Hoo-boy! Did your school ever teach C/C++? My alma mater had been doing C++ for a few years when I started (and C before that) and they just switched to Java this year for incoming freshmen.
I remember taking Java my senior year, and hearing they were going to be replacing C++ with Java as "the language" at the school, and I was horrified for those poor freshman. It was bad enough starting off with C++.
Every computer engineer who goes into development should start off with a certain book from the MIT Press. Codemonkeys can skip this stuff, I suppose, but not straight to Java!
Holy Buckets! I never knew LOGO was related to LISP!
We learned Logo-Writer (turtle-graphics) in 3rd grade. That was when I had my first inkling that I might like to be a programmer. In fourth grade we re-hashed the same logo programs, but I started dinking around and doing my own stuff. In fifth grade we moved on to Apple BASIC, and I finally started to do "useful" things such as write calculator programs and draw graphics. From there I went to QBASIC, then Pascal, C++ (and COM), VB, Java, C# (and.NET), and now Python, and in the near future I have vague plans to look into Perl, Ruby, and coming full circle: LISP!
Wow. So if it weren't for LISP, I probably would have pursued my first love, writing, instead of my second (and somewhat related) love: programming.
There is no such thing as "the American public school system" (yet?). Every state manages their own school systems, and many of them hand off most of the responsibility to the cities. I'd argue that if there's a problem with American school systems it is that there are no widely imposed standards.
Want to know why technology use lags in rural areas? Because the schools there have no obligation to teach the students about it. The curricula are designed by people from the area, who grew up without the technology and see little or no reason to teach it if the kids who stay in the area won't need it. I don't think that this is necessarily a problem, itself. But the lack of grading and testing standards is.
There's a reason it's called artificial intelligence.
But it isn't lack of reasoning, it's lack of creativity. If there was real creativity going on, then it would just be intelligence.
computers already make heavy use of quantum mechanics... quantum effects come in to play, and it is the understanding of these principles... which lead to the development of the transistor
I'm not sure "quantum mechanics" is exactly the right terminology for the principles behind transistor physics. At least not at the time of their invention. Although the principles behind energy quanta and states are utilized, there's no entanglement, tunneling, or other such "spooky" quantum effects going on as far as I remember.
But then again, maybe I need to go back and take a second read-through of the "Semiconductor Physics" book we used in our "Physics of Electronics" course in college.
The turnoff for females in videogame stores may be different than the turnoff for males in clothing stores, but it's still a turnoff, and that's what I was trying to illustrate. You appear to have missed the point in your eagerness to come up with a snappy response.
Last I checked 0.5% is still greater than 0%, and that's the point I was making. I said nothing, and made no pretences about, proportion, just existence.
So tell me do the hassidic jews burn red heffers if they catch a glimse of a naked woman? Of course not. That's because even the ultra orhodox
Well I guess I don't know for sure what you were about to say, but it looks like it was going to be a sweeping generalization. Hey believe it or not, not everyone gives in to their physical lusts. Just because you may not be able to control your urges, doesn't mean no one else can.
And in any case, if one Hassidic Jew looks at naked women against his supposed beliefs that says absolutely nothing about the entire culture as a whole! Just like if one so-called Christian's actions betray his supposed beliefs that says nothing about all other Christians. Indeed, since the label "Christian" or "Hassidic Jew" is a statement of adherance to a certain value-set, then if their actions don't jive with that value-set, then they don't truly belong to that group. I can claim I'm a physician all I want, but I don't practice medicine, so what does that make me other than a liar?
"Female-friendly"? That's some nice misogyny there. Last I knew, females liked to buy music/media/games (gasp!)/TVs/etc. just like anyone else. Oh wait, they're probably all too busy looking in the Appliance section to notice the video games.
Firstly, this is about games, not "music/media/.../TVs/etc."
Secondly, it's a statistical reality that a much higher percentage of males regularly play video games than of females.
