You seem to have a negative attitude towards C++ - how come? It is a superset of C, meaning it is capable of everything C is. It was designed (IMO quite well) from the beginning to be comparable to C in speed if used properly. On top of this, it was also designed to be more readable, maintainable, and safe. Even in the hands of a novice, C++ is mostly harmless (ignoring memory issues) due to smarter compilers and cheap clock cycles.
As far as ASM - I have studied my share of it in my EE undergrad, and I found it to be close to useless except in the simplest of embedded devices or to replace 10 lines of code in a loop - all while sacrificing portability. Are the clock cycles (that will cost almost nothing in five years anyway) really worth the time required for any other application?
I am not trying to argue - you sound like you have more experience than I do - but I meet very few people who share the same favorite languages as you, and I'm curious why. What kinds of programming do you do?
I know virtually zero people in the real world who can get by on just C. It's come to the point where people will mix C++ and C styles in large projects, and if you don't know how to read the C++ you are close to useless.
Yes, there are still a lot of low-level nitch C applications, but the number of C/C++ programmers dwarfs the number of pure C programmers.
Civilization - not RTS Warlords - not RTS Company of Heroes - Gamespy's 2006 game of the year - not on the Mac Age Of Empires III - Gamespy's Best RTS of 2005, not 2006.
0 for 3
RTS games actually seem to have low support on the Mac, not sure why
I am really happy to see someone on Slashdot being mature about this. Yeah, most of us are against Windows, but when people claim that 40 million sales are a flop (just because it is MSFT) - or display any other form of sour grapes - it makes us look bad as a community.
Wishing that Vista was a failure does not make it so.
"which if you've been paying any attention, you'd know was the intended slight of the Bungie dev who brought it up."
Nope, this whole thread has been a misunderstanding of what he said. He responded to the interviewer saying "Nintendo claims that they can make Halo". He was joking that they could make super mario brothers.
"True, but the difference is that Super Mario Bros. was revolutionary when it was first introduced, as evident by the numerous SMB clones that followed in its wake. "
That was true 20 years ago, but is almost irrelevant today. Nintendo cannot use it as an example of them being innovative *today*
Well, that may have been the original reason - my "c:\program files\common files" folder is about 250 megs, which is still a decent amount on my 30 gig laptop hard drive.
I personally hate they way things are not portable, and have been trying to figure it out myself for some time. I wish MSFT would just get rid of the registry
Two reasons that I can think of: A. It's harder to secure a program from privacy when it's portable to another computer. The registry allows them to tie a program to the computer - if you can put the program on a disk and then put it on another computer, it can now be pirated B. A lot of programs use the same files as other programs. A common dll may be used in 20 different applications. Space can be saved if the programs take advantage of some common location for these shared files, installing only if they don't already exist. It seems like this requires applications to be tied onto a computer.
Most movies do, but not all. Remember that half the box office sales go to distributors and the theaters. So when you read 100 million in box office, if the movie cost 75 million to make they still lost money.
If producing movies were such a sure thing, more rich people would get into it. DVD sales are taken into account in the budget of a film.
I think he is basically saying that the government should not *require* free software or ban it. It is not the government's job to mandate anything about a technology or an application of a technology. This is a great view (and very against the anti-competitive nature of previous French politicians). Remember that fiasco where France essentially tried to ban iPods from France? Sarkozy probably wouldn't pull crap like that.
It's too bad that linux.com has to put a anti-Sarkozy spin in its article. In the process, they spent all their space blasting him instead of summarizing his answers. Just because he doesn't want to require Linux does not make him evil.
I have been studying AI in grad school, and mostly agree. It has actually come to the point that most AI type people prefer not to use the term "artificial intelligence" at all. You would be hard pressed to find a class called "artificial intelligence" in any prestigious graduate school (beyond maybe an intro class). Instead, look for "machine learning," "neural networks" and the like. I postulate that this is because people have made much better progress on specific topics that don't really move towards anything like strong AI - it's not even a goal for most people anymore. In fact, a lot of researchers don't even know what strong AI means. It is more of a science fiction or futurist term.
I would love to see strong AI in my lifetime, but I'm not going to hold my breath, nor am I going to waste my time researching it until we know more about its required foundations.
