This is a common misunderstanding/misperception. The Libertarians vehemently oppose corporate welfare and public/private partnerships. What you're calling "pro-corporate" is really not true - they believe that in general, the market should be left alone, regulation minimized and clear separation between companies and government should exist. They are deeply suspicious of things like the military-industrial complex.
The Libertarians believe that a person has a right to the fruit of their own labors, and that people should be free from burdensome regulation and oppressive government manipulation of markets. This is not "pro corporate" this is "pro human". They also believe that just as a person should be free to succeed, they should be free to fail. The libertarians are passionately opposed to "bail outs" and "stimulus" government corporate welfare programs.
Any Libertarian who tried to pull the sort of shenanigans that we're seeing here would be tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail by his/her own party.
Hell, have you noticed how Google's advertisements on other sites like Slashdot change based on what you've been recently searching on Google.
Yes indeed, and I'm glad. I'd rather see an ad for something I'm interested in than constant True.com or e-harmony adds.
The Internet as we know it is coming to an end.
The internet as I know it starts with the Google home page. And yes, I was there during the 1200 baud dial-up BBS days. Or are you saying you prefer Bing? Are you honestly going to tell me that we are worse off now that we have a universe of information at our fingertips than we were back in the IRC days? Really?
Everyone sees this but doesn't act. They just let Google steal all of their privacy. Google and CISPA must be stopped and it's your only time to act!
Steal my privacy? Hardly. When I walk into the Home Depot and ask the cashier where I can find a garden hose, he tells me, and also suggests some other products I might be interested in since I'm there looking for a garden hose. I'm really happy he does. Well, damn, I guess he just "stole my privacy". I suppose it would be better for me to have to wander every aisle and manually check every product until I can find it huh?
I can talk to my phone and say "What's the population of Isreal?" and my freaking phone will answer me. With citations. And for this mind blowing ability, the cost I must pay is to see advertisements that I'm interested in? We're living in a unimaginable universe that even the authors of Star Trek couldn't envision - and for that phenomenal access to the collective intelligence of mankind, I get unobtrusive suggestions for products that might help me out. And your answer to this is "Google must be stopped?" What the hell?
How about, "Thanks Google. Thanks for being a large part of making the world into a Sci-Fi fantasy. And by the way, thanks for doing it in a really ethical way. We see you, and we appreciate you."
What is not seen, is the $800 per month that this no longer costs your neighbors.
All government spending is not evil, and all public works aren't bad. But it is a mistake, a fallacy, to think that taking $800 per month from your neighbors so you can spend it is somehow good for the economy, or your neighbors.
When we must engage in public works, we should do so - hold our nose and accept the necessary evil. This, however, should never be mistaken for economic activity. That is an illusion.
It is worth taking a hard, critical look at yourself and what it is you do. Is your job really justified? Maybe so, perhaps you are a civil engineer or water treatment specialist, I have no way of knowing. Only your conscience can guide you when you wake up in the morning and greet your struggling neighbors, look them in the eye, and know that they are paying for you to do what you do.
Have you actually used KDE recently? The reason I ask is because I hadn't. I had it in my mind, like you, that it was basically a windows clone desktop (because that's how it used to be). Recently, Unity on Ubuntu annoyed me enough that I installed Kubuntu. I have to tell you, I was blown away. Modern KDE is nothing like windows. It's stunning, really - quite amazing, and has some great paradigms that I haven't seen in any other OS, like actually making the desktop area useful.
Navigating to apps etc.. is pretty awesome. Every time I boot it up I'm just struck by how beautiful it is, I really don't understand how Apple gets all this "beauty" cred. To me, it looks like a turd compared to KDE. It's in the eye of the beholder, I guess - but if you haven't tried it recently, I highly recommend giving it a shot.
Thanks, and actually I added the quotes for exactly that reason. The left, like the right, has many different viewpoints (many of which I passionately agree with), so in an attempt to emphasis the generic nature of my argument I added the quotes. The "left" is a bad label, as is the "right" but for lack of better terms or many pages of explanation of the complex and rich philosophy and history of both "sides", I used the generically accepted labels, but tried to qualify them with quotes to emphasize the fact that they were just labels. Sorry if I didn't communicate that well.
A lot of people are confused about how this sort of law could be passed in Texas, which according to left-wing groupthink is a regressive bible-thumping gun-toting desert filled with rednecks who hate Darwin and force kids to pray in school.
