Rubes: I watched one fellow try to play it. He tried for about two weeks, wanting it to be a great game, but the interface was not up to snuff. As an observer, it looked slow and not terribly interesting. Give me a good ol' fashioned text based MUD instead:-)
Depends on what kind of sales you want (i.e. who you are trying to sell to). If they're paying more then a few bucks for a game, most people will want quality graphics (even if they say they don't, almost all of them do), and art takes a lot of time and a lot of money. Well, if you're doing solitaire type games the art requirements are pretty low, but for most games...
Now, if you just put in place holder art for demoing purposes so you can get a contract or buy-out from a big publisher who can finish the art...
"Mars. I can't believe I'm back on Mars. Three times before this place almost killed me. I swore I'd never give it another chance to finish the job. Humans have got no business being here. No business at all." Garibaldi
I tried explaining to my wife that I don't want to program any more (after 6 years) and she I shouldn't even think such a thing, as what else could I do?
I think it depends on exactly what you're doing. My first job I hated after only a short time, but my second job was great and I'd have been happy doing that forever. Amazingly, I'm only on my third job in that time. It's not what I want to do for the rest of my life, though.
As to what else could I do, probably a lot of things, but the current job market doesn't tolerate anything less then perfect knowledge in 100% of the desired skills. Bleh.
Ironically (given the topic of this article), I'd really like to switch from programming to system administration...
Milk is not very common or popular in China, and the government there has been making a big push to get the people drinking it for health reasons. But they also had to set up a special hotline to handle all the cases of lactose intolerant people drinking it for the first time. And that'd be most of them.
1.) these are not natural changes, they are human induced.
Humans are somehow not part of nature? What we do doesn't count as being "natural"? Yes, we may be more "aware" of the world around us, but that doesn't make us any less a part of nature - if anything, it makes us more a part of it.
If you were coming from a religious perspective, where God says that the plants and animals exist for humans to exploit, I might just let you get away with that attitude, but I am suspicious that that is not your angle.
When a beaver builds a damn, it radically alters its envionment. Does that mean beaver-built damns are unnatural and bad? Is sentience really what separates environment alteration from being "good" vs. "bad"?
And plants and animals can and do make their way to new places on their own (how did all those plants and animals get to Hawaii before the first humans did, given that the islands are thousands of miles from the nearest body of land?). Often it is an animal who is the agent for change - seeds get stuck on a bird's feathers (or fail to get digested upon being eaten) and drop off hundreds of miles away. If it happens "naturally" it is ok, but if humans (who are apparently not "natural") do it, it isn't? What's the difference between a migrating bird relocating something 500 miles away, and a human doing it?
You interested in working on a sprite-based (think Chromium BSU) SDL/GLUT OpenGL game? Could use the extra help... got an artist on board who is freaking awesome.
I haven't worked with OpenGL, but I'd be willing to give it a shot:-)
Unless it was a very challenging job (Like game development,
Um, there is a HUGE amount of grunt coding in game programming. Coding the GUI, writing a script parser, or processing keyboard clicks ain't challenging. But you only need just so many programmers on a given project to write the graphics engine or the AI or do other "challenging" work. (well, of course the AI will absorb as many programmers as you want to throw at it, but for a game that will actually ship...).
Having been a game programmer for five years, I have to say that Slashdotters seem to have some very strange ideas about game programming...:-p
Then again, there are those in the Netherlands (and in many other countries in europe) who fear foreign elements exploiting their welfare system. And did you hear what is going on in Lewiston, Maine? In Lewiston (pop. 36,000) they have an amazingly good welfare system in place, but they also don't use it too much and can easily afford it. Or they could, until 1,200 somalis moved there from Atlanta almost literally overnight, every single one of them helping themselves to the town's generous welfare system. The system can't handle it! The mayor asked the somali people to slow down the pace of migration, that they town couldn't handle so many new people all at once, especially people requiring welfare, but they just kept coming and coming. And of course, the mayor got smeared by the left as a racist for making that comment. *sigh*.
