Since the US Constitution states that the purpose of patents is to advance the useful arts and sciences, and interoperability is key to that advance, all interfaces (whether human-machine or machine-machine) should only be patentable if they are FRAND. That should be a constitutional legal requirement for any US patent covering an interface or protocol.
Interfaces are important. Imagine if every car were forced to have a different interface by patents, with different pedals in different places and different steering wheels. That's no different from the slide-to-lock patent. We want to reward the creation of new and better interfaces, yet allow such interfaces to spread when they are proven to be better. FRAND is exactly the middle ground we want, as the success of GSM (a machine-machine interface) shows.
Is Google's search algorithm patented to begin with? I believe that nearly all modern search engines use conceptually similar heuristics (i.e. content that is often linked from important content is important).
I think it is a big leap to assume that the first autonomous cars will be owned by the rich who have money to burn. The first autonomous vehicles will be used to MAKE money. Driverless taxis and buses will carry passengers, autonomous semis and trucks will haul freight, and small ATVs will courier documents and urgent deliveries in cities. The speed limit might matter to the last, but not the others.
Refusing to put blame on the correct party is a form of partisanship. Trying to pretend both sides are equally at fault when one side is clearly wrong is precisely a "stupid partisan game". Being willing to call a spade a spade and basing debate and policy on facts, regardless of how it makes each party looks, is how one gets past partisanship.
I am an employee of DSTA, but I do not speak in my capacity as one.
The purpose of such contests is typically not to field an operational capability. It is very unlikely that the winning robot or a variant will actually be deployed. The main purpose is to encourage industry and academia to perform research in certain fields, such as machine vision, control systems, AI, etc. This is a long term investment. The secondary purpose is to gauge the state of the art in these fields while advancing it. This is the short term gain.
The contest is modelled after the DARPA Grand Challenge, which concentrates on outdoor navigation. Similarly, you will not see autonomous combat vehicles anytime soon. However, DARPA has certainly focussed interest and effort toward all the fundamental research questions needed to achieve such a feat. DARPA also now has a good idea of what is possible when planning acquisitions and upgrades, and is able to better assess the technical risk of new developments. If the US Army asked for an autonomous UGV tomorrow, DARPA would be able to give a good estimate of how much it would cost, how long it would take, and what is realistically achievable (then the politicians will come in and screw things up).
Such contests are an admission that the state of the art is no longer in the military or intelligence communities, but in the acadamic and industrial spheres. AES was developed outside the NSA, for example. More and more equipment is COTS or MOTS (commercial / militarized off-the-shelf). The days when you could get a national laboratory (Singapore has one too) to singlehandedly advance the state of the art are long over. Nowadays inhouse research tends to be focussed on either security-sensitive fields, or areas no one else simply wants to touch. This trend will only accelerate in the future.
In Singapore, racial harmony is considered nothing less than a matter of national survival. We are a tiny city state that is home to many races. We used to have racial riots in the 60's and 70's, where hundreds died in brutal street warfare. My father used to patrol his Chinese neighbourhood with a parang (machete) to keep out Malays. Race is not a laughing matter in Singapore.
There is now harmony between the races, achieved by force, reeducation and enforced mixing in housing, education and military service. In formulating policy, the Singaporean government considers people to be basically selfish and untrustworthy. People only respond to threats and incentives, brutally and unfailingly enforced. Their better natures are not appealed to, since they have none. These rules are enforced on the rulemakers themselves, since they recognize that they too are human. In my contact with people around the world, I find that this cynical view of human nature is basically correct. The few saints and heroes that exist are the exceptions that prove the rule.
Singapore considers itself to be continually under immediate threat of destruction, whether by economic decline, military invasion, social disintegration, racial or religious disharmony, crime, terrorism or simple governmental incompetence. As a tiny nation with no natural resources, we have no right to survive, and every day that we continue to exist is a miracle.
To survive, discipline is enforced and continual sacrifice expected. This sacrifice takes many forms. We sacrifice our civil rights, and our time and youth in conscripted military service. We expend tremendous effort to secure even the water that we drink and the food we eat. In return for this sacrifice, we have order, fair laws and good government. We walk our streets in safety and live in prosperity. We deserve none of these things, and they are dearly bought. There is no room for error with regards to anything that threatens Singapore's survival. We are too small to take any hits or make any mistakes. Hence the conservatism, harshness and hardheadedness of our laws and policies. We can afford no illusions.
Hence the classification of hate speech as sedition. It is a direct threat to national security and national survival. It threatens the lives of fellow citizens. We do not want to repeat the past.