This, of course, is nonsense. Much of the anti-Texas sentiment results from fundamental ideological differences that go to the core of the "left" versus "right" arguments.
Texans, for very valid historical reasons, have a deep seated mistrust of centralized government and authority. This can be seen in pretty much every part of our culture, especially our constitution and court systems. This way of thinking, of course, is a direct attack on everything that those on the "left" believe in. Even worse, the evidence clearly shows that our way of governing and beliefs work very well - from tort reform, to right to work, to zero income tax (just to name a few) we have a state that cherishes individual liberty, resists government interference, and we have one of the best economies in the world to show for it.
The success of Texas is a sore tooth to those on the "left". As a result, they are forced to rely on ad-hominem attacks and mischaracterization in a defensive attempt to protect and justify their beliefs, even though even casual comparisons of the success of cities and states that implement those beliefs shows that they are clearly misguided.
The fact is, disturbing as it may seem to those on the "left", Texas is beautiful, tolerant, friendly and a wonderful place to live. I moved my family here from the east coast seven years ago, and it was one of the best decisions we've ever made.
This law is just another example (among many) of Texas following in its long tradition of codifying individual rights and protecting liberties. Yes, Texas has some black marks in it's history - but show me a state (or country) that doesn't!
There is a reason why people from all over the country are flooding here, and why we gained four seats in the house in 2010. As much vitriol, misrepresentation and flat out lying that those on the "left" do about Texas, the truth is becoming more and more evident to those around the country, that just as once the United States was the place that people fled to in order to escape oppressive government, now Texas has become a safe haven within the U.S. for the same reasons.
While there are many things about python that I love (array slicing, list comprehensions, etc...) the lack of anonymous in-lines really kills it for me. I enjoy working with python, and for certain apps python/django is a clear win - but these days I find myself mostly slinging nodejs code.
1) You just want to make cool things, but don't really care about the details 2) You really want to grok this stuff, and want to build stuff from scratch
This is roughly equivalent, in programmers terms, of learning a high-level language like.Net, PHP, Python etc... versus assembly/C.
Do you want to Just Make It Work(tm) without understanding the underlying libraries/platform? Or do you want to be able to build the libraries/platform?
For option 1, the Arduino is fantastic, and really can't be beat. For option 2, I'd say start with an 8 bit AVR, like AT tiny, grab a breadboard, come LEDs and a programmer, and pull your hair out until it starts making sense and the lights flash in the pattern you expect.
I took the second route, and have been very happy with my choice. Now, if (at my option) I just want to do something quick and dirty, I can grab an arduino and prototype something fast. But the thing is, I'm not constrained by that. I'm able to throw things together on a breadboard from components in a tray. I can write the code in straight C (or avr asm), and really grok the ISRs.
It's kind of like Processing (the platform for data visualization and artistic CG). Would you rather make fast animations that look great, are easy to make, but only run in the Processing environment? Or would you rather build your own cross platform UI stack and then create your own highly optimized animations?
I don't really agree with the "beginners" attitude towards Arduino, the same way I don't agree that Python is a good language for "beginner" programmers. We become programmers or amateur EE's for some reason - to solve some problem. If the problem you want to solve is that you want to be an expert developer, then don't start with python, start with c or asm. If you just have stuff you need to get done, python is great.
Same with EE, don't start with Arduino if your purpose is to really learn the stuff. You'll just be confused by the toolchain and helpful libraries.
Not sure if you're being purposefully obtuse, or trolling, but in case you're serious - there are a fantastically wide range of applications that benefit from massive parallelism found in shader languages like GLSL. Just take a look at some of the books on amazon that have CUDA implementations for everything from fluid simulation to computer vision stuff.
Most recently I've been playing with the concept of doing sound synth and processing on the GPU with shaders in js.
In my original post I mentioned that WebGL isn't just for graphics. There are enormous benefits to being able to execute massively parallel operations on a web page.
Honestly, isn't not just for graphics - it's for the whole fantastic class of problems that can be solved via GLSL shaders - GPU accelerated calculations in JS - this is simply so amazingly powerful, IE 10 is essentially worthless without it.
As people start doing high performance computing and solving wildly complex problems in the browser with GPU accelerated JS, the browser will continue to emerge as the platform of choice for a wonderfully wide range of applications. IE will sit off to the side, largely ignored (except for certain "enterprise" business users) and will become even more irrelevant.
I'd expect to start seeing more and more web sites that want to do these things refuse to support IE at all, the shims and plugins just aren't worth screwing with.
