For the most part, this is still the basis of the working person's life. People are no more "cultured" or less animalistic nowadays.
If we look at the average person we see however that an "average" salary is only obtained through collegiate study and that this makes people have to work very, very, very, very hard to actually get a shot at anything approaching a normal condition. Sure you can be an animal but it is being beaten out of people. Raising the bar is something that I feel is just plain wrong for it causes the weak to fall and the strong to kill.
This is a forum for conversation, not a magazine or journal. The post is highly rated not because it's necessarily true or even historically accurate but because it's thought provoking -- much more so than the average Slashdot post. If you find that you are provoked to disagree with the content of the article, why not point out where it goes wrong?
-NooM
So what your saying is that the spirit of the speech not the speech itself is interesting and makes it worth while? Really? Well in that case I guess I can passionately just spout jibberish to people talking about magic and little gnomes and such and you will buy it right? After all it's tought provoking. Honestly that basic conventions that have stood the test of time are suddently coming under fire from people who would turn humans into something else than what they are really. I post information that I think is both acurate and thought provoking because I am comming from a different perspective than most people and does that usually get a good reaction? Usually something like "oh your just a whiner" and "oh well I guess that's they way life is" blah, blah, blah.
By the way what you are describing is what made men like Hitler and Lenin so popular. Tell the people what they want to hear (because it sounds good) and lie, lie, lie. Am I the only person who thinks so?
If farmer Ted is my buddy, I might admire him and by his example strive to do better. Or if farmer Ted is ugly, I might be satisfied that my yield is smaller, in the knowledge that people think I am sexier. Or i may not care too much about comparing our yields, since mine is ENOUGH to keep me and my mistress in plush comfort.
How very odd. I don't think that things back in times where farmers actually did farming in the majority of any society did they usually have such complex relationships. Concepts of sex appeal and such are usually not the domain of farmers in the mdeieval times. If I have to work to live I really wouldn't care what I look like as long as pain is absent from my life. That is what people should really look at and see. Pain is quite bad. Anyone who actually likes pain is usually not a person in pain or a person who cannot see out of pain. Human life is infinite and so therefore avoiding pain is the halmark of basic human desires. The desire to be sexy or to admire anyone is a step above the basic desires and is therefore not terribly revelent when analyzing how the average human conducts themselves.
William Shakespeare when he was in his time did various plays. The average person was nowhere near the oppulent and ecconomic level where concerns of complex associations between honor, duty, revenge, jealousy, and kindness were not revelent. Peseants do not have that level of luxry that allows them that freedom. Do you think that bum dowm the street really cares about his honor or duty?, how about his sex appeal? How about intricate policital schemes? I don't think that he really cares more than the avoidance of pain. That man is most likely measuring out his life in coffee spoons and is not concerned with the need to do anything else. Until we eliminate the main barriers to a successful life we will always have problems and always the solutions will still present themselves. A look at ancient peoples will yield precisely the themes I have given out and not many of the little sophisticated ones. Oh and the people who usually had time to write or had the knowledge to write books in the ancient days were not the ones we are concerned with. Dirt farmers are the subejct and not the king of Mesopotamia or the Emperor or Rome.
Well thnks moderators for the Troll I guess I didn't need those karma points anyway.
Karl Marx would have seen this for what it is -- a wish that things could be other than they are. Hegel's dialetic was one in which synthesis was achieved between opposites. For example, the aristocracy and the populace found their synthesis in the highest form of human organisation -- the Prussian state.
I really cannot see how the pre united germany (germany before 1870's) was very powerful or the epitome of the state. Generally we have not seen anything close except attempts made by Hitler and Stalin wherein the state was everyhting. If I were a peseant I would rather see the aristocracy die in a rather bloody and cruel way sooner than actually help them. For one simple reason: they are the haves and I am one of the have nots. They can spend all day doing whatever they want and I have to do my dull little tasks. They never have want and have many excesses and I have many wants and no excesses. Do you see a pattern. There is no way short of brainwashing to actually get a people to go along with this in any way.
Except that the Prussian state was unstable. And it was unstable for the same reason that Brian's utopian ideal is unstable. It's the reason that Karl Marx (early, pre Communist Manifesto) identified in a statement which was shocking at the time, but so true that these days it's taken as obvious.
Between genuinely opposing interests, there can be no compromise
Yes. However you need those to define both. I was thinking about this. Consider if we use the idea of Satan and God (many may hate this but it gets the message across). Satan is the embodiment of all the evil in the world. Now suppose that God does in fact destroy Satan. Since there is no opposite to actually become evil we have what ammounts to no evil. Without that evil element there is no good and then anything that you do becomes good because evil has been distroyed. If say proprietary software were distroyed in some way (say secret police make everyone give up their code to the government) then anything that the government does is in fact just a movemnt of the open-source group. This may not be totally correct but it comes close. I can be good or bad but when bad is distroyed then I am just a different shade of good.
We can't all work together, because some of "us" depend for "our" existence on keeping code proprietary, and some of us depend on keeping it free. Microsoft can't compromise with free-software, because if it does, it effectively dies as Microsoft. Sure, it could exist as a distro company for FreeWindows2000, but it would no longer be Microsoft in anything but name.
You would have to associate all the behaviour of Microsoft with what they are (a software company). If we look at what would happen with them if they decided to actually give away their code they are in fact not distroyed as an entity they are merely just changing tactics. Suppose we look at policy of the US military in the 19th and 20th centuries. Now the military was still in the same country and potentially all of the same people were involved with it however what changed were the tactics and more global conflicts that didn't happen in the 19th century.
Similarly, it's not possible to say that you want "most" code to be open source, any more than you can say you want "most" speech to be free. Freedom scales in some ways, but not in this way. The existence of the whole copyright/patent/trademark legal nexus is inimical to the free exchange of information. It's a part of "the system" (a term degraded by the dull hippies who coined it) -- the legal and political superstructure put up to serve the interests of those who control the economic base.
Maybe but what is actually very interesting is that those same hippies (most of them) decided when they really needed something that they would have to take something from the system. To totally rebel and oppose the system would mean that the system and those who operate it would have to be totally distroyed. Maybe something similar to the French revolution in socpe and blood. You can have an effective system where some code is free and some code makes you pay for it. What this creates is a good ecconomy and allows for more people to have that better job so that they can code software for free. I can't tell you how irritating that computers cost so damn much. However this has resolved me that when I do get a sum of money (about $3,000) I will get the best computer that could be sold to the average person or that is just before an exponentially more expensive system (mainframe/high end server). This means that some very lucky company some time in the future will get my business because of my jealousy and burning desire for what others have. Now I could always just get a group of terrorists and just rob a computer store with force but that's not as simple or as perhaps safe as I would like. I think that people trust the system because they don't like the altenative.
People sound interesting and all ivory tower for awhile but when they really get dowm to brass tacks then begin to realize: hey that bum on the corner could be me. Or that old man who is bitter and has no friends down the street could be me in 40 years or something like that. People don't really think and take a minute to internalize that ecconomic solvency is what drives us. It used to be an option to just leave town and set up shack in the woods. However Fredric Jackson Turner in his essay in 1891 officially said that there was no more frontier. That was 109 years ago roughly. If a man who has grown up knowing the difference between wide open spaces and urban sprawl said that there was no more space left dosn't that mean that obviously there is none left as well now? This means that we have to operate in the capitalistic system because we don't have any other choice. Well except suicide or perhaps just infinite suffering. Usually these two options do not appeal to most people because in out popular media they are rather frowned upon for what they create.
Microsoft and free software have fundamentally inconsistent economic interests, so any accomodation between them has to be unstable, and prone to collapse. There's no way around it. Compromises, whether it's a sickly Christmas fairy-story, or the OpenBSD license, are attempts to kid oneself. They are nice illusions, and people like Mike Chaney and the OpenBSD advocates are to be praised for trying to make things good, but the fact is that opposites are irreconcilable. We need to stop kidding ourselves.
