> you can run virtualbox if you just want free (linux is free too).
Yeah, no kidding! Setting up a VM host is not difficult, just time consuming the first time, the second time it goes much faster.
Just this past I week I setup VirtualBox + Ubuntu Server + LAMP (woot for option at install time) + Blog (WordPress) + Forum (myBB) + Wiki (MediaWiki) on my Win 7 box. The cool thing with VirtualBox Bridged Network adapter the windows box can see the Linux hosting.
> You can learn to man up and actually use the package managers.
Yup agreed -- Is it _really_ that difficult to type: sudo get-apt install... ?
> 2) Compared to other keyboards of the same size, it is laid out stupidly. My only beef as a coder is the complete the lack of an "Insert" key on the Mac keyboards.
> - 2 "apple/windows" keys where 1 would be enough. Uhm, you ARE aware that Apple has pretty much _always_ had a 2 of them -- starting way back with 2 keys on the Apple//e -- the closed apple key, and the open apple key, right?
MMO's, such as WoW, are pseudo-games; They present the illusion of being a real game when in fact they are just badly designed games.
That's is NOT to imply sandbox games, like Minecraft, are not fun, because WoW and Minecraft certainly are fun at times but that is _precisely_ due to them being _fun_ _toys_.
The funny thing on the iPhone their crappy "games", such as Mafia Wars, Street Racing, Vampires, etc. are not even real games. If you can't win nor lose, you don't have a game, you have a toy! Hell, you can't even "restart" if you want to try another "style"
> I hate the RIAA as much as the next fellow, but people need to be paid for things they produce.
Why?
I question your basic underpinning of "need" philosophy.
In my spare time, I work on open-source, produce music, create art, and I don't feel a "need" to be paid. The only reason people need money is because society literally "bought" into some lack of scarcity argument, and to 'survive' in the "modern" you need money, because everyone else demands it.
The sun, earth, plants, and animals all freely produce for us, but yet it is only us 'advanced' humans that demand payment from one another. Of course I expect to compensated for my time & skill but that is only to be able to "afford" my basic needs. Once those are met, I am able to produce for the benefit of everyone -- money is just a bonus -- I am already living my joy by creating. The day is coming when every man, woman, and child will have as much electricity as they need, as much food as they need, and their basic physical needs are all freely provided. Until we get to that point in a few centuries, we should be questioning: What exactly is money? Why is it needed? What would it be like to live in a world where it isn't needed?
Why is the book out of print though? Not enough demand? Methinks that justifies society benefiting as a whole. The author was given his "limited time" to profit. Now it is society's turn to benefit.
> If human life on Earth is the desired result, an almighty, all-knowing transcendental God would not use evolution as the means.
I love it when people think they know more than God.
> Nor would it sculpt them out of clay after seven days of puttering around. We're talking almighty here, why wait?
You are correct -- but you have fallen for the red herring of literalism. Try reading the _2_ Genesis accounts -- there are numerous contradiction _intentionally_ placed in them to emphasize they are NOT meant to be literal. Only spiritually stupid fundamentalists do that.
> if one believes in the God-as-first-cause thing, it follows that either 1. God is not almighty, or 2. Human life on Earth is not the desired result, or at least not the sole desired result.
You are blinded by a false dichotomy. The 2 statements are not contradictory.
> (you can conduct no HUMAN experiment to show the existence of such a God)
FTFY. After you are dead you will have all the proof you need. i.e. Consciousness is not bound by human perspective/terms of life & death.
> It would be like saying some would "choose" to be born Jewish in pre WWII Europe, or "choose" to be born black in 1920s America. What horseshit and I've seen with my own two eyes it is horseshit.
Calling something horseshit doesn't make it so.
I'll get extremely down modded for saying this, but as a mystic you are completely and TOTALLY ignorant of higher reality -- for some people their Higher Self DID chose those exact scenarios. Hell, even, the _Jewish_ Rabbi Ovadia Yosefan said the same thing: the 6 million Holocaust victims "were reincarnations of the souls of sinners, people who transgressed and did all sorts of things that should not be done. They had been reincarnated in order to atone." He was flamed by people too spiritually stupid to understand this advanced concept of Karma.