Thirdly, by female-friendly, the OP probably meant getting rid of, or at least playing down, the over-endowed, scantily clad female characters whose images are plastered all over everything in game stores/departments. You want to have that type of stuff in your store? Fine. Just don't expect to expand your customer-base into the female market anytime soon. If you, as a man, want women to walk into your game store and buy stuff, think first about the last time you walked into a store that had the latest women's fashion hanging in the front window, without your significant other.
I would add "mom-friendly" as a step in the right direction. And separating games like the Sims (original, not later PG-13 expansions/sequels), or racing games (not like NFS Underground 2, which has scantily-clad flag-wavers), or Sports titles which appeal to a broader age-range from the teen/adult tailored games with pictures of half-naked heroines, bloody-bladed warriors, gun-toting sharpshooters, or bloody-clawed gape-mawed monsters.
The hebrews of today bear little resembelence to the hebrews of 4000 year ago.
Except for the Hassidic, or "orthodox", Jews. Many of them won't even make eye-contact with Gentiles. For what it's worth, I say this from first-hand experience: I took a trip to Israel about 6 years ago. While yes, much of the Israeli population is as "modern" and "liberal" as any European culture (brightly colored hair and facial piercings were popular among the youth when I was there), the Hassidic Jews are still very dedicated to the heritage of the Old Testament and other texts from that era.
Also remember that someone who points out a problem early is a troublemaker; someone who fixes a problem at the last minute is a hero.
That's a dangerous line to tread, because there's a third option: someone who identifies a problem at the last minute and can't fix it in time is shortsighted and incompetent.
You are not considering all the costs of the Dvorak keyboard - namely the transition costs of re-learning for everyone, including myself. Are you saying things would be better if something other than the market choose what kind of keyboard I should have?
I think that maybe this issue is that we are at a local maximum. Dvorak may get us a bigger maximum, but we have to decrease productivity/efficiency first in order to get there. That is something the market is not good at. So we will probably stay with QWERTY keyboards until/unless someone designs something that does not require a decrease in productivity to move to.
I wonder if this stuff is incorporated into market theory anywhere?
AFAIK, Miyamoto was never a developer. He started out as a character designer, moved up to "game designer" (not developer), and eventually became a project manager of sorts. Now he's more of a guiding force across many projects, rather than a manager.
At most "large" game studios, these are the people that most significantly affect the quality and celebrity of a game, not the developers. This is because these are the people that make the final judgements on gameplay, character, and story issues--the "feel" of the game. At smaller studios, that job can fall more on the developers, but I doubt that's often the case at Nintendo, and I'm almost 100% sure it's not the case with Miyamoto.
Check out GameSpy's interesting write-up of Miyamoto.
No, if this patent is upheld noone can release any similar functionality under any license for any reason. More or less.
Functionality is not what is patented (at least not in this case, or in the cases of most software patents). The method by which the functionality is provided is what is patented. If you can provide the same functionality by a different-enough method, you're in the clear.
Which is why all these paranoid posts regarding "operating system" or "file system" patents are unfounded.
Sorry for the somewhat harsh response due to mixed signals there. We were obviously (now =) talking about different kinds of cheating.
The thing is, you don't need a deeper understanding about your, say, digital camera other than the USB data transfer specs in order to write OSS drivers for it. For a GPU, you need the whole deal.
Good point. I hadn't thought of that. I guess I see the threat now, and the difficulty of ensuring that an open interface doesn't also allow work arounds for the crippling I talked about. Also, if their "secrets" are patentable they shouldn't be worried about hiding those, but I can understand wanting to keep some non-patentable, "flash-of-inspiration" tricks hidden.
I don't suppose you'd know the location of some Geforce 3 drivers for Linux? I've been having trouble finding them. Maybe I just need to work on my googling skills?
I just want specs on the interface which lets me use that particular hardware.