I just bought one on T-Mobile - most amazing piece of technology I've ever owned. Absolutely stunning.
At first I was worried that the whole Pen thing would be a useless gimmick, but I use the damn thing all the time. For jotting down quick notes, it's actually as usable as carrying around a paper notebook, which has always been the bar I've measured these things against.
In all the technology I've owned over the years, PDA's, tablets, smartphones etc... they've never given me the ability to do away with paper/pencil notebook. This actually has, which is fantastic.
You know, I've been down on Unity as much as the next guy, until a wild thing happened: my 13 year old son sat down in front of it, never having used it before, and started navigating and using it like it was the most natural thing in the world.
I was shocked, he didn't have any of the old UI paradigm hangups that I have, he looked at it with completely new eyes, and was immediately productive with it, using it in ways that had not been obvious to me.
After seeing this, I really had to reconsider my Unity griping. These guys really know something about usability, and while yes, there are flaws, they seem to be getting ironed out.
You'd think that in today's era of streaming video, netflix, hulu, amazon and iTunes, the cable companies would be doing everything in their power to increase viewership numbers (for advertising revenue).
Adding obstacles to folks trying to watch their programming seems insane - like they are actively trying to go out of business, driving more folks (like me) away from traditional add supported media. My wife and I do all our watching on Netflix (or Amazon, if there's a show we're willing to buy). I can't imagine going back to the bad old days of television ads.
Not that I mind, given the advances in cell technology, I think we're less than 10 years away from cable companies being nothing more than legacy internet providers anyway, like dial-up.
Education and Society dictate a persons capabilities.
Do you have any supporting evidence of this other than a naive "I wish it were like this so it must be so!"
Want to throw out decades of research that support genetic influence of behavior on such diverse issues as alcoholism, personality disorders, etc...
A simple search of scholarly articles will give you plenty of studies conducted on identical twins raised in diverse social and economic situations, that have a genetic predisposition towards specific behaviors.
According to your point, if I had the right education, in the right society, I could be a NFL linebacker, correct?
You are an inspiration to many in the geek world, and have pretty much reached the pinnacle of what any geek could aspire to. That being said, you are frequently accused of having an abrasive personality, and many of your public comments (euphemistically) "lack tact." Do you ever suffer negative repercussions from this? Have you ever considered trying a different approach, or reading Carnegie? (That last bit wasn't a snark, I was "laid off" from a job once for similar issues, I turned to Dale Carnegie, and it had a profoundly positive effect on my professional and personal life)
I'm sure you feel very morally superior, and all that "what,what", but have you considered that perhaps there are significant geographical differences between where you live and parts of the U.S.? That this country is *really big* and most of it isn't urban? When I was in high school, my mother drove me 45 minutes each way to my swim team, which was at the YMCA, and was the closest option. My graduating class was 63 people, and the school bus ride was frequently over an hour long.
A +5 modded post for calling everyone in the U.S. "backwards morons" because we don't have city buses spanning the country. Seriously? You do realize that you can fit the entire country of France inside of Texas, right? California is larger than the entire country of Germany.
FFS, what's going on with the mods that a post like this gets modded +5? Mods, how about a tiny bit of quality control here? Or do I just have to post any random anti-US slogan in order to get +5 modded?
Here, I'll try: "Umm, the U.S. is like really dumb and stupid and stuff. Like totally, everyone there is a moron because, you know, they're dumb."
I've been a developer for about 16 years, and have had a pretty spotty math education. I've generally taught myself what I need to know as I needed to know it - 3D programming? What's a matrix? How do I rotate things with it? Developing animate graphical charts? How do I scale from business coords to pixel coords, and animate? Draw box an whiskers charts etc...
Recently, I've decided to stop doing the corporate developer gig and to go to school. As part of that, I've needed to take math a lot more seriously, so I've bought some books and been going through a more rigorous program.
One thing I've discovered through this process is that I *really enjoy it*. I'm not being pressured to learn something for a test, I'm not worried about a grade. Instead, I take my books to a coffee shop and relax and think about fascinating things, like trying to visualize the complex plane, and what the value for i really is, and what dividing by zero really means.
Instead of memorizing the quadratic equation, I spent some time learning how to derive it from basic principals. Instead of memorizing that the vertex of a parabola can be found by -b/2a, I noodled around and tried to visualize the determinant (sqrt(b^2 -4ac)), it's effect on an equation, and what happens if you zero it out.
