree. The developers have no doubt worked hard and maybe have made some incremental contribution to robotics AI. But that is hard to judge from the hyperbolous article. Their website has zero information. It looks to me like just another homebrew robot. I would love love love to be proved wrong
So you are saying they have entered the environmental data (ie room dimensions, furniture type and expected position etc). Then they know roughly what to expect and adapt from that baseline. That would simplify the task. A valid approach.
A robot with decent legs, arms, and appropriate sensors (for balance, vision, grip, etc) is all you need
I agree with you. That is all you need. But we don't have it. They have not built a "humanoid" robot, but a very crude machine. So I am not impressed. In my opinion, the mechanical engineering problem is much harder then the software problem. New materials and actuators are required, and I don't see them coming any time soon. So we will be stuck with incremental improvements to the machines we currently use.
Anybody peddling an autonomous general purpose domestic robot is a snake oil salesman. We are at least 20 yrs away from that (ie never).
The DARPA challenge has been a major step forward, but those robots only do one "simple" task. They did not have to deal with any mechanical challenges. They just added sensors and software to an already highly developed (over 100 years) mechanical system.
Domestic automation will continue as it has done for the last few decades, with the development of cost effective single task machines, dish washers, clothes washers, vacuum cleaners, lawn mowers.
experimental modes of government in test communities .
That is a brilliant idea. One problem would be that there strong forces (both left and right) who are vested in the status quo. They would probably try and suppress the more successful experiments.
Another thing is that different types of people probably have different government preferences, so there is not actually one ideal form of government. Also the history of the world could be written through this lens. Lots of communities with different forms of goverrnment, but they were eventually destroyed by the most aggressive, violent and ruthless communities. Even the United States, seen as a beacon of freedom and enlightenment destroyed thousands of self governing indian tribes (who probably had previously destroyed other communities). So maybe in the end the purpose of government always turns out to be the pursuit of power for a certain type of personality. Those of us not interested in power are manipulated by those who are.
I was simply arguing that if they are old enough to die for their country, they are old enough to have a legal beer. The drinking age law is wrong in my opinion.We protect them from the evils of a cold Bud, but we send them off to a hail of Al-Quaeda bullets. Hypocrisy. Let them have a beer in peace.
I didn't call anyone a fascist. You have no idea what my opinion of the wars is, and you obviously have no interest. Maybe you next time you could ask questions before making assumptions. And by the way I am ex national guard. Obviously not equal to your kick butt special forces combat record but there you go.
then I'm going to create a Facebook account for myself and publish the photo. Just to lessen the chances of ending up in a job/college or whatever run by these pinched faced puritans. Life is too short man. And by the way USA, the drinking age (which is unenforced anyway) is 18 pretty much every where else in the world. How many kids have died in Iraq/Afghanistan before they legally had the right to hold up a beer can at a party?
I don't think an Ubuntu style OSS OS will ever be successful with Joe Sixpack. For one thing he requires a massive marketing campaign (see iphone). For another, OSS is developed by geeks. Windows and OSX development is ultimately driven by marketing and sales people. The developers give them what they think they can sell to the masses. The one place where a client OS could gain traction is in the business world, where the price may be attractive. But even there, a surprising amount of proactive marketing and selling is required. I have seen many cases where an obviously superior solution has been beaten out by the slick corporate effort at literally 10 times the price.
Of course, on the server side technical superiority and price are fairly compelling. But even there, not to the average IT drone. Nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft.
However, what happens when a superclass is changed, e.g., a new method is added? Much of the time, nothing. But what happens with MI when one superclass adds a method that already exists by name in another superclass? You end up in exactly the same solution as with SI; you use composition to arbitrate the ambiguity.
When interfaces collide, there is no issue. If a method is added to a superclass in single-inheritance, it rarely affects the subclass unless that subclass is too tightly coupled with private variables (the implementation) of the superclass; you'd be hosed with any change in the superclass.
I dunno. Maybe the whole thing is a little too complicated. You could do the same thing with a few functions and while loops.
someone please show an example of where multiple implementation inheritance is superior (not just equivalent) to multiple interfaces and the composition design pattern
I have no idea what that sentence means. I must be a moron.