Well there is a word and a concept that was taken from the cold war. MAD. Basically the world had created the most powerful weapons that could possibly be created. Essentially this could very possibly just decimate billions. Now when this was realized people resorted to just claiming what people already expected who were in the know. Mutual Assured Destruction. That boils down to the following statement "Well if you try to kill me. I will kill you too!!" type thing. Another concept is that we are racing to an apocalypse of our own creation. Essentially that attitide creates a climate of nihilism and allows for either a slow disipation of thought or just a massive climax that destorys usually both parties. I would rather prolong that eventual climax as long as possible and just concentrate in changing every possible faction that I can insead of just going out ranting and raving with an automatic weapon in my hand.
Marx said it best himself:
..theory has removed the flowers from the chain, not so that man shall wear the unadorned chain, but so that he may recognise the chain for what it is, and throw off his shackles so that he may pick the flowers as they are
We need to see the copyright/patent/trademark proprietary structure for what it is -- a restriction on our freedom. Articles like this are just attempts to put more flowers on the chain.
Again this is quite bad. Just look at it this way. I don't suppose you ever had a hard time getting some form of employment in you life right? Well that kind of proposition just damn well scares me. In general you have to get something to make sure that you don't die of starvation (really nasty thing: hallucinations, massive fatigue, intense intestinal pain, bloated stomach, (see Africa south of the Sahara for prime examples)). We have used methods of "progress" to raise the bar so to speak. What that translates into is that it becomes harder and harder to do something that makes an "average" wage. Back in the good old days (say 1700-1850 or so) people usually did the same thing: farm. Farmers usually did the same work and that was how it was. Because of this you didn't feel cheated and you didn't need to have a great deal of your disadvantages broadcast to the world through your station in life. It was a goods ecconomy. Because of this people had a rather easy time to get things done. You just simply were a farmer along with everyone else; you hated the wealthy and praised the poor people like you. What the so called "information" age has created is that people are by no means guaranteed anything. This is the epitome of nihilistic thought. Essentially it is so very easy to fail and never realize anything that it becomes almost frightening. When I have to have an almost flawless interpretation of logic just to get by that makes for rather interesting living.
You have it all wrong. We CAN all work together. All you need is love.. love.. love is all you need!
That's wrong. You see the reason we have problems is largely because if I am farmer X and I see that farmer Y is doing better than me I want to be better. Now because I can see the difference between myself and farmer Y I start to do different things based on what I actually think/feel. For example the first emotion is usually jealousy and then comes the reaction to jealousy. It is this that motivates people for what we term good and evil. Working together is also not universally wanted in all cases. If I don't want to work together with you because I really hate you I should not be forced to. When we force anyone or make if difficult if not impossible to do anything without cooperation then what you have effectively done is remove the free nature of it and created the borg.
Java is easier to code, easier to maintain, platform independent. And that's only the language. C++ is going to be cobol's replacement. The next generation of programmers will make huge amounts of money keeping C++ code running. Don't get me wrong, C++ is a powerfull language in the right hands. Unfortunately it often ends up in the wrong hands: people who never really understood the OO paradigm, people who love to use multiple inheritance. people who think that macros actually improve the maintainability of their code,... (all the horrible things you can do to make source code unreadable)...
I have actually learned/am learing C++ on a collegiate level. I can say that they do not offer Java in the CS department. This is a reflection in the fact that Java is not important for what programmers actually do in the world. There is one class of Java taught in the whole college and that is in a business related sub-optimal computer program. This surely says something about what people really do. I would wager a whole keg of beer that you would find a large percentage of schools who do not use java and a larger portion of software development that dosn't use it. (Around 30-70%). As long as java remains so un interesting and tied to the web and the internet I will never learn it. Haven't you ever tried to access the internet and couldn't for whatever reason? Now look at the number of times you computer has prevented you from accessing the data you need. Now what should happen for most people is that the internet should be statistically more prone to failure than traditional media and far less controllable and customizable for your needs.
You are probably right that java is suitable for web applications but then, what isn't webrelated these days? Standalone programs are a dead end for most domains nowadays. The client server architectures and n-tier architectures in use nowadays make networking a requirement not an optional feature.
This is quite bad for at least a few reasons:
1. access: If I need to have more silly requirements then if begins to decrease the ability of that application to actually get something accomplished in a timely manner. When I get a computer do I have to get say Phd in CS do use said computer (contrary to what people would like of the world)? No. This is because it's not necessary. Suppose I have a video game. Does say even dramcast or playstation games or even almost any PC game really *need* to be connected to a network? I can't really see any advantage if I am just a single lone person why that makes the experience any better for me. Almost anything you want control over does not *need* to have access to the web. Does working with say simple spread sheets need web access? How about word processing?
Also let's look at how the business model works in the internet world for services. Usually the trend has been that the individual has little or no control. This is reinforced with the huge cost of actually getting a dedicated server or bandwidth so that you can control it. Again for the average person (typical consumer who wishes to utilize the computer and has a moderate income of say $25,000-$70,000 USD/yr even if they are schooled in CS) this dosn't help at all in any way. Tell me why I shouldn't have access to all the things that I want to do at my finger tips without the need for someone to control it, charge me for it, change it, or make use of a series of networks which quite frankly are controlled by robber barons who don't care about the little guy?
1.Please give an example on the type of code you'd want to optimize, any reasonably simple (small fragment of )ecode that doesn't depend on advanced integer arithmetic should compile to something as fast or faster than you would possibly write yourself... Please include example.c or.cpp, GCC input, GCC assembler output and your "better" ASM output.
I was talking about a simple brute force compare and if it dosn't work then move on type thing. I think that this type of thing will always work (just take a little while). Considering that most modern computers are extremely powerful then I have to say that such brute force is still possible. What I don't get and still don't get is how people get all the time to actually research all this stuff. Does anyone have a functional life anymore? I am took courses for an associate of science and they didn't get anywhere as complex as all the little theory arguments as I have seen here.
1.Invartiant detection, using compilers to find invariants in the code, and then deduce lemma's which may remove bounds-checks, type-lookups, casting or flush of registers to memory.
Could someone please explain what a lemma is I'm sorry I guess I didn't take Phd level math courses.
Sure, it's called M-x compile. Or if that's too hard, you can always try the little 'compile' button up at the top of Xemacs.
Ahhh however you have to edit the command line to take into account for the file you are editing unless you know of a nifty trick to make the buffer you are editing append itself to compile's command.
I'm not sure I see your problem. I do Java and C++ development in Emacs, and I have 2 windows open: Emacs, and a terminal for testing the program. You're not going to get any fewer windows no matter what you're doing. Now I must admit, I'm rarely dealing with more than a handful of sources, so it's trivial to whip up a makefile and just M-x compile using the default command "make -k".
Or are you referring to something else?
Yes as I explain below.
*long sigh* Yes. I learned programming using things like the dos based borland products. You made a mistake in the program using the editor and when you tried to compile it you were given a list of errors. When you went to the error your cursor was taken to the exact area of the code that contained said error. You could set breakpoints in the code. You could easily open up windows that showed the cpu registers. You could setup things to look at variables. I have developed exactly one program that was fairly trivial (I actually figured most of it out in about 3 hours) and then I proceeded to code it. I used the traditional method that a great deal of people use currently. I took tty1 and got that read for compiling with the command line. Next I opened tty2 with the source in ae. I wrote code in ae and then went to tty1 and compiled it by hand. When an error was generated I had to manually count the lines of code down from the top look at the error message and then fix the problem. This was preformed at least 40 times to get the whole thing to work. Now I thought to myself I guess this little thing called linux could at least make this process a little easier on me. Now is there a good way to do this? I mean they have something for java called JDE however that works for java and the JDK and not for C++. Since I really can't easily learn all the intricies of emacs lisp while simulstaneously trying to learn C++ in an educational environment I thought that there was at least a little more formal system in place to do such a thing. Or do people just gloss over difficult subject matter or just secretly design their own.