I hope this also helps you to understand why we are the way we are -- why Singapore has such harsh laws, a disproportionately large military, and strictly enforced social order -- and why Singaporeans support it.
The first foreign response to actually arrive in Louisiana was a contingent of three Singaporean CH-47 Chinook helicopters and 38 personnel from a training detachment based in Grand Prairie, Texas. They arrived in Fort Polk on Tuesday, 1 Sep 05 and are assisting the Texas Army National Guard with airlift and resupply missions. This help was requested and accepted by FEMA, probably due to its quick availability.
Guess what: Special Forces troopers in Afghanistan operated on horseback for exactly the reasons the horse-cavalry boys said. They were perfect for the rough terrain, were logistically light and allowed them to blend in with the locals. Nothing that the proponents of horse cavalry said was wrong, only the scale was.
However, war is always about move and countermove. If you build robots, the enemy will build robot killers (bigger robots, EMP), and you will then need to build even bigger robots with heavier EMP shielding and so on. If you rely completely on robots, then the enemy will force you into a form of conflict where you cannot use them. Carrier battle groups could not stop the destruction of the World Trade Center. This is just one more step in the eternal dance that is warfare.
One of the most important parts of growing up is learning how to deal with violence. In particular, learning when to use violence, and when not to use violence. Learning when and how to escalate or deescalate a violent encounter. Violence is a part of society and of human existence. It is inescapable. As long as we have fists and teeth there will be bullying, robbery, rape and war, and the need to defend oneself from these. Violence is neither right nor wrong in and of itself. It is a merely a tool.
For example, if a thief snatched a purse from an old woman and three guys jumped the thief and beat him up, they would be heroes and their action would be morally right. If three guys jump a random guy on the street and thrash him, they would be criminals and morally wrong. If you are threatened with a gun and you shoot back with your own gun, your use of violence would be justified. If someone called you names and you shot him, you would be wrong.
A child needs to learn these things and more. If he is male in many societies, he will be expected to be the defender of his family and his nation. He may have to mercilessly kill and maim as a soldier if his nation is under attack, the ultimate shame and the ultimate honor. He must come to terms with that.
How a child responds to bullying and whether or not he bullies others is part of the process of learning about violence. It will determine whether he eventually becomes a felon, a bully, a coward, a doormat, or simply a well-adjusted member of society. I feel that many children aren't learning the right lessons. The whole topic has somehow become taboo in public discourse, like sex education was in the past.
If a child is forbidden to fight back, even after all reasonable peaceful methods of resolving the issue have been exhausted, then he will learn to be walked on. He will never learn when and how much violence is right or wrong and develop a healthy spectrum of responses to violence. These are the people who will silently be bullied one day, then kill everyone with SMGs the next, since they know of nothing between total submission and total war. Conversely, if a child is allowed to bully others, or to escalate to violence before peaceful means are exhausted, then he is on his way to jail if nothing is done.
There is some happy medium between psychopath and pacifist, between bully and victim. It is enshrined in a society's laws and culture, and transmitted through media and family. A child needs to discover it. He needs to learn how to respond to an insult, a malicious rumor, a threat, a punch, a gun and a war. It's just part of growing up.
Never start a fight, but always end one. Violence must be avoided as far as possible, but no further. Violence is always wrong, but sometimes it is also right.
Since Counterstrike is by far the most popular game at Net Cafes and LAN arcades in Singapore, parents' groups here called on the Government to ban Half-Life sometime in the 90's. This was put into effect for a few days, before an outcry by gamers and the software industry brought the Government back to its senses. The ban was overturned.
Imagine that. A bad Government policy was reversed by public action. I love the smell of freedom in the morning. And that's the fresh ground real stuff, not the type you get from a Constitution that is being ignored. Yes, I am a Singaporean.
Seriously, knowing politics in Thailand, this is just grandstanding by one political faction or another. There will be some sturm und drang, and everything will return to normal. The American readers should be quite familiar with such maneuvers.
I notice there is a highly-moderated post about how drug offenders are shot on sight in Singapore. That is simply false, but it is interesting to me that it could even be considered plausible. However, death by hanging is mandatory for drug traffickers in Singapore once they are arrested and convicted in a court of law. Due process is not limited to any one country.
SARS is a big deal. It has a mortality rate of about 4% and this is with suspected patients rushed to hospital, pumped full of advanced antiviral drugs and kept in the best intensive care money can buy. Its mortality rate is much higher in untreated cases. It seems to be at least as virulent as the flu.
Do the math. The flu, which has a mortality rate of only 1-2%, kills hundreds of thousands around the world each year. If SARS is not successfully contained, millions will die, mostly in the third world which does not have the kind of medical care available in Singapore.