I spend a leisurely afternoon coming up with a visual proof of the Pythagorean theorem, and was pretty excited when I finally had it, and was even more excited when I googled it and saw the same basic proof has been derived by students for a really long time - I loved the notion that I was connected back through time with a whole bunch of other people who were going through the same mental steps.
This stuff is great! And I'm only scratching the surface. I'm in baby algebra - and I'm excited to keep going.
My point is - we go about this stuff all wrong. Forcing kids to memorize equations so they can pass an exam is absolutely pointless, if not masochistic. Exploring really interesting concepts about numbers, and what they mean - this stuff should be recreation. It's great!
I see my older son struggling through his algebra course, and he hates it. He doesn't care, and hates doing the homework. But when I get excited about some math problem I'm studying, he'll come over to look over my shoulder to see what I'm doing, and we'll puzzle it out together. He forgets that we're doing math, instead we're talking about concepts and challenging each other. We'll spend an hour or two going over something that's really cool, and we both have a great time.
Ask him about math, however, and he immediately relates it to school, and he'll tell you how much he hates it.
This disturbs me. The phrase "the Constitution is not a suicide pact". Deeply.
The first time I heard this was from full Commander in the Navy, while I was enlisted. She said "The Constitution isn't a suicide pact". As an aside, she was very liberal.
I was speechless. Here we were, on a military base, surrounded by Marines who were being deployed to quite literally give their lives to defend the Constitution, and this woman was blatantly and flippantly disregarding the Constitution. Especially considering the fact that she took this oath (similar to mine, as enlisted):
"I, [name], do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same;"
Over the years, millions of people have given their lives to defend the Constitution, and many more have suffered great personal harm and hardship to stand up for it civilly.
If you are not willing to stand up for the letter and the spirit of the Constitution, why have it? It has no teeth. It can be violated without consequence.
The U.S. Constitution is indeed a suicide pact. Otherwise, it's just a series of nice suggestions.
I agree with most of your points here, the hyper-stylized sexualization trend in asian manga, games and art is pretty distasteful to western cultures. Actually, the US/western release of Tera has a lot of this stuff toned down, because they received a lot of negative feedback from the early testing over it. I also dislike the feminine stylized males, to the point of almost being androgynous (this is also common in anime/manga, and taken to extremes occasionally, like in Black Butler).
Having lived in Tokyo briefly, I sort of "get" this kind of thing a little better than I would have before that experience. Asian cultures aren't just "america, but weird". They are very alien to our way of thinking. Completely foreign, we just completely lack context.
I have always considered myself to be a fairly modern, laid-back guy, and really didn't think much could shock me. I never really considered myself to be heavily influenced by the whole western "puritan" morality thing, I like to consider myself a critical thinker and objective.
Then I went to Japan and learned how incredibly naive I was. The examples are too numerous to list here, but I happened to be there during the annual penis festival, where young girls would walk around with candy penises in their mouths: Kanamara Matsuri (NSWF!)
Suffice to say, my eyes were opened quite a bit.
As for the game Tera, I find the combat to be a refreshing change, and generally enjoyable enough to ignore the (valid) criticism of shallow questing. I don't spend nearly the amount of time playing it as I did WoW, I generally play for maybe a couple hours per week, so maybe that in itself is telling.
FWIW: when I wrote that I had a tag "snark" at the end of that statement, but the slashdot cleanser stripped it out. The Panda statement was meant to be snarky/sarcastic - sorry about the confusion, I should have said/snark.
Honestly, the technology underpinning WoW is just too dated these days. Players expect more - Tera is a perfect example of that, a combat system where you actually have to hit your opponent (yes, some of it is simulated, but it feels real.
I have 5 level 80+ chars on WoW, but haven't played the game in at least a year, maybe two, and don't plan to go back to it, even for Pandas.
What little gaming time I have, I spend on games that are trying to innovate.
If Blizzard wants me back, they need to do something other than yet another expansion money grab. They need to do something new, innovative and wonderful. Sadly, I don't see much of this coming from them any more. I played Diablo 3 for about 3 hours before I got bored and switched back to Tera.
Hey Blizzard, how about this: World of Starcraft. And make it awesome, using latest technology - not an groaning engine that's 10 years old.
Slashdot Mirror
This is a common misunderstanding/misperception. The Libertarians vehemently oppose corporate welfare and public/private partnerships. What you're calling "pro-corporate" is really not true - they believe that in general, the market should be left alone, regulation minimized and clear separation between companies and government should exist. They are deeply suspicious of things like the military-industrial complex.