I have no idea at all where you got the idea that Java has some "inherent use of networking and such"--thats just flat out false. Java is no more network reliant than any other language, it just makes the possibility of connecting to networks a lot easier than most languages. I get the impression from your statement about using standalone programs that you think Java only exists as applets in web browsers, most Java coders stopped making applets a couple of years ago. I love Java but hate applets (never know what version of Java is going to be on the browser, if any, can't be sure how their classloader is going to work, etc.), Java does standalone programs just fine.
Well if it dosn't *force* you to have networking then it pretty darn well makes it a *heavily* suggested idea. Usually if you wish to run or use a java program you have to have a browser. If I have to have a browser to run that really good new ID game then what you have just done is turn linux into a win98 clone. Plus running a graphical browser is not my system's forte. The only other way that you can create a program that uses java and actually test it is to maybe use some support under the linux kernel for what they term 'java binaries'. I know of a compiler in the gnu series but I have never seen any large scale (or gnu program for that matter) that used java for text based or internal processing for things like scientific components.
I was disappointed to see John Carmack on that list. It's not that I have anything against John, but his posts are nothing special, really. The only reason they get moderated so high is because of his icon-status.
And that's only because most of the people on slashdot probably bought that multi-million dollar mainframe just to play his baby quake*
I was disappointed to see John Carmack on that list. It's not that I have anything against John, but his posts are nothing special, really. The only reason they get moderated so high is because of his icon-status.
I would be hardly impressed by this. If any private individual actually got money for just posting reponsed to slashdot then I think I would be up in arms about it. All that posting a great deal actually shows is that you have a great deal of free time or that you can type a 300wpm or something.
I seriously doubt that you will be nominated but that's because I don't believe in immense levels of self absorbtion.
Well at least you can make me! your new leader
And remember, always remember:
******ONE PEOPLE, ONE NATION, ONE SLASHDOT-TERMINAL******:)
Actually, the web site says that this device will reduce cyber sickness by coordinating what you see with what you feel.
Do people just love to be masohistic nowadays? Anything that would tamper with this level of interaction with the internal parts of the human body are in fact not usually safe. Silicon breast implants ring a bell. Saccharine. Lead in gasoline. DDT. All of these so called "innovations" had horrendous prices to be paid by the individuals who were effected. Now just imagine if you will this little senario. I decide to play say the newest quake XXXVIII game with the new motion pack enhancements. I put some little thing like a hearing aid in my ear. I play the game for a while. However something slightly interesting goes wrong. You see unbenounced to me I have a congential birth defect or something that just causes me to have a predisposition to having equibrilium problems. Now somwwhere down the line maybe 5-10 years I start to have problems with my equibrilium. This because it's in the inner ear and would either affect my hearing or my brain potentially difficuly to operate on. This will mean that I would be permanently disabled for the rest of my life. Now I am sure that a full CAT scan of my brain my reduce these little problems from coming up but that dosn't insure total safety in terms of the vast majority of problems.
The Curso technology will probably make the Java chip a reality and improve upon the idea all in one shot. Program the morphing code to run Java Byte Code and you have a Java chip which optmises your code. A very clean language that you can easily maintain and not sacrifice execution speed. Every Software development Managers dream!
I think that C++ is more complex and has a little more maturity. As it stands now you really shouldn't use java for anything more than web related stuff. This is because of it's inherent use of networking and such. Why force the use of network connectivity when standalone programs are just fine. From a standpoint of looking at failure the more points of reliance that are utilized the worse the design. If I have to talk to 10 different people before I can get ahold of say my boss he has put a large degree of failure into his interpersonal communication system. This can be illustrated in events like the Challenger space shuttle disaster where people did not really take anything seriously because of ineffective communications.
It could also be said that humans can't solve the problem of writing a compiler that can handle the complexity of current architectures. Maybe we need to write a compiler capable of writing a compiler capable of writing a compiler...
If you think that something like the linux kernel or emacs is complex just try working on one of those little dears. What's wrong with just getting people to actually do the design work themselves. We created C++ and Java for the reasons of creating better code and creating maintainable programs. We must really look objectively and say is creating stuff for lazy people really worth the effort. Do you really want to be out of a job because the computer can just write that new app by itself? Do you really want to be in college for 20 years just to be bested by a machine that can supposedly do better than you? Guess what that leaves for any significant money:
1. business: generally not very much fun seeing other people make money, thinking about money, scamming the customer, and not too interesting for computer professionals.
2. Scientific research: Wow can you say compelex! and difficult to get into! Essentially you spend a great deal of time in college which means you have either to get a crappy job washing disher and scrubbing floors or take out thousands of dollars in student loans to get by. Not to mention the very sharp learning curve that it takes in doing these things.
Now in my case I do not handle stress very well at all. I hate spending large ammounts of time doing anything that is either hard or boring. I have historically not had a very high success rate in solving complex problems which leaves me feeling betrayed by the problem. It's little problems like this that are taxing enough on the human condition that are going to make the task of getting into computers next to impossible.
"In the general case", perhaps a compiler will produce better code (and certainlty not, as yet, for specialised cases - an inner loop coded direct to PPC macro assembler (PASM on Amiga PPC) is the fastest code I've ever written, but humans still write compilers. Now, if they were to force-evolve code using a genetic algorithm, you might get code better than any a human code write, but it'll probably depend on some weird side effect to some obscure instruction, or the rtesosnant frequency of your ram bus, or something...
Evolving code? What actual evidence that this is even within the reach of all but 2 people in the world. I just can't see how exactly this works. Ok I'll shut up about that for this post.
Generally I think that all that has to be done to make a compiler better or almost anything better is to increase the ammount of brute force checking. For example have a bunch of conditions that in effect say that if you have this and that instructions in C/C++ then you will have this output which can be created in assembly. Now this may increase the size of the compiler but it would allow faster compiler creation. Spending a large quantity of time on something that has almost hit a brick wall is usually never the way to go in this world. What a lot of people are finding out is that to get anywhere close to the level of education that is required is an incalculable frustration. Why do you think that everyone and their mother is going to those "schools" that teach people how to do network admining and such? It's because they want quick money in something that dosn't turn you into Ted Kazanski because of all the mental straining.
Most likely by the time I actually get the education level to handle this type of thing what I have studied will be obsolete anyway.
In general I think that awards for such things are a really nice thing in general. Philanthropy is usually a very noble persuit. What I would suggest is that perhaps a little pressure be put on people to get a really good IDE for linux that actually works. You cannot believe the trouble I have had getting any sort of IDE to actually work. Does anyone know of a way to force^H^H^H^H^H persuade Xemacs/Emacs or something else to work well (even to the level of say turbo C++ 3.0)? That is where I would suggest putting the money. I have always thought that the compilers were really nice but having to have two windows open one for compiling things and another for a text editor is just complete crap and more of a pain than anything else.
/. is screwed
This should prove interesting reading.
I didn't realize the voting was still going on-- it's been how long, two weeks?
Well if you had $100,000 to give away wouldn't you wait a little before giving it to someone?
And slashdot is also having problems--the 404 mentioned in the above posts, and also for a period of about two minutes before this article appeared I'd get an "Internal Server Error" when trying to access anything on/.
Small technical problems usually occur on large high trafic web sites and such don't cast slashdot in the light of 'sites that really suck' category.
And also when I try to preview this comment the previewer isn't showing my
What kind of error is this? I generally have never used a 'Hope Taco and Crew fix it.