SARS is still spreading. The outbreak is not over yet. If it reaches densely populated poor urban centres like Calcutta, Rio de Janeiro, or the projects in LA, Chicago or New York, all hell will break loose. This is bigger than some minor conflict in Iraq. This is serious shit.
You should be thankful that cities like Singapore, Hong Kong and Toronto are trying so hard to keep SARS under control. Singapore and Hong Kong are the world's two busiest seaports and both are major air transport hubs. They are now the world's bulwark against contagion and if they fail millions will die.
The country is highly controlled and regulated. I am all for civil rights and freedom, but this is one of those times that strong authority is needed to enforce quarantines and stop people acting stupidly. The government is on the ball, among other things shutting down schools, imposing mandatory screening at the airport, and even deploying the army to stop SARS. Honestly, if Singapore cannot contain SARS, the world is fucked.
As an aside, most of the SARS deaths in Singapore are health care workers working with those infected with SARS at the hospital where they are all being concentrated in. I salute the duty, bravery and valor of these men and women.
There are two issues here. The first is whether or not a software engineer performs "engineering". The second is whether a software engineer can have the legal status of an "engineer".
Do software engineers perform engineering? What is engineering anyway? As far as I am concerned as a Chemical Engineer, an engineer fundamentally designs systems. As part of this work, he will probably need to model the system and test this model (whether the model is mental, computational or physical). Implementing the design involves the engineer, but is not the engineer's job. That is the job of the technician.
This means that a software engineer should be the person who develops requirements (both software and hardware), overall design (data structures, classes, interfaces, protocols) and supervises their implementation. As part of this he may write some test code or build test equipment to verify his design. The actual writing and testing of the code to the design specification is the job of a software technician (which is a better term than "code monkey").
Note that engineers usually have engineers below them. Smaller parts of the overall system may be designed by a junior engineer according to specifications that the senior engineer provides. This smaller part may in turn have smaller parts designed by yet more junior engineers and so on. So you do not have to be a project manager to be an engineer. The important thing is what you are actually doing at your desk. If you design, test THEN implement, according to scientific principles, you perform engineering and are in that sense an "engineer".
However, whether or not you can legally be called an "engineer" is a seperate matter. A "professional engineer" in Singapore is a very special beast. To become one, you need 10 years of exemplary active experience, yearly training, adherence to a code of conduct, etc. You become empowered to testify in court as an expert regarding engineering in your field. Certain types of work require certification by a professional engineer and cannot proceed without you (this means big bucks).
In return for this status, you accept great responsibility. You are personally liable for criminal charges if a design you certify fails, in addition to civil damages. If the failure involved grevious injury or the loss of life, this may mean 10+ years jail and caning, in addition to a criminal record.
This is the issue that the article probably refers to. The software industry has not yet reached a state where its engineers can accept this level of responsibility without it becoming a legal farce. The poor seperation of engineer from technician in software engineering makes this even harder. This is because every line of code is in a sense "designed" when it is written. The design of the code IS the code.
I do not see any real way out of this, which is a pity. Until some professional order is imposed on the software industry, hairy and wasteful civil lawsuits will be the only way to ensure (not just produce) quality, which means that unreliability will remain rampant. It is likely that software will always remain an art and never make the transition to engineering. Perhaps that is the way it should be.
Considering the anti-monopoly, anti-totalitarian bent on/., I am very surprised to see people defending the XBox Live subscription model, compared to the PS2 subscription model.
To recap, the XBox Live requires that you pay an upfront $50 fee for the first year of game play, followed by an as yet unspecified fee each year after that in order to play XBox Live games online. This is the only fee you need to pay and it is set by MS, not game developers. On the other hand, the PS2 allows game developers to charge as much or as little as they want for their individual online games. Sony itself does not decide.
Now, MS claims that their service is cheaper since there is a possibility you might have to pay for each and every PS2 game, as opposed to one flat fee.
However, this completely ignores free market economics. Of course, if there is money to be extracted from the consumer, the price of PS2 game subscriptions will rise to the level the public will pay. However, if any PS2 online game overcharges for its online component, then its sales will suffer, and it will be forced to reduce the fee due to competition within the same market. In short, Sony has created a competitive market for PS2 online game subscriptions. Game companies are NOT STUPID; they will not charge so much that you will not pay.
MS on the other hand is able to extract monopoly rents from the market for XBox Live game subscriptions. If the subscriptions are underpriced, it definitely will raise prices. However, if the subscriptions are overpriced, it is under very little pressure to reduce them since it controls the market of XBox Live game subscriptions and has no competition. While there will be some pressure from the PS2 since it is a substitute, PS2 games are only a weak substitute for XBox games since switching would require buying a new console -- a classic example of platform lock-in.