Just because you are ignorant of what you are before you were born, or will be after you die, doesn't mean you have to _remain_ ignorant. Thankfully I don't have to waste time trying convince you -- you'll know this when you are dead.
The rest of your post is great!
> Instead of trying to make everyone fit into your myopic world view, why not just treat them like people?
Agreed ! What people chose to believe is irrelevant -- they are still human beings, that have feelings, they live, eat, breath, and dream like the rest of us. They just happen to love in a little differently manner, but that love is just as real.
> Let's do a quick comparison of how stupidly inefficient game development is... > 2. Wii/Gamecube - OpenGL,C/C++ > 3. PS2/PS3 - OpenGL, C/C++
Your facts are wrong. I've _shipped_ games on Wii, PS2, amongst other consoles. Currently, I do compiler support on the PS3 and am familiar with the rendering APIs that drive the RSX.
* The Wii does NOT use OpenGL. I personally know because I wrote an OpenGL implementation over _top_ of the native GX calls. While the GX*() API _is_ strongly _based_ on OpenGL, it is NOT OpenGL.
* The PS2 does NOT have OpenGL. You either
a) manually build a packet to set the GS registers,
b) use the sce*() calls, or
c) write your own API. At one job, where I wrote the Wii-OpenGL, we had an in-house implementation of OpenGL running on the PS2, but that was, again, over _top_ of the native GS registers.
* There are 2 rendering APIs on the PS3. CGM and OpenGL. I could probably count on one hand the total number developers that have shipped their game with OpenGL. Almost no one ships OpenGL it because it is SLOWER and LESS EFFICIENT then CGM.
Please get your facts straight before looking like an ignorant fool.
> Am I the only one who gets absolutely frustrated that people are still proposing the possibility of time-travel?
Am I the only one who gets frustrated that people still propose the possibility of lighter-than-air travel? Oh wait, balloons and airplanes proved that one true.
Am I the only one who gets frustrated that people still propose the possibility of breaking the sound barrier? Oh wait, the supersonic airplane also proved that one true.
Am I the only one who gets frustrated that people still propose the possibility that nothing faster then can move faster than light? Oh wait, gravity proves that true too. (See: http://metaresearch.org/cosmology/speed_of_gravity.asp )
Am I the only one who gets frustrates that people still propose the possibility that the arrow of time is actually bidirectional? Oh wait, Feynman and QED showed 'backwards' in time makes sense. (i.e. Positrons are electrons going "backwards in time.", and "And what about photons? Photons look exactly the same in all respects when they travel backwards in time, so they are their own anti-particles. You see how clever we are at making an exception part of the rule! (Feynman, 1985)." Also see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retrocausality
Your frustration with time travel is failing to learn from history -- assumptions have proven to be incomplete, pardon the pun, time and time again. Scientists (and Science) are still CLUELESS on the fine-structure constant*, what an electric charge is, what a potential is, what gravity is, etc. You are complaining about not understanding meta-physics when we are still struggling to understands basics?!?! At the risk of being a jerk, methinks your priorities are messed up!
As a mystic I have a different perspective of what time is -- your understanding of space and time is incomplete. If you practiced meditation eventually you would realize that you don't have to _physically_ move to either:
a) travel faster than the speed OR
b) to time travel you _already_ can, because of 2 truths the scientific community does not yet understand: 1. At the highest level, the past, present, and future is really "one now" -- they are simply _interpretations_ and perspectives. 2. Time is simply a dimension of mind. Obviously that begs the question: WHICH mind, but I'll leave that fun question up to you to explore. (Note: If you are _serious_ about expanding your consciousness and understanding of meta-physics you will want to start with Lucid Dreaming, and eventually practice Out-Of-Body / Astral Travel specific forms of meditation WITHOUT DRUGS. Reddit has a good forum: http://www.reddit.com/r/LucidDreaming/ that I would recommend.)
To quote a famous scientist:
"The scientific community has always been this way, in its fierce resistance to really innovative developments.
* Resisted Mayer's original statement of energy conservation; hounded him so much that he attempted suicide and was institutionalized.
