It's ironic that the party that was formed to champion the people is the one that has so much to destroy democratic freedoms hard won over centuries.
You do understand how this works, right? Whatever party wins UK elections, the newly voted Prime Minister goes to 10 Downing Street and is shown into a little room at the back. There lies a special red phone. It rings and the Prime Minister is put in touch with the President of the USA. At this point they are told exactly what they should do or else the UK will face severe repercussions. It's been like this for several decades, maybe since the end of World War II. So it doesn't matter one bit what policies the incoming party have. It doesn't matter if they're for or against the people. Whatever the US asks, the UK will give, even if it means a supposedly socialist government will join a coalition of right wing governments to fight a phoney war in Iraq.
I just hope they never have probes on Mars and Venus at the same time because calling both types of day 'sol' will be confusing (though admittedly Venus is a little different). The length of the Martian day is a property of Mars, not of the Sun. It should have a name that reflects it's Martianness.
I just don't get it. If the good games aren't out yet, you're better off playing games on your old console. Why take the risk now? I can understand buying a new PC the moment what you want is available - all your old performance hungry games will suddenly perform better. But with the new consoles, unless the game you want is already available (eg. I bought a DS for Super Mario) there's no point buying now. And anyway, the N64 didn't "win" and yet it provided me with many hours of pleasure.
One thing I'll mention: when I bought my DS, some people said to me "but the PSP is so much more powerful", and I could have afforded the PSP. But the DS gave me what I wanted. However, I can see how some people would probably have caved in under the pressure from friends pointing out that they didn't have the "most powerful". That's a bit sad. Maybe that's what this is really about, people wanting bragging rights to having the "best" console instead of considering "what is the best console for me?". (Or conversely, "who is this console best suited for?")
Well, yes, you could play wow and join the hordes of other people down the same cave as you all fighting copies of the same respawning monster as you in a world where no matter what anyone does, everything looks exactly the same every day. Give me a real RPG any day over games like World of Groundhog.
I'm horrified to hear that you disagree with me, but maybe we can find some common ground before things degenarate into an orgy of death and mutilation.
. People have limited funds, and therefore cannot make multiple system purchases.
If you have limited funds you should spend wisely. I suggest waiting to see what games appear for a console before buying it.
. The choice of a single system has to be an informed choice, and these articles, especially ones presented by supposed informed sources, aid in making this choice.
I suggesting trutsing what you see on sale rather than comments by 'informed' sources.
. A system with two great games might be good for some, but others like variety, and a flopped system doesn't support the same level of variety.
If it matters to you, you should wait and see what kind of games start appearing for your console.
. Even the probability of getting two great games depends upon the number of games produced. The more games produces, the greater the chance of getting a hit game.
Why not wait for the hit game to appear before committing yourself to vaporware?
. Game manufacturers tend to focus more on the popular system, so game variety (and sheers numbers) depends on popularity. Therefore, in choosing a popular system you are more likely to get what you're hoping for.
The best way to judge popularity of a console is to wait and see how many people buy it.
. These articles aid in increasing hype, and therefore popularity, of the particular systems.
Now we get closer to the truth. These articles aren't about informed comment. They're noise generated by people on one 'side' or another trying to hype their preferred console.
. And a final point, before I lazily give up on writing this, is that buying any product supports the further manufacturing of similar products. These articles, and these underlying discussions, aid towards more informed purchases.
Again, you're indicating that the content of these kinds of articles is completely irrelevant. They're purely about making noise in favor of your preferred console.
Just use a little common sense. If you buy from a proven console manufacturer, and you have a feel for the kind of games that company produces, you can afford to preorder a console. If you buy from a company with no track record in the games industry, you need to wait to see what games come out before buying. I'm talking about a diferent issue. In 10 years time someone will probably declare that the PS3 was trounced by the Wii, or vice versa, and yet there will be countless happy customers for both consoles.
There are stores that sell consoles. You can buy a Wii. You can buy a PS3. You can buy an Xbox 360. You can buy all three or just buy a discounted PS2. All of these products will still be available in two, three, four or more years time (except maybe the PS2). Why does everyone have this obsession with X being the best or Y being the winner? Just go out and buy what makes you happy. Years ago I bought a Nintendo 64. Everyone said it was a flop. Countless articles today still claim it was a flop. But guess what? I never noticed, I just played Super Mario 64 and Goldeneye and I was happy. I can understand why this all matters if your 401(k) or pension portfolio is dominated by game company stock. But otherwise, just get out there and have fun! I know I will. (Probably on a Wii;-)
You insensitive clod! I could never get the tape deck to work with my ZX80 (that's ZED-EX-ATEY) and I had to type in my programs every time I restarted. Can you imagine what it was like to develop machine code having to type in my hex loader afresh every time the thing crashed. But develop code I did. I even got my epic 23 byte program published in a magazine.