I want to say up front that this is spot on. The card company doesn't lose any money by allowing other people to work on drivers for their software. In fact, they can only sell more. If they are hiding higher-tech features on cheaper cards, they should be hidden further behind the interface, not at it.
That said, I will address another part of the parent's post.
almost every major GFX vendor has been caught cheating
I don't know if you really feel that this is "cheating", but if so, what would you suggest as an alternative? What they do makes perfect economic sense. They've put in the money on R&D for a hi-tech product. Once the design is implemented, manufacturing cost differences between the multiple levels of cards are negligible. But they still paid to research the hi-tech stuff, and so if they just charged less for the expensive features, they couldn't recoup costs.
So if they didn't disable those higher-tech options, then they would simply have no cheaper cards available. Which means they'd sell less, and possibly not recoup the costs of their research. Instead, they disable the "most expensive" features and sell a cheaper version, which opens a new market to them: people who want brand-X cards, but aren't pay an arm and a leg for a top-of-the-line card.
The other option is to make two separate designs, and completely exclude the ability to support those features from one of them. But that's even more design and testing work that really isn't necessary. Remember, the cards work because of the research that went into the features, so they're charging you for use of the features, not physical presence of the features.
It's really no different than airplanes that have multiple classes of seats. 1st class gets better service. And even though coach is on the same plane, and technically has access to the same resources as 1st class, they paid less, so they don't get to take advantage of them. It's a cost effective way of offering services at different price levels, so that large portions of the market aren't excluded.
This should make sense to anyone who has taken a microeconomics class. And anyone who hasn't should be asking questions before they make judgments.
Yes thank you, I understand that. It requires an infinite amount of energy to accelerate to light speed. Not only does that not have any bearing on what I said, but it has been repeated over and over again throughout this discussion.
Regardless, particles travelling faster than the speed of light would have an imaginary component to their mass. This is frankly fairly meaningless in our current understanding of physics, since we don't really know what exactly gives things mass in the first place, so we can't even say whether it's possible to have imaginary mass. All we know is that mathematically, we can't currently rule it out.
I do understand the reasons for the philosophy. Ideally, it promotes the most efficient evolution of human society. The only people who would survive to contribute to the gene pool are the people who are willing to help themselves. She doesn't rule out good-will offering, only forced collection of funds/goods that will be distributed as a temporary salve for poverty. But I question whether, in her system, there is really any encouragement for people to even give good-will offerings, because it does put them at an economic disadvantage.
Her philosophy bothers me because it assigns a moral responsibility to people not to aid those whose situation is unfortunate due to their own actions (i.e. there is no mercy), but it does not assign a moral responsibility to people whose situations are comfortable, even if not due to their own actions, to help anyone at all, even if those in need cannot help themselves. In short, it's okay to be selfish if you're rich, but it's not okay to be merciful to people who are suffering due to laziness or bad choices.
She effectively says that greed is okay, grace is nice but you'll suffer for it, and mercy is bad. That may help us advance in some areas, but it certainly doesn't promote the kind of qualities that I value in humanity.
If that last paragraph doesn't make sense, then to clarify what I mean by grace and mercy: grace is giving someone something to benefit them, that they don't necessarily deserve; mercy is not giving punishment to someone who does deserve it. There's a significant difference. I understand discouraging mercy. I don't agree with it, but I understand it. What worries me more is that Rand's philosophy it allows, but does not encourage grace. Grace (IMO) is beneficial to humanity, but it costs the giver economically, and so it seems that without encouragement, it would be bred out of humanity eventually.
I was by no means saying that we should rest on our laurels and not worry about competition. I do see the danger to in-house developers at companies whose main business is not software. In fact, I think that eventually even the offshore developers will probably largely be replaced by solutions that require no 3rd party development or support. Pay for the solution, pay for it to be set up once, and train a couple people on site to handle day-to-day operations and configurations. I think that is the future of this sector of IT.
