"Hmm, so running the code and seeing it do the job you intended it for won't tell you it "works"?"
So if you asked me to write a random number generator for an encryption program that meets the FIPS 140-2, Security Requirements for Cryptographic Modules how would you or I know if the program I gave you meets the requirements without testing it?
Sure you could look at the output and it looks random, but is it "sufficiently random" to meet the requirements in the security spec? How can you tell without testing it? Moreover, how could I ever write code that meets the FIPS 140-2 requirements without every researching or understanding WHAT those requirements are? Please, enlighten this "fucking imbecile".
"So a piece of code that does everything it is supposed to with no problems, and works perfectly, but hasn't been debugged or standardized, magically doesn't work because YOU SAY SO?"
So a text book that HAPPENS to be perfectly one hundred percent factually accurate, but hasn't been proofread is suddenly inaccurate because YOU SAID SO?
No one is going to write a 100% perfectly accurate textbook without proofreading, editing and fact checking. Similarly no one is going to write a 100% perfectly accurate piece of software without testing and debugging (at least not a non-trivial piece of software). Sure it's theoretically possible that either of these two things could happen, but as a general rule they won't.
No offense, but you sound like someone who doesn't have much insight into how software is developed.
"YOU Think it's too hard? RESEARCH INTO STANDARDS, TESTING AND DEBUGGING ARE NOT REQUIRED IN ANY WAY."
"With code, if it works, nothing else is necessary"
Just as you can't know if a book is factually accurate until you proofread it, you can't know if a piece of code "works" if you never tested or debugged it.
Furthermore, when it comes to writing a lot of complex software package part of making the software "work" is making it adhere to a well defined standard (because other software and/or hardware relies on your code following the spec). You simply cannot "make it work" without researching and understanding the standards. Period.
Not to troll either but I will point out that your reply seems to have conveniently ignored all but the very last line of his post.
What's wrong with
Because it entrenches existing priviledge and prevents people of the 'wrong sort' being able to work their way up to better things. It permanently disenfranchises the old, female and minority workers from getting a fair chance at a job they have the skills to do, in a country which prides itself on supposedly being fair, just, and given all an equal chance to rise on merit.
as an answer?
(please note I'm not saying this necessarily a good or reasonable answer, I'm just pointing out that your rebuttal ignored the bulk of his post).
"American politicians and american parents need to learn the philosphy of wearing shoes"
That would be all well and good if the politician's goal was to actually protect children and not just to grandstand and make political hay for themselves.
It's like the man says: "Politicians are great at inventing a problem we'd like to solve, so that we can ignore problems we don't want to solve."
"They have patent indemnification licenses with MS. This suggests they believe that without those licenses they would be violating patents."
That would make sense if the legal system were somehow setup to ensure that only guilty people got sued. But as our good friends over at SCO have shown us pretty much any idiot can sue anyone for any reason. And if that idiot has deep enough pockets (which MS certainly does) they can make your life miserable regardless of the merits of the case.
To me this sounds more like a marketing gimmick than anything. MS stirs up a lot of FUD in the press about Linux allegedly violating their IP. This naturally makes CEOs hesitant to adopt Linux for fear of being sued by MS. So Novell signs a "no suing" pact with MS and can then put a big bullet point in their brochure reassuring their potential customers that they won't be on the business end of an MS lawsuit.
Then you'd better hope the game company decided to pay the toll imposed by every network provider between their server and your PC.
"How about smooth VoIP conversations?"
Ditto your VoIP provider, as well as potentially your ISP and the ISP of the person you're talking to (if they're also on VoIP).
"Would you like your ISP to block the spambot from filling your email with nonsense?"
That'd be nice, but I'd rather put up with the spam then give my ISP and every ISP between me and the person I'm emailing carte blanche to pitch or delay every message I send.
"There are good reasons for prioritization and blocking,"
I don't see why net neutrality needs to prevent prioritization. Shouldn't it be possible to write the laws in such a way to outlaw traffic shaping based on who the sender/receiver are while still allowing shaping based on what they're sending.