Monopoly pricing. Loss of developer control. Platform lock-in. Do these things sound familiar? Microsoft seems to only understand one strategy for success.
A single company controlling pricing will always be more expensive for consumers than when a competitive market determines prices, no matter what that company claims.
This is already happening. You pay $50 a year for XBox Live. Almost all the PS2 online games are free -- strongly indicating that under a competitive market, the equilibrium price of (non-MMORPG) online console game subscriptions should be nil. You are already paying monopoly rents to MS if you paid your XBox Live subscription.
Do not believe monopolist economics. This is no different from MS claiming the world would be more efficient if everyone would just switch to their products.
PS: I do understand that there are some complications to this Microeconomics 101 analysis. MS runs the XBox servers and certifies a certain level of service, while PS2 games use the PC gaming model for servers. The PS2 requires a hardware upgrade to play online. The PS2 and XBox have different capabilities. However, in the long run, competition always benefits the consumer. That will never change.
My experience is that people's earliest memories tend to usually be traumatic ones. My first memory is of the sheer pain of discovering just how hot the clothes iron was at the age of three. I reached up and touched it when my mother put it down for a moment. I am suspicious of any further details that I "remember", but I clearly remember the exact appearance of that iron. I hated and feared that thing for the rest of the time my family owned it.
Similarly, the few people whom I have spoken to about their early memories tend to recall traumatic memories, specifically intense pain. Like the first time they fell down and scraped a knee.
Since pain is a sensation that cannot be sensed by others, memories of the nature of the pain felt are less likely to have been implanted by subsequent descriptions of the event. If someone can describe that the pain they felt was piercing, throbbing, or came in waves, it is (to me) more likely to be real rather than the result of incorporating later experiences into memory.
What are you talking about? TF2 was released ages ago with only a few hiccups in production. IIRC the only the problems they suffered were:
1. They had to outsource development.
2. They had to rename the game to Counter-Strike.
I am only half joking. CS now has nearly all the important features that TF2 was meant to have, along with polish, popularity and panache that it could never have hoped for.
In addition, the Half-Life engine has undergone tremendous enhancement over the years, to nearly the state that TF2 promised. Voice communication has already been added, and a player can assume a "commander role" if the mod allows (as in Natural Selection). The graphics were also bumped up with higher quality texture maps. There have also been many many other enhancements, great and small. In fact, I think the HL engine is the most heavily upgraded engine of all time.
As far as I'm concerned, CS *IS* TF2 and Valve gave it out for free. Yay!
I agree with most of your points. However, I must take issue with the idea that console gaming is cheaper than PC gaming. While it is true that the hardware cost of consoles are subsidized, there is one big element that most people seem to miss: the price of the TV set.
I do not own a TV set, nor do I watch TV. For me to play console games at all would require me to buy one. They are NOT cheap, since you typically sit further from a TV set than from a computer monitor and have to buy a bigger one to get the same field of view. This tips the price of a console over that of a decent (not cutting edge) gaming PC.
I realize that I am in a minority here, and that for most people the TV set is a "free" commodity that the console makes use of. However, I think it is equally fair to say that a PC is a "free" commodity that PC games make use of, since I need my PC for work. If anything, a PC represents ZERO additional cost for many people nowadays, since they need one anyway.
This does not even take into account the generally higher price of console games. The licensing fees are, after all, how they manage to subsidize the initial cost of the console. There is no free lunch.
Your comparison to Prohibition is very apt. It is the professional piracy syndicates that the RIAA and MPAA should be most afraid of. The more effective their DRM, the more it plays into the hands of organized crime.
Let's say that PERFECT DRM were achieved, down all the way to the speakers, microphones and recording equipment. The only way to overcome this would be:
1. Get a soundproofed professional recording studio, the best possible DRM speakers. Strong encryption forces this.
2. Develop high-quality illegal non-DRM microphones and recording equipment.
3. Rerecord the tracks and burn them to non-DRM CDs.
4. Sell them on the black market to support the expense of the above.
5. PROFIT!
With digital technology (TM), generational losses are limited to just one generation!
Guess who are the ones who have the capability to do this? That's right. Organized crime. By using DRM to shut down file sharing, the RIAA and MPAA force the possible economic benefits from technology out of the hands of the consumer, into the hands of -- not themselves! -- but the mob.
Slashdot Mirror
Since the US Constitution states that the purpose of patents is to advance the useful arts and sciences, and interoperability is key to that advance, all interfaces (whether human-machine or machine-machine) should only be patentable if they are FRAND. That should be a constitutional legal requirement for any US patent covering an interface or protocol.
