One problem with comparing game addiction to substance abuse is that substance abuse only gets more addictive with time. Games are the opposite. The more you play games the more you see the same game over and over and its immersion becomes weaker and weaker. Pretty soon it's boring. Not to mention games won't kill you.
Now that multi-core computers have been out I keep hearing buzz around the idea of parallel computing, as if it is something new. We've had threads, processes, multi-CPU machines, grid computing, etc etc for a long time now. Parallelism has been in use on single processor machines for a long time. Multi-core machines might make it more attractive to thread certain applications that were traditionally single-threaded, but that's the only major development I can see. The biggest problem in parallel computing is the complexity it adds, so hopefully developments will be made in that area, but it's an area that's been researched for a long time now.
Actually that doesn't prove anything. He could have played on another xbox/account, or he may have used an offline account. It also doesn't make sense because when you read the review its obvious he played more than the first mission and co-op.
There's a lot of good arguments to counter that, and people have already posted them. But even if you are right, does decreasing the chance of terrorist attacks in the US justify what we've done to Iraq and Afghanistan? Does it justify the loss of thousands of our soldier's lives, and many more of civilian casualties? Does it justify our loss of ideals? Does it justify the loss of goodwill we had from the world? Does it justify the billions of dollars we could have spent improving our security at home, or fixing any number of domestic issues that have taken a back burner to the war on terror? Does it justify our loss of ability to be a credible threat to other countries that might actually acquire a nuclear bomb and use it?
9/11 was a terrible tragedy made even more so by our response to it.
Out of curiosity, were there ever any benchmarks between the two schedulers, or is their comparison completely theoretical? And why does it matter if Con can maintain it or not? Why couldn't Ingo maintain Con's scheduler? He's getting paid right?
Oh man... KOTOR. I can't believe they left that out. Of all the RPGs I have played, I have never enjoyed one as much as I did KOTOR. In fact... it's one of the very few single-player games I've finished. The dialogue and characters in that game blew away anything done before or since. Another ground-breaking game was Decent on the PC. That game was a blast and one of (if not the first) games of its kind. Others that I didn't see on there were Myst, Magic Carpet, 7th Guest, Natural Selection Mod for Half-Life, and EVE Online. All of them were break-throughs in gaming, and certainly deserve a mention in the top 100.
If you RTFA they point out that his failure rate my be explained by Microsoft sending back refurbished consoles. Maybe Xbox360s do have a 3% failure rate, but their repair services suck?
You are comparing not knowing how to even use a technology (or refusing to) with not knowing how a technology works or how to create it/maintain it. Those are two very different things. I drive a car, but I don't know how to fix it or build one. People would laugh at me, and rightly so, for refusing to use automobiles. I can open a window. I can live in a house. I can open my refrigerator door. I don't NEED to know anything else to use those technologies. My expertise are specialized to my job, just like everyone else in society. I pay someone to come fix my windows, and they'll pay me (or professionals like me) for the software they use. That's how society functions. Not everyone can know everything about everything. But everyone can know enough to use the technologies created by other people.
So, should people be shocked that Gates, the head of an organization that greatly depends on the US's technological superiority, claims he doesn't use email? I would say so. Maybe he has his reasons, and maybe he can be effective. But his response sounds technophobic, and that is what sounds ridiculous coming from someone responsible for putting the technological superiority of the United States to good use.
The GPS isn't going to work unless the person is outside and their phone has an unobstructed view of enough satalites long enough to get a fix. I don't see that happening all that often. Not to mention, I imagine most users will be turning off their GPS to save battery life.
Actually, if you really want 1080p on the cheap (like I did) you can get it for a bit over $1000 by building your own LCD projector. Just use a laptop WUXGA screen. I've done this and am very happy with the results. When comparing it to a commercial projector there are downsides: size of the projector, light distribution isn't totally even (or as bright), colors aren't perfectly reproduced, contrast isn't as great. However, for the price it can't be beat IMHO. Those drawbacks aren't anything I actually notice when watching a movie, it feels just like I'm in a theater . I learned how to do it at the lumenlab forums: www.lumenlab.com
[sarcasm] How compassionate. [/sarcasm] Disregarding the possiblity that some of those volunteers were in great need of that money, but just did it for a 60 inch plasma, perhaps you should consider that at no point did they sign up to die. They didn't sign up to something they were told was "fantastically dangereous". They signed up to a test that they were assured the company had taken the necessary steps to assure its safety. You might think bungie jumping is crazy. That doesn't mean that if someone dies because the owner didn't tie the bungie a waiver should absolve him of responsibility.