I'll grant you blocking is more problematic, but do you really want any network provider on the net to be able to arbitrarily block your traffic with no accountability?
"none of which any of our current legislators can comprehend"
Then perhaps we should try explaining it to them.
"If you don't like your ISP's policies, find another. If you have no choice, go talk to your local city council about laying municipal fiber"
And how does that help if some douche-bag backbone provider decides to throttle all traffic coming from a website I like because that site didn't feel like paying the toll? Unless you're suggesting that my municipal fiber network will have transatlantic cables...
Note that I'm not necessarily saying that net neutrality laws are a good thing, or that we wouldn't be better off keeping the government out of these things, but I do think you're over simplifying the argument a little.
"Well, then you're under the wrong impression. Before Marx published his work socialism was nothing but an idea bantered about by european scholars"
I've already argued this point in the follow up thread from kneejerker so I won't bother to repeat it here.
"Are you serious? Your idea of a free market is that non-citizens can hop off the boat and open a business, no questions asked?"
Well in so much as a free market is defined as "One in which any individual may exchange their products or services by competitive bidding, open to all, without constraint", then yes I am making that argument. By definition a government rule that says that non-citizens are not allowed to engage in trade is a restriction on the economy which makes it less "free". Now, do I think that such a rule is a bad thing? Hell no! In fact I would argue that it is probably beneficial to society. But I'm at least grown up enough to acknowledge that a government restriction that I happen to agree with is still a government restriction.
That's what this whole discussion is about. Many opponents of Net Neutrality claim to oppose it because it is "against the notion of the free market", as if this were somehow sufficient to make it a bad thing. My point is that just because something is counter to the free market doesn't mean it's something we shouldn't consider, the same way we do with rules concerning illegal immigrants and other non-citizens.
Now that I've (hopefully) cleared that up, let me ask you a question.
Is your idea of a free market feudal Europe where everything was by default owned by the nobility, and the Monarch could hand down any arbitrary decree about who was allowed to engage in what type of business?
Is your idea of a free market early America where black people were not only prevented by law from participating in trade, but were themselves legally classified as chattel and all the benefits of their labour were automatically given to their "owner"?
If not, then perhaps you could explain what you meant by
Ok fine. If you want to argue that 19th century Western European social critics coined the term "socialism" and therefore by definition no form of government before that time could be correctly called a "socialist" government then go ahead, but such an argument is pedantry at it's best.
Socialism is generally defined as "A system based on public ownership of the means of production and distribution of wealth", and such forms of government were experimented with long before Karl Marx. If you want to argue that they weren't socialist because no one had coined the term socialism then there's nothing I can say to convince you otherwise.
In the history of Western thought, the idea of a society based on common ownership of property can be traced back to ancient times.[1] In his 4th century BCE The Republic, Plato considers the idea of the ruling class sharing property. [2] In the republic, the ruling or guardian classes are committed to an austere and communistic way of life, with the aim of devoting all of their time and efforts to public service. [3]
At one time or another, various small communist communities existed, generally under the inspiration of Scripture.[4] In the medieval Christian church, for example, some monastic communities and religious orders shared their land and other property. (See Christian communism) These groups often believed that concern with private property was a distraction from religious service to God and neighbor. (Encarta)
Communist thought has also been traced back to the work of 16th century English writer Thomas More. In his treatise Utopia (1516), More portrayed a society based on common ownership of property, whose rulers administered it through the application of reason. (Encarta) In the 17th century, communist thought arguably surfaced again in England. In 17th-century England, the Diggers, a Puritan religious group known as advocated the abolition of private ownership of land. (Encarta) Eduard Bernstein, in his 1895 Cromwell and Communism [4] argued that several groupings in the English Civil War, especially the Diggers espoused clear communistic, agrarian ideals, and that Oliver Cromwell's attitude to these groups was at best ambivalent and often hostile.[5]
.....