Interfaces are important. Imagine if every car were forced to have a different interface by patents, with different pedals in different places and different steering wheels. That's no different from the slide-to-lock patent. We want to reward the creation of new and better interfaces, yet allow such interfaces to spread when they are proven to be better. FRAND is exactly the middle ground we want, as the success of GSM (a machine-machine interface) shows.
Is Google's search algorithm patented to begin with? I believe that nearly all modern search engines use conceptually similar heuristics (i.e. content that is often linked from important content is important).
I think it is a big leap to assume that the first autonomous cars will be owned by the rich who have money to burn. The first autonomous vehicles will be used to MAKE money. Driverless taxis and buses will carry passengers, autonomous semis and trucks will haul freight, and small ATVs will courier documents and urgent deliveries in cities. The speed limit might matter to the last, but not the others.
Refusing to put blame on the correct party is a form of partisanship. Trying to pretend both sides are equally at fault when one side is clearly wrong is precisely a "stupid partisan game". Being willing to call a spade a spade and basing debate and policy on facts, regardless of how it makes each party looks, is how one gets past partisanship.
I am an employee of DSTA, but I do not speak in my capacity as one.
The purpose of such contests is typically not to field an operational capability. It is very unlikely that the winning robot or a variant will actually be deployed. The main purpose is to encourage industry and academia to perform research in certain fields, such as machine vision, control systems, AI, etc. This is a long term investment. The secondary purpose is to gauge the state of the art in these fields while advancing it. This is the short term gain.
The contest is modelled after the DARPA Grand Challenge, which concentrates on outdoor navigation. Similarly, you will not see autonomous combat vehicles anytime soon. However, DARPA has certainly focussed interest and effort toward all the fundamental research questions needed to achieve such a feat. DARPA also now has a good idea of what is possible when planning acquisitions and upgrades, and is able to better assess the technical risk of new developments. If the US Army asked for an autonomous UGV tomorrow, DARPA would be able to give a good estimate of how much it would cost, how long it would take, and what is realistically achievable (then the politicians will come in and screw things up).
Such contests are an admission that the state of the art is no longer in the military or intelligence communities, but in the acadamic and industrial spheres. AES was developed outside the NSA, for example. More and more equipment is COTS or MOTS (commercial / militarized off-the-shelf). The days when you could get a national laboratory (Singapore has one too) to singlehandedly advance the state of the art are long over. Nowadays inhouse research tends to be focussed on either security-sensitive fields, or areas no one else simply wants to touch. This trend will only accelerate in the future.
In Singapore, racial harmony is considered nothing less than a matter of national survival. We are a tiny city state that is home to many races. We used to have racial riots in the 60's and 70's, where hundreds died in brutal street warfare. My father used to patrol his Chinese neighbourhood with a parang (machete) to keep out Malays. Race is not a laughing matter in Singapore.
There is now harmony between the races, achieved by force, reeducation and enforced mixing in housing, education and military service. In formulating policy, the Singaporean government considers people to be basically selfish and untrustworthy. People only respond to threats and incentives, brutally and unfailingly enforced. Their better natures are not appealed to, since they have none. These rules are enforced on the rulemakers themselves, since they recognize that they too are human. In my contact with people around the world, I find that this cynical view of human nature is basically correct. The few saints and heroes that exist are the exceptions that prove the rule.
Singapore considers itself to be continually under immediate threat of destruction, whether by economic decline, military invasion, social disintegration, racial or religious disharmony, crime, terrorism or simple governmental incompetence. As a tiny nation with no natural resources, we have no right to survive, and every day that we continue to exist is a miracle.
To survive, discipline is enforced and continual sacrifice expected. This sacrifice takes many forms. We sacrifice our civil rights, and our time and youth in conscripted military service. We expend tremendous effort to secure even the water that we drink and the food we eat. In return for this sacrifice, we have order, fair laws and good government. We walk our streets in safety and live in prosperity. We deserve none of these things, and they are dearly bought. There is no room for error with regards to anything that threatens Singapore's survival. We are too small to take any hits or make any mistakes. Hence the conservatism, harshness and hardheadedness of our laws and policies. We can afford no illusions.
Hence the classification of hate speech as sedition. It is a direct threat to national security and national survival. It threatens the lives of fellow citizens. We do not want to repeat the past.
I hope this also helps you to understand why we are the way we are -- why Singapore has such harsh laws, a disproportionately large military, and strictly enforced social order -- and why Singaporeans support it.