What Russia is probably hoping for is for their northern ports to not be ice locked in the winter months. Historically speaking, warm-water ports have been a sort of holy grail for Russia.
I doubt most people would go for genetic manipuation of their babies, even if guarenteed of the results. Most people have too much of the Fear of God in them. The whole muslim world would reject it and that's already a quarter to a third of the population. How about Buddhists or Hindus? Fundamentalists of every religion would also reject it, and many others could probably be cowed by their religious leaders into shunning it.
Slashdot isn't a place big on religion so it's easy to forget how important it is to most people in the world. Telling them they could have some gene therapy done on their fetus to have a "perfect" baby would probably strike most people in the world as playing God, and not something to be done.
Here's one more option: Countries that don't give a damn about human rights violations and that also have the ability to pursue the matter (say, China!) will do all sorts of crazy ass genetic experimentation (at least on their prisoners and social rejects, or maybe they'll just work on their general populace and not care), until they do get their ubermensch.
Then they will breed a population of ubermensch over a few generations and be able to quickly conquer the world. Their genetic engineering will be forced on everybody they deem worthy, while the rest are left to devolve out of existance, or they will use eugenics or simply mass executions on the "genetic dead ends".
It's all well and good to say that doing certain things are violations of human rights, but human rights are really just a luxury for only a few wealthy countries. Most countries in the world are severly lacking in their treatment of the masses.
Adding more congress critters would only ADD to the amount of braindamaged legislation in committee. And we've already got pork enough already without adding another 150 pork projects to the barrel. I'd prefer FEWER congress critters, not more.
Except that long before the US was even a country, indeed, long before Europeans even came to the americas, humans were seeking better, more efficient ways to kill their fellow humans. It isn't unique to the US, or to the modern day. For whatever primal reason, it's what people do - always have and always will.
Re:Not as far fetched as it would seem
on
AI in Sci-Fi
·
· Score: 1
Today I'm going to disagree with you Twirlip:-)
A few thousand years ago slavery was quite acceptable in China. That means at some point a very large percentage of the world's population accepted it. It lasted there until at least 200 to 300 AD (Qin and Han dynasties), though by that time is was quite marginal and certainly no longer widespread in industrial production.
Slavery was quite the norm for a very long time in Africa and northern europe (vikings!), in ancient Greece and Rome, and even among certain tribes in central and south america before 1500 (and of course, Europeans brought their own brand slavery to the New World). I'd say that most of the world, before 1700, practiced or accepted the practice of slavery in some form or another. It's still a problem today in certain areas, especially certain muslim countries (notably the Sudan), though they definitely are in the minority these days.
The number of people who actually owned slaves may always have been small, but the acceptance or tolerance of slavery by nations was widespread for most of humanity's existance.
For something hideously expensive like a car, maybe. But never buy one for home elenctronics (unless maybe you're buying one of those $6000 plasma TVs or whatever).
Clark says: Don't buy an extended warranty on electronic devices such as a computer or VCR. The value of a new computer will drop to nearly nothing in just a few years, and a VCR can be replaced very inexpensively if it breaks. A TV or DVD player can be replaced very inexpensively if it breaks. Update! An extended warranty for an appliance is a bad deal because they rarely pay off. People often lose the contracts, they move, or they forget they purchased the contract in the first place. The usage rate is even lower than the breakdown rate of the appliance. You're better off taking the money you would have spent on service contracts and putting it into a repair fund.
Slashdot Mirror
Huh? I always thought samba was the name of a snake. Or at least it was in "Temple of Apshai" :-D
And to think, it required a whopping 256K of RAM! But it did support the bleeding edge CGA technology...
The last in NASA's Great Observatory Program,
:-)
The year is 1987 and NASA launches the last of America's deep space probes....
Rubes: I watched one fellow try to play it. He tried for about two weeks, wanting it to be a great game, but the interface was not up to snuff. As an observer, it looked slow and not terribly interesting. Give me a good ol' fashioned text based MUD instead :-)
Depends on what kind of sales you want (i.e. who you are trying to sell to). If they're paying more then a few bucks for a game, most people will want quality graphics (even if they say they don't, almost all of them do), and art takes a lot of time and a lot of money. Well, if you're doing solitaire type games the art requirements are pretty low, but for most games...