In its modern form, communism grew out of the socialist movement of 19th-century Europe. (Encarta) As the Industrial Revolution advanced, socialist critics blamed capitalism for the misery of the proletariat--a new class of poor, urban factory workers who labored under often-hazardous conditions.
You're right, that wikipedia thing is really handy.
"First, Socialism was not embraced as a form of government the same year that Marx published his theory. Second, Even if it happened that same year, it is 150 years. I'm OK with rounding."
That's funny because I was under the impression that socialism was embraced as a form of government WELL BEFORE Marx every published his theory. I think the point was that Marxism is the most famous application of socialism in recent history and even IT predates the 100 year time frame you gave.
"Third, in the feudal times you mention you weren't a proper citizen unless you were part of the 'land owning class' or nobility. So that is a given. A free market in a country only applies to that countries citizens, no?"
That's a pretty interesting definition of a "free market" you've got there.
You've essentially just argued that a market where the government gets to decide who can and can't participate (since the government dictates who is and is not a citizen as well as imposing the arbitrary rule that only citizens are allowed to participate) and other people can forcibly prevent you from participating (I don't think many slaves volunteered for the position) can be considered "free".
If that's your idea of free I'd hate to see what you consider a regulated market to be.
"I've provided many reasons to show why it would; you have provided none to directly show it would not, and none that defeat any reason I've posted. The fact is, it'd work perfectly. There would be no more hijackings"
I can see the news headlines now
Airplane hijackings down 100%, while accidental shootings on airplanes up an astonishing 60000%
Seriously there have been how many airplane hijackings in the last two decades? I think if we implemented your plan you'd be WAAAAY more likely to die as a result of being accidentally shot by some moron with no knowledge of gun safety, and no idea how to handle a firearm than you would ever have been to die in a terrorist hijacking.
The bald faced truth of it is that there really aren't that many airplane hijackings now. And I would put money on the fact that the increased rate of gun accidents would more than out weigh the reduced loss of life you would see by preventing those few remaining hijackings. Your cure is worse than the disease.
Let me start off by saying that I liked your analysis of the ruling and I don't mean to offend, but this parting shot across Microsoft's bow kind of stuck in my craw:
"I personally feel that Microsoft has worked with organizations such as the Department of Homeland Security and other organizations (civil and governmental) to include extremely hidden processes which allow certain amounts of monitoring to take place"
Do you have any sort of evidence to back up that accusation? If so I for one would be very interested to read it, so please share with the class.
If not, then in future you might want to reconsider making baseless claims like this. All it does is make OSS advocates look like a bunch of paranoid conspiracy nuts, which ultimately just encourages people to dismiss excellent software like Linux out of turn.
"the plan has been to train the Iraqi military/police to handle internal security"
Fair enough. So how many troops have you trained so far? What duties have they performed, and how have you rated their effectiveness? What are the estimated troops required to "handle internal security"? What are your recruiting goals and what steps are you taking to reach them?
These are the fundamental questions that would need answering before you have what I would consider a plan. I would hope that the administration has answers to all of these questions but so far I don't think they've done a good job at communicating them.
All I keep hearing is that "America will stay until the job is done". But without answering these questions you give the impression that the job might never be done, because you haven't defined what "the job" is or how you intend to go about doing it.
Seriously what's so hard about saying, we estimate X troops are required. So far we have Y troops and currently we're recruiting and training Z troops per unit of time. Therefore we estimate that we'll be in Iraq for at least (X-Y) / Z units of time.
I may be wrong, but I don't think that would recursively traverse sub-directories. So it's not quite as simple as that, although it certainly can be done.
"For instance, let's say you were sent a project that has dozens of directories with thousands of files in it. Let's say you want to rename all *.jpeg files to *.jpg. How would you do that in Windows?"
Off the top of my head I'd probably do something like this
for/R %I in (*.jpeg) do copy %I %~pI%~nI.jpg
for/R %I in (*.jpeg) do del %I
Although there very well may be better ways
Not that I particularly disagree with the thrust of you argument, but windows does have reasonably powerful command line scripting capabilities. They may not be as good as what Linux/Unix have available but still I don't think Windows gets enough credit for them since they're not as widely used / known about. Windows tries to make everything point-and-click and as a result people don't necessarily realize what scripting tools are available.