The first foreign response to actually arrive in Louisiana was a contingent of three Singaporean CH-47 Chinook helicopters and 38 personnel from a training detachment based in Grand Prairie, Texas. They arrived in Fort Polk on Tuesday, 1 Sep 05 and are assisting the Texas Army National Guard with airlift and resupply missions. This help was requested and accepted by FEMA, probably due to its quick availability.
n r/2005/sep/02sep05_nr.html
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelo calnews/view/166195/1/.html
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_ page/0,5744,16477524%255E1702,00.html
Sources:
http://www.mindef.gov.sg/imindef/news_and_events/
Guess what: Special Forces troopers in Afghanistan operated on horseback for exactly the reasons the horse-cavalry boys said. They were perfect for the rough terrain, were logistically light and allowed them to blend in with the locals. Nothing that the proponents of horse cavalry said was wrong, only the scale was.
However, war is always about move and countermove. If you build robots, the enemy will build robot killers (bigger robots, EMP), and you will then need to build even bigger robots with heavier EMP shielding and so on. If you rely completely on robots, then the enemy will force you into a form of conflict where you cannot use them. Carrier battle groups could not stop the destruction of the World Trade Center. This is just one more step in the eternal dance that is warfare.
One of the most important parts of growing up is learning how to deal with violence. In particular, learning when to use violence, and when not to use violence. Learning when and how to escalate or deescalate a violent encounter. Violence is a part of society and of human existence. It is inescapable. As long as we have fists and teeth there will be bullying, robbery, rape and war, and the need to defend oneself from these. Violence is neither right nor wrong in and of itself. It is a merely a tool.
For example, if a thief snatched a purse from an old woman and three guys jumped the thief and beat him up, they would be heroes and their action would be morally right. If three guys jump a random guy on the street and thrash him, they would be criminals and morally wrong. If you are threatened with a gun and you shoot back with your own gun, your use of violence would be justified. If someone called you names and you shot him, you would be wrong.
A child needs to learn these things and more. If he is male in many societies, he will be expected to be the defender of his family and his nation. He may have to mercilessly kill and maim as a soldier if his nation is under attack, the ultimate shame and the ultimate honor. He must come to terms with that.
How a child responds to bullying and whether or not he bullies others is part of the process of learning about violence. It will determine whether he eventually becomes a felon, a bully, a coward, a doormat, or simply a well-adjusted member of society. I feel that many children aren't learning the right lessons. The whole topic has somehow become taboo in public discourse, like sex education was in the past.
If a child is forbidden to fight back, even after all reasonable peaceful methods of resolving the issue have been exhausted, then he will learn to be walked on. He will never learn when and how much violence is right or wrong and develop a healthy spectrum of responses to violence. These are the people who will silently be bullied one day, then kill everyone with SMGs the next, since they know of nothing between total submission and total war. Conversely, if a child is allowed to bully others, or to escalate to violence before peaceful means are exhausted, then he is on his way to jail if nothing is done.
There is some happy medium between psychopath and pacifist, between bully and victim. It is enshrined in a society's laws and culture, and transmitted through media and family. A child needs to discover it. He needs to learn how to respond to an insult, a malicious rumor, a threat, a punch, a gun and a war. It's just part of growing up.
Never start a fight, but always end one. Violence must be avoided as far as possible, but no further. Violence is always wrong, but sometimes it is also right.
Since Counterstrike is by far the most popular game at Net Cafes and LAN arcades in Singapore, parents' groups here called on the Government to ban Half-Life sometime in the 90's. This was put into effect for a few days, before an outcry by gamers and the software industry brought the Government back to its senses. The ban was overturned.
Imagine that. A bad Government policy was reversed by public action. I love the smell of freedom in the morning. And that's the fresh ground real stuff, not the type you get from a Constitution that is being ignored. Yes, I am a Singaporean.
Seriously, knowing politics in Thailand, this is just grandstanding by one political faction or another. There will be some sturm und drang, and everything will return to normal. The American readers should be quite familiar with such maneuvers.
I notice there is a highly-moderated post about how drug offenders are shot on sight in Singapore. That is simply false, but it is interesting to me that it could even be considered plausible. However, death by hanging is mandatory for drug traffickers in Singapore once they are arrested and convicted in a court of law. Due process is not limited to any one country.
SARS is a big deal. It has a mortality rate of about 4% and this is with suspected patients rushed to hospital, pumped full of advanced antiviral drugs and kept in the best intensive care money can buy. Its mortality rate is much higher in untreated cases. It seems to be at least as virulent as the flu.
Do the math. The flu, which has a mortality rate of only 1-2%, kills hundreds of thousands around the world each year. If SARS is not successfully contained, millions will die, mostly in the third world which does not have the kind of medical care available in Singapore.