However, there will still be software studios (small, large, closed, and open), for as long as there are PCs, and though there are fewer jobs in that field, they are jobs that will stick around. I would be surprised to see a significant portion of this go to outsourcing. Of course, it could be argued that within the next 10-20 years, we may not have much need for PCs anymore, so then the only real development jobs left will be for server-side software that thin clients will interact with.
Of course even then, there's still embedded systems work to be done. The field is definitely changing, so we definitely need to be agile. I agree with you there. But I don't think it's hopeless. There may just no longer be room in the field for every guy or gal who can put two lines of Java together. As I said above, I think that type of stuff will eventually even leave the realm of offshoring and enter the realm of automated development.
You, my friend, are a rarity among slashdotters. It's good to see once in a while that there are other regulars who care about things beyond technology and money.
You can have tachyons
It's a little misleading to say that, I think. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I know, no evidence of tachyons (a certain amount of radiation emitted by a vacuum) have ever been observed, and a large percentage of physicists in this field do not believe they exist.
Well, it might be possible to go faster than the speed of light. We would just need to figure out what it would mean to have mass and/or energy that has an imaginary component to them.
So now you're relying on health care to treat all your medical problems
Neither I nor bob beta said anything of the sort. You brought up "life-saving operations", and that is exactly the type of thing that insurance, Medicare, etc. are for.
and scholarship programs for your kids to go to school
Scholarships aren't the only way to pay for school, but in any case, they exist for the express purpose of giving talented people who aren't well-off the means to make the most of their abilities. I went to an engineering school with a $23k-per-year tuition. I got $9k in scholarships, $12k in loans, and the other $2k I paid for out of pocket. No contribution whatsoever from my parents, because they couldn't afford it. Not only have I managed to get by, but it made me better at managing my expenses. I know when not to indulge, and when I can spare some money to splurge.
Doesn't sound like the ideal simple life
It sounds like you're confusing "simple" with "easy". When I say simple, I'm talking about the basic components of human life that have always been part of civilization since the beginning. Family, community, brotherhood, etc. If we lose these things then all our wonderful comforts, and technology, and economy, and governments--all the so-called great achievements of mankind--will do us no good in the end. Progress is good, but there are foundations that, if left untended, can cause the entire structure to fall.
Some of us choose to do something with our lives
Not everyone defines "doing something" the same way. I feel that bringing children into the world and raising them well is "doing something". And I feel that there are much more important contributions to your childrens' development than just providing them with financial padding. The wonderful thing about the U.S. (maybe you're not from the U.S.?) is that your financial state as a child doesn't have to dictate the path of your life. Being born into meager means does not mean you'll die in them. Of course, beyond that capitalist principle, it also has helped me that I recognize that my financial state at any point in time does not need to dictate my satisfaction with my life either. That realization lifts some heavy burdens and gives me much more control over my own happiness.
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I remember taking Java my senior year, and hearing they were going to be replacing C++ with Java as "the language" at the school, and I was horrified for those poor freshman. It was bad enough starting off with C++.
Every computer engineer who goes into development should start off with a certain book from the MIT Press. Codemonkeys can skip this stuff, I suppose, but not straight to Java!
Holy Buckets! I never knew LOGO was related to LISP!
.NET), and now Python, and in the near future I have vague plans to look into Perl, Ruby, and coming full circle: LISP!
We learned Logo-Writer (turtle-graphics) in 3rd grade. That was when I had my first inkling that I might like to be a programmer. In fourth grade we re-hashed the same logo programs, but I started dinking around and doing my own stuff. In fifth grade we moved on to Apple BASIC, and I finally started to do "useful" things such as write calculator programs and draw graphics. From there I went to QBASIC, then Pascal, C++ (and COM), VB, Java, C# (and
Wow. So if it weren't for LISP, I probably would have pursued my first love, writing, instead of my second (and somewhat related) love: programming.