"I still have my own Perlin code sitting around on my hard drive"
That's all well and good for you but the problem is the artist whose job it is to make the texture look right is (most likely) incapable of understanding the complex mathematics and programming that would go into designing the procedural texture algorithm.
The current problem with procedural textures is that it requires someone conversant in wavelet / Fourier mathematics and programming in order to be able to generate them. They won't be of much practical use in industry until we can develop a way for artists to deal with them. This is thrust of the original question. What mechanisms are there for manipulating procedural textures that might be usable by the average game artist?
As I understand the issue what you would need to do to make procedural textures useful in a general sense is have some programmers who are fluent in the requisite mathematical and programming aspects to come up with a generic library of procedural texture algorithms. You could have a set of procedures for stone textures, another for wood grains, others for marble, and so forth.
Each of these procedures would have a set of input parameters that control what the resulting texture looks like. In order to be useful to an artist there needs to be a mechanism by which an artist can manipulate these input parameters and view the results to see if they've got the texture looking the way they want it.
This is what would require a "photoshop plugin". The artist would open up photoshop (which in this hypothetical example is the tool they are familiar with) select which procedure they want to use, and be given some widget that would allow them to manipulate the input parameters (via sliders for example, as was suggested above) and would show them the resulting texture (perhaps mapped to a sphere or cone or what have you). Once they had the texture looking right, they would "export" the texture, which would in effect just save which procedure to use and the value of each of the input parameters.
As a side note I think the GP understands the concept of procedural textures just fine, and I don't see any need to insult him/her.
"But accidents are relatively constant, and societies work to minimise them.
Yes but if I started rounding up "suspected reckless drivers" and shipping them off to a secret military prison in some foreign country because "OMG!!!! Look at how many people are killed in car accidents each year" George Bush's head would explode!
So why is it ok to round up "suspected terrorists" but not "suspected reckless drivers" when, statistically speaking, you're much more likely to be killed by the latter? And don't tell me it's because the terrorists would destroy God, mom and apple pie if they could, because if I could I would make myself Emperor of the Universe but that doesn't mean it's ever going to happen.
I don't think anyone is seriously suggesting that you shouldn't try to guard against terrorist attacks, but rather that the methods you use to prevent them should be proportional to the risks that you face.
As the article suggests people have a tendency to overrate the risks associated with intentional actions and one method to try and get people to gain some perspective on the situation is to point out all of less spectacular but more dangerous risks posed by "accidents, abstract events, and natural phenomena" that you put up with everyday without getting all freaked out about.
I was wondering if anyone was going to mention the Tex Murphy games. Truly a series that deserved a better fate.
I've got Overseer and I loved it. I don't think it was quite as good as the Pandora Directive but still an excellent game. My only complaint is that it was originally designed to be the first game in a trilogy but they never did make the other two games, so you kind of get left hanging at the end.
Still I think those three are my favorite games of all time.
"The whole thing about terrorists needing to somehow fraudulently ninja their way past security is dumb anyway. The 9/11 hijackers all bought real tickets."
"He didn't say 'making a fake,' he said faking it, a verb, and action, and, in context, his intended action"
And then later....
"There's nothing wrong with GP. He specifically used the verb for 'causing an act of deception' rather than 'creation of deceptive object.' You didn't break the law by making your fake bill of sale, but he did, by using it as a real one. Hence, faking."
In fairness to KFG, the person in the article didn't "fake it" in the verb sense. He never tried to pass off a fake boarding pass as a real one
From TFA (heck it's even in the summary)
"Soghoian admits that he hasn't actually tried to use one of the boarding passes yet."
So why is it that Soghoian should be threatened with arrest?
If we interpret the GP post the way you suggest it is not applicable to case at hand.
I think KFG made a valid point, you can't be prosecuted for just making a fake bill of sale for a car (which is the analog of what Soghoian in this case) which somewhat refutes the point the GP was trying to make.