SARS is still spreading. The outbreak is not over yet. If it reaches densely populated poor urban centres like Calcutta, Rio de Janeiro, or the projects in LA, Chicago or New York, all hell will break loose. This is bigger than some minor conflict in Iraq. This is serious shit.
You should be thankful that cities like Singapore, Hong Kong and Toronto are trying so hard to keep SARS under control. Singapore and Hong Kong are the world's two busiest seaports and both are major air transport hubs. They are now the world's bulwark against contagion and if they fail millions will die.
Singapore is the best equipped city in the world to weather the storm. She is a first world country, with per capita GDP equal to the UK. She has the best health care system in the world.
The country is highly controlled and regulated. I am all for civil rights and freedom, but this is one of those times that strong authority is needed to enforce quarantines and stop people acting stupidly. The government is on the ball, among other things shutting down schools, imposing mandatory screening at the airport, and even deploying the army to stop SARS. Honestly, if Singapore cannot contain SARS, the world is fucked.
As an aside, most of the SARS deaths in Singapore are health care workers working with those infected with SARS at the hospital where they are all being concentrated in. I salute the duty, bravery and valor of these men and women.
There are two issues here. The first is whether or not a software engineer performs "engineering". The second is whether a software engineer can have the legal status of an "engineer".
Do software engineers perform engineering? What is engineering anyway? As far as I am concerned as a Chemical Engineer, an engineer fundamentally designs systems. As part of this work, he will probably need to model the system and test this model (whether the model is mental, computational or physical). Implementing the design involves the engineer, but is not the engineer's job. That is the job of the technician.
This means that a software engineer should be the person who develops requirements (both software and hardware), overall design (data structures, classes, interfaces, protocols) and supervises their implementation. As part of this he may write some test code or build test equipment to verify his design. The actual writing and testing of the code to the design specification is the job of a software technician (which is a better term than "code monkey").
Note that engineers usually have engineers below them. Smaller parts of the overall system may be designed by a junior engineer according to specifications that the senior engineer provides. This smaller part may in turn have smaller parts designed by yet more junior engineers and so on. So you do not have to be a project manager to be an engineer. The important thing is what you are actually doing at your desk. If you design, test THEN implement, according to scientific principles, you perform engineering and are in that sense an "engineer".
However, whether or not you can legally be called an "engineer" is a seperate matter. A "professional engineer" in Singapore is a very special beast. To become one, you need 10 years of exemplary active experience, yearly training, adherence to a code of conduct, etc. You become empowered to testify in court as an expert regarding engineering in your field. Certain types of work require certification by a professional engineer and cannot proceed without you (this means big bucks).
In return for this status, you accept great responsibility. You are personally liable for criminal charges if a design you certify fails, in addition to civil damages. If the failure involved grevious injury or the loss of life, this may mean 10+ years jail and caning, in addition to a criminal record.
This is the issue that the article probably refers to. The software industry has not yet reached a state where its engineers can accept this level of responsibility without it becoming a legal farce. The poor seperation of engineer from technician in software engineering makes this even harder. This is because every line of code is in a sense "designed" when it is written. The design of the code IS the code.
I do not see any real way out of this, which is a pity. Until some professional order is imposed on the software industry, hairy and wasteful civil lawsuits will be the only way to ensure (not just produce) quality, which means that unreliability will remain rampant. It is likely that software will always remain an art and never make the transition to engineering. Perhaps that is the way it should be.
Considering the anti-monopoly, anti-totalitarian bent on /., I am very surprised to see people defending the XBox Live subscription model, compared to the PS2 subscription model.
To recap, the XBox Live requires that you pay an upfront $50 fee for the first year of game play, followed by an as yet unspecified fee each year after that in order to play XBox Live games online. This is the only fee you need to pay and it is set by MS, not game developers. On the other hand, the PS2 allows game developers to charge as much or as little as they want for their individual online games. Sony itself does not decide.
Now, MS claims that their service is cheaper since there is a possibility you might have to pay for each and every PS2 game, as opposed to one flat fee.
However, this completely ignores free market economics. Of course, if there is money to be extracted from the consumer, the price of PS2 game subscriptions will rise to the level the public will pay. However, if any PS2 online game overcharges for its online component, then its sales will suffer, and it will be forced to reduce the fee due to competition within the same market. In short, Sony has created a competitive market for PS2 online game subscriptions. Game companies are NOT STUPID; they will not charge so much that you will not pay.