Now, if you just put in place holder art for demoing purposes so you can get a contract or buy-out from a big publisher who can finish the art...
There'd be no point - it'd go off every time the politicians moved their lips.
There was a news item a month ago about how speaking Chinese requires the use of both sides of the brain, whereas english only use one side.
I'm actually trying to learn chinese and I'm having a rather difficult time of it. Damn intonation....
"Thin air? Why is it always thin air? Never fat air, chubby air, mostly-fit-could-stand-lose-a-few-pounds air?"
-Garibaldi (Grey 17 is Missing)
"Mars. I can't believe I'm back on Mars. Three times before this place almost killed me. I swore I'd never give it another chance to finish the job. Humans have got no business being here. No business at all."
Garibaldi
I tried explaining to my wife that I don't want to program any more (after 6 years) and she I shouldn't even think such a thing, as what else could I do?
I think it depends on exactly what you're doing. My first job I hated after only a short time, but my second job was great and I'd have been happy doing that forever. Amazingly, I'm only on my third job in that time. It's not what I want to do for the rest of my life, though.
As to what else could I do, probably a lot of things, but the current job market doesn't tolerate anything less then perfect knowledge in 100% of the desired skills. Bleh.
Ironically (given the topic of this article), I'd really like to switch from programming to system administration...
Milk is not very common or popular in China, and the government there has been making a big push to get the people drinking it for health reasons. But they also had to set up a special hotline to handle all the cases of lactose intolerant people drinking it for the first time. And that'd be most of them.
I ssue19.pdf
http://www.fb.com/issues/analysis/China_Briefing_
I read the original Wall Street Journal article referenced, but don't have reg at wsj.com so can't link to it. It was quite interesting.
1.) these are not natural changes, they are human induced.
Humans are somehow not part of nature? What we do doesn't count as being "natural"? Yes, we may be more "aware" of the world around us, but that doesn't make us any less a part of nature - if anything, it makes us more a part of it.
If you were coming from a religious perspective, where God says that the plants and animals exist for humans to exploit, I might just let you get away with that attitude, but I am suspicious that that is not your angle.
When a beaver builds a damn, it radically alters its envionment. Does that mean beaver-built damns are unnatural and bad? Is sentience really what separates environment alteration from being "good" vs. "bad"?
And plants and animals can and do make their way to new places on their own (how did all those plants and animals get to Hawaii before the first humans did, given that the islands are thousands of miles from the nearest body of land?). Often it is an animal who is the agent for change - seeds get stuck on a bird's feathers (or fail to get digested upon being eaten) and drop off hundreds of miles away. If it happens "naturally" it is ok, but if humans (who are apparently not "natural") do it, it isn't? What's the difference between a migrating bird relocating something 500 miles away, and a human doing it?
Xerithane you knob :-) You're on my friends list! Of course I read your journal :-D
You interested in working on a sprite-based (think Chromium BSU) SDL/GLUT OpenGL game? Could use the extra help... got an artist on board who is freaking awesome.
:-)
I haven't worked with OpenGL, but I'd be willing to give it a shot
Unless it was a very challenging job (Like game development,
:-p
Um, there is a HUGE amount of grunt coding in game programming. Coding the GUI, writing a script parser, or processing keyboard clicks ain't challenging. But you only need just so many programmers on a given project to write the graphics engine or the AI or do other "challenging" work. (well, of course the AI will absorb as many programmers as you want to throw at it, but for a game that will actually ship...).
Having been a game programmer for five years, I have to say that Slashdotters seem to have some very strange ideas about game programming...
Then again, there are those in the Netherlands (and in many other countries in europe) who fear foreign elements exploiting their welfare system. And did you hear what is going on in Lewiston, Maine? In Lewiston (pop. 36,000) they have an amazingly good welfare system in place, but they also don't use it too much and can easily afford it. Or they could, until 1,200 somalis moved there from Atlanta almost literally overnight, every single one of them helping themselves to the town's generous welfare system. The system can't handle it! The mayor asked the somali people to slow down the pace of migration, that they town couldn't handle so many new people all at once, especially people requiring welfare, but they just kept coming and coming. And of course, the mayor got smeared by the left as a racist for making that comment. *sigh*.