The Chinese government is FASCIST in structure, not Communist, which does not allow for any private enterprise. But of course, saying Fascist is not politically correct.
As long as you have a type of political philosophy you essentially have the government. That does not mean that the government does in principal exist. People very much believed that communism when Stalin and the boys were in control. Yes in theory he ran a different ship but try telling that to them or others who wanted to look at things in a more formal manner.
Tell me why fasciasm is politically incorrect and communism is more so? Is this to mean that we should all believe in communism if we are to be good citizens?
The policies of China make it in the style of governments of the 20th century who tried to call themselves communist in that they are attempting to censor material that disagrees with the state. In fact in almost every government calling the people in control fools is usually a really bad idea. Just look at the Sedition acts passed around WWI in the USA. Some poor shmuck called Eugene V. Debbs decided it was really cool to insult the government and big business and he got a few years in the pokey for it.
I think it is a prefrence of listening. Using mp3's allows you to listen to a wide variety of songs, without haveing to change cd's, or buy cd's. If you get a good player, it will pick songs for you based on your prefrences, and then you can listen to any given time's worth of random mixed up music. It is basically like listening to the radio, but being sure that only the kinds of music you like is going to be played, and there are no comercials...
A while back radio was dieing out as a medium that most people reall cared about. I am just wondering why people have such a fascination with music when most of the future is becoming based on highly visual interactive formats. I realize convience is nice but why sound? Is this the direction human society is taking?
OK, you're an artist, trying to make a living playing music rather than selling your soul to some subicle-owning master.
What exactly is a "subsicle-owning master" I must have missed that reference. Trying to make money from art is extremely difficult. Many people in this world favor job security and being able to know that they will be able to pay the bills instead of living in a homeless shelter. I would rather do a job that I hate and still get paid then not to get paid. Or I could just jump off a tall building and remove myself from the public scene. Even that choice I think would be better than uncertainty and instability from being an artist.
You actually get a contract, get a CD out, and try to survive through the first couple of releases until you start making money yourself rather than the record company.
Noble work. I salute you sir.
Meanwhile, 5 people buy your CD, rip it, and share it on napster. Eventually a million people have it, and never spent a cent to support the artists. The CD sales are low, so the label drops the band. The band, with no viable source of income, goes back to working day jobs.
Why does everyone think that the entire earth has PCs now? Even more people assume that those people are proficient enough using their new found power to get and support a massive distributed effort at revolution and espionage. Come on people we don't have the whole earth wired and probably never will at the rate we are going.
As far as working day jobs people have to do 'real' work eventually. What strikes me as odd is why no one even thought that working is still done. You know there are a whole class of people who are working on jobs that don't have the ability to do something that they get mass fame for you know.
Really, it's mighty sad. I mean, we've all seen a startup company go under at some point, I've been part of a couple, and it's a despairing moment. Multiply that by the factor of artistic expression and hopes and dreams of not having to become a mouse jockey to survive, and you've got some really sad shit.
Well to use that colorful vernacular I have seen more depressing shit than that. People who are wealthy or self important enough to take high risk ventures are people for the most part are a little batty or are just not thinking about future probabilities. Every day I think about the probabilities (informally because not even mathmetics allows for all the really interesting things that the human brain can do) that will arise. These probabilities work on the factor of the path of least resistance. Taking the path of most resistance will have a higher likelyhood of creating bad things and should therefore be avoided. You see events like you describe because we have the ability to artificially increase the age of people beyond what most individuals can mentally calculate in reasobable terms. What will become aparent in the next 20 years is that living will become really quite sour from many people's perspectives and will therefore mutate into increasing use of euthansia as a cure. And it's all because of people's thinking that risk = good for many things.
It's no wonder the RIAA is up in arms. I hate the fat record execs as much as anyone else, but I worry about the artists too. Noone seems to even think about that anymore, which is just sad.
What a bunch of crock shit. If I am an executive I can hire anyone I want. Suppose a band is removed from a record label. So what I probably can choose any band from at least 1,000 or so in the USA and abroad. The RIAA dosn't care if people die or even worse suffer. They want money so they can be comfortable and never have to wory about anything. This is not altruism it's greed plain and simple. And that dear Watson is the reason why your reasoning is completely baseless.
I'm guessing you're not an American. But if you are, then statements like "voting is a priviledge" irratate me to no end. Read the constitution buddy. Voting is a right, not a priviledge.
Not to nitpick but when the constitution was around sufferage (the term for being able to vote) was only guaranteed to white males who owned property. If you had no property or you were anything but white or female you could not vote in any way.
I've got ancestors who died for the ability to elect their leaders as I'm sure you might. It isn't a priviledge given to us by the nice government, it's our right!
How noble of you to bring up lineage and such. I really think that arguments like "my granddaddy was a really great and mighty man and I am great and noble or have some right based on his" type of thing is reallly silly. You see even if you are descended from George Washington dosn't mean shit in the modern world. Maybe you can get a free ride now and then but that's usually the total extent of it. You genetic material dosn't even closely resemble his or the people with whom he associated with so therefore you can conclude that unless you are using some form of religious thinking that it dosn't mean anything.
Ok I guess I can blow a couple of karma points right here and get this off my chest.
Why are mp3s so terribly popular? I mean all they are is basically a collection of electrnic bits representing a sound wave and such. It almost gets to the point where it's even more popular than porn and that's really a stretch for something to do. One would only see this type of thing in areas that involve narcotics and such. Why all this trying to get hundreds of terabytes of music on a computer? Aren't there more fascinating things than non-visual communication and data exchange?
No, there's one thing Lucas cares about even more than money. Control. He wants absolute control over his creations. That's why there are so many commerical tie-ins to the movies -- they help fund the next movie to be made, freeing Lucas from having to rely on the studios' funding and thus free from studio control.
I think this stems from his early days in the film industry. Just as any person has a 401k or a couple of mutual funds to help them later in life to be able to live comfortably so does lucas. In this case he is a film geek and likes to produce films. Because of this when a film is made it is usually a big affair and costs a great deal.
He does this because early on when he did films and such he was under a large number of constraints. Suppose you grew up in an Amish community and had to follow all the rules and such. Would you like it very much? I guess not. He's just preventing what he had to go through in the past from happening again.
Given that, it seems reasonable that Lucas really IS just waiting for the DVDs until HE can do them himself, and he doesn't have time right now. If it were just a question of money, he'd shill it out and get them on the market quickly, because they'll likely be the best-selling DVDs ever made.
Does this mean that he will simply create a new movie or just do a really nice official dress up for the DVD? I am really doubting that DVD is the best possibly format. Is there anything going down the pike in the near future that can hold more data theoretically or produce better quality? Somehow even in 10 years DVD may be replaced with something else.
Everybody knows Lucas is a cheap bastard with no intent on the happiness of his customers. All he cares about is the billions of dollars he makes. When the Star Wars TPM comes out on DVD if you want it you will have to buy it in a huge Star Wars collectible set. This is bound to cost upwards of $200 CAN, just another billion in Lucas' pocket.
A couple of things:
1. Exactly how much is $200 CAN in USD at the current exchange rate I might have a better understanding of the kinf of cash you are talking about.
2. Possibly however not everyone actually hates to buy all that stuff or to buy all that gear. I suppose that if you bought one and then kept it in good condition you might be able to sell it as antique or maybe you just like crazy SW crap. I mean if you are the type of person who has a Darth Maul double edged light sabre then this would be your pot of gold.
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For the most part, this is still the basis of the working person's life. People are no more "cultured" or less animalistic nowadays.
If we look at the average person we see however that an "average" salary is only obtained through collegiate study and that this makes people have to work very, very, very, very hard to actually get a shot at anything approaching a normal condition. Sure you can be an animal but it is being beaten out of people. Raising the bar is something that I feel is just plain wrong for it causes the weak to fall and the strong to kill.