Want to know why technology use lags in rural areas? Because the schools there have no obligation to teach the students about it. The curricula are designed by people from the area, who grew up without the technology and see little or no reason to teach it if the kids who stay in the area won't need it. I don't think that this is necessarily a problem, itself. But the lack of grading and testing standards is.
There's a reason it's called artificial intelligence. But it isn't lack of reasoning, it's lack of creativity. If there was real creativity going on, then it would just be intelligence.
I must say, I feel quite sheepish now. =(
I'm not sure "quantum mechanics" is exactly the right terminology for the principles behind transistor physics. At least not at the time of their invention. Although the principles behind energy quanta and states are utilized, there's no entanglement, tunneling, or other such "spooky" quantum effects going on as far as I remember.
But then again, maybe I need to go back and take a second read-through of the "Semiconductor Physics" book we used in our "Physics of Electronics" course in college.
And banks.
not for us... unless you have a fiber line
In decent sized cities, more and more businesses are using fiber lines. And oh by the way, it's becoming more popular in homes too.
Still sound far-fetched?
The turnoff for females in videogame stores may be different than the turnoff for males in clothing stores, but it's still a turnoff, and that's what I was trying to illustrate. You appear to have missed the point in your eagerness to come up with a snappy response.
Odds are good that this is because video drivers tend to be better for Windows than other OSes.
Last I checked 0.5% is still greater than 0%, and that's the point I was making. I said nothing, and made no pretences about, proportion, just existence.
So tell me do the hassidic jews burn red heffers if they catch a glimse of a naked woman? Of course not. That's because even the ultra orhodox
Well I guess I don't know for sure what you were about to say, but it looks like it was going to be a sweeping generalization. Hey believe it or not, not everyone gives in to their physical lusts. Just because you may not be able to control your urges, doesn't mean no one else can.
And in any case, if one Hassidic Jew looks at naked women against his supposed beliefs that says absolutely nothing about the entire culture as a whole! Just like if one so-called Christian's actions betray his supposed beliefs that says nothing about all other Christians. Indeed, since the label "Christian" or "Hassidic Jew" is a statement of adherance to a certain value-set, then if their actions don't jive with that value-set, then they don't truly belong to that group. I can claim I'm a physician all I want, but I don't practice medicine, so what does that make me other than a liar?
Firstly, this is about games, not "music/media/.../TVs/etc."
Secondly, it's a statistical reality that a much higher percentage of males regularly play video games than of females.
Thirdly, by female-friendly, the OP probably meant getting rid of, or at least playing down, the over-endowed, scantily clad female characters whose images are plastered all over everything in game stores/departments. You want to have that type of stuff in your store? Fine. Just don't expect to expand your customer-base into the female market anytime soon. If you, as a man, want women to walk into your game store and buy stuff, think first about the last time you walked into a store that had the latest women's fashion hanging in the front window, without your significant other.
I would add "mom-friendly" as a step in the right direction. And separating games like the Sims (original, not later PG-13 expansions/sequels), or racing games (not like NFS Underground 2, which has scantily-clad flag-wavers), or Sports titles which appeal to a broader age-range from the teen/adult tailored games with pictures of half-naked heroines, bloody-bladed warriors, gun-toting sharpshooters, or bloody-clawed gape-mawed monsters.
Except for the Hassidic, or "orthodox", Jews. Many of them won't even make eye-contact with Gentiles. For what it's worth, I say this from first-hand experience: I took a trip to Israel about 6 years ago. While yes, much of the Israeli population is as "modern" and "liberal" as any European culture (brightly colored hair and facial piercings were popular among the youth when I was there), the Hassidic Jews are still very dedicated to the heritage of the Old Testament and other texts from that era.
From the article:
Also remember that someone who points out a problem early is a troublemaker; someone who fixes a problem at the last minute is a hero.