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft's problem is probably that they are a weird combination of duct tape programmers and architecture astronauts. They create a massive complex architecture which they can't complete and then ship it. Google seem to be able to deliver. But they use Java, Python and C++. All heavily OO. I wonder if they use templates, multiple inheritance etc.
Duct tape programmers may be invaluable tools in Joels world of overpervasive market economy and the corporate, but in some areas of application duct tape just does not cut it.
I agree but would add one thing. In mission critical apps, simplicity is extremely important. These guys don't go for the "classes constructed entirely from multiple inheritance from templates" approach either.
whey hey!!!!
Obviously our disagreement is really about emphasis. I respect what you are trying to say, I started with your position myself. Nuclear does seem like a panacea. But it realistically takes 10 yrs to build a reactor. And you would have to build something like 400 reactors to just replace the current fossil fuel power stations. You would have to have 800 new reactors or something to have a decent electric economy (electric cars etc). These reactors have to be built and operated by highly trained people. Who don't exist right now. The workforce alone would take five years to train before you could get a decent building program going. Not to mention the stubborn opposition. It seems that when you take it all into account it would be 20 yrs before we had more than a handful of new reactors online. And you have to build electric cars, because you are moving to an electric transport system. And what about the cost of the carbon emissions over those 20 years while we wait.
Contrast this with the alternative. In those 20yrs you could have built an almost infinite number of wind turbines, solar panels insulated houses, ethanol cars etc etc.
Wind turbines, solar, etc can also be built, installed and maintained by people with already existing skill sets (laid off auto and construction workers). They don't require lengthy approval processes. Retrofitting existing houses with insulation, double paned windows etc is even easier. There were 1.4 million houses built in the US in 97 and 18 million cars. Half of that effort can be diverted to these low tech solutions. You can be reducing carbon output today. Ethanol (not corn ethanol...), can be produced by today's farmers right now, can be used to fuel existing cars (ie even 20 yr clunkers) right now with trivial modifications. It is all low tech and easy and genuinely clean (there is no way to dispose of nuclear waste).
Also I don't believe nuclear is any cheaper than wind. For one thing the cost of waste management and the real cost of security is not included in the calculations, and the "time" cost while we wait 20yrs. And there is the finite possibility of a major disaster, which would have the effect of shutting down all the reactors anyway, which I'm sure is not included in the cost.
Peace.
And I believe that we may need more reactors but I am slightly scared by the prospect. I would even concede that the safety systems can probably handle most normal failures. But there is always the "Black Swan".
I have never seen an analysis of say if A.Q. loaded a 737 with 40,000 lbs of high explosive and flew it into a reactor. Ok I haven't really looked..
And the other problem that has not (and never will be) addressed is waste disposal.
So I would really like us to build huge arrays of offshore windmills, solar panels, thermal solar, geo-thermal, insulate houses, re-design cities and transport systems, high efficiency ethanol cars, low loss transmission lines etc etc, before we spend any effort on new reactors. They may be necessary, but they need to be a last resort when all other possibilities have been exhausted. The nuclear lobby should be able to easily prove that they are necessary. I haven't seen a convincing case.
Dr Hubris, I presume?
I dunno. Murphy's law operates regardless of the level of technology.
but the few anti-nuke mouths are just too loud
Chernobyl....
So are you claiming that the increase in atmospheric CO2 is having no effect?
All I have to go on is the article, which as you say is hyperbolous. I think we essentially agree. The developers have no doubt worked hard and maybe have made some incremental contribution to robotics AI. But that is hard to judge from the hyperbolous article. Their website has zero information. It looks to me like just another homebrew robot. I would love love love to be proved wrong
A hyperbolous christmas to you.
I don't think there is any claim that this device is going to be doing everything tomorrow.
The headline of the article is:-
"The Gundersons get us ready for Basil, the robot of our dreams"
Quite a claim, really, but an "intelligent" table is not the robot of anyones dreams.
So you are saying they have entered the environmental data (ie room dimensions, furniture type and expected position etc). Then they know roughly what to expect and adapt from that baseline. That would simplify the task. A valid approach.