* Laughed and slandered Ovshinsky on his "insane" amorphous semi-conductor. "Everybody knew" a semiconductor had to have a crystalline structure. The Japanese who funded Ovshinsky are still laughing all the way to the bank.
* Made Wegener's name a synonym for "utter fool" because of his continental drift theory. Why, imagine continents floating and moving! Insane!" (NOTE: Madame Blatavsky predicted continental drift even before the concept existed!)
* Refused to accept the Aharonov-Bohm effect for 25 years (as pointed out by Feynman). Prior to the MEG, the AB effect appears never to have been applied for COP > 1.0 from "two-energy reservoir" electrical power systems.
* Uses an EE model that assumes every EM field, EM potential, and joule of EM ene
Agreed. Movies were not considered art in the early 20th century -- it took a while for people to recognize that there was an _art_ in _making_ good movies -- it was not a science. Same with video-games.
Theorem: Art is any representation of human expression that makes you think of something you normally wouldn't.
Corollary: The _medium_ doesn't matter.
Games are META-ART.
Proof : If the individual components (music, pictures, etc) of a videogame can be sold by _themselves_ why is it that the entire package is not considered art ??
I will stand by my assertion that Ebert is a fucking art snob (idiot) that doesn't understand META art. Even game _design_ _can_ be considered an art form -- Go is a beautiful design. Programming _may_ be an art form -- I've written some very beautiful code. e.g. The one that shows the beautiful & simple relationship between combinations and permutations. i.e. "The most beautiful code I never wrote" - Three Beautiful Quicksorts" http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1031789501179533828#
* 10% off = 35% increase in sales (real dollars, not units shipped)
* 25% off = 245% increase in sales
* 50% off = 320% increase in sales
* 75% off = 1470% increase in sales
"Valve decided to do an experiment with Left 4 Dead. Last weekend's sale resulted in a 3000% increase over relatively flat numbers. It sold more last weekend than when it launched the game. WOW. That is unheard of in this industry. Valve beat its launch sales. Also, it snagged a 1600% increase in new customers to Steam over the baseline."
.. I don't have to far around with trying to find/install having the latest DirectX or GPU drivers because they fixed a bug that the latest game exposed.
Well, at least they used too... until game developers realized they could "patch" on day-0.:-( So much for quality assurance / control. QA is ignored because management needs a game out THIS quarter.
--} Thinks just work out of the box. {-- I wish the customer experience was the forefront of ALL technology -- sadly it is all-too-often tossed aside at the expense of profits & ship date.
> Well, are you sure would really want to tell right away to some girl you meet that you read comic books or watch anime? Things like can make people think about you wrongly.
If at the local japanese manga store, yes. If not, that really depends on where we meet.
If people are that shallow to judge you based on your honesty and hobbies, they can fuck off. This tactic weeds out all the immature relationships.
I want authentic relationships - "pretending" to hide my interests because someone doesn't understand what a geek is / does is immature of them.
> Unfortunately, I'm not certain that there is much reason to believe that America can get out of this rut,
There are easy solutions:
1. Abolish the 2 party system -- have politicians run for issues. 2. Outlaw corporations from donating to politicians / lobbying.
Americans don't have the balls to do it, due to greed, so their political system is gimped.
In 20 years, the now 20 years olds, will actually be a big enough influence to actually demand honest politics -- honest politics is only an oxymoron right now, but it doesn't have to always be that way.
Slashdot Mirror
LOL, nice. Dam memory :)
> you can run virtualbox if you just want free (linux is free too).
Yeah, no kidding! Setting up a VM host is not difficult, just time consuming the first time, the second time it goes much faster.
Just this past I week I setup VirtualBox + Ubuntu Server + LAMP (woot for option at install time) + Blog (WordPress) + Forum (myBB) + Wiki (MediaWiki) on my Win 7 box. The cool thing with VirtualBox Bridged Network adapter the windows box can see the Linux hosting.
> You can learn to man up and actually use the package managers.
Yup agreed -- Is it _really_ that difficult to type: sudo get-apt install ... ?
> 2) Compared to other keyboards of the same size, it is laid out stupidly.
My only beef as a coder is the complete the lack of an "Insert" key on the Mac keyboards.