That's a dangerous line to tread, because there's a third option: someone who identifies a problem at the last minute and can't fix it in time is shortsighted and incompetent.
I think that maybe this issue is that we are at a local maximum. Dvorak may get us a bigger maximum, but we have to decrease productivity/efficiency first in order to get there. That is something the market is not good at. So we will probably stay with QWERTY keyboards until/unless someone designs something that does not require a decrease in productivity to move to.
I wonder if this stuff is incorporated into market theory anywhere?
AFAIK, Miyamoto was never a developer. He started out as a character designer, moved up to "game designer" (not developer), and eventually became a project manager of sorts. Now he's more of a guiding force across many projects, rather than a manager.
At most "large" game studios, these are the people that most significantly affect the quality and celebrity of a game, not the developers. This is because these are the people that make the final judgements on gameplay, character, and story issues--the "feel" of the game. At smaller studios, that job can fall more on the developers, but I doubt that's often the case at Nintendo, and I'm almost 100% sure it's not the case with Miyamoto.
Check out GameSpy's interesting write-up of Miyamoto.
Functionality is not what is patented (at least not in this case, or in the cases of most software patents). The method by which the functionality is provided is what is patented. If you can provide the same functionality by a different-enough method, you're in the clear.
Which is why all these paranoid posts regarding "operating system" or "file system" patents are unfounded.
The thing is, you don't need a deeper understanding about your, say, digital camera other than the USB data transfer specs in order to write OSS drivers for it. For a GPU, you need the whole deal.
Good point. I hadn't thought of that. I guess I see the threat now, and the difficulty of ensuring that an open interface doesn't also allow work arounds for the crippling I talked about. Also, if their "secrets" are patentable they shouldn't be worried about hiding those, but I can understand wanting to keep some non-patentable, "flash-of-inspiration" tricks hidden.
atleast nVidia offers excellent closed-source drivers
I don't suppose you'd know the location of some Geforce 3 drivers for Linux? I've been having trouble finding them. Maybe I just need to work on my googling skills?
I want to say up front that this is spot on. The card company doesn't lose any money by allowing other people to work on drivers for their software. In fact, they can only sell more. If they are hiding higher-tech features on cheaper cards, they should be hidden further behind the interface, not at it.
That said, I will address another part of the parent's post.
almost every major GFX vendor has been caught cheating
I don't know if you really feel that this is "cheating", but if so, what would you suggest as an alternative? What they do makes perfect economic sense. They've put in the money on R&D for a hi-tech product. Once the design is implemented, manufacturing cost differences between the multiple levels of cards are negligible. But they still paid to research the hi-tech stuff, and so if they just charged less for the expensive features, they couldn't recoup costs.
So if they didn't disable those higher-tech options, then they would simply have no cheaper cards available. Which means they'd sell less, and possibly not recoup the costs of their research. Instead, they disable the "most expensive" features and sell a cheaper version, which opens a new market to them: people who want brand-X cards, but aren't pay an arm and a leg for a top-of-the-line card.
The other option is to make two separate designs, and completely exclude the ability to support those features from one of them. But that's even more design and testing work that really isn't necessary. Remember, the cards work because of the research that went into the features, so they're charging you for use of the features, not physical presence of the features.
It's really no different than airplanes that have multiple classes of seats. 1st class gets better service. And even though coach is on the same plane, and technically has access to the same resources as 1st class, they paid less, so they don't get to take advantage of them. It's a cost effective way of offering services at different price levels, so that large portions of the market aren't excluded.
This should make sense to anyone who has taken a microeconomics class. And anyone who hasn't should be asking questions before they make judgments.
Regardless, particles travelling faster than the speed of light would have an imaginary component to their mass. This is frankly fairly meaningless in our current understanding of physics, since we don't really know what exactly gives things mass in the first place, so we can't even say whether it's possible to have imaginary mass. All we know is that mathematically, we can't currently rule it out.