The message the probe will be sending back:
"Can you hear me know?"
What Russia is probably hoping for is for their northern ports to not be ice locked in the winter months. Historically speaking, warm-water ports have been a sort of holy grail for Russia.
I doubt most people would go for genetic manipuation of their babies, even if guarenteed of the results. Most people have too much of the Fear of God in them. The whole muslim world would reject it and that's already a quarter to a third of the population. How about Buddhists or Hindus? Fundamentalists of every religion would also reject it, and many others could probably be cowed by their religious leaders into shunning it.
Slashdot isn't a place big on religion so it's easy to forget how important it is to most people in the world. Telling them they could have some gene therapy done on their fetus to have a "perfect" baby would probably strike most people in the world as playing God, and not something to be done.
Here's one more option: Countries that don't give a damn about human rights violations and that also have the ability to pursue the matter (say, China!) will do all sorts of crazy ass genetic experimentation (at least on their prisoners and social rejects, or maybe they'll just work on their general populace and not care), until they do get their ubermensch.
Then they will breed a population of ubermensch over a few generations and be able to quickly conquer the world. Their genetic engineering will be forced on everybody they deem worthy, while the rest are left to devolve out of existance, or they will use eugenics or simply mass executions on the "genetic dead ends".
It's all well and good to say that doing certain things are violations of human rights, but human rights are really just a luxury for only a few wealthy countries. Most countries in the world are severly lacking in their treatment of the masses.
From the CIA World Factbook:
Population:
24,001,816 (July 2002 est.)
Internet users:
12,500 (2001)
Internet Service Providers (ISPs):
1 (2000)
Adding more congress critters would only ADD to the amount of braindamaged legislation in committee. And we've already got pork enough already without adding another 150 pork projects to the barrel. I'd prefer FEWER congress critters, not more.
What's wrong with just prouncing it "cee-eff-nine"?
Except that long before the US was even a country, indeed, long before Europeans even came to the americas, humans were seeking better, more efficient ways to kill their fellow humans. It isn't unique to the US, or to the modern day. For whatever primal reason, it's what people do - always have and always will.
Today I'm going to disagree with you Twirlip :-)
A few thousand years ago slavery was quite acceptable in China. That means at some point a very large percentage of the world's population accepted it. It lasted there until at least 200 to 300 AD (Qin and Han dynasties), though by that time is was quite marginal and certainly no longer widespread in industrial production.
Slavery was quite the norm for a very long time in Africa and northern europe (vikings!), in ancient Greece and Rome, and even among certain tribes in central and south america before 1500 (and of course, Europeans brought their own brand slavery to the New World). I'd say that most of the world, before 1700, practiced or accepted the practice of slavery in some form or another. It's still a problem today in certain areas, especially certain muslim countries (notably the Sudan), though they definitely are in the minority these days.
The number of people who actually owned slaves may always have been small, but the acceptance or tolerance of slavery by nations was widespread for most of humanity's existance.
For something hideously expensive like a car, maybe. But never buy one for home elenctronics (unless maybe you're buying one of those $6000 plasma TVs or whatever).
a nties.html
Clark Howard puts it into his "Ripoffs" category:
http://clarkhoward.com/library/tips/extended_warr
Clark says:
Don't buy an extended warranty on electronic devices such as a computer or VCR. The value of a new computer will drop to nearly nothing in just a few years, and a VCR can be replaced very inexpensively if it breaks.
A TV or DVD player can be replaced very inexpensively if it breaks. Update!
An extended warranty for an appliance is a bad deal because they rarely pay off.
People often lose the contracts, they move, or they forget they purchased the contract in the first place. The usage rate is even lower than the breakdown rate of the appliance.
You're better off taking the money you would have spent on service contracts and putting it into a repair fund.