Don't they realise that there's an objective way of precisely measuring the objectivity of a web site that every right-thinking (or did I mean left-thinking?) academic agrees with? Shame on them. It's not like objectivity is something you could dispute over.
Now that's funny, but you stole it from me. But forewarned is forearmed. This time round, when 2009 arrives, I'm going to make sure that nobody, and I mean absolutely nobody, sneaks into my room and steals my jokes.
I couldn't get anywhere with Kaku's books. I used to own those but I found I couldn't follow the details of the reasoning. Green, Schwarz and Witten I still have. I really ought to get Polchinski, it sounds like the best book on the subject.
...two years ago an email. I'm going to do this by fiddling with the headers. I think my approach has roughly the same amount of good physics backing it as what these guys are doing, and I expect roughly the same amount of success. The advantage of my approach is that I'm going to get the same results for less money. Maybe I should create a startup...
Maybe you can tell us exactly what purpose the Iraq "enterprise" did serve. WMD? No. Fight terrorism? No. Spread democracy in the Middle East? No. I hardly think that a few people in 2 bit country like Iraq is what's standing between us and a space program, anywhere.
Amazing that normal people have to take time out to explain these basics to leftards
I love the irony of someone who writes like a chimpanzee talking about "leftards"!
I thought The Dig was pretty good. I resurrected it a couple of years ago and really enjoyed it. I think I must now be about 2/3 of the way through. Unfortunately I got stuck and lost interest. I really enjoyed the 'classic' science fiction feel. Although many games pretend to be science fiction, they're usually more like science fantasy. The Dig felt more like the kind of science fiction I grew up reading (particularly Asimov) than any other game.
Uncanny reply - I didn't expect anyone to be familiar with quite so many books from my list, especially as they reflect my specific academic and work history!
I've always liked "Introduction to Riemann Surfaces" by George Springer.
I like the machinery in Gunning - sheaves, Cech cohomology and so on.
I learned spectral sequences from this book.
If there's one thing in my life I want to get good at it's spectral sequences. Bott & Tu are very explicit in pointing out exactly what all of the maps are, but there's still something I'm not quite getting.
Never got into that subject,
I was vaguely interested in Category Theory many years ago but I'm only now trying to get to get beyond basics because of the applications to Computer Science. Really beautiful stuff.
eventually anyone studying GR will have to read "Gravitation"
I blasted through Schutz when I was 18. MWT would have terrified me at that age! I did eventually buy MWT but I sold it just a few months ago. I realised that I'd learned as much GR as I was going to need in my life already and that MWT could go to someone who would really use it for a bargain price.
I think every 'technical' person should own..."Principles of Mathematical Analysis"
Funny you should mention that. I really don't get on well with analysis, but it is an esential subject. I kept thinking "I must buy Rudin" but then decided that I couldn't spend that much money on a subject I don't like. Eventually, a couple of months ago, I resolved the issue by buying a cheap analysis book published by Dover (Bachman & Narici) that seemed to cover the material I wanted. I have a mental block with analysis, I'm not sure what to do about it. What I really need is a book on a subject like axiomatic quantum theory that develops functional analysis from scratch using QM as a motivator.
Yes, those definitions on Wikipedia are only any good to someone who has acquired all the prerequisites. Category theory is hard to acquire outside of a course. I acquired the rudiments myself, but it was really hard on my own. That's why it's a good course to study.
What does it get you? Well it does allow you to see commonality between a lot of different things, for example shared structures between many different algorithms. This can lead to nice refactorings of your code.
But where I think it could really help is in programming language design. A language like C++ (and though I'm not happy with C++, I'm not a rabid C++ basher either) is fairly ad hoc. Haskell is a nice well principled language, and category theory plays a big part in thinking about Haskell. Now I'm not (unlike Haskell zealots) saying we should all go off and program in Haskell. But Haskell (and its relatives) have many cool ideas that are making their way into other programming languages (including C++ and Python, say). Category Theory is a foundational kind of subject, good for suggesting overarching guiding principles, like the kind of thing you need in programming language design.
I also think we need lots of smart people thinking about formal methods because of the big problem I see coming over the next few years - dealing with concurrency. Nobody really knows how to write reliable concurrent code. I think of all the poor programmers I know working on PS3 coding who have to corral a bunch of heterogeneous processors to work together reliably enough to work in a piece of consumer electronics. This is hard. Without concurrency you can get away without formal methods using a trial and error approach to programming. With concurremcy this doesn't work anywhere near as well because literally anything could happen at any time. Category Theory is a great tool for people who want to try to think about these things formally and maybe come up with a programming methodology that makes it impossible to make certain types of concurrency related error. (In the same way that static typing makes a whole bunch of errors impossible to happen at run time.)