"few people would raise an eyebrow at a heterosexual male coaching a high school girl's basketball team"
Yes, but take that same heterosexual male coach and have him take that same girls basketball team on a camping trip...alone in the woods...away from all other supervision...in close quarters with little privacy...and you just might see a few eyebrows raised.
Not that I particularly agree with the prohibition against gay scout leaders (I'm inclined to think it's generally an overreaction) but I can at least understand the argument, and I don't think it necessarily implies a homophobic bent (although it's certainly possible to use such an argument to cover homophobic tendencies).
Slashdot Mirror
"Hmm, so running the code and seeing it do the job you intended it for won't tell you it "works"?"
So if you asked me to write a random number generator for an encryption program that meets the FIPS 140-2, Security Requirements for Cryptographic Modules how would you or I know if the program I gave you meets the requirements without testing it?
Sure you could look at the output and it looks random, but is it "sufficiently random" to meet the requirements in the security spec? How can you tell without testing it? Moreover, how could I ever write code that meets the FIPS 140-2 requirements without every researching or understanding WHAT those requirements are? Please, enlighten this "fucking imbecile".
"So a piece of code that does everything it is supposed to with no problems, and works perfectly, but hasn't been debugged or standardized, magically doesn't work because YOU SAY SO?"
So a text book that HAPPENS to be perfectly one hundred percent factually accurate, but hasn't been proofread is suddenly inaccurate because YOU SAID SO?
No one is going to write a 100% perfectly accurate textbook without proofreading, editing and fact checking. Similarly no one is going to write a 100% perfectly accurate piece of software without testing and debugging (at least not a non-trivial piece of software). Sure it's theoretically possible that either of these two things could happen, but as a general rule they won't.
No offense, but you sound like someone who doesn't have much insight into how software is developed.
"YOU Think it's too hard? RESEARCH INTO STANDARDS, TESTING AND DEBUGGING ARE NOT REQUIRED IN ANY WAY."
"With code, if it works, nothing else is necessary"
Just as you can't know if a book is factually accurate until you proofread it, you can't know if a piece of code "works" if you never tested or debugged it.
Furthermore, when it comes to writing a lot of complex software package part of making the software "work" is making it adhere to a well defined standard (because other software and/or hardware relies on your code following the spec). You simply cannot "make it work" without researching and understanding the standards. Period.
Perhaps you're thinkg of a false dichotomy?
What's wrong with
as an answer?
(please note I'm not saying this necessarily a good or reasonable answer, I'm just pointing out that your rebuttal ignored the bulk of his post).
Very few people are reliant on MS for their hardware needs.
"While the "all-MS shop" allows you to change the (hardware-)horse whenever you want"
I wasn't aware that MS sold a whole lot of hardware.
"American politicians and american parents need to learn the philosphy of wearing shoes"
That would be all well and good if the politician's goal was to actually protect children and not just to grandstand and make political hay for themselves.
It's like the man says: "Politicians are great at inventing a problem we'd like to solve, so that we can ignore problems we don't want to solve."
"They have patent indemnification licenses with MS. This suggests they believe that without those licenses they would be violating patents."
That would make sense if the legal system were somehow setup to ensure that only guilty people got sued. But as our good friends over at SCO have shown us pretty much any idiot can sue anyone for any reason. And if that idiot has deep enough pockets (which MS certainly does) they can make your life miserable regardless of the merits of the case.
To me this sounds more like a marketing gimmick than anything. MS stirs up a lot of FUD in the press about Linux allegedly violating their IP. This naturally makes CEOs hesitant to adopt Linux for fear of being sued by MS. So Novell signs a "no suing" pact with MS and can then put a big bullet point in their brochure reassuring their potential customers that they won't be on the business end of an MS lawsuit.
"You want low latency in your game traffic?"
Then you'd better hope the game company decided to pay the toll imposed by every network provider between their server and your PC.
"How about smooth VoIP conversations?"