Yeah, I was trying to build an analogous situation to the story. What the Chinese are doing is exactly that. They are claiming that Minney Mouse is a cat they created, and profiting off it!
The GP called the siltation "good" and called it progress. I was calling him on it.
"Your contributions to the culture of humanity will be mercilessly dissected, reshuffled, caricatured, parodied, paraded, criticized, subclassed and recycled."
This is not progress. This is a step for a bunch of profiteering assholes. According to your reasoning, if a starving art student created a webcomic with a lovable character, it would be A-OK for Disney to come in, steal the character, rename him, put him in a bunch of movies that make 100 million dollars, and then give absolutely no credit or money to the creator.
I don't know many people who would call this progress.
"What they do is give puny donations to universities, who then spend millions of tax-payer dollars in R&D, and right at the end, your corporation will come back, patent the idea"
Are you saying that Disney World was invented by a bunch of PhD students, and then Walt Disney stole it;)
I think it is a very interesting theory - basically it states that up to now we have had exponential growth in significant "paradigm" shifts. While the first human technologies took 1000s of years to develop, today there is some revolution in technology every few years.
Singularity claims that when AIs become smart enough to take over the human's role in designing technology (and themselves), we will experience something faster than exponential growth.
This is a very similar pattern to what happened with ICs. The first computers were meticulously hand-built by people. Within a few years, computer aided design helped humans build faster, more impressive computers in a fraction of the time. Chip synthesis tools now allow us to design chips with a few 100 lines of code. While chips have remained "only" exponential in growth, this is more of a limitation of the chemical and physical properties than the design limitations.
From http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/refpages/RefArticle. aspx?refid=1741500821&pn=14 "About half of the nation's lumber and all of its fir plywood come from the forests of the Pacific states, an area dominated by softwoods. In addition to the Douglas fir forests in Washington and Oregon, this area includes the famous California redwoods and the Sitka spruce along the coast of Alaska."
Far more wood is used for lumber than for paper, so I think that is more relevant to the discussion. And this lumber comes from forests with varied and interesting ecosystems. I'm not saying we shouldn't use trees at all, but we should keep in mind that we really do affect the environment when we do so. These pacific forests are huge carbon sinks, and regrowing them to their original state isn't so easy.
I read your link, but I don't agree with the article. He is advocating replacing all other fats with saturated fats, but never explains why polyunsaturated fats are so bad except with unfair comparisons and correlations that probably do not show causation given the complicated nature of the situation. I think everyone can agree that hydrogenated oils = bad; they have fallen out of favor in foods over the last several years. But I think the assertion that animal fats are better for you than poly unsaturated fats is fringe and requires an actual scientific study to convince me. The article you link to uses about 2000 words to make a simple, very flawed point:
'Americans are becoming less healthy, and they have been replacing saturated fats with other types of fats. Therefore, *all* fats except saturated fats are bad'
He employs two major logic flaws here - lumping all non-saturated fats together (yes, we know hydrogenated oils are bad, it's like shooting fish in a barrel), and linking correlation with causation. My original point was that chocolate makers will likely use poly unsaturated fats. Unless some sort of study can show that these types of fats are less healthy than cocoa butter (which your link failed to do, IMO), I don't think health is a valid reason to object to the change. The greatest reason to object is that chocolate is supposed to taste good, not be a health food.
"Countries like India uses huge amounts of butter (ghee) and coconut oil and you don't see them with rampaging blood sugar levels, heart disease and all of the other side effects of eating crap like "Crisco" and margarines."
"'Vegetable oil' is a synonym for 'heavily processed, hydrogenated oil which will kill you but makes good financial sense to the corporatised US food production industry'"
Vegetable oil in the USA is rarely hydrogenated anymore. "Vegetable oil" usually means soy oil, which accounts for 80% of national oil consumption. It is actually quite healthy compared to many other alternatives, and is arguably natural: http://www.talksoy.com/FoodIndustry/oOil.htm
I agree that what the FDA is doing is wrong, but for a different reason - because I love chocolate, and I know this move will open the doors to even crappier chocolate replacing what we have now.
"You mean one company will have more information than any other company? Unthinkable!"