CT is also a very beautiful subject, worthy of study in its own right. CT also connects many different branches of mathematics. This means that as you learn CT you're also learning about many branches of mathematics (and computer science) at the same time without even realising it.
On my TODO list is "write a book on category theory where each of the constructions is related to something practical rather than just left as an abstract notion".
I looked through some pages using "search inside" on amazon and it looked down to earth and sensible. But what was cool about QED was that Feynman built a model, without using much mathematical notation, that made surprising non-trivial predictions, which turn out to be correct. Most pop science just gives you an account of the science with metaphors that are useless. Yes, they're a pretty picture you can ponder on and think to yourself "isn't physics amazing". But Feynman puts the tools in your hands to reason further. Only the very best pop science does that. (I don't know if Nick's book fits into that category.)
Lectures on Riemann Surfaces, RC Gunning (Best book I've read on Riemann surfaces.) On Numbers and Games, J Conway (You know the strategy for Nim. This is that on acid.) Enumerative Combinatorics I & II, Stanley (Everything you need to know about counting.) Quantum Field Theory, Ryder (This is where I learned much of what I know.) Differential Forms in Algebraic Topology, Bott & Tu (A masterpiece of clarity.) Introduction to Algorithms, Cormen, Leiserson & Rivest (I thought I knew it all until I read this!) The Blackwell Guide to Philosophical Logic, Goble (How many logics are there? More than you think.) QED, Feynman (I'm lying, it's not on my shelf, I forgot who I lent it to. Eschew all QM books until you've read this.) Categories for the Working Mathematician, MacLane. (I'm lying again. It's too expensive, but it should be on my shelf...) Thinking Forth, Brodie. (Forth is the most beautiful programming language ever...after Haskell.) A First Course in General Relativity, Schutz. (I swear I understood this stuff 20 years ago, but age takes its toll...)
It was better than mixing assembly and BASIC. BASIC served as an über-macro assembler meaning that while other people were struggling to write hacky loaders for their machine code, we were coding our own compilers. I wrote an adventure game compiler (which in retrospect I now realise was similar to a baby version of Inform). It would have been a lot harder without BBC Basic.
Slashdot Mirror
I just hope they never have probes on Mars and Venus at the same time because calling both types of day 'sol' will be confusing (though admittedly Venus is a little different). The length of the Martian day is a property of Mars, not of the Sun. It should have a name that reflects it's Martianness.
One thing I'll mention: when I bought my DS, some people said to me "but the PSP is so much more powerful", and I could have afforded the PSP. But the DS gave me what I wanted. However, I can see how some people would probably have caved in under the pressure from friends pointing out that they didn't have the "most powerful". That's a bit sad. Maybe that's what this is really about, people wanting bragging rights to having the "best" console instead of considering "what is the best console for me?". (Or conversely, "who is this console best suited for?")
Well, yes, you could play wow and join the hordes of other people down the same cave as you all fighting copies of the same respawning monster as you in a world where no matter what anyone does, everything looks exactly the same every day. Give me a real RPG any day over games like World of Groundhog.
Just use a little common sense. If you buy from a proven console manufacturer, and you have a feel for the kind of games that company produces, you can afford to preorder a console. If you buy from a company with no track record in the games industry, you need to wait to see what games come out before buying. I'm talking about a diferent issue. In 10 years time someone will probably declare that the PS3 was trounced by the Wii, or vice versa, and yet there will be countless happy customers for both consoles.
There are stores that sell consoles. You can buy a Wii. You can buy a PS3. You can buy an Xbox 360. You can buy all three or just buy a discounted PS2. All of these products will still be available in two, three, four or more years time (except maybe the PS2). Why does everyone have this obsession with X being the best or Y being the winner? Just go out and buy what makes you happy. Years ago I bought a Nintendo 64. Everyone said it was a flop. Countless articles today still claim it was a flop. But guess what? I never noticed, I just played Super Mario 64 and Goldeneye and I was happy. I can understand why this all matters if your 401(k) or pension portfolio is dominated by game company stock. But otherwise, just get out there and have fun! I know I will. (Probably on a Wii ;-)
You're proposing the real cause of our wars is that we don't shoot each other enough?
Oh no! I couldn't have been trusted with a soldering iron at that age!
You insensitive clod! I could never get the tape deck to work with my ZX80 (that's ZED-EX-ATEY) and I had to type in my programs every time I restarted. Can you imagine what it was like to develop machine code having to type in my hex loader afresh every time the thing crashed. But develop code I did. I even got my epic 23 byte program published in a magazine.
...the article is about "World of Warcraft", a different kettle of fish entirely.
I thought this was the birth of a new troll. But no, it's for real.
Don't they realise that there's an objective way of precisely measuring the objectivity of a web site that every right-thinking (or did I mean left-thinking?) academic agrees with? Shame on them. It's not like objectivity is something you could dispute over.