This is a forum for conversation, not a magazine or journal. The post is highly rated not because it's necessarily true or even historically accurate but because it's thought provoking -- much more so than the average Slashdot post. If
you find that you are provoked to disagree with the content of the article, why not point out where it goes wrong?
-NooM
So what your saying is that the spirit of the speech not the speech itself is interesting and makes it worth while? Really? Well in that case I guess I can passionately just spout jibberish to people talking about magic and little gnomes and such and you will buy it right? After all it's tought provoking. Honestly that basic conventions that have stood the test of time are suddently coming under fire from people who would turn humans into something else than what they are really. I post information that I think is both acurate and thought provoking because I am comming from a different perspective than most people and does that usually get a good reaction? Usually something like "oh your just a whiner" and "oh well I guess that's they way life is" blah, blah, blah.
By the way what you are describing is what made men like Hitler and Lenin so popular. Tell the people what they want to hear (because it sounds good) and lie, lie, lie. Am I the only person who thinks so?
If farmer Ted is my buddy, I might admire him and by his example strive to do better. Or if farmer Ted is ugly, I might be satisfied that my yield is smaller, in the knowledge that people think I am sexier. Or i may not care too much
about comparing our yields, since mine is ENOUGH to keep me and my mistress in plush comfort.
How very odd. I don't think that things back in times where farmers actually did farming in the majority of any society did they usually have such complex relationships. Concepts of sex appeal and such are usually not the domain of farmers in the mdeieval times. If I have to work to live I really wouldn't care what I look like as long as pain is absent from my life. That is what people should really look at and see. Pain is quite bad. Anyone who actually likes pain is usually not a person in pain or a person who cannot see out of pain. Human life is infinite and so therefore avoiding pain is the halmark of basic human desires. The desire to be sexy or to admire anyone is a step above the basic desires and is therefore not terribly revelent when analyzing how the average human conducts themselves.
William Shakespeare when he was in his time did various plays. The average person was nowhere near the oppulent and ecconomic level where concerns of complex associations between honor, duty, revenge, jealousy, and kindness were not revelent. Peseants do not have that level of luxry that allows them that freedom. Do you think that bum dowm the street really cares about his honor or duty?, how about his sex appeal? How about intricate policital schemes? I don't think that he really cares more than the avoidance of pain. That man is most likely measuring out his life in coffee spoons and is not concerned with the need to do anything else. Until we eliminate the main barriers to a successful life we will always have problems and always the solutions will still present themselves. A look at ancient peoples will yield precisely the themes I have given out and not many of the little sophisticated ones. Oh and the people who usually had time to write or had the knowledge to write books in the ancient days were not the ones we are concerned with. Dirt farmers are the subejct and not the king of Mesopotamia or the Emperor or Rome.
Well thnks moderators for the Troll I guess I didn't need those karma points anyway.
Karl Marx would have seen this for what it is -- a wish that things could be other than they are. Hegel's dialetic was one in which synthesis was achieved between opposites. For example, the aristocracy and the populace found their
..theory has removed the flowers from the chain, not so that man shall wear the unadorned chain, but so that he may recognise the chain for what it is, and throw off his shackles so that he may pick the flowers as
synthesis in the highest form of human organisation -- the Prussian state.
I really cannot see how the pre united germany (germany before 1870's) was very powerful or the epitome of the state. Generally we have not seen anything close except attempts made by Hitler and Stalin wherein the state was everyhting. If I were a peseant I would rather see the aristocracy die in a rather bloody and cruel way sooner than actually help them. For one simple reason: they are the haves and I am one of the have nots. They can spend all day doing whatever they want and I have to do my dull little tasks. They never have want and have many excesses and I have many wants and no excesses. Do you see a pattern. There is no way short of brainwashing to actually get a people to go along with this in any way.
Except that the Prussian state was unstable. And it was unstable for the same reason that Brian's utopian ideal is unstable. It's the reason that Karl Marx (early, pre Communist Manifesto) identified in a statement which was shocking
at the time, but so true that these days it's taken as obvious.
Between genuinely opposing interests, there can be no compromise
Yes. However you need those to define both. I was thinking about this. Consider if we use the idea of Satan and God (many may hate this but it gets the message across). Satan is the embodiment of all the evil in the world. Now suppose that God does in fact destroy Satan. Since there is no opposite to actually become evil we have what ammounts to no evil. Without that evil element there is no good and then anything that you do becomes good because evil has been distroyed. If say proprietary software were distroyed in some way (say secret police make everyone give up their code to the government) then anything that the government does is in fact just a movemnt of the open-source group. This may not be totally correct but it comes close. I can be good or bad but when bad is distroyed then I am just a different shade of good.
We can't all work together, because some of "us" depend for "our" existence on keeping code proprietary, and some of us depend on keeping it free. Microsoft can't compromise with free-software, because if it does, it effectively dies as
Microsoft. Sure, it could exist as a distro company for FreeWindows2000, but it would no longer be Microsoft in anything but name.
You would have to associate all the behaviour of Microsoft with what they are (a software company). If we look at what would happen with them if they decided to actually give away their code they are in fact not distroyed as an entity they are merely just changing tactics. Suppose we look at policy of the US military in the 19th and 20th centuries. Now the military was still in the same country and potentially all of the same people were involved with it however what changed were the tactics and more global conflicts that didn't happen in the 19th century.
Similarly, it's not possible to say that you want "most" code to be open source, any more than you can say you want "most" speech to be free. Freedom scales in some ways, but not in this way. The existence of the whole
copyright/patent/trademark legal nexus is inimical to the free exchange of information. It's a part of "the system" (a term degraded by the dull hippies who coined it) -- the legal and political superstructure put up to serve the interests of
those who control the economic base.
Maybe but what is actually very interesting is that those same hippies (most of them) decided when they really needed something that they would have to take something from the system. To totally rebel and oppose the system would mean that the system and those who operate it would have to be totally distroyed. Maybe something similar to the French revolution in socpe and blood. You can have an effective system where some code is free and some code makes you pay for it. What this creates is a good ecconomy and allows for more people to have that better job so that they can code software for free. I can't tell you how irritating that computers cost so damn much. However this has resolved me that when I do get a sum of money (about $3,000) I will get the best computer that could be sold to the average person or that is just before an exponentially more expensive system (mainframe/high end server). This means that some very lucky company some time in the future will get my business because of my jealousy and burning desire for what others have. Now I could always just get a group of terrorists and just rob a computer store with force but that's not as simple or as perhaps safe as I would like. I think that people trust the system because they don't like the altenative.
People sound interesting and all ivory tower for awhile but when they really get dowm to brass tacks then begin to realize: hey that bum on the corner could be me. Or that old man who is bitter and has no friends down the street could be me in 40 years or something like that. People don't really think and take a minute to internalize that ecconomic solvency is what drives us. It used to be an option to just leave town and set up shack in the woods. However Fredric Jackson Turner in his essay in 1891 officially said that there was no more frontier. That was 109 years ago roughly. If a man who has grown up knowing the difference between wide open spaces and urban sprawl said that there was no more space left dosn't that mean that obviously there is none left as well now? This means that we have to operate in the capitalistic system because we don't have any other choice. Well except suicide or perhaps just infinite suffering. Usually these two options do not appeal to most people because in out popular media they are rather frowned upon for what they create.
Microsoft and free software have fundamentally inconsistent economic interests, so any accomodation between them has to be unstable, and prone to collapse. There's no way around it. Compromises, whether it's a sickly Christmas
fairy-story, or the OpenBSD license, are attempts to kid oneself. They are nice illusions, and people like Mike Chaney and the OpenBSD advocates are to be praised for trying to make things good, but the fact is that opposites are
irreconcilable. We need to stop kidding ourselves.