Ditto your VoIP provider, as well as potentially your ISP and the ISP of the person you're talking to (if they're also on VoIP).
"Would you like your ISP to block the spambot from filling your email with nonsense?"
That'd be nice, but I'd rather put up with the spam then give my ISP and every ISP between me and the person I'm emailing carte blanche to pitch or delay every message I send.
"There are good reasons for prioritization and blocking,"
I don't see why net neutrality needs to prevent prioritization. Shouldn't it be possible to write the laws in such a way to outlaw traffic shaping based on who the sender/receiver are while still allowing shaping based on what they're sending.
I'll grant you blocking is more problematic, but do you really want any network provider on the net to be able to arbitrarily block your traffic with no accountability?
"none of which any of our current legislators can comprehend"
Then perhaps we should try explaining it to them.
"If you don't like your ISP's policies, find another. If you have no choice, go talk to your local city council about laying municipal fiber"
And how does that help if some douche-bag backbone provider decides to throttle all traffic coming from a website I like because that site didn't feel like paying the toll? Unless you're suggesting that my municipal fiber network will have transatlantic cables...
Note that I'm not necessarily saying that net neutrality laws are a good thing, or that we wouldn't be better off keeping the government out of these things, but I do think you're over simplifying the argument a little.
"Well, then you're under the wrong impression. Before Marx published his work socialism was nothing but an idea bantered about by european scholars"
I've already argued this point in the follow up thread from kneejerker so I won't bother to repeat it here.
"Are you serious? Your idea of a free market is that non-citizens can hop off the boat and open a business, no questions asked?"
Well in so much as a free market is defined as "One in which any individual may exchange their products or services by competitive bidding, open to all, without constraint", then yes I am making that argument. By definition a government rule that says that non-citizens are not allowed to engage in trade is a restriction on the economy which makes it less "free". Now, do I think that such a rule is a bad thing? Hell no! In fact I would argue that it is probably beneficial to society. But I'm at least grown up enough to acknowledge that a government restriction that I happen to agree with is still a government restriction.
That's what this whole discussion is about. Many opponents of Net Neutrality claim to oppose it because it is "against the notion of the free market", as if this were somehow sufficient to make it a bad thing. My point is that just because something is counter to the free market doesn't mean it's something we shouldn't consider, the same way we do with rules concerning illegal immigrants and other non-citizens.
Now that I've (hopefully) cleared that up, let me ask you a question.
Is your idea of a free market feudal Europe where everything was by default owned by the nobility, and the Monarch could hand down any arbitrary decree about who was allowed to engage in what type of business?
Is your idea of a free market early America where black people were not only prevented by law from participating in trade, but were themselves legally classified as chattel and all the benefits of their labour were automatically given to their "owner"?
If not, then perhaps you could explain what you meant by
"The success of the freemarket can be measured by look at the whole of human history prior to the 20th century."
Ok fine. If you want to argue that 19th century Western European social critics coined the term "socialism" and therefore by definition no form of government before that time could be correctly called a "socialist" government then go ahead, but such an argument is pedantry at it's best.
Socialism is generally defined as "A system based on public ownership of the means of production and distribution of wealth", and such forms of government were experimented with long before Karl Marx. If you want to argue that they weren't socialist because no one had coined the term socialism then there's nothing I can say to convince you otherwise.
Early communism
You're right, that wikipedia thing is really handy.
"First, Socialism was not embraced as a form of government the same year that Marx published his theory. Second, Even if it happened that same year, it is 150 years. I'm OK with rounding."
That's funny because I was under the impression that socialism was embraced as a form of government WELL BEFORE Marx every published his theory. I think the point was that Marxism is the most famous application of socialism in recent history and even IT predates the 100 year time frame you gave.
"Third, in the feudal times you mention you weren't a proper citizen unless you were part of the 'land owning class' or nobility. So that is a given. A free market in a country only applies to that countries citizens, no?"
That's a pretty interesting definition of a "free market" you've got there.