The Libertarians believe that a person has a right to the fruit of their own labors, and that people should be free from burdensome regulation and oppressive government manipulation of markets. This is not "pro corporate" this is "pro human". They also believe that just as a person should be free to succeed, they should be free to fail. The libertarians are passionately opposed to "bail outs" and "stimulus" government corporate welfare programs.
Any Libertarian who tried to pull the sort of shenanigans that we're seeing here would be tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail by his/her own party.
Hell, have you noticed how Google's advertisements on other sites like Slashdot change based on what you've been recently searching on Google.
Yes indeed, and I'm glad. I'd rather see an ad for something I'm interested in than constant True.com or e-harmony adds.
The Internet as we know it is coming to an end.
The internet as I know it starts with the Google home page. And yes, I was there during the 1200 baud dial-up BBS days. Or are you saying you prefer Bing? Are you honestly going to tell me that we are worse off now that we have a universe of information at our fingertips than we were back in the IRC days? Really?
Everyone sees this but doesn't act. They just let Google steal all of their privacy. Google and CISPA must be stopped and it's your only time to act!
Steal my privacy? Hardly. When I walk into the Home Depot and ask the cashier where I can find a garden hose, he tells me, and also suggests some other products I might be interested in since I'm there looking for a garden hose. I'm really happy he does. Well, damn, I guess he just "stole my privacy". I suppose it would be better for me to have to wander every aisle and manually check every product until I can find it huh?
I can talk to my phone and say "What's the population of Isreal?" and my freaking phone will answer me. With citations. And for this mind blowing ability, the cost I must pay is to see advertisements that I'm interested in? We're living in a unimaginable universe that even the authors of Star Trek couldn't envision - and for that phenomenal access to the collective intelligence of mankind, I get unobtrusive suggestions for products that might help me out. And your answer to this is "Google must be stopped?" What the hell?
How about, "Thanks Google. Thanks for being a large part of making the world into a Sci-Fi fantasy. And by the way, thanks for doing it in a really ethical way. We see you, and we appreciate you."
As Bastiat pointed out so eloquently in That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen your $800 per month is what is seen.
What is not seen, is the $800 per month that this no longer costs your neighbors.
All government spending is not evil, and all public works aren't bad. But it is a mistake, a fallacy, to think that taking $800 per month from your neighbors so you can spend it is somehow good for the economy, or your neighbors.
When we must engage in public works, we should do so - hold our nose and accept the necessary evil. This, however, should never be mistaken for economic activity. That is an illusion.
It is worth taking a hard, critical look at yourself and what it is you do. Is your job really justified? Maybe so, perhaps you are a civil engineer or water treatment specialist, I have no way of knowing. Only your conscience can guide you when you wake up in the morning and greet your struggling neighbors, look them in the eye, and know that they are paying for you to do what you do.
Have you actually used KDE recently? The reason I ask is because I hadn't. I had it in my mind, like you, that it was basically a windows clone desktop (because that's how it used to be). Recently, Unity on Ubuntu annoyed me enough that I installed Kubuntu. I have to tell you, I was blown away. Modern KDE is nothing like windows. It's stunning, really - quite amazing, and has some great paradigms that I haven't seen in any other OS, like actually making the desktop area useful.
Navigating to apps etc.. is pretty awesome. Every time I boot it up I'm just struck by how beautiful it is, I really don't understand how Apple gets all this "beauty" cred. To me, it looks like a turd compared to KDE. It's in the eye of the beholder, I guess - but if you haven't tried it recently, I highly recommend giving it a shot.
Thanks, and actually I added the quotes for exactly that reason. The left, like the right, has many different viewpoints (many of which I passionately agree with), so in an attempt to emphasis the generic nature of my argument I added the quotes. The "left" is a bad label, as is the "right" but for lack of better terms or many pages of explanation of the complex and rich philosophy and history of both "sides", I used the generically accepted labels, but tried to qualify them with quotes to emphasize the fact that they were just labels. Sorry if I didn't communicate that well.
A lot of people are confused about how this sort of law could be passed in Texas, which according to left-wing groupthink is a regressive bible-thumping gun-toting desert filled with rednecks who hate Darwin and force kids to pray in school.
This, of course, is nonsense. Much of the anti-Texas sentiment results from fundamental ideological differences that go to the core of the "left" versus "right" arguments.
