it must be tax-funded as a public-good without a profit motive
His point is science should be done for knowledge, if somebody can use that knowledge to make a profit that's fine- but that somebody must not be the scientist.
That would be ideal. Unfortunately that only works if people at large are happy to pay taxes to fund the science. In the real world we live in, majority of people bitch and whine about taxes that don't bring them direct, immediate benefits.
Science investment brings with it incredible returns, but in incomprehensible forms that can only be put into practical inventions many years later. Majority of people would rather have more money in their pocket to spend on whatever they feel like at the moment, rather than being put towards something that they don't understand nor can imagine ever being useful. Another aspect is the anti-intellectual slant that seems to be quite prevalent.
Thus taxes get cut, government science programs are on the top list to get slashed (Since majority of voters care about them the least and don't employ as many people), so researchers must turn towards profit-looking private investors to survive.
Given how Malcolm's self-righteous, philosophical bitching takes up quite a bit of the book, the whole novel comes off as preachy. The Lost World (sequel) just follows up with the same message.
I will admit that I was referring to every single book of his that I have read. And to be fair, it was only three: The Terminal Man, Jurassic Park and The Lost World that followed this convention. Rising Sun was thinly covered up racism. Haven't read any others afterward.
I have read several of his books and came to the conclusion that either he is really afraid of all science and technology or just writing his books targeting the audience that are