I found it interesting to see this link slipped into the article. It seems rather disproportional rhetoric for something as insignificant as the banning of foriegn made PCs for classified data. To the anonymous submitter: If you want to properly rile people up, try choosing subjects people actually care about. If the US government doesn't want to use foreign PCs to store/access classified data, I don't blame them. I wouldn't blame China if they didn't use US made PCs, because I am sure that we would try to "bug" them. All governments do their best to maintain or better their country's position in the world. Of all the deplorable actions that governments have taken to achieve those goals, this is insignificant.
You're missing an important point. No matter how much you agree with what the poster said, the fact was that the information was presented in a misleading way that made the source appear more authoritive and unbiased than it really is. The article was written by someone with no credentials in the area he was writing about, for a magazine that is clearly a leftist publication. If the information is as "valid" as you believe it to be, why would someone find it necessary to falsify the information regarding its source?
To take aim more directly at the points, I would ask you to look up the wikipedia entry on facsism. There are similarties like those shown in the 14 points. However, many of th 14 points have stretched those similarities quite a long way. Many of the 14 points are simply ways in which governments of all types have tried to gain power. Some of the more definining characteristics of facism are discussed in the wikipedia article:
"Fascism in many ways seems to have clearly developed as a reaction against Communism and Marxism, both in a philosophic and political sense, although it it can be seen as opposing democratic capitalist economics along with Marxism. It viewed the state as an organic entity in a positive light rather than as an institution designed to protect collective and individual rights, or as one that should be held in check. It tended to reject the Marxist notion of social classes (and universally dismissed the concept of class conflict), replacing it instead with two more nebulous struggles: conflict between races and the struggle of the youth versus their elders. This meant embracing nationalism and mysticism, and advancing ideas of strength and power as means of legitimacy, a might makes right that glorified war as an end in itself and determinant of truth and worthiness. An affinity to these ideas can be found in Social Darwinism. These ideas are in direct opposition to the ideas reason or rationalism characteristic of the Age of Enlightenment, from which liberalism and, later, Marxism would emerge."
I'm curious to see if you find that paragraph to describe the current administration.
I wish people would be quicker to question the things they see posted by random people on the internet. This post was modded up very quickly, with only one reply which says, "Can I put this in my sig?". If you were to do 5 minutes of googling you would find that this is from an article written by a Laurence Britt, for the magazine "Free Inquiry". The original article can be found on their website here. Notice that it is a Laurence Britt, not a "Dr. Lawrence Britt". The article has also been modified. Further googling will find this article, which gives a little background information on Mr. Britt as well as an interview.
I'm not commenting at all on how valid those 14 characteristics are. I wouldn't know, I'm not an expert on facism. My arguement is that these characteristics were obviously created with a political agenda in mind, and not by a political scientist who is an expert in fascism.
Well, since this guy got modded up, I think I'd like to point out a few things.
CPU heat doesn't increase exponentially with clock speed. If this were true then the chips we are running today would be burning their way to the center of the earth right now. Today's production chips are running hotter than their predecesors simply because our current chip technology has finally hit the brick wall of physics.
That's the reason dual core CPUs are being made now. It's the easiest way for chipset makers to increase performance. However, your performance is only going to increase according to how well the problem it is solving can be done in parallel. Some problems are difficult or impossible to solve in parallel, and you won't see any performance gain when running those on a dual core CPU.