You've essentially just argued that a market where the government gets to decide who can and can't participate (since the government dictates who is and is not a citizen as well as imposing the arbitrary rule that only citizens are allowed to participate) and other people can forcibly prevent you from participating (I don't think many slaves volunteered for the position) can be considered "free".
If that's your idea of free I'd hate to see what you consider a regulated market to be.
"I've provided many reasons to show why it would; you have provided none to directly show it would not, and none that defeat any reason I've posted. The fact is, it'd work perfectly. There would be no more hijackings"
I can see the news headlines now
Airplane hijackings down 100%, while accidental shootings on airplanes up an astonishing 60000%
Seriously there have been how many airplane hijackings in the last two decades? I think if we implemented your plan you'd be WAAAAY more likely to die as a result of being accidentally shot by some moron with no knowledge of gun safety, and no idea how to handle a firearm than you would ever have been to die in a terrorist hijacking.
The bald faced truth of it is that there really aren't that many airplane hijackings now. And I would put money on the fact that the increased rate of gun accidents would more than out weigh the reduced loss of life you would see by preventing those few remaining hijackings. Your cure is worse than the disease.
Is that a good enough reason for you?
Let me start off by saying that I liked your analysis of the ruling and I don't mean to offend, but this parting shot across Microsoft's bow kind of stuck in my craw:
"I personally feel that Microsoft has worked with organizations such as the Department of Homeland Security and other organizations (civil and governmental) to include extremely hidden processes which allow certain amounts of monitoring to take place"
Do you have any sort of evidence to back up that accusation? If so I for one would be very interested to read it, so please share with the class.
If not, then in future you might want to reconsider making baseless claims like this. All it does is make OSS advocates look like a bunch of paranoid conspiracy nuts, which ultimately just encourages people to dismiss excellent software like Linux out of turn.
"the plan has been to train the Iraqi military/police to handle internal security"
Fair enough. So how many troops have you trained so far? What duties have they performed, and how have you rated their effectiveness? What are the estimated troops required to "handle internal security"? What are your recruiting goals and what steps are you taking to reach them?
These are the fundamental questions that would need answering before you have what I would consider a plan. I would hope that the administration has answers to all of these questions but so far I don't think they've done a good job at communicating them. All I keep hearing is that "America will stay until the job is done". But without answering these questions you give the impression that the job might never be done, because you haven't defined what "the job" is or how you intend to go about doing it.
Seriously what's so hard about saying, we estimate X troops are required. So far we have Y troops and currently we're recruiting and training Z troops per unit of time. Therefore we estimate that we'll be in Iraq for at least (X-Y) / Z units of time.
"In Windows it would be 'rename *.jpeg *.jpg'"
I may be wrong, but I don't think that would recursively traverse sub-directories. So it's not quite as simple as that, although it certainly can be done.
"For instance, let's say you were sent a project that has dozens of directories with thousands of files in it. Let's say you want to rename all *.jpeg files to *.jpg. How would you do that in Windows?"
/R %I in (*.jpeg) do copy %I %~pI%~nI.jpg /R %I in (*.jpeg) do del %I
Off the top of my head I'd probably do something like this
for
for
Although there very well may be better ways
Not that I particularly disagree with the thrust of you argument, but windows does have reasonably powerful command line scripting capabilities. They may not be as good as what Linux/Unix have available but still I don't think Windows gets enough credit for them since they're not as widely used / known about. Windows tries to make everything point-and-click and as a result people don't necessarily realize what scripting tools are available.
"I still have my own Perlin code sitting around on my hard drive"
That's all well and good for you but the problem is the artist whose job it is to make the texture look right is (most likely) incapable of understanding the complex mathematics and programming that would go into designing the procedural texture algorithm.
The current problem with procedural textures is that it requires someone conversant in wavelet / Fourier mathematics and programming in order to be able to generate them. They won't be of much practical use in industry until we can develop a way for artists to deal with them. This is thrust of the original question. What mechanisms are there for manipulating procedural textures that might be usable by the average game artist?