A robot with decent legs, arms, and appropriate sensors (for balance, vision, grip, etc) is all you need
I agree with you. That is all you need. But we don't have it. They have not built a "humanoid" robot, but a very crude machine. So I am not impressed. In my opinion, the mechanical engineering problem is much harder then the software problem. New materials and actuators are required, and I don't see them coming any time soon. So we will be stuck with incremental improvements to the machines we currently use.
Anybody peddling an autonomous general purpose domestic robot is a snake oil salesman. We are at least 20 yrs away from that (ie never).
The DARPA challenge has been a major step forward, but those robots only do one "simple" task. They did not have to deal with any mechanical challenges. They just added sensors and software to an already highly developed (over 100 years) mechanical system.
Domestic automation will continue as it has done for the last few decades, with the development of cost effective single task machines, dish washers, clothes washers, vacuum cleaners, lawn mowers.
So is copyright as currently constituted a net benefit to society?
experimental modes of government in test communities
.
That is a brilliant idea. One problem would be that there strong forces (both left and right) who are vested in the status quo. They would probably try and suppress the more successful experiments.
Another thing is that different types of people probably have different government preferences, so there is not actually one ideal form of government. Also the history of the world could be written through this lens. Lots of communities with different forms of goverrnment, but they were eventually destroyed by the most aggressive, violent and ruthless communities. Even the United States, seen as a beacon of freedom and enlightenment destroyed thousands of self governing indian tribes (who probably had previously destroyed other communities). So maybe in the end the purpose of government always turns out to be the pursuit of power for a certain type of personality. Those of us not interested in power are manipulated by those who are.
OK, you self-righteous prick
Whoah there Sport,
I was simply arguing that if they are old enough to die for their country, they are old enough to have a legal beer. The drinking age law is wrong in my opinion.We protect them from the evils of a cold Bud, but we send them off to a hail of Al-Quaeda bullets. Hypocrisy. Let them have a beer in peace.
I didn't call anyone a fascist. You have no idea what my opinion of the wars is, and you obviously have no interest. Maybe you next time you could ask questions before making assumptions. And by the way I am ex national guard. Obviously not equal to your kick butt special forces combat record but there you go.
then I'm going to create a Facebook account for myself and publish the photo. Just to lessen the chances of ending up in a job/college or whatever run by these pinched faced puritans. Life is too short man.
And by the way USA, the drinking age (which is unenforced anyway) is 18 pretty much every where else in the world. How many kids have died in Iraq/Afghanistan before they legally had the right to hold up a beer can at a party?
Unfortunately China ended up in the hands of the madman Mao Zedong
Many Chinese still worship Mao as far as I know.
I don't think an Ubuntu style OSS OS will ever be successful with Joe Sixpack. For one thing he requires a massive marketing campaign (see iphone). For another, OSS is developed by geeks. Windows and OSX development is ultimately driven by marketing and sales people. The developers give them what they think they can sell to the masses. The one place where a client OS could gain traction is in the business world, where the price may be attractive. But even there, a surprising amount of proactive marketing and selling is required. I have seen many cases where an obviously superior solution has been beaten out by the slick corporate effort at literally 10 times the price.
Of course, on the server side technical superiority and price are fairly compelling. But even there, not to the average IT drone. Nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft.
However, what happens when a superclass is changed, e.g., a new method is added? Much of the time, nothing. But what happens with MI when one superclass adds a method that already exists by name in another superclass? You end up in exactly the same solution as with SI; you use composition to arbitrate the ambiguity. When interfaces collide, there is no issue. If a method is added to a superclass in single-inheritance, it rarely affects the subclass unless that subclass is too tightly coupled with private variables (the implementation) of the superclass; you'd be hosed with any change in the superclass.
I dunno. Maybe the whole thing is a little too complicated. You could do the same thing with a few functions and while loops.
someone please show an example of where multiple implementation inheritance is superior (not just equivalent) to multiple interfaces and the composition design pattern
I have no idea what that sentence means. I must be a moron.
Time to start firing up the flash ripper and start scraping the site
Which is of course, theft.
Surely if no copyright notice attached then anyone can copy it? Otherwise what is the point of a copyright notice?
Time to shutdown the internet, boys.......
It's being used by the evildoers to spread anti American progaganda.