For that reason, chipset manufactuers typically don't rate the performance of their chips much higher than what 1 core would be rated at by itself. Manufactuers are underclocking CPUs now for the same reason they've always done it... and it has nothing to do with duel core. It has to do with the fact that they produce only one type of chip for a whole line of chips, and then try to sell it at a number of different price points and speeds. The manufacturing process isn't precise, and there is already a natural curve of how fast the chips produced from a plant can run. This doesn't necessarily fit demand. If their manufactuering process is doing particularly well, then they may have a lot more processors that can run at high clock speeds than there is demand for. In that case they get underclocked and sold at a lower price point and speed.
In my opinion, the reason we are seeing this extreme overclockability is mostly due to the fact that manufactuers have hit a brick wall in increasing clock speed. They are just getting better at getting consistantly close to that brick wall with their manufactuering processes. That means more CPUs are getting underclocked. Unless there is some breakthrough in technology, we are going to be seeing more and more diminishing returns as manufactuers try to add more cores to their chips. At least with current technology, I think the future of CPU competition will be how cheaply they can be made, rather than how fast they can be run.
It is easy to missinterpret that picture. Half of the roof isn't missing. Just the white skin of it blew off, and apparently there were a few "small" holes. Check out the story and picture here.
If you do just enough to pass, you're the real sucker. Poor performance in school doesn't make you predestined to a life of burger flipping. It does make it much more likely though.
Yes but flashing the firmware doesn't take all that long. Seems like a good workaround would be a utility that would allow you to easily flash between versions. You could flash back to a later version to play those games.
I don't understand why there is so much focus on trying to hack every new firmware release Sony has. Wouldn't it be easier to find a hack that would allow you to use earlier versions of the PSP firmware?
Can we get a fact check on this please? I'm willing to bet that at least half of those "facts" are exagerated, misleading, or out right wrong. The author needs to reign in his fury, because I have trouble believing the credibility of someone who, in one post, manages to accuse two of the most open, progressive, and free countries in the world of being terrorists and/or police states.
I commend this kind of research. It is very comforting to know that it is now safe to have sex with crocidiles. Well... at least it's safe for them.
Re:A blinkered view from the ivory tower of UC Dav
on
Johnny Can So Program
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· Score: 1
I don't think you understood his arguements at all:
"From this I guess the author means that it's OK to be at the same level they were eight years ago."
He is just talking about how percentiles work, and that the news isn't as alarming as it sounds. He isn't saying America shouldn't be motivated to be better, he is just speaking out against the alarmists.
"OMG, it's not fair, they trained harder! Well hello! Is it cheating to produce programmers who can actually solve problems and write code?"
No, he is saying that they are spending almost all their time preparing for a test, which will certainly help them score better than someone who doesn't. It doesn't necessarily mean they are really better programmers, or better at solving real world problems.
"I was a H1-B worker - I made great rates (thanks very much) and so did all the other H1-B's I know. It's convenient for Norm's flawed argument to repeat this myth, propagated by programmers who think they should have had my job because it was their birthright, not because they could have done it better."
If what you say is true, then why would companies be hiring you? You think American companies outsource and hire H1-Bs out of some idealistic belief in a "global economy"? Of course not. They do it because it is cheaper. That said, there are valid arguements for allowing H1-Bs, but don't claim that the obvious is a "myth".
"Too much time in academia Norm. If you can't do the job right it really doesn't matter how cheap you come. The way to compete is to be the best, there is no other way."
Ironic for you to claim he is the naive one. Companies are often very short sighted, with nothing mattering to them but the next quarter's earnings. In that environment, cost is everything. Even in every day living, cost is a BIG factor in any product. Ever bought a cheap item, knowing it would likely break quickly, but were willing to take the risk because it was so cheap? The same principle applies. In fact, that product was most likely the product of a cheap labor force that produced poor quality products. You can't distill an IT product into it "working or not working". It isn't just a matter of getting it working, it's how much money and time it took to get it working, as well as how much of the planned functionality was implemented.
"When Chinese (or Indian, or anyone else) programmers turn out to cost less AND be better programmers we'll be able to thank guys like Norm, who wanted to deny there was ever a problem."