> - 2 "apple/windows" keys where 1 would be enough. //e -- the closed apple key, and the open apple key, right?
Uhm, you ARE aware that Apple has pretty much _always_ had a 2 of them -- starting way back with 2 keys on the Apple
Exactly!
MMO's, such as WoW, are pseudo-games; They present the illusion of being a real game when in fact they are just badly designed games.
That's is NOT to imply sandbox games, like Minecraft, are not fun, because WoW and Minecraft certainly are fun at times but that is _precisely_ due to them being _fun_ _toys_.
The funny thing on the iPhone their crappy "games", such as Mafia Wars, Street Racing, Vampires, etc. are not even real games. If you can't win nor lose, you don't have a game, you have a toy! Hell, you can't even "restart" if you want to try another "style"
Think the AC meant 128-bit vector units = 4x32 floats, or 2x64 doubles
wow, mods are on crack .... their sarcasm detector broken?
> I hate the RIAA as much as the next fellow, but people need to be paid for things they produce.
Why?
I question your basic underpinning of "need" philosophy.
In my spare time, I work on open-source, produce music, create art, and I don't feel a "need" to be paid. The only reason people need money is because society literally "bought" into some lack of scarcity argument, and to 'survive' in the "modern" you need money, because everyone else demands it.
The sun, earth, plants, and animals all freely produce for us, but yet it is only us 'advanced' humans that demand payment from one another. Of course I expect to compensated for my time & skill but that is only to be able to "afford" my basic needs. Once those are met, I am able to produce for the benefit of everyone -- money is just a bonus -- I am already living my joy by creating. The day is coming when every man, woman, and child will have as much electricity as they need, as much food as they need, and their basic physical needs are all freely provided. Until we get to that point in a few centuries, we should be questioning: What exactly is money? Why is it needed? What would it be like to live in a world where it isn't needed?
Food for thought.
> IE9 is might be shaping up better than FF.
Um, let me know when IE9 can run on WinXP please ...
> Even though the book is out of print,
Why is the book out of print though? Not enough demand? Methinks that justifies society benefiting as a whole. The author was given his "limited time" to profit. Now it is society's turn to benefit.
> If human life on Earth is the desired result, an almighty, all-knowing transcendental God would not use evolution as the means.
I love it when people think they know more than God.
> Nor would it sculpt them out of clay after seven days of puttering around. We're talking almighty here, why wait?
You are correct -- but you have fallen for the red herring of literalism. Try reading the _2_ Genesis accounts -- there are numerous contradiction _intentionally_ placed in them to emphasize they are NOT meant to be literal. Only spiritually stupid fundamentalists do that.
> if one believes in the God-as-first-cause thing, it follows that either 1. God is not almighty, or 2. Human life on Earth is not the desired result, or at least not the sole desired result.
You are blinded by a false dichotomy. The 2 statements are not contradictory.
> (you can conduct no HUMAN experiment to show the existence of such a God)
FTFY. After you are dead you will have all the proof you need. i.e. Consciousness is not bound by human perspective/terms of life & death.
> It would be like saying some would "choose" to be born Jewish in pre WWII Europe, or "choose" to be born black in 1920s America. What horseshit and I've seen with my own two eyes it is horseshit.
Calling something horseshit doesn't make it so.
I'll get extremely down modded for saying this, but as a mystic you are completely and TOTALLY ignorant of higher reality -- for some people their Higher Self DID chose those exact scenarios. Hell, even, the _Jewish_ Rabbi Ovadia Yosefan said the same thing: the 6 million Holocaust victims "were reincarnations of the souls of sinners, people who transgressed and did all sorts of things that should not be done. They had been reincarnated in order to atone." He was flamed by people too spiritually stupid to understand this advanced concept of Karma.
Just because you are ignorant of what you are before you were born, or will be after you die, doesn't mean you have to _remain_ ignorant. Thankfully I don't have to waste time trying convince you -- you'll know this when you are dead.
The rest of your post is great!
> Instead of trying to make everyone fit into your myopic world view, why not just treat them like people?
Agreed ! What people chose to believe is irrelevant -- they are still human beings, that have feelings, they live, eat, breath, and dream like the rest of us. They just happen to love in a little differently manner, but that love is just as real.