Well there is a word and a concept that was taken from the cold war. MAD. Basically the world had created the most powerful weapons that could possibly be created. Essentially this could very possibly just decimate billions. Now when this was realized people resorted to just claiming what people already expected who were in the know. Mutual Assured Destruction. That boils down to the following statement "Well if you try to kill me. I will kill you too!!" type thing. Another concept is that we are racing to an apocalypse of our own creation. Essentially that attitide creates a climate of nihilism and allows for either a slow disipation of thought or just a massive climax that destorys usually both parties. I would rather prolong that eventual climax as long as possible and just concentrate in changing every possible faction that I can insead of just going out ranting and raving with an automatic weapon in my hand.
Marx said it best himself:
they are
We need to see the copyright/patent/trademark proprietary structure for what it is -- a restriction on our freedom. Articles like this are just attempts to put more flowers on the chain.
Again this is quite bad. Just look at it this way. I don't suppose you ever had a hard time getting some form of employment in you life right? Well that kind of proposition just damn well scares me. In general you have to get something to make sure that you don't die of starvation (really nasty thing: hallucinations, massive fatigue, intense intestinal pain, bloated stomach, (see Africa south of the Sahara for prime examples)). We have used methods of "progress" to raise the bar so to speak. What that translates into is that it becomes harder and harder to do something that makes an "average" wage. Back in the good old days (say 1700-1850 or so) people usually did the same thing: farm. Farmers usually did the same work and that was how it was. Because of this you didn't feel cheated and you didn't need to have a great deal of your disadvantages broadcast to the world through your station in life. It was a goods ecconomy. Because of this people had a rather easy time to get things done. You just simply were a farmer along with everyone else; you hated the wealthy and praised the poor people like you. What the so called "information" age has created is that people are by no means guaranteed anything. This is the epitome of nihilistic thought. Essentially it is so very easy to fail and never realize anything that it becomes almost frightening. When I have to have an almost flawless interpretation of logic just to get by that makes for rather interesting living.
You have it all wrong. We CAN all work together. All you need is love.. love.. love is all you need!
That's wrong. You see the reason we have problems is largely because if I am farmer X and I see that farmer Y is doing better than me I want to be better. Now because I can see the difference between myself and farmer Y I start to do different things based on what I actually think/feel. For example the first emotion is usually jealousy and then comes the reaction to jealousy. It is this that motivates people for what we term good and evil. Working together is also not universally wanted in all cases. If I don't want to work together with you because I really hate you I should not be forced to. When we force anyone or make if difficult if not impossible to do anything without cooperation then what you have effectively done is remove the free nature of it and created the borg.
Java is easier to code, easier to maintain, platform independent. And that's only the language. C++ is going to be cobol's replacement. The next generation of programmers will make huge amounts of money keeping C++ code ... (all the horrible things you can do to make source code unreadable) ...
running. Don't get me wrong, C++ is a powerfull language in the right hands. Unfortunately it often ends up in the wrong hands: people who never really understood the OO paradigm, people who love to use multiple inheritance.
people who think that macros actually improve the maintainability of their code,
I have actually learned/am learing C++ on a collegiate level. I can say that they do not offer Java in the CS department. This is a reflection in the fact that Java is not important for what programmers actually do in the world. There is one class of Java taught in the whole college and that is in a business related sub-optimal computer program. This surely says something about what people really do. I would wager a whole keg of beer that you would find a large percentage of schools who do not use java and a larger portion of software development that dosn't use it. (Around 30-70%). As long as java remains so un interesting and tied to the web and the internet I will never learn it. Haven't you ever tried to access the internet and couldn't for whatever reason? Now look at the number of times you computer has prevented you from accessing the data you need. Now what should happen for most people is that the internet should be statistically more prone to failure than traditional media and far less controllable and customizable for your needs.
You are probably right that java is suitable for web applications but then, what isn't webrelated these days? Standalone programs are a dead end for most domains nowadays. The client server architectures and n-tier architectures in use
nowadays make networking a requirement not an optional feature.
This is quite bad for at least a few reasons:
1. access: If I need to have more silly requirements then if begins to decrease the ability of that application to actually get something accomplished in a timely manner. When I get a computer do I have to get say Phd in CS do use said computer (contrary to what people would like of the world)? No. This is because it's not necessary. Suppose I have a video game. Does say even dramcast or playstation games or even almost any PC game really *need* to be connected to a network? I can't really see any advantage if I am just a single lone person why that makes the experience any better for me. Almost anything you want control over does not *need* to have access to the web. Does working with say simple spread sheets need web access? How about word processing?
Also let's look at how the business model works in the internet world for services. Usually the trend has been that the individual has little or no control. This is reinforced with the huge cost of actually getting a dedicated server or bandwidth so that you can control it. Again for the average person (typical consumer who wishes to utilize the computer and has a moderate income of say $25,000-$70,000 USD/yr even if they are schooled in CS) this dosn't help at all in any way. Tell me why I shouldn't have access to all the things that I want to do at my finger tips without the need for someone to control it, charge me for it, change it, or make use of a series of networks which quite frankly are controlled by robber barons who don't care about the little guy?
1.Please give an example on the type of code you'd want to optimize, any reasonably simple (small fragment of )ecode that doesn't depend on advanced integer arithmetic should compile to something as fast or faster than you .cpp, GCC input, GCC assembler output and your "better" ASM output.
would possibly write yourself... Please include example.c or
I was talking about a simple brute force compare and if it dosn't work then move on type thing. I think that this type of thing will always work (just take a little while). Considering that most modern computers are extremely powerful then I have to say that such brute force is still possible. What I don't get and still don't get is how people get all the time to actually research all this stuff. Does anyone have a functional life anymore? I am took courses for an associate of science and they didn't get anywhere as complex as all the little theory arguments as I have seen here.
1.Invartiant detection, using compilers to find invariants in the code, and then deduce lemma's which may remove bounds-checks, type-lookups, casting or flush of registers to memory.
Could someone please explain what a lemma is I'm sorry I guess I didn't take Phd level math courses.
Sure, it's called M-x compile. Or if that's too hard, you can always try the little 'compile' button up at the top of Xemacs.
Ahhh however you have to edit the command line to take into account for the file you are editing unless you know of a nifty trick to make the buffer you are editing append itself to compile's command.
I'm not sure I see your problem. I do Java and C++ development in Emacs, and I have 2 windows open: Emacs, and a terminal for testing the program. You're not going to get any fewer windows no matter what you're doing. Now I
must admit, I'm rarely dealing with more than a handful of sources, so it's trivial to whip up a makefile and just M-x compile using the default command "make -k".
Or are you referring to something else?
Yes as I explain below.
*long sigh* Yes. I learned programming using things like the dos based borland products. You made a mistake in the program using the editor and when you tried to compile it you were given a list of errors. When you went to the error your cursor was taken to the exact area of the code that contained said error. You could set breakpoints in the code. You could easily open up windows that showed the cpu registers. You could setup things to look at variables. I have developed exactly one program that was fairly trivial (I actually figured most of it out in about 3 hours) and then I proceeded to code it.
I used the traditional method that a great deal of people use currently. I took tty1 and got that read for compiling with the command line. Next I opened tty2 with the source in ae. I wrote code in ae and then went to tty1 and compiled it by hand. When an error was generated I had to manually count the lines of code down from the top look at the error message and then fix the problem. This was preformed at least 40 times to get the whole thing to work. Now I thought to myself I guess this little thing called linux could at least make this process a little easier on me. Now is there a good way to do this? I mean they have something for java called JDE however that works for java and the JDK and not for C++. Since I really can't easily learn all the intricies of emacs lisp while simulstaneously trying to learn C++ in an educational environment I thought that there was at least a little more formal system in place to do such a thing. Or do people just gloss over difficult subject matter or just secretly design their own.