Texans, for very valid historical reasons, have a deep seated mistrust of centralized government and authority. This can be seen in pretty much every part of our culture, especially our constitution and court systems. This way of thinking, of course, is a direct attack on everything that those on the "left" believe in. Even worse, the evidence clearly shows that our way of governing and beliefs work very well - from tort reform, to right to work, to zero income tax (just to name a few) we have a state that cherishes individual liberty, resists government interference, and we have one of the best economies in the world to show for it.
The success of Texas is a sore tooth to those on the "left". As a result, they are forced to rely on ad-hominem attacks and mischaracterization in a defensive attempt to protect and justify their beliefs, even though even casual comparisons of the success of cities and states that implement those beliefs shows that they are clearly misguided.
The fact is, disturbing as it may seem to those on the "left", Texas is beautiful, tolerant, friendly and a wonderful place to live. I moved my family here from the east coast seven years ago, and it was one of the best decisions we've ever made.
This law is just another example (among many) of Texas following in its long tradition of codifying individual rights and protecting liberties. Yes, Texas has some black marks in it's history - but show me a state (or country) that doesn't!
There is a reason why people from all over the country are flooding here, and why we gained four seats in the house in 2010. As much vitriol, misrepresentation and flat out lying that those on the "left" do about Texas, the truth is becoming more and more evident to those around the country, that just as once the United States was the place that people fled to in order to escape oppressive government, now Texas has become a safe haven within the U.S. for the same reasons.
Please go read Bastiat: http://bastiat.org/en/twisatwins.html it will do you a lot of good intellectually.
While there are many things about python that I love (array slicing, list comprehensions, etc...) the lack of anonymous in-lines really kills it for me. I enjoy working with python, and for certain apps python/django is a clear win - but these days I find myself mostly slinging nodejs code.
There are two ways you can tackle this:
1) You just want to make cool things, but don't really care about the details
2) You really want to grok this stuff, and want to build stuff from scratch
This is roughly equivalent, in programmers terms, of learning a high-level language like .Net, PHP, Python etc... versus assembly/C.
Do you want to Just Make It Work(tm) without understanding the underlying libraries/platform? Or do you want to be able to build the libraries/platform?
For option 1, the Arduino is fantastic, and really can't be beat. For option 2, I'd say start with an 8 bit AVR, like AT tiny, grab a breadboard, come LEDs and a programmer, and pull your hair out until it starts making sense and the lights flash in the pattern you expect.
I took the second route, and have been very happy with my choice. Now, if (at my option) I just want to do something quick and dirty, I can grab an arduino and prototype something fast. But the thing is, I'm not constrained by that. I'm able to throw things together on a breadboard from components in a tray. I can write the code in straight C (or avr asm), and really grok the ISRs.
It's kind of like Processing (the platform for data visualization and artistic CG). Would you rather make fast animations that look great, are easy to make, but only run in the Processing environment? Or would you rather build your own cross platform UI stack and then create your own highly optimized animations?
I don't really agree with the "beginners" attitude towards Arduino, the same way I don't agree that Python is a good language for "beginner" programmers. We become programmers or amateur EE's for some reason - to solve some problem. If the problem you want to solve is that you want to be an expert developer, then don't start with python, start with c or asm. If you just have stuff you need to get done, python is great.
Same with EE, don't start with Arduino if your purpose is to really learn the stuff. You'll just be confused by the toolchain and helpful libraries.
I'm doing some fun stuff with chains js, an experimental library I've been working on to make async javascript look/feel more synchronous.
Massive scalability through distributed computing?
Ask the guys at SETI why it shouldn't all be done on centralized servers.
Not sure if you're being purposefully obtuse, or trolling, but in case you're serious - there are a fantastically wide range of applications that benefit from massive parallelism found in shader languages like GLSL. Just take a look at some of the books on amazon that have CUDA implementations for everything from fluid simulation to computer vision stuff.
Most recently I've been playing with the concept of doing sound synth and processing on the GPU with shaders in js.
In my original post I mentioned that WebGL isn't just for graphics. There are enormous benefits to being able to execute massively parallel operations on a web page.
Honestly, isn't not just for graphics - it's for the whole fantastic class of problems that can be solved via GLSL shaders - GPU accelerated calculations in JS - this is simply so amazingly powerful, IE 10 is essentially worthless without it.
As people start doing high performance computing and solving wildly complex problems in the browser with GPU accelerated JS, the browser will continue to emerge as the platform of choice for a wonderfully wide range of applications. IE will sit off to the side, largely ignored (except for certain "enterprise" business users) and will become even more irrelevant.