> China is a capitalist country, with a veneer of communism,
Jailed Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo might beg to differ...
http://www.google.com/search?q=chinese+peace+prize+jailed
I hope someone mods you up, because nailed it! The OS _itself_ should support better meta-data support -- live queries and tagging.
I can't find the main arstechnica review that goes in depth about meta-data but this might help the OP.
http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2010/06/the-beos-filesystem.ars
http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2007/10/mac-os-x-10-5.ars/7
http://arstechnica.com/hardware/news/2008/03/past-present-future-file-systems.ars/7
> Let's do a quick comparison of how stupidly inefficient game development is...
> 2. Wii/Gamecube - OpenGL,C/C++
> 3. PS2/PS3 - OpenGL, C/C++
Your facts are wrong. I've _shipped_ games on Wii, PS2, amongst other consoles. Currently, I do compiler support on the PS3 and am familiar with the rendering APIs that drive the RSX.
* The Wii does NOT use OpenGL. I personally know because I wrote an OpenGL implementation over _top_ of the native GX calls. While the GX*() API _is_ strongly _based_ on OpenGL, it is NOT OpenGL.
* The PS2 does NOT have OpenGL. You either
a) manually build a packet to set the GS registers,
b) use the sce*() calls, or
c) write your own API.
At one job, where I wrote the Wii-OpenGL, we had an in-house implementation of OpenGL running on the PS2, but that was, again, over _top_ of the native GS registers.
* There are 2 rendering APIs on the PS3. CGM and OpenGL. I could probably count on one hand the total number developers that have shipped their game with OpenGL. Almost no one ships OpenGL it because it is SLOWER and LESS EFFICIENT then CGM.
Please get your facts straight before looking like an ignorant fool.
Cheers
> Am I the only one who gets absolutely frustrated that people are still proposing the possibility of time-travel?
Am I the only one who gets frustrated that people still propose the possibility of lighter-than-air travel?
Oh wait, balloons and airplanes proved that one true.
Am I the only one who gets frustrated that people still propose the possibility of breaking the sound barrier?
Oh wait, the supersonic airplane also proved that one true.
Am I the only one who gets frustrated that people still propose the possibility that nothing faster then can move faster than light?
Oh wait, gravity proves that true too. (See: http://metaresearch.org/cosmology/speed_of_gravity.asp )
Am I the only one who gets frustrates that people still propose the possibility that the arrow of time is actually bidirectional?
Oh wait, Feynman and QED showed 'backwards' in time makes sense. (i.e. Positrons are electrons going "backwards in time.", and "And what about photons? Photons look exactly the same in all respects when they travel backwards in time, so they are their own anti-particles. You see how clever we are at making an exception part of the rule! (Feynman, 1985)." Also see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retrocausality
Your frustration with time travel is failing to learn from history -- assumptions have proven to be incomplete, pardon the pun, time and time again. Scientists (and Science) are still CLUELESS on the fine-structure constant*, what an electric charge is, what a potential is, what gravity is, etc. You are complaining about not understanding meta-physics when we are still struggling to understands basics?!?! At the risk of being a jerk, methinks your priorities are messed up!
As a mystic I have a different perspective of what time is -- your understanding of space and time is incomplete. If you practiced meditation eventually you would realize that you don't have to _physically_ move to either:
a) travel faster than the speed OR
b) to time travel
you _already_ can, because of 2 truths the scientific community does not yet understand:
1. At the highest level, the past, present, and future is really "one now" -- they are simply _interpretations_ and perspectives.
2. Time is simply a dimension of mind. Obviously that begs the question: WHICH mind, but I'll leave that fun question up to you to explore.
(Note: If you are _serious_ about expanding your consciousness and understanding of meta-physics you will want to start with Lucid Dreaming, and eventually practice Out-Of-Body / Astral Travel specific forms of meditation WITHOUT DRUGS. Reddit has a good forum: http://www.reddit.com/r/LucidDreaming/ that I would recommend.)
To quote a famous scientist:
"The scientific community has always been this way, in its fierce resistance to really innovative developments.