I have no idea at all where you got the idea that Java has some "inherent use of networking and such"--thats just flat out false. Java is no more network reliant than any other language, it just makes the possibility of connecting to
networks a lot easier than most languages. I get the impression from your statement about using standalone programs that you think Java only exists as applets in web browsers, most Java coders stopped making applets a couple of
years ago. I love Java but hate applets (never know what version of Java is going to be on the browser, if any, can't be sure how their classloader is going to work, etc.), Java does standalone programs just fine.
Well if it dosn't *force* you to have networking then it pretty darn well makes it a *heavily* suggested idea. Usually if you wish to run or use a java program you have to have a browser. If I have to have a browser to run that really good new ID game then what you have just done is turn linux into a win98 clone. Plus running a graphical browser is not my system's forte. The only other way that you can create a program that uses java and actually test it is to maybe use some support under the linux kernel for what they term 'java binaries'. I know of a compiler in the gnu series but I have never seen any large scale (or gnu program for that matter) that used java for text based or internal processing for things like scientific components.
I was disappointed to see John Carmack on that list. It's not that I have anything against John, but his posts are nothing special, really. The only reason they get moderated so high is because of his icon-status.
And that's only because most of the people on slashdot probably bought that multi-million dollar mainframe just to play his baby quake*
I was disappointed to see John Carmack on that list. It's not that I have anything against John, but his posts are nothing special, really. The only reason they get moderated so high is because of his icon-status.
I would be hardly impressed by this. If any private individual actually got money for just posting reponsed to slashdot then I think I would be up in arms about it. All that posting a great deal actually shows is that you have a great deal of free time or that you can type a 300wpm or something.
I seriously doubt that you will be nominated but that's because I don't believe in immense levels of self absorbtion.
Well at least you can make me! your new leader
And remember, always remember:
******ONE PEOPLE, ONE NATION, ONE SLASHDOT-TERMINAL******:)
Actually, the web site says that this device will reduce cyber sickness by coordinating what you see with what you feel.
Do people just love to be masohistic nowadays? Anything that would tamper with this level of interaction with the internal parts of the human body are in fact not usually safe. Silicon breast implants ring a bell. Saccharine. Lead in gasoline. DDT. All of these so called "innovations" had horrendous prices to be paid by the individuals who were effected. Now just imagine if you will this little senario. I decide to play say the newest quake XXXVIII game with the new motion pack enhancements. I put some little thing like a hearing aid in my ear. I play the game for a while. However something slightly interesting goes wrong. You see unbenounced to me I have a congential birth defect or something that just causes me to have a predisposition to having equibrilium problems. Now somwwhere down the line maybe 5-10 years I start to have problems with my equibrilium. This because it's in the inner ear and would either affect my hearing or my brain potentially difficuly to operate on. This will mean that I would be permanently disabled for the rest of my life. Now I am sure that a full CAT scan of my brain my reduce these little problems from coming up but that dosn't insure total safety in terms of the vast majority of problems.
The Curso technology will probably make the Java chip a reality and improve upon the idea all in one shot. Program the morphing code to run Java Byte Code and you have a Java chip which optmises your code. A very clean
language that you can easily maintain and not sacrifice execution speed. Every Software development Managers dream!
I think that C++ is more complex and has a little more maturity. As it stands now you really shouldn't use java for anything more than web related stuff. This is because of it's inherent use of networking and such. Why force the use of network connectivity when standalone programs are just fine. From a standpoint of looking at failure the more points of reliance that are utilized the worse the design. If I have to talk to 10 different people before I can get ahold of say my boss he has put a large degree of failure into his interpersonal communication system. This can be illustrated in events like the Challenger space shuttle disaster where people did not really take anything seriously because of ineffective communications.
It could also be said that humans can't solve the problem of writing a compiler that can handle the complexity of current architectures. Maybe we need to write a compiler capable of writing a compiler capable of writing a compiler...
If you think that something like the linux kernel or emacs is complex just try working on one of those little dears. What's wrong with just getting people to actually do the design work themselves. We created C++ and Java for the reasons of creating better code and creating maintainable programs. We must really look objectively and say is creating stuff for lazy people really worth the effort. Do you really want to be out of a job because the computer can just write that new app by itself? Do you really want to be in college for 20 years just to be bested by a machine that can supposedly do better than you? Guess what that leaves for any significant money:
1. business: generally not very much fun seeing other people make money, thinking about money, scamming the customer, and not too interesting for computer professionals.
2. Scientific research: Wow can you say compelex! and difficult to get into! Essentially you spend a great deal of time in college which means you have either to get a crappy job washing disher and scrubbing floors or take out thousands of dollars in student loans to get by. Not to mention the very sharp learning curve that it takes in doing these things.
Now in my case I do not handle stress very well at all. I hate spending large ammounts of time doing anything that is either hard or boring. I have historically not had a very high success rate in solving complex problems which leaves me feeling betrayed by the problem. It's little problems like this that are taxing enough on the human condition that are going to make the task of getting into computers next to impossible.
"In the general case", perhaps a compiler will produce better code (and certainlty not, as yet, for specialised cases - an inner loop coded direct to PPC macro assembler (PASM on Amiga PPC) is the fastest code I've ever written, but
humans still write compilers. Now, if they were to force-evolve code using a genetic algorithm, you might get code better than any a human code write, but it'll probably depend on some weird side effect to some obscure instruction,
or the rtesosnant frequency of your ram bus, or something...
Evolving code? What actual evidence that this is even within the reach of all but 2 people in the world. I just can't see how exactly this works. Ok I'll shut up about that for this post.
Generally I think that all that has to be done to make a compiler better or almost anything better is to increase the ammount of brute force checking. For example have a bunch of conditions that in effect say that if you have this and that instructions in C/C++ then you will have this output which can be created in assembly. Now this may increase the size of the compiler but it would allow faster compiler creation. Spending a large quantity of time on something that has almost hit a brick wall is usually never the way to go in this world. What a lot of people are finding out is that to get anywhere close to the level of education that is required is an incalculable frustration. Why do you think that everyone and their mother is going to those "schools" that teach people how to do network admining and such? It's because they want quick money in something that dosn't turn you into Ted Kazanski because of all the mental straining.
Most likely by the time I actually get the education level to handle this type of thing what I have studied will be obsolete anyway.
In general I think that awards for such things are a really nice thing in general. Philanthropy is usually a very noble persuit. What I would suggest is that perhaps a little pressure be put on people to get a really good IDE for linux that actually works. You cannot believe the trouble I have had getting any sort of IDE to actually work. Does anyone know of a way to force^H^H^H^H^H persuade Xemacs/Emacs or something else to work well (even to the level of say turbo C++ 3.0)? That is where I would suggest putting the money. I have always thought that the compilers were really nice but having to have two windows open one for compiling things and another for a text editor is just complete crap and more of a pain than anything else.
/. is screwed
/.
This should prove interesting reading.
I didn't realize the voting was still going on-- it's been how long, two weeks?
Well if you had $100,000 to give away wouldn't you wait a little before giving it to someone?
And slashdot is also having problems--the 404 mentioned in the above posts, and also for a period of about two minutes before this article appeared I'd get an "Internal Server Error" when trying to access anything on
Small technical problems usually occur on large high trafic web sites and such don't cast slashdot in the light of 'sites that really suck' category.
And also when I try to preview this comment the previewer isn't showing my
What kind of error is this? I generally have never used a 'Hope Taco and Crew fix it.
Good chance they will.
do it now
Well it worked for me the first time in my location at......*muffled scream*.... Johnson destroy of the evidence quickly...Yes Sir!
I seriously need to lay off the Red Bull.