I know you are being funny, but I want to point out - in case it's not clear - that that isn't what they meant. What they mean is that this acquisition will cause google to *overtake* the current record holder of privacy infringement (if it isn't them already). They key is that Google will be worse for the status quo, instead of replacing it with something comparable. If it's not stopped now, it never will be. And these consumer activists have a very good point on why it should be.
My god man, you're in college. When I was your age (by which I mean 2 years younger) living a little involved something a bit crazier than mailing back some empty applications to companies. Although I'll admit graduating has made me more mature (and hence more boring), I think your rebellious side is also coming off as a bit tame.
If you want to get into a technical argument, even an ounce of gas wasted makes your adventure a negative sum game. There's a reason why the post office has to charge 40 cents an envelope (and still loses money). in addition, the added cost to the company goes directly back to the consumer in higher costs. I don't mind cool pranks, but the second they start hurting people I lose respect for them.
A good prank is: a. funny b. noticeable to others (so they can appreciate the humor) c. harmless
You are 0/3 on that scale. Whatever, I don't really want to argue with you about something as insignificant as this - my original point was supposed to be limited to my criticism of America's wasteful nature, not an attack on you or your actions. Mail away if it brings you satisfaction:)
Sorry, I don't mean to be a troll, but I think your plan is bad for the environment for no real good reason. Every time we do anything, even if it's for some sort of abstract version of revenge against the "man", we should ask if it will do harm to the world. In this case, I doubt companies that depend on mailing applications out will *ever* stop. On the other hand, the added weight of this mass mailing bomb will waste fuel. While you would be the lesser of two evils, you would still be evil.
Sorry for being so serious about it, I am sure you were only being half-serious
Slashdot Mirror
I'm pretty sure Java is entirely obscene ;)
You seem to have a negative attitude towards C++ - how come? It is a superset of C, meaning it is capable of everything C is. It was designed (IMO quite well) from the beginning to be comparable to C in speed if used properly. On top of this, it was also designed to be more readable, maintainable, and safe. Even in the hands of a novice, C++ is mostly harmless (ignoring memory issues) due to smarter compilers and cheap clock cycles.
As far as ASM - I have studied my share of it in my EE undergrad, and I found it to be close to useless except in the simplest of embedded devices or to replace 10 lines of code in a loop - all while sacrificing portability. Are the clock cycles (that will cost almost nothing in five years anyway) really worth the time required for any other application?
I am not trying to argue - you sound like you have more experience than I do - but I meet very few people who share the same favorite languages as you, and I'm curious why. What kinds of programming do you do?
I know virtually zero people in the real world who can get by on just C. It's come to the point where people will mix C++ and C styles in large projects, and if you don't know how to read the C++ you are close to useless.
Yes, there are still a lot of low-level nitch C applications, but the number of C/C++ programmers dwarfs the number of pure C programmers.
Civilization - not RTS
Warlords - not RTS
Company of Heroes - Gamespy's 2006 game of the year - not on the Mac
Age Of Empires III - Gamespy's Best RTS of 2005, not 2006.
0 for 3
RTS games actually seem to have low support on the Mac, not sure why
And the ISP pays for it...
Why wouldn't the user just get a gmail account? Who needs the extra 8 gigs of space and the genericISP.com e-mail?
I am really happy to see someone on Slashdot being mature about this. Yeah, most of us are against Windows, but when people claim that 40 million sales are a flop (just because it is MSFT) - or display any other form of sour grapes - it makes us look bad as a community.
Wishing that Vista was a failure does not make it so.
"which if you've been paying any attention, you'd know was the intended slight of the Bungie dev who brought it up."
Nope, this whole thread has been a misunderstanding of what he said. He responded to the interviewer saying "Nintendo claims that they can make Halo". He was joking that they could make super mario brothers.
"True, but the difference is that Super Mario Bros. was revolutionary when it was first introduced, as evident by the numerous SMB clones that followed in its wake. "
That was true 20 years ago, but is almost irrelevant today. Nintendo cannot use it as an example of them being innovative *today*
Well, that may have been the original reason - my "c:\program files\common files" folder is about 250 megs, which is still a decent amount on my 30 gig laptop hard drive.