Bring it! That's what competition is about. I have no doubt that India, China and other countries will begin to earn reputations as technology leaders. America won't hold the huge technology lead it's had forever, but I feel confident we will stay a front runner for a very long time. But, if things start leveling out as the "global economy" theory suggests, then so will your competitive advantages in cost. In the end, the quality of the product is what produces it's value, and therefore its cost. If you're the best there's no reason to be the cheapest.
This is true... right now. However, if you go read their site, there is quite a bit of info on how they plan to implement PvP. Right now PvP basically isn't implemented beyond the fact that you can PvP if you want to. Later there will be rewards for PvP, and it is designed to be team based. By the time you hit 60 (which in my opinion will be where PvP really starts to shine) I'm guessing they'll have a lot more of the PvP implemented.
Slashdot Mirror
One problem with comparing game addiction to substance abuse is that substance abuse only gets more addictive with time. Games are the opposite. The more you play games the more you see the same game over and over and its immersion becomes weaker and weaker. Pretty soon it's boring. Not to mention games won't kill you.
Now that multi-core computers have been out I keep hearing buzz around the idea of parallel computing, as if it is something new. We've had threads, processes, multi-CPU machines, grid computing, etc etc for a long time now. Parallelism has been in use on single processor machines for a long time. Multi-core machines might make it more attractive to thread certain applications that were traditionally single-threaded, but that's the only major development I can see. The biggest problem in parallel computing is the complexity it adds, so hopefully developments will be made in that area, but it's an area that's been researched for a long time now.
Actually that doesn't prove anything. He could have played on another xbox/account, or he may have used an offline account. It also doesn't make sense because when you read the review its obvious he played more than the first mission and co-op.
There's a lot of good arguments to counter that, and people have already posted them. But even if you are right, does decreasing the chance of terrorist attacks in the US justify what we've done to Iraq and Afghanistan? Does it justify the loss of thousands of our soldier's lives, and many more of civilian casualties? Does it justify our loss of ideals? Does it justify the loss of goodwill we had from the world? Does it justify the billions of dollars we could have spent improving our security at home, or fixing any number of domestic issues that have taken a back burner to the war on terror? Does it justify our loss of ability to be a credible threat to other countries that might actually acquire a nuclear bomb and use it? 9/11 was a terrible tragedy made even more so by our response to it.
Out of curiosity, were there ever any benchmarks between the two schedulers, or is their comparison completely theoretical? And why does it matter if Con can maintain it or not? Why couldn't Ingo maintain Con's scheduler? He's getting paid right?
Oh man... KOTOR. I can't believe they left that out. Of all the RPGs I have played, I have never enjoyed one as much as I did KOTOR. In fact... it's one of the very few single-player games I've finished. The dialogue and characters in that game blew away anything done before or since. Another ground-breaking game was Decent on the PC. That game was a blast and one of (if not the first) games of its kind. Others that I didn't see on there were Myst, Magic Carpet, 7th Guest, Natural Selection Mod for Half-Life, and EVE Online. All of them were break-throughs in gaming, and certainly deserve a mention in the top 100.
If you RTFA they point out that his failure rate my be explained by Microsoft sending back refurbished consoles. Maybe Xbox360s do have a 3% failure rate, but their repair services suck?
So, should people be shocked that Gates, the head of an organization that greatly depends on the US's technological superiority, claims he doesn't use email? I would say so. Maybe he has his reasons, and maybe he can be effective. But his response sounds technophobic, and that is what sounds ridiculous coming from someone responsible for putting the technological superiority of the United States to good use.
The GPS isn't going to work unless the person is outside and their phone has an unobstructed view of enough satalites long enough to get a fix. I don't see that happening all that often. Not to mention, I imagine most users will be turning off their GPS to save battery life.