Her philosophy bothers me because it assigns a moral responsibility to people not to aid those whose situation is unfortunate due to their own actions (i.e. there is no mercy), but it does not assign a moral responsibility to people whose situations are comfortable, even if not due to their own actions, to help anyone at all, even if those in need cannot help themselves. In short, it's okay to be selfish if you're rich, but it's not okay to be merciful to people who are suffering due to laziness or bad choices.
She effectively says that greed is okay, grace is nice but you'll suffer for it, and mercy is bad. That may help us advance in some areas, but it certainly doesn't promote the kind of qualities that I value in humanity.
If that last paragraph doesn't make sense, then to clarify what I mean by grace and mercy: grace is giving someone something to benefit them, that they don't necessarily deserve; mercy is not giving punishment to someone who does deserve it. There's a significant difference. I understand discouraging mercy. I don't agree with it, but I understand it. What worries me more is that Rand's philosophy it allows, but does not encourage grace. Grace (IMO) is beneficial to humanity, but it costs the giver economically, and so it seems that without encouragement, it would be bred out of humanity eventually.
However, there will still be software studios (small, large, closed, and open), for as long as there are PCs, and though there are fewer jobs in that field, they are jobs that will stick around. I would be surprised to see a significant portion of this go to outsourcing. Of course, it could be argued that within the next 10-20 years, we may not have much need for PCs anymore, so then the only real development jobs left will be for server-side software that thin clients will interact with.
Of course even then, there's still embedded systems work to be done. The field is definitely changing, so we definitely need to be agile. I agree with you there. But I don't think it's hopeless. There may just no longer be room in the field for every guy or gal who can put two lines of Java together. As I said above, I think that type of stuff will eventually even leave the realm of offshoring and enter the realm of automated development.
You, my friend, are a rarity among slashdotters. It's good to see once in a while that there are other regulars who care about things beyond technology and money.
You can have tachyons It's a little misleading to say that, I think. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I know, no evidence of tachyons (a certain amount of radiation emitted by a vacuum) have ever been observed, and a large percentage of physicists in this field do not believe they exist.
Well, it might be possible to go faster than the speed of light. We would just need to figure out what it would mean to have mass and/or energy that has an imaginary component to them.
So now you're relying on health care to treat all your medical problems
Neither I nor bob beta said anything of the sort. You brought up "life-saving operations", and that is exactly the type of thing that insurance, Medicare, etc. are for.
and scholarship programs for your kids to go to school
Scholarships aren't the only way to pay for school, but in any case, they exist for the express purpose of giving talented people who aren't well-off the means to make the most of their abilities. I went to an engineering school with a $23k-per-year tuition. I got $9k in scholarships, $12k in loans, and the other $2k I paid for out of pocket. No contribution whatsoever from my parents, because they couldn't afford it. Not only have I managed to get by, but it made me better at managing my expenses. I know when not to indulge, and when I can spare some money to splurge.
Doesn't sound like the ideal simple life
It sounds like you're confusing "simple" with "easy". When I say simple, I'm talking about the basic components of human life that have always been part of civilization since the beginning. Family, community, brotherhood, etc. If we lose these things then all our wonderful comforts, and technology, and economy, and governments--all the so-called great achievements of mankind--will do us no good in the end. Progress is good, but there are foundations that, if left untended, can cause the entire structure to fall.
Some of us choose to do something with our lives
Not everyone defines "doing something" the same way. I feel that bringing children into the world and raising them well is "doing something". And I feel that there are much more important contributions to your childrens' development than just providing them with financial padding. The wonderful thing about the U.S. (maybe you're not from the U.S.?) is that your financial state as a child doesn't have to dictate the path of your life. Being born into meager means does not mean you'll die in them. Of course, beyond that capitalist principle, it also has helped me that I recognize that my financial state at any point in time does not need to dictate my satisfaction with my life either. That realization lifts some heavy burdens and gives me much more control over my own happiness.