I personally hate they way things are not portable, and have been trying to figure it out myself for some time. I wish MSFT would just get rid of the registry
Two reasons that I can think of:
A. It's harder to secure a program from privacy when it's portable to another computer. The registry allows them to tie a program to the computer - if you can put the program on a disk and then put it on another computer, it can now be pirated
B. A lot of programs use the same files as other programs. A common dll may be used in 20 different applications. Space can be saved if the programs take advantage of some common location for these shared files, installing only if they don't already exist. It seems like this requires applications to be tied onto a computer.
Most movies do, but not all. Remember that half the box office sales go to distributors and the theaters. So when you read 100 million in box office, if the movie cost 75 million to make they still lost money.
If producing movies were such a sure thing, more rich people would get into it. DVD sales are taken into account in the budget of a film.
I think he is basically saying that the government should not *require* free software or ban it. It is not the government's job to mandate anything about a technology or an application of a technology. This is a great view (and very against the anti-competitive nature of previous French politicians). Remember that fiasco where France essentially tried to ban iPods from France? Sarkozy probably wouldn't pull crap like that.
It's too bad that linux.com has to put a anti-Sarkozy spin in its article. In the process, they spent all their space blasting him instead of summarizing his answers. Just because he doesn't want to require Linux does not make him evil.
I have been studying AI in grad school, and mostly agree. It has actually come to the point that most AI type people prefer not to use the term "artificial intelligence" at all. You would be hard pressed to find a class called "artificial intelligence" in any prestigious graduate school (beyond maybe an intro class). Instead, look for "machine learning," "neural networks" and the like. I postulate that this is because people have made much better progress on specific topics that don't really move towards anything like strong AI - it's not even a goal for most people anymore. In fact, a lot of researchers don't even know what strong AI means. It is more of a science fiction or futurist term.
I would love to see strong AI in my lifetime, but I'm not going to hold my breath, nor am I going to waste my time researching it until we know more about its required foundations.
Yeah, I was trying to build an analogous situation to the story. What the Chinese are doing is exactly that. They are claiming that Minney Mouse is a cat they created, and profiting off it!
The GP called the siltation "good" and called it progress. I was calling him on it.
"Your contributions to the culture of humanity will be mercilessly dissected, reshuffled, caricatured, parodied, paraded, criticized, subclassed and recycled."
This is not progress. This is a step for a bunch of profiteering assholes. According to your reasoning, if a starving art student created a webcomic with a lovable character, it would be A-OK for Disney to come in, steal the character, rename him, put him in a bunch of movies that make 100 million dollars, and then give absolutely no credit or money to the creator.
I don't know many people who would call this progress.
"What they do is give puny donations to universities, who then spend millions of tax-payer dollars in R&D, and right at the end, your corporation will come back, patent the idea"
;)
Are you saying that Disney World was invented by a bunch of PhD students, and then Walt Disney stole it
You are talking about technological singularitya rity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singul
I think it is a very interesting theory - basically it states that up to now we have had exponential growth in significant "paradigm" shifts. While the first human technologies took 1000s of years to develop, today there is some revolution in technology every few years.
Singularity claims that when AIs become smart enough to take over the human's role in designing technology (and themselves), we will experience something faster than exponential growth.
This is a very similar pattern to what happened with ICs. The first computers were meticulously hand-built by people. Within a few years, computer aided design helped humans build faster, more impressive computers in a fraction of the time. Chip synthesis tools now allow us to design chips with a few 100 lines of code. While chips have remained "only" exponential in growth, this is more of a limitation of the chemical and physical properties than the design limitations.
And we click on the ads, don't we ;)
From http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/refpages/RefArticle. aspx?refid=1741500821&pn=14
"About half of the nation's lumber and all of its fir plywood come from the forests of the Pacific states, an area dominated by softwoods. In addition to the Douglas fir forests in Washington and Oregon, this area includes the famous California redwoods and the Sitka spruce along the coast of Alaska."
Far more wood is used for lumber than for paper, so I think that is more relevant to the discussion. And this lumber comes from forests with varied and interesting ecosystems. I'm not saying we shouldn't use trees at all, but we should keep in mind that we really do affect the environment when we do so. These pacific forests are huge carbon sinks, and regrowing them to their original state isn't so easy.