As I understand the issue what you would need to do to make procedural textures useful in a general sense is have some programmers who are fluent in the requisite mathematical and programming aspects to come up with a generic library of procedural texture algorithms. You could have a set of procedures for stone textures, another for wood grains, others for marble, and so forth.
Each of these procedures would have a set of input parameters that control what the resulting texture looks like. In order to be useful to an artist there needs to be a mechanism by which an artist can manipulate these input parameters and view the results to see if they've got the texture looking the way they want it.
This is what would require a "photoshop plugin". The artist would open up photoshop (which in this hypothetical example is the tool they are familiar with) select which procedure they want to use, and be given some widget that would allow them to manipulate the input parameters (via sliders for example, as was suggested above) and would show them the resulting texture (perhaps mapped to a sphere or cone or what have you). Once they had the texture looking right, they would "export" the texture, which would in effect just save which procedure to use and the value of each of the input parameters.
As a side note I think the GP understands the concept of procedural textures just fine, and I don't see any need to insult him/her.
"But accidents are relatively constant, and societies work to minimise them.
Yes but if I started rounding up "suspected reckless drivers" and shipping them off to a secret military prison in some foreign country because "OMG!!!! Look at how many people are killed in car accidents each year" George Bush's head would explode!
So why is it ok to round up "suspected terrorists" but not "suspected reckless drivers" when, statistically speaking, you're much more likely to be killed by the latter? And don't tell me it's because the terrorists would destroy God, mom and apple pie if they could, because if I could I would make myself Emperor of the Universe but that doesn't mean it's ever going to happen.
I don't think anyone is seriously suggesting that you shouldn't try to guard against terrorist attacks, but rather that the methods you use to prevent them should be proportional to the risks that you face.
As the article suggests people have a tendency to overrate the risks associated with intentional actions and one method to try and get people to gain some perspective on the situation is to point out all of less spectacular but more dangerous risks posed by "accidents, abstract events, and natural phenomena" that you put up with everyday without getting all freaked out about.
I was wondering if anyone was going to mention the Tex Murphy games. Truly a series that deserved a better fate.
I've got Overseer and I loved it. I don't think it was quite as good as the Pandora Directive but still an excellent game. My only complaint is that it was originally designed to be the first game in a trilogy but they never did make the other two games, so you kind of get left hanging at the end. Still I think those three are my favorite games of all time.
"The last time I checked, Canada only had 1/10th the population as the US"
Shouldn't that mean that Canada would also have 1/10th as many people volunteering to count the votes?
"The whole thing about terrorists needing to somehow fraudulently ninja their way past security is dumb anyway. The 9/11 hijackers all bought real tickets."
Now, now, don't confuse the issue with facts....
"He didn't say 'making a fake,' he said faking it, a verb, and action, and, in context, his intended action"
And then later....
"There's nothing wrong with GP. He specifically used the verb for 'causing an act of deception' rather than 'creation of deceptive object.' You didn't break the law by making your fake bill of sale, but he did, by using it as a real one. Hence, faking."
In fairness to KFG, the person in the article didn't "fake it" in the verb sense. He never tried to pass off a fake boarding pass as a real one
From TFA (heck it's even in the summary)
"Soghoian admits that he hasn't actually tried to use one of the boarding passes yet."
So why is it that Soghoian should be threatened with arrest?
If we interpret the GP post the way you suggest it is not applicable to case at hand.
I think KFG made a valid point, you can't be prosecuted for just making a fake bill of sale for a car (which is the analog of what Soghoian in this case) which somewhat refutes the point the GP was trying to make.
"few people would raise an eyebrow at a heterosexual male coaching a high school girl's basketball team"
Yes, but take that same heterosexual male coach and have him take that same girls basketball team on a camping trip...alone in the woods...away from all other supervision...in close quarters with little privacy...and you just might see a few eyebrows raised.
Not that I particularly agree with the prohibition against gay scout leaders (I'm inclined to think it's generally an overreaction) but I can at least understand the argument, and I don't think it necessarily implies a homophobic bent (although it's certainly possible to use such an argument to cover homophobic tendencies).