I'd expect to start seeing more and more web sites that want to do these things refuse to support IE at all, the shims and plugins just aren't worth screwing with.
I just bought one on T-Mobile - most amazing piece of technology I've ever owned. Absolutely stunning.
At first I was worried that the whole Pen thing would be a useless gimmick, but I use the damn thing all the time. For jotting down quick notes, it's actually as usable as carrying around a paper notebook, which has always been the bar I've measured these things against.
In all the technology I've owned over the years, PDA's, tablets, smartphones etc... they've never given me the ability to do away with paper/pencil notebook. This actually has, which is fantastic.
You know, I've been down on Unity as much as the next guy, until a wild thing happened: my 13 year old son sat down in front of it, never having used it before, and started navigating and using it like it was the most natural thing in the world.
I was shocked, he didn't have any of the old UI paradigm hangups that I have, he looked at it with completely new eyes, and was immediately productive with it, using it in ways that had not been obvious to me.
After seeing this, I really had to reconsider my Unity griping. These guys really know something about usability, and while yes, there are flaws, they seem to be getting ironed out.
You'd think that in today's era of streaming video, netflix, hulu, amazon and iTunes, the cable companies would be doing everything in their power to increase viewership numbers (for advertising revenue).
Adding obstacles to folks trying to watch their programming seems insane - like they are actively trying to go out of business, driving more folks (like me) away from traditional add supported media. My wife and I do all our watching on Netflix (or Amazon, if there's a show we're willing to buy). I can't imagine going back to the bad old days of television ads.
Not that I mind, given the advances in cell technology, I think we're less than 10 years away from cable companies being nothing more than legacy internet providers anyway, like dial-up.
Comcast = Earthlink in ten years.
Education and Society dictate a persons capabilities.
Do you have any supporting evidence of this other than a naive "I wish it were like this so it must be so!"
Want to throw out decades of research that support genetic influence of behavior on such diverse issues as alcoholism, personality disorders, etc...
A simple search of scholarly articles will give you plenty of studies conducted on identical twins raised in diverse social and economic situations, that have a genetic predisposition towards specific behaviors.
According to your point, if I had the right education, in the right society, I could be a NFL linebacker, correct?
Absurd.
You are an inspiration to many in the geek world, and have pretty much reached the pinnacle of what any geek could aspire to. That being said, you are frequently accused of having an abrasive personality, and many of your public comments (euphemistically) "lack tact." Do you ever suffer negative repercussions from this? Have you ever considered trying a different approach, or reading Carnegie? (That last bit wasn't a snark, I was "laid off" from a job once for similar issues, I turned to Dale Carnegie, and it had a profoundly positive effect on my professional and personal life)
I'm sure you feel very morally superior, and all that "what,what", but have you considered that perhaps there are significant geographical differences between where you live and parts of the U.S.? That this country is *really big* and most of it isn't urban? When I was in high school, my mother drove me 45 minutes each way to my swim team, which was at the YMCA, and was the closest option. My graduating class was 63 people, and the school bus ride was frequently over an hour long.
A +5 modded post for calling everyone in the U.S. "backwards morons" because we don't have city buses spanning the country. Seriously? You do realize that you can fit the entire country of France inside of Texas, right? California is larger than the entire country of Germany.
FFS, what's going on with the mods that a post like this gets modded +5? Mods, how about a tiny bit of quality control here? Or do I just have to post any random anti-US slogan in order to get +5 modded?
Here, I'll try: "Umm, the U.S. is like really dumb and stupid and stuff. Like totally, everyone there is a moron because, you know, they're dumb."
I've been a developer for about 16 years, and have had a pretty spotty math education. I've generally taught myself what I need to know as I needed to know it - 3D programming? What's a matrix? How do I rotate things with it? Developing animate graphical charts? How do I scale from business coords to pixel coords, and animate? Draw box an whiskers charts etc...
Recently, I've decided to stop doing the corporate developer gig and to go to school. As part of that, I've needed to take math a lot more seriously, so I've bought some books and been going through a more rigorous program.
One thing I've discovered through this process is that I *really enjoy it*. I'm not being pressured to learn something for a test, I'm not worried about a grade. Instead, I take my books to a coffee shop and relax and think about fascinating things, like trying to visualize the complex plane, and what the value for i really is, and what dividing by zero really means.
Instead of memorizing the quadratic equation, I spent some time learning how to derive it from basic principals. Instead of memorizing that the vertex of a parabola can be found by -b/2a, I noodled around and tried to visualize the determinant (sqrt(b^2 -4ac)), it's effect on an equation, and what happens if you zero it out.