I read your link, but I don't agree with the article. He is advocating replacing all other fats with saturated fats, but never explains why polyunsaturated fats are so bad except with unfair comparisons and correlations that probably do not show causation given the complicated nature of the situation. I think everyone can agree that hydrogenated oils = bad; they have fallen out of favor in foods over the last several years. But I think the assertion that animal fats are better for you than poly unsaturated fats is fringe and requires an actual scientific study to convince me. The article you link to uses about 2000 words to make a simple, very flawed point:
'Americans are becoming less healthy, and they have been replacing saturated fats with other types of fats. Therefore, *all* fats except saturated fats are bad'
He employs two major logic flaws here - lumping all non-saturated fats together (yes, we know hydrogenated oils are bad, it's like shooting fish in a barrel), and linking correlation with causation. My original point was that chocolate makers will likely use poly unsaturated fats. Unless some sort of study can show that these types of fats are less healthy than cocoa butter (which your link failed to do, IMO), I don't think health is a valid reason to object to the change. The greatest reason to object is that chocolate is supposed to taste good, not be a health food.
"Countries like India uses huge amounts of butter (ghee) and coconut oil and you don't see them with rampaging blood sugar levels, heart disease and all of the other side effects of eating crap like "Crisco" and margarines."
t icare06.shtmlr t%20disease%20chart.jpg
This article explains that India is actually having a huge problem with heart disease. This is partly related to the fact that more people can afford ghee and other unhealthy fats used there as India becomes more wealthy:
http://www.expresshealthcaremgmt.com/20041215/cri
Heart disease has actually been going down in the USA for decades:
http://www.crouse.org/WHA2/images/women%20&%20hea
"'Vegetable oil' is a synonym for 'heavily processed, hydrogenated oil which will kill you but makes good financial sense to the corporatised US food production industry'"
Vegetable oil in the USA is rarely hydrogenated anymore. "Vegetable oil" usually means soy oil, which accounts for 80% of national oil consumption. It is actually quite healthy compared to many other alternatives, and is arguably natural:
http://www.talksoy.com/FoodIndustry/oOil.htm
I agree that what the FDA is doing is wrong, but for a different reason - because I love chocolate, and I know this move will open the doors to even crappier chocolate replacing what we have now.
"You mean one company will have more information than any other company? Unthinkable!"
I know you are being funny, but I want to point out - in case it's not clear - that that isn't what they meant. What they mean is that this acquisition will cause google to *overtake* the current record holder of privacy infringement (if it isn't them already). They key is that Google will be worse for the status quo, instead of replacing it with something comparable. If it's not stopped now, it never will be. And these consumer activists have a very good point on why it should be.
I can't believe I am even replying to this.
Simple logic will show that the application will probably be thrown out or recycled when mailed back, leading to no gain.
"Sometimes you have to live a little."
:)
My god man, you're in college. When I was your age (by which I mean 2 years younger) living a little involved something a bit crazier than mailing back some empty applications to companies. Although I'll admit graduating has made me more mature (and hence more boring), I think your rebellious side is also coming off as a bit tame.
If you want to get into a technical argument, even an ounce of gas wasted makes your adventure a negative sum game. There's a reason why the post office has to charge 40 cents an envelope (and still loses money). in addition, the added cost to the company goes directly back to the consumer in higher costs. I don't mind cool pranks, but the second they start hurting people I lose respect for them.
A good prank is:
a. funny
b. noticeable to others (so they can appreciate the humor)
c. harmless
You are 0/3 on that scale. Whatever, I don't really want to argue with you about something as insignificant as this - my original point was supposed to be limited to my criticism of America's wasteful nature, not an attack on you or your actions. Mail away if it brings you satisfaction
Sorry, I don't mean to be a troll, but I think your plan is bad for the environment for no real good reason. Every time we do anything, even if it's for some sort of abstract version of revenge against the "man", we should ask if it will do harm to the world. In this case, I doubt companies that depend on mailing applications out will *ever* stop. On the other hand, the added weight of this mass mailing bomb will waste fuel. While you would be the lesser of two evils, you would still be evil.
Sorry for being so serious about it, I am sure you were only being half-serious