Actually, if you really want 1080p on the cheap (like I did) you can get it for a bit over $1000 by building your own LCD projector. Just use a laptop WUXGA screen. I've done this and am very happy with the results. When comparing it to a commercial projector there are downsides: size of the projector, light distribution isn't totally even (or as bright), colors aren't perfectly reproduced, contrast isn't as great. However, for the price it can't be beat IMHO. Those drawbacks aren't anything I actually notice when watching a movie, it feels just like I'm in a theater . I learned how to do it at the lumenlab forums: www.lumenlab.com
[sarcasm] How compassionate. [/sarcasm] Disregarding the possiblity that some of those volunteers were in great need of that money, but just did it for a 60 inch plasma, perhaps you should consider that at no point did they sign up to die. They didn't sign up to something they were told was "fantastically dangereous". They signed up to a test that they were assured the company had taken the necessary steps to assure its safety. You might think bungie jumping is crazy. That doesn't mean that if someone dies because the owner didn't tie the bungie a waiver should absolve him of responsibility.
I found it interesting to see this link slipped into the article. It seems rather disproportional rhetoric for something as insignificant as the banning of foriegn made PCs for classified data. To the anonymous submitter: If you want to properly rile people up, try choosing subjects people actually care about. If the US government doesn't want to use foreign PCs to store/access classified data, I don't blame them. I wouldn't blame China if they didn't use US made PCs, because I am sure that we would try to "bug" them. All governments do their best to maintain or better their country's position in the world. Of all the deplorable actions that governments have taken to achieve those goals, this is insignificant.
To take aim more directly at the points, I would ask you to look up the wikipedia entry on facsism. There are similarties like those shown in the 14 points. However, many of th 14 points have stretched those similarities quite a long way. Many of the 14 points are simply ways in which governments of all types have tried to gain power. Some of the more definining characteristics of facism are discussed in the wikipedia article:
"Fascism in many ways seems to have clearly developed as a reaction against Communism and Marxism, both in a philosophic and political sense, although it it can be seen as opposing democratic capitalist economics along with Marxism. It viewed the state as an organic entity in a positive light rather than as an institution designed to protect collective and individual rights, or as one that should be held in check. It tended to reject the Marxist notion of social classes (and universally dismissed the concept of class conflict), replacing it instead with two more nebulous struggles: conflict between races and the struggle of the youth versus their elders. This meant embracing nationalism and mysticism, and advancing ideas of strength and power as means of legitimacy, a might makes right that glorified war as an end in itself and determinant of truth and worthiness. An affinity to these ideas can be found in Social Darwinism. These ideas are in direct opposition to the ideas reason or rationalism characteristic of the Age of Enlightenment, from which liberalism and, later, Marxism would emerge." I'm curious to see if you find that paragraph to describe the current administration.
I'm not commenting at all on how valid those 14 characteristics are. I wouldn't know, I'm not an expert on facism. My arguement is that these characteristics were obviously created with a political agenda in mind, and not by a political scientist who is an expert in fascism.
Well, since this guy got modded up, I think I'd like to point out a few things. CPU heat doesn't increase exponentially with clock speed. If this were true then the chips we are running today would be burning their way to the center of the earth right now. Today's production chips are running hotter than their predecesors simply because our current chip technology has finally hit the brick wall of physics. That's the reason dual core CPUs are being made now. It's the easiest way for chipset makers to increase performance. However, your performance is only going to increase according to how well the problem it is solving can be done in parallel. Some problems are difficult or impossible to solve in parallel, and you won't see any performance gain when running those on a dual core CPU. For that reason, chipset manufactuers typically don't rate the performance of their chips much higher than what 1 core would be rated at by itself. Manufactuers are underclocking CPUs now for the same reason they've always done it... and it has nothing to do with duel core. It has to do with the fact that they produce only one type of chip for a whole line of chips, and then try to sell it at a number of different price points and speeds. The manufacturing process isn't precise, and there is already a natural curve of how fast the chips produced from a plant can run. This doesn't necessarily fit demand. If their manufactuering process is doing particularly well, then they may have a lot more processors that can run at high clock speeds than there is demand for. In that case they get underclocked and sold at a lower price point and speed. In my opinion, the reason we are seeing this extreme overclockability is mostly due to the fact that manufactuers have hit a brick wall in increasing clock speed. They are just getting better at getting consistantly close to that brick wall with their manufactuering processes. That means more CPUs are getting underclocked. Unless there is some breakthrough in technology, we are going to be seeing more and more diminishing returns as manufactuers try to add more cores to their chips. At least with current technology, I think the future of CPU competition will be how cheaply they can be made, rather than how fast they can be run.