I spend a leisurely afternoon coming up with a visual proof of the Pythagorean theorem, and was pretty excited when I finally had it, and was even more excited when I googled it and saw the same basic proof has been derived by students for a really long time - I loved the notion that I was connected back through time with a whole bunch of other people who were going through the same mental steps.
This stuff is great! And I'm only scratching the surface. I'm in baby algebra - and I'm excited to keep going.
My point is - we go about this stuff all wrong. Forcing kids to memorize equations so they can pass an exam is absolutely pointless, if not masochistic. Exploring really interesting concepts about numbers, and what they mean - this stuff should be recreation. It's great!
I see my older son struggling through his algebra course, and he hates it. He doesn't care, and hates doing the homework. But when I get excited about some math problem I'm studying, he'll come over to look over my shoulder to see what I'm doing, and we'll puzzle it out together. He forgets that we're doing math, instead we're talking about concepts and challenging each other. We'll spend an hour or two going over something that's really cool, and we both have a great time.
Ask him about math, however, and he immediately relates it to school, and he'll tell you how much he hates it.
This disturbs me. The phrase "the Constitution is not a suicide pact". Deeply.
The first time I heard this was from full Commander in the Navy, while I was enlisted. She said "The Constitution isn't a suicide pact". As an aside, she was very liberal.
I was speechless. Here we were, on a military base, surrounded by Marines who were being deployed to quite literally give their lives to defend the Constitution, and this woman was blatantly and flippantly disregarding the Constitution. Especially considering the fact that she took this oath (similar to mine, as enlisted):
"I, [name], do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same;"
Over the years, millions of people have given their lives to defend the Constitution, and many more have suffered great personal harm and hardship to stand up for it civilly.
If you are not willing to stand up for the letter and the spirit of the Constitution, why have it? It has no teeth. It can be violated without consequence.
The U.S. Constitution is indeed a suicide pact. Otherwise, it's just a series of nice suggestions.
I agree with most of your points here, the hyper-stylized sexualization trend in asian manga, games and art is pretty distasteful to western cultures. Actually, the US/western release of Tera has a lot of this stuff toned down, because they received a lot of negative feedback from the early testing over it. I also dislike the feminine stylized males, to the point of almost being androgynous (this is also common in anime/manga, and taken to extremes occasionally, like in Black Butler).
Having lived in Tokyo briefly, I sort of "get" this kind of thing a little better than I would have before that experience. Asian cultures aren't just "america, but weird". They are very alien to our way of thinking. Completely foreign, we just completely lack context.
I have always considered myself to be a fairly modern, laid-back guy, and really didn't think much could shock me. I never really considered myself to be heavily influenced by the whole western "puritan" morality thing, I like to consider myself a critical thinker and objective.
Then I went to Japan and learned how incredibly naive I was. The examples are too numerous to list here, but I happened to be there during the annual penis festival, where young girls would walk around with candy penises in their mouths: Kanamara Matsuri (NSWF!)
Suffice to say, my eyes were opened quite a bit.
As for the game Tera, I find the combat to be a refreshing change, and generally enjoyable enough to ignore the (valid) criticism of shallow questing. I don't spend nearly the amount of time playing it as I did WoW, I generally play for maybe a couple hours per week, so maybe that in itself is telling.
Or maybe I've just grown up a little.
FWIW: when I wrote that I had a tag "snark" at the end of that statement, but the slashdot cleanser stripped it out. The Panda statement was meant to be snarky/sarcastic - sorry about the confusion, I should have said /snark.
Oh my god, try installing 12.04 upgrade with an Nvidia card.
Hell.
Was damn near enough to make me swear off Ubuntu forever.
Honestly, the technology underpinning WoW is just too dated these days. Players expect more - Tera is a perfect example of that, a combat system where you actually have to hit your opponent (yes, some of it is simulated, but it feels real.
I have 5 level 80+ chars on WoW, but haven't played the game in at least a year, maybe two, and don't plan to go back to it, even for Pandas.
What little gaming time I have, I spend on games that are trying to innovate.
If Blizzard wants me back, they need to do something other than yet another expansion money grab. They need to do something new, innovative and wonderful. Sadly, I don't see much of this coming from them any more. I played Diablo 3 for about 3 hours before I got bored and switched back to Tera.
Hey Blizzard, how about this: World of Starcraft. And make it awesome, using latest technology - not an groaning engine that's 10 years old.