Can you ship all your extra stuff over here to Canada? Can't get that shit here, as Canada has fucked up caffine laws.
What's so special about it? You do realize that caffene has an LD50 level for it you know.
Did someone say Fascism? :)
Benito Mussolini!
Hey he got the trains running on time.
Yeah and the same people who were so interested in him decided they didn't need him anymore and they hung him and his 'wife'
The Chinese government is FASCIST in structure, not Communist, which does not allow for any private enterprise. But of course, saying Fascist is not politically correct.
As long as you have a type of political philosophy you essentially have the government. That does not mean that the government does in principal exist. People very much believed that communism when Stalin and the boys were in control. Yes in theory he ran a different ship but try telling that to them or others who wanted to look at things in a more formal manner.
Tell me why fasciasm is politically incorrect and communism is more so? Is this to mean that we should all believe in communism if we are to be good citizens?
The policies of China make it in the style of governments of the 20th century who tried to call themselves communist in that they are attempting to censor material that disagrees with the state. In fact in almost every government calling the people in control fools is usually a really bad idea. Just look at the Sedition acts passed around WWI in the USA. Some poor shmuck called Eugene V. Debbs decided it was really cool to insult the government and big business and he got a few years in the pokey for it.
I think it is a prefrence of listening. Using mp3's allows you to listen to a wide variety of songs, without haveing to change cd's, or buy cd's. If you get a good player, it will pick songs for you based on your prefrences, and then you
can listen to any given time's worth of random mixed up music. It is basically like listening to the radio, but being sure that only the kinds of music you like is going to be played, and there are no comercials...
A while back radio was dieing out as a medium that most people reall cared about. I am just wondering why people have such a fascination with music when most of the future is becoming based on highly visual interactive formats. I realize convience is nice but why sound? Is this the direction human society is taking?
OK, you're an artist, trying to make a living playing music rather than selling your soul to some subicle-owning master.
What exactly is a "subsicle-owning master" I must have missed that reference. Trying to make money from art is extremely difficult. Many people in this world favor job security and being able to know that they will be able to pay the bills instead of living in a homeless shelter. I would rather do a job that I hate and still get paid then not to get paid. Or I could just jump off a tall building and remove myself from the public scene. Even that choice I think would be better than uncertainty and instability from being an artist.
You actually get a contract, get a CD out, and try to survive through the first couple of releases until you start making money yourself rather than the record company.
Noble work. I salute you sir.
Meanwhile, 5 people buy your CD, rip it, and share it on napster. Eventually a million people have it, and never spent a cent to support the artists. The CD sales are low, so the label drops the band. The band, with no viable source
of income, goes back to working day jobs.
Why does everyone think that the entire earth has PCs now? Even more people assume that those people are proficient enough using their new found power to get and support a massive distributed effort at revolution and espionage. Come on people we don't have the whole earth wired and probably never will at the rate we are going.
As far as working day jobs people have to do 'real' work eventually. What strikes me as odd is why no one even thought that working is still done. You know there are a whole class of people who are working on jobs that don't have the ability to do something that they get mass fame for you know.
Really, it's mighty sad. I mean, we've all seen a startup company go under at some point, I've been part of a couple, and it's a despairing moment. Multiply that by the factor of artistic expression and hopes and dreams of not having
to become a mouse jockey to survive, and you've got some really sad shit.
Well to use that colorful vernacular I have seen more depressing shit than that. People who are wealthy or self important enough to take high risk ventures are people for the most part are a little batty or are just not thinking about future probabilities. Every day I think about the probabilities (informally because not even mathmetics allows for all the really interesting things that the human brain can do) that will arise. These probabilities work on the factor of the path of least resistance. Taking the path of most resistance will have a higher likelyhood of creating bad things and should therefore be avoided. You see events like you describe because we have the ability to artificially increase the age of people beyond what most individuals can mentally calculate in reasobable terms. What will become aparent in the next 20 years is that living will become really quite sour from many people's perspectives and will therefore mutate into increasing use of euthansia as a cure. And it's all because of people's thinking that risk = good for many things.
It's no wonder the RIAA is up in arms. I hate the fat record execs as much as anyone else, but I worry about the artists too. Noone seems to even think about that anymore, which is just sad.
What a bunch of crock shit. If I am an executive I can hire anyone I want. Suppose a band is removed from a record label. So what I probably can choose any band from at least 1,000 or so in the USA and abroad. The RIAA dosn't care if people die or even worse suffer. They want money so they can be comfortable and never have to wory about anything. This is not altruism it's greed plain and simple. And that dear Watson is the reason why your reasoning is completely baseless.
I'm guessing you're not an American. But if you are, then statements like "voting is a priviledge" irratate me to no end. Read the constitution buddy. Voting is a right, not a priviledge.
Not to nitpick but when the constitution was around sufferage (the term for being able to vote) was only guaranteed to white males who owned property. If you had no property or you were anything but white or female you could not vote in any way.
I've got ancestors who died for the ability to elect their leaders as I'm sure you might. It isn't a priviledge given to us by the nice government, it's our right!
How noble of you to bring up lineage and such. I really think that arguments like "my granddaddy was a really great and mighty man and I am great and noble or have some right based on his" type of thing is reallly silly. You see even if you are descended from George Washington dosn't mean shit in the modern world. Maybe you can get a free ride now and then but that's usually the total extent of it. You genetic material dosn't even closely resemble his or the people with whom he associated with so therefore you can conclude that unless you are using some form of religious thinking that it dosn't mean anything.
Ok I guess I can blow a couple of karma points right here and get this off my chest.
Why are mp3s so terribly popular? I mean all they are is basically a collection of electrnic bits representing a sound wave and such. It almost gets to the point where it's even more popular than porn and that's really a stretch for something to do. One would only see this type of thing in areas that involve narcotics and such. Why all this trying to get hundreds of terabytes of music on a computer? Aren't there more fascinating things than non-visual communication and data exchange?
No, there's one thing Lucas cares about even more than money. Control. He wants absolute control over his creations. That's why there are so many commerical tie-ins to the movies -- they help fund the next movie to be made,
freeing Lucas from having to rely on the studios' funding and thus free from studio control.
I think this stems from his early days in the film industry. Just as any person has a 401k or a couple of mutual funds to help them later in life to be able to live comfortably so does lucas. In this case he is a film geek and likes to produce films. Because of this when a film is made it is usually a big affair and costs a great deal.
He does this because early on when he did films and such he was under a large number of constraints. Suppose you grew up in an Amish community and had to follow all the rules and such. Would you like it very much? I guess not. He's just preventing what he had to go through in the past from happening again.
Given that, it seems reasonable that Lucas really IS just waiting for the DVDs until HE can do them himself, and he doesn't have time right now. If it were just a question of money, he'd shill it out and get them on the market
quickly, because they'll likely be the best-selling DVDs ever made.
Does this mean that he will simply create a new movie or just do a really nice official dress up for the DVD? I am really doubting that DVD is the best possibly format. Is there anything going down the pike in the near future that can hold more data theoretically or produce better quality? Somehow even in 10 years DVD may be replaced with something else.
Everybody knows Lucas is a cheap bastard with no intent on the happiness of his customers. All he cares about is the billions of dollars he makes. When the Star Wars TPM comes out on DVD if you want it you will have to buy it
in a huge Star Wars collectible set. This is bound to cost upwards of $200 CAN, just another billion in Lucas' pocket.
A couple of things:
1. Exactly how much is $200 CAN in USD at the current exchange rate I might have a better understanding of the kinf of cash you are talking about.
2. Possibly however not everyone actually hates to buy all that stuff or to buy all that gear. I suppose that if you bought one and then kept it in good condition you might be able to sell it as antique or maybe you just like crazy SW crap. I mean if you are the type of person who has a Darth Maul double edged light sabre then this would be your pot of gold.