What about the fact that I've never received any message from the future dated after today? Now that's worrying.
Now that's funny, but you stole it from me. But forewarned is forearmed. This time round, when 2009 arrives, I'm going to make sure that nobody, and I mean absolutely nobody, sneaks into my room and steals my jokes.
I couldn't get anywhere with Kaku's books. I used to own those but I found I couldn't follow the details of the reasoning. Green, Schwarz and Witten I still have. I really ought to get Polchinski, it sounds like the best book on the subject.
...two years ago an email. I'm going to do this by fiddling with the headers. I think my approach has roughly the same amount of good physics backing it as what these guys are doing, and I expect roughly the same amount of success. The advantage of my approach is that I'm going to get the same results for less money. Maybe I should create a startup...
I thought The Dig was pretty good. I resurrected it a couple of years ago and really enjoyed it. I think I must now be about 2/3 of the way through. Unfortunately I got stuck and lost interest. I really enjoyed the 'classic' science fiction feel. Although many games pretend to be science fiction, they're usually more like science fantasy. The Dig felt more like the kind of science fiction I grew up reading (particularly Asimov) than any other game.
What does it get you? Well it does allow you to see commonality between a lot of different things, for example shared structures between many different algorithms. This can lead to nice refactorings of your code.
But where I think it could really help is in programming language design. A language like C++ (and though I'm not happy with C++, I'm not a rabid C++ basher either) is fairly ad hoc. Haskell is a nice well principled language, and category theory plays a big part in thinking about Haskell. Now I'm not (unlike Haskell zealots) saying we should all go off and program in Haskell. But Haskell (and its relatives) have many cool ideas that are making their way into other programming languages (including C++ and Python, say). Category Theory is a foundational kind of subject, good for suggesting overarching guiding principles, like the kind of thing you need in programming language design.
I also think we need lots of smart people thinking about formal methods because of the big problem I see coming over the next few years - dealing with concurrency. Nobody really knows how to write reliable concurrent code. I think of all the poor programmers I know working on PS3 coding who have to corral a bunch of heterogeneous processors to work together reliably enough to work in a piece of consumer electronics. This is hard. Without concurrency you can get away without formal methods using a trial and error approach to programming. With concurremcy this doesn't work anywhere near as well because literally anything could happen at any time. Category Theory is a great tool for people who want to try to think about these things formally and maybe come up with a programming methodology that makes it impossible to make certain types of concurrency related error. (In the same way that static typing makes a whole bunch of errors impossible to happen at run time.)
CT is also a very beautiful subject, worthy of study in its own right. CT also connects many different branches of mathematics. This means that as you learn CT you're also learning about many branches of mathematics (and computer science) at the same time without even realising it.
On my TODO list is "write a book on category theory where each of the constructions is related to something practical rather than just left as an abstract notion".
I looked through some pages using "search inside" on amazon and it looked down to earth and sensible. But what was cool about QED was that Feynman built a model, without using much mathematical notation, that made surprising non-trivial predictions, which turn out to be correct. Most pop science just gives you an account of the science with metaphors that are useless. Yes, they're a pretty picture you can ponder on and think to yourself "isn't physics amazing". But Feynman puts the tools in your hands to reason further. Only the very best pop science does that. (I don't know if Nick's book fits into that category.)
Lectures on Riemann Surfaces, RC Gunning (Best book I've read on Riemann surfaces.)
On Numbers and Games, J Conway (You know the strategy for Nim. This is that on acid.)
Enumerative Combinatorics I & II, Stanley (Everything you need to know about counting.)
Quantum Field Theory, Ryder (This is where I learned much of what I know.)
Differential Forms in Algebraic Topology, Bott & Tu (A masterpiece of clarity.)
Introduction to Algorithms, Cormen, Leiserson & Rivest (I thought I knew it all until I read this!)
The Blackwell Guide to Philosophical Logic, Goble (How many logics are there? More than you think.)
QED, Feynman (I'm lying, it's not on my shelf, I forgot who I lent it to. Eschew all QM books until you've read this.)
Categories for the Working Mathematician, MacLane. (I'm lying again. It's too expensive, but it should be on my shelf...)
Thinking Forth, Brodie. (Forth is the most beautiful programming language ever...after Haskell.)
A First Course in General Relativity, Schutz. (I swear I understood this stuff 20 years ago, but age takes its toll...)
It was better than mixing assembly and BASIC. BASIC served as an über-macro assembler meaning that while other people were struggling to write hacky loaders for their machine code, we were coding our own compilers. I wrote an adventure game compiler (which in retrospect I now realise was similar to a baby version of Inform). It would have been a lot harder without BBC Basic.
And don't forget about doing DFTs over finite fields as used by GMP.