WONDERFUL! Now I can have some 1337 h4x0r break into my robot and re-program him to do all kinds of nasty (and hopefully not homocidal) things.
It is easy to missinterpret that picture. Half of the roof isn't missing. Just the white skin of it blew off, and apparently there were a few "small" holes. Check out the story and picture here.
If you do just enough to pass, you're the real sucker. Poor performance in school doesn't make you predestined to a life of burger flipping. It does make it much more likely though.
I know there aren't any right now. What I was asking about was why there hasn't been more focus on making it possible, and reliable.
Yes but flashing the firmware doesn't take all that long. Seems like a good workaround would be a utility that would allow you to easily flash between versions. You could flash back to a later version to play those games.
I don't understand why there is so much focus on trying to hack every new firmware release Sony has. Wouldn't it be easier to find a hack that would allow you to use earlier versions of the PSP firmware?
Can we get a fact check on this please? I'm willing to bet that at least half of those "facts" are exagerated, misleading, or out right wrong. The author needs to reign in his fury, because I have trouble believing the credibility of someone who, in one post, manages to accuse two of the most open, progressive, and free countries in the world of being terrorists and/or police states.
I commend this kind of research. It is very comforting to know that it is now safe to have sex with crocidiles. Well... at least it's safe for them.
"From this I guess the author means that it's OK to be at the same level they were eight years ago."
He is just talking about how percentiles work, and that the news isn't as alarming as it sounds. He isn't saying America shouldn't be motivated to be better, he is just speaking out against the alarmists.
"OMG, it's not fair, they trained harder! Well hello! Is it cheating to produce programmers who can actually solve problems and write code?"
No, he is saying that they are spending almost all their time preparing for a test, which will certainly help them score better than someone who doesn't. It doesn't necessarily mean they are really better programmers, or better at solving real world problems.
"I was a H1-B worker - I made great rates (thanks very much) and so did all the other H1-B's I know. It's convenient for Norm's flawed argument to repeat this myth, propagated by programmers who think they should have had my job because it was their birthright, not because they could have done it better."
If what you say is true, then why would companies be hiring you? You think American companies outsource and hire H1-Bs out of some idealistic belief in a "global economy"? Of course not. They do it because it is cheaper. That said, there are valid arguements for allowing H1-Bs, but don't claim that the obvious is a "myth".
"Too much time in academia Norm. If you can't do the job right it really doesn't matter how cheap you come. The way to compete is to be the best, there is no other way."
Ironic for you to claim he is the naive one. Companies are often very short sighted, with nothing mattering to them but the next quarter's earnings. In that environment, cost is everything. Even in every day living, cost is a BIG factor in any product. Ever bought a cheap item, knowing it would likely break quickly, but were willing to take the risk because it was so cheap? The same principle applies. In fact, that product was most likely the product of a cheap labor force that produced poor quality products. You can't distill an IT product into it "working or not working". It isn't just a matter of getting it working, it's how much money and time it took to get it working, as well as how much of the planned functionality was implemented.
"When Chinese (or Indian, or anyone else) programmers turn out to cost less AND be better programmers we'll be able to thank guys like Norm, who wanted to deny there was ever a problem."
Bring it! That's what competition is about. I have no doubt that India, China and other countries will begin to earn reputations as technology leaders. America won't hold the huge technology lead it's had forever, but I feel confident we will stay a front runner for a very long time. But, if things start leveling out as the "global economy" theory suggests, then so will your competitive advantages in cost. In the end, the quality of the product is what produces it's value, and therefore its cost. If you're the best there's no reason to be the cheapest.
This is true... right now. However, if you go read their site, there is quite a bit of info on how they plan to implement PvP. Right now PvP basically isn't implemented beyond the fact that you can PvP if you want to. Later there will be rewards for PvP, and it is designed to be team based. By the time you hit 60 (which in my opinion will be where PvP really starts to shine) I'm guessing they'll have a lot more of the PvP implemented.