MS on the other hand is able to extract monopoly rents from the market for XBox Live game subscriptions. If the subscriptions are underpriced, it definitely will raise prices. However, if the subscriptions are overpriced, it is under very little pressure to reduce them since it controls the market of XBox Live game subscriptions and has no competition. While there will be some pressure from the PS2 since it is a substitute, PS2 games are only a weak substitute for XBox games since switching would require buying a new console -- a classic example of platform lock-in.
Monopoly pricing. Loss of developer control. Platform lock-in. Do these things sound familiar? Microsoft seems to only understand one strategy for success.
A single company controlling pricing will always be more expensive for consumers than when a competitive market determines prices, no matter what that company claims.
This is already happening. You pay $50 a year for XBox Live. Almost all the PS2 online games are free -- strongly indicating that under a competitive market, the equilibrium price of (non-MMORPG) online console game subscriptions should be nil. You are already paying monopoly rents to MS if you paid your XBox Live subscription.
Do not believe monopolist economics. This is no different from MS claiming the world would be more efficient if everyone would just switch to their products.
PS: I do understand that there are some complications to this Microeconomics 101 analysis. MS runs the XBox servers and certifies a certain level of service, while PS2 games use the PC gaming model for servers. The PS2 requires a hardware upgrade to play online. The PS2 and XBox have different capabilities. However, in the long run, competition always benefits the consumer. That will never change.
My experience is that people's earliest memories tend to usually be traumatic ones. My first memory is of the sheer pain of discovering just how hot the clothes iron was at the age of three. I reached up and touched it when my mother put it down for a moment. I am suspicious of any further details that I "remember", but I clearly remember the exact appearance of that iron. I hated and feared that thing for the rest of the time my family owned it.
Similarly, the few people whom I have spoken to about their early memories tend to recall traumatic memories, specifically intense pain. Like the first time they fell down and scraped a knee.
Since pain is a sensation that cannot be sensed by others, memories of the nature of the pain felt are less likely to have been implanted by subsequent descriptions of the event. If someone can describe that the pain they felt was piercing, throbbing, or came in waves, it is (to me) more likely to be real rather than the result of incorporating later experiences into memory.
What are you talking about? TF2 was released ages ago with only a few hiccups in production. IIRC the only the problems they suffered were:
1. They had to outsource development.
2. They had to rename the game to Counter-Strike.
I am only half joking. CS now has nearly all the important features that TF2 was meant to have, along with polish, popularity and panache that it could never have hoped for.
In addition, the Half-Life engine has undergone tremendous enhancement over the years, to nearly the state that TF2 promised. Voice communication has already been added, and a player can assume a "commander role" if the mod allows (as in Natural Selection). The graphics were also bumped up with higher quality texture maps. There have also been many many other enhancements, great and small. In fact, I think the HL engine is the most heavily upgraded engine of all time.
As far as I'm concerned, CS *IS* TF2 and Valve gave it out for free. Yay!
I agree with most of your points. However, I must take issue with the idea that console gaming is cheaper than PC gaming. While it is true that the hardware cost of consoles are subsidized, there is one big element that most people seem to miss: the price of the TV set. I do not own a TV set, nor do I watch TV. For me to play console games at all would require me to buy one. They are NOT cheap, since you typically sit further from a TV set than from a computer monitor and have to buy a bigger one to get the same field of view. This tips the price of a console over that of a decent (not cutting edge) gaming PC. I realize that I am in a minority here, and that for most people the TV set is a "free" commodity that the console makes use of. However, I think it is equally fair to say that a PC is a "free" commodity that PC games make use of, since I need my PC for work. If anything, a PC represents ZERO additional cost for many people nowadays, since they need one anyway. This does not even take into account the generally higher price of console games. The licensing fees are, after all, how they manage to subsidize the initial cost of the console. There is no free lunch.
Your comparison to Prohibition is very apt. It is the professional piracy syndicates that the RIAA and MPAA should be most afraid of. The more effective their DRM, the more it plays into the hands of organized crime.
Let's say that PERFECT DRM were achieved, down all the way to the speakers, microphones and recording equipment. The only way to overcome this would be:
1. Get a soundproofed professional recording studio, the best possible DRM speakers. Strong encryption forces this.
2. Develop high-quality illegal non-DRM microphones and recording equipment.
3. Rerecord the tracks and burn them to non-DRM CDs.
4. Sell them on the black market to support the expense of the above.
5. PROFIT!
With digital technology (TM), generational losses are limited to just one generation!
Guess who are the ones who have the capability to do this? That's right. Organized crime. By using DRM to shut down file sharing, the RIAA and MPAA force the possible economic benefits from technology out of the hands of the consumer, into the hands of -- not themselves! -- but the mob.
Prohibition all over again. They never learn.