* Resisted Mayer's original statement of energy conservation; hounded him so much that he attempted suicide and was institutionalized.
* Laughed and slandered Ovshinsky on his "insane" amorphous semi-conductor. "Everybody knew" a semiconductor had to have a crystalline structure. The Japanese who funded Ovshinsky are still laughing all the way to the bank.
* Made Wegener's name a synonym for "utter fool" because of his continental drift theory. Why, imagine continents floating and moving! Insane!" (NOTE: Madame Blatavsky predicted continental drift even before the concept existed!)
* Refused to accept the Aharonov-Bohm effect for 25 years (as pointed out by Feynman). Prior to the MEG, the AB effect appears never to have been applied for COP > 1.0 from "two-energy reservoir" electrical power systems.
* Uses an EE model that assumes every EM field, EM potential, and joule of EM ene
Agreed. Movies were not considered art in the early 20th century -- it took a while for people to recognize that there was an _art_ in _making_ good movies -- it was not a science. Same with video-games.
Theorem:
Art is any representation of human expression that makes you think of something you normally wouldn't.
Corollary:
The _medium_ doesn't matter.
Games are META-ART.
Proof :
If the individual components (music, pictures, etc) of a videogame can be sold by _themselves_ why is it that the entire package is not considered art ??
I will stand by my assertion that Ebert is a fucking art snob (idiot) that doesn't understand META art. Even game _design_ _can_ be considered an art form -- Go is a beautiful design. Programming _may_ be an art form -- I've written some very beautiful code. e.g. The one that shows the beautiful & simple relationship between combinations and permutations.
i.e.
"The most beautiful code I never wrote" - Three Beautiful Quicksorts"
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1031789501179533828#
> I rather spend $50 and have a great game than small little games for a few dollars.
Fortunately people don't want that $50 over-priced nonsense and show otherwise....
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090219/1124433835.shtml
Valve dropped the price on L4D and sales went up over 200% !
* 10% off = 35% increase in sales (real dollars, not units shipped)
* 25% off = 245% increase in sales
* 50% off = 320% increase in sales
* 75% off = 1470% increase in sales
http://www.g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/693342/live-blog-dice-2009-keynote-gabe-newell-valve-software/
"Valve decided to do an experiment with Left 4 Dead. Last weekend's sale resulted in a 3000% increase over relatively flat numbers. It sold more last weekend than when it launched the game. WOW. That is unheard of in this industry. Valve beat its launch sales. Also, it snagged a 1600% increase in new customers to Steam over the baseline."
Their loss.
Plenty of fish in the sea.
.. I don't have to far around with trying to find/install having the latest DirectX or GPU drivers because they fixed a bug that the latest game exposed.
Well, at least they used too ... until game developers realized they could "patch" on day-0. :-( So much for quality assurance / control. QA is ignored because management needs a game out THIS quarter.
--} Thinks just work out of the box. {-- I wish the customer experience was the forefront of ALL technology -- sadly it is all-too-often tossed aside at the expense of profits & ship date.
> Well, are you sure would really want to tell right away to some girl you meet that you read comic books or watch anime? Things like can make people think about you wrongly.
If at the local japanese manga store, yes. If not, that really depends on where we meet.
If people are that shallow to judge you based on your honesty and hobbies, they can fuck off. This tactic weeds out all the immature relationships.
I want authentic relationships - "pretending" to hide my interests because someone doesn't understand what a geek is / does is immature of them.
Yeah, runescape is a UO clone.
Sorry, should of mentioned that one too.
> EVE is terrible
Show me another MMORPG (aside from UO = Ultima Online) that doesn't have character classes please?
> Unfortunately, I'm not certain that there is much reason to believe that America can get out of this rut,
There are easy solutions:
1. Abolish the 2 party system -- have politicians run for issues.
2. Outlaw corporations from donating to politicians / lobbying.
Americans don't have the balls to do it, due to greed, so their political system is gimped.
In 20 years, the now 20 years olds, will actually be a big enough influence to actually demand honest politics -- honest politics is only an oxymoron right now, but it doesn't have to always be that way.
> If the company steals the idea, ...
How do you "steal" something intangible, like an idea anyways ?