I had to read the entire book for an AI course once. It was awful! Kurzweil seems to exist in a world of the geeks, by the geeks, for the geeks. He pretty clearly has no concept of, say, poverty, or even acknowledgment that as you go further down the economic totem pole, the more people you will find. His predictions make *some* sense if you're only talking about wealthy Americans. (I.e., geeks) But they make far less sense if you consider a world where people are *different from Ray Kurzweil*.
Tech things from the past decade that he COMPLETELY misses in his book:
The green movement and the resource crunch (Yes! It turns out that even as we spend more time on our computers, we continue to care about natural resources! How quaint!)
Cultural clashes. Technology continues to bring people "closer" together, sometimes in ways they don't want. Globalization keeps happening, but it also continues to stir up discontent among people who see their jobs/traditions/beliefs replaced.
The degree to and method by which computers are used for entertainment. As mentioned in an earlier comment, facebook and youtube are really the stars of the past 10 years (at least, on the internet.) People like communicating with other people. And that doesn't mean better interfaces. (Apple's has mics and cameras installed in every Mac laptop for a few years now and....still I don't know any one who uses it.) It means *more things to communicate about*. We like our pets - let's video tape them doing stupid things to share with mom and dad. We like our own cleverness - let's update our facebook status with something more witty than our friends! Even in gaming, we see a rise in online and co-op play.
Kurzweil, in his long term view, predicted a world where technology starts to change us, and we are replaced with computers. He envisioned conflict over this - people fighting about whether computer rights, the meaning of "human," etc. But there hasn't been much conflict, because computers haven't changed us. Human needs are still the driving force between technological change, and as long as this is the case, technology will continue to satisfy our basic needs - to help us do the same things we *already do* faster and better, rather than suddenly giving me a taste for wireless jewelry.
Do you have any actual data that suggests diseases which primarily affect minorities are "over-emphasised" [sic] in terms of funds? I can't say that I'm an expert, but from what data I've seen, I strongly suspect this is *very much* not the case.
Actually, most economists would point out that the cost of a tax on a particular good or service will eventually end up being split between consumer and producer. So if we tax Exxon (or the consumer as they pay for gas, it doesn't matter) $1 per gallon, then Exxon will eat 50% of the tax and let the consumer pay the other 50%.
So, yes, technically "all" the taxes came from people to begin with (since Exxon's initial profits came from people to begin with), but not quite in the way you're describing. Although taxes do raise prices for consumers, they also eat into profits (in addition to scaring away potential revenue due to the higher price...but in a high-demand market like gasoline, that doesn't happen so much.)
I graduated a year ago with a degree in Computer Science, because I loved the topic. I wasn't the best student at my school, but I was pretty good. Likewise, my school isn't the best school in the world for CS or anything technology-related, but it's pretty good.
I spent a year after college looking for a job, but probably not because of the reasons this article cites. I had offers right away at several places, and my time was spent choosing the right one. Eventually, I opted for the low-paying web development position at a small but growing firm dedicated to serving non-profits. The reason? More freedom and a relaxed atmosphere. But seriously, I had many choices, with pay ranging from $15,000 to $70,000 a year - and this with virtually no experience.
Everyone seems to be panicling about losing their jobs to outsourcing, but I don't see it. I guess there are some jobs which could easily be outsourced abroad, but it seems to me that being that disconnected from the client must mean that the work wouldn't have been all that special anyway. More and more is happening on the web, and I still see companies growing. As far as I can tell, there are plenty of jobs to be had, as long as you're generally competent to begin with.
Because it lets you abstract easily and quickly. You don't have to worry about what type something is, you can interface with most everything the same way.
In Java, this is dealt with by having a huge inheritance tree. If you want high-level behavior for a low-level class, you have to make sure it inherits all the way back up to class x, then write a method that takes the abstract class and operates on it. But half the time this still doesn't work (especially when the primitive types get involved.) So you end up with wrappers and the same object adhering to about 12 different interfaces just to use a *single* function. And don't get me started about how much of a pain it is to pass functions as arguments...
In JavaScript, if I receive an object, I can just iterate over it to look at its properties - I don't even need to know what they are. I can construct functions on the fly, pass them in as arguments along with an object (that I just recently constructed, without any class definition), and have that function run on each property of the object. It's one step away from having first-class continuations.
The apparent advantage of Java is having strict types - so if something adheres to an interface or abstract class, you just "know" it will have x,y,z and can do m and n. But very often (mostly sloppy programming), this isn't the case, so you have to check for things anyway. And why did you even try to pass in something that wasn't going to work with that function to begin with? In JavaScript, you have the flexibility to just pass it in. If it works, it works, if not - why did you pass it in? Ultimately, you still have to know what you're doing, so compile-time checks aren't really useful for catching more than typos.
As far as I'm concerned, Java doesn't even come close to the power of JavaScript. Java likes big, bloated classes that are fixed at compile-time with LongNamesLikeThis. It has most of the drawbacks of C++ with almost none of the benefits. The only thing it has going for it is a huge API, but even that is so slow as to be useless for anything like graphics code. Heck, JavaScript is even more cross-platform than Java - and that's what Java was designed for! (Everything has a browser these days.)
AJAX programming is weird, young, unpolished and tricky. But it already has more promise than a Java applet ever will.
(Reserving judgement on this new JavaFX or whatever...but not holding my breath.)
KOTOR was less than a single month, I believe, because it was announced as a PC/Xbox title - not an exclusive. Jade Empire took longer because it was intended as an exclusive from the beginning. (At least, as a "timed exclusive.") So my guess would be Mass Effect shouldn't take too much longer than Jade Empire to see a PC release.
Plus, as I said, there are more PC projects from Bioware coming...soon.;)
If past experience shows us anything, it's that Bioware's "Xbox only" titles are in fact, not Xbox-only. Mass Effect, like Jade Empire and KOTOR before it, will almost assuredly be ported to the PC eventually. (Give it a year or two.)
Plus, Bioware still has Dragon Age in development for PC, as well as some other projects. Fear not.
Though it does seem that Mac/Linux support is probably out of the question...
Perhaps the original poster didn't mean Edge was comparable to Famitsu in popularity, but in quality? This would be supported by the fact that the next sentence begins "The much-respected games magazine...," as well as by the generally sophisticated quality of the writing witnessed in the magazine by myself.
I'm not a lawyer so I'm not too clear on the GPL. I thought you could modify the software under it and release it without ever being forced to hand out the source code. I could be wrong though.
That's almost exactly what you CAN'T do with GPL'd code.
Dude, if it took you that long to finish Tomb Raider: Legend, then you just suck. That was like a 6-to-8 hour game, generously. (At least the main story portion.) And if you didn't finish..it's not like you're actually missing anything.
When I was in first and second grade, we were taught Logo-Writer at my public school. It's a lightweight programming language where the commands control a "turtle" onscreen who follows the sequence of commands for drawing, moving...lots of various tasks. Unfortunately, that has since been removed from the curriculum and Logo instruction was not taught much beyond fourth grade. (The program switched to using Word and the Internet and such...which is a shame, really.)
The Little Schemer was mentioned above - that might also make a good choice.
An example might help: In modern Russia, and many former USSR satellites, "liberals" are those who favor more modernization and capitalization policies, while "conservatives" are associated with the former Soviet Union and want the government to revert to a more leftist stance.
Also im nto even sure what your talking about but I assume you mean policies such as student funding and food banks are "forced redistribution (of wealth)".
Well, I would assume he meant that there was no post-war re-distribution of former slave-owner's lands and money into the hands of their former slaves (who probably helped them earn most of it), thus forcing most former slaves to turn right back to their former masters in exchange for food, shelter, and extremely meager wages.
Are you being facetious? Daikatana's target audience was hard-core FPS players. The Sims reached out to every segment of the market. What a ridiculous statement!
Again, are you trolling, or genuinely too stupid to comprehend even the simplest metaphor? The point wasn't about market sizes, the point was simply that more people criticized Daikatana than people who've actually played it. That's all. _Can_ you address the real point, or is fabricating straw-men out of phrases taken out of context the best you can do? No, seriously. I'm curious.
He was comparing the actual sales of The Sims to the maximum number of potential sales of Daikatana (i.e., all the people that had ever heard of it and would be criticizing it without playing it, like you said.) I'm pretty sure The Sims would still win. Regardless of how cool it was to attack Daikatana on some obscure gaming forums, I don't think the number of all the critics could possibly have reached the millions of teenage girls, moms, dads, cousins and even hardcore gamers that bought The Sims.
But ferfucksake, decide after you've played and enjoyed them.
Well, if he's already played and enjoyed them, why even bother buying them? Spending money on a game after you've already finished it won't bring you any additional enjoyment.
Well, it can't pinpoint your location absolutely. It can only sense acceleration/rotation in any direction. Though it also has the sensor bar, which detects where the device is pointing on-screen. So, I would guess (I don't really know) that it could calculate movement/relative positioning from those two sources of information?
Slashdot Mirror
84 > 77
Odd we don't see many stories about the global shortage in female garbage collectors. Or janitors.
Last time I checked, programming pays considerably better than garbage collectors or janitors, and has comparatively better social prestige.
*Some* of the cost gets passed onto the consumer, but some of it doesn't. It depends on the elasticity of demand.
Tech things from the past decade that he COMPLETELY misses in his book:
Kurzweil, in his long term view, predicted a world where technology starts to change us, and we are replaced with computers. He envisioned conflict over this - people fighting about whether computer rights, the meaning of "human," etc. But there hasn't been much conflict, because computers haven't changed us. Human needs are still the driving force between technological change, and as long as this is the case, technology will continue to satisfy our basic needs - to help us do the same things we *already do* faster and better, rather than suddenly giving me a taste for wireless jewelry.
Do you have any actual data that suggests diseases which primarily affect minorities are "over-emphasised" [sic] in terms of funds? I can't say that I'm an expert, but from what data I've seen, I strongly suspect this is *very much* not the case.
Actually, most economists would point out that the cost of a tax on a particular good or service will eventually end up being split between consumer and producer. So if we tax Exxon (or the consumer as they pay for gas, it doesn't matter) $1 per gallon, then Exxon will eat 50% of the tax and let the consumer pay the other 50%.
So, yes, technically "all" the taxes came from people to begin with (since Exxon's initial profits came from people to begin with), but not quite in the way you're describing. Although taxes do raise prices for consumers, they also eat into profits (in addition to scaring away potential revenue due to the higher price...but in a high-demand market like gasoline, that doesn't happen so much.)
I graduated a year ago with a degree in Computer Science, because I loved the topic. I wasn't the best student at my school, but I was pretty good. Likewise, my school isn't the best school in the world for CS or anything technology-related, but it's pretty good. I spent a year after college looking for a job, but probably not because of the reasons this article cites. I had offers right away at several places, and my time was spent choosing the right one. Eventually, I opted for the low-paying web development position at a small but growing firm dedicated to serving non-profits. The reason? More freedom and a relaxed atmosphere. But seriously, I had many choices, with pay ranging from $15,000 to $70,000 a year - and this with virtually no experience. Everyone seems to be panicling about losing their jobs to outsourcing, but I don't see it. I guess there are some jobs which could easily be outsourced abroad, but it seems to me that being that disconnected from the client must mean that the work wouldn't have been all that special anyway. More and more is happening on the web, and I still see companies growing. As far as I can tell, there are plenty of jobs to be had, as long as you're generally competent to begin with.
Because it lets you abstract easily and quickly. You don't have to worry about what type something is, you can interface with most everything the same way. In Java, this is dealt with by having a huge inheritance tree. If you want high-level behavior for a low-level class, you have to make sure it inherits all the way back up to class x, then write a method that takes the abstract class and operates on it. But half the time this still doesn't work (especially when the primitive types get involved.) So you end up with wrappers and the same object adhering to about 12 different interfaces just to use a *single* function. And don't get me started about how much of a pain it is to pass functions as arguments... In JavaScript, if I receive an object, I can just iterate over it to look at its properties - I don't even need to know what they are. I can construct functions on the fly, pass them in as arguments along with an object (that I just recently constructed, without any class definition), and have that function run on each property of the object. It's one step away from having first-class continuations. The apparent advantage of Java is having strict types - so if something adheres to an interface or abstract class, you just "know" it will have x,y,z and can do m and n. But very often (mostly sloppy programming), this isn't the case, so you have to check for things anyway. And why did you even try to pass in something that wasn't going to work with that function to begin with? In JavaScript, you have the flexibility to just pass it in. If it works, it works, if not - why did you pass it in? Ultimately, you still have to know what you're doing, so compile-time checks aren't really useful for catching more than typos. As far as I'm concerned, Java doesn't even come close to the power of JavaScript. Java likes big, bloated classes that are fixed at compile-time with LongNamesLikeThis. It has most of the drawbacks of C++ with almost none of the benefits. The only thing it has going for it is a huge API, but even that is so slow as to be useless for anything like graphics code. Heck, JavaScript is even more cross-platform than Java - and that's what Java was designed for! (Everything has a browser these days.) AJAX programming is weird, young, unpolished and tricky. But it already has more promise than a Java applet ever will. (Reserving judgement on this new JavaFX or whatever...but not holding my breath.)
JavaScript is a better language than Java. Seriously, it truly is.
KOTOR was less than a single month, I believe, because it was announced as a PC/Xbox title - not an exclusive. Jade Empire took longer because it was intended as an exclusive from the beginning. (At least, as a "timed exclusive.") So my guess would be Mass Effect shouldn't take too much longer than Jade Empire to see a PC release. Plus, as I said, there are more PC projects from Bioware coming...soon. ;)
If past experience shows us anything, it's that Bioware's "Xbox only" titles are in fact, not Xbox-only. Mass Effect, like Jade Empire and KOTOR before it, will almost assuredly be ported to the PC eventually. (Give it a year or two.)
Plus, Bioware still has Dragon Age in development for PC, as well as some other projects. Fear not.
Though it does seem that Mac/Linux support is probably out of the question...
Perhaps the original poster didn't mean Edge was comparable to Famitsu in popularity, but in quality? This would be supported by the fact that the next sentence begins "The much-respected games magazine...," as well as by the generally sophisticated quality of the writing witnessed in the magazine by myself.
Dude, if it took you that long to finish Tomb Raider: Legend, then you just suck. That was like a 6-to-8 hour game, generously. (At least the main story portion.) And if you didn't finish..it's not like you're actually missing anything.
Many.
GTA isn't a PS3-only title anymore. It appears to be coming to the Xbox 360 day-and-date with the PS3.
When I was in first and second grade, we were taught Logo-Writer at my public school. It's a lightweight programming language where the commands control a "turtle" onscreen who follows the sequence of commands for drawing, moving...lots of various tasks. Unfortunately, that has since been removed from the curriculum and Logo instruction was not taught much beyond fourth grade. (The program switched to using Word and the Internet and such...which is a shame, really.)
The Little Schemer was mentioned above - that might also make a good choice.
Do we know that the show was profitable? The Slashdot posts only mentions that it was popular.
An example might help: In modern Russia, and many former USSR satellites, "liberals" are those who favor more modernization and capitalization policies, while "conservatives" are associated with the former Soviet Union and want the government to revert to a more leftist stance.
It's Doctor Who, not Dr. Who.
Well, it can't pinpoint your location absolutely. It can only sense acceleration/rotation in any direction. Though it also has the sensor bar, which detects where the device is pointing on-screen. So, I would guess (I don't really know) that it could calculate movement/relative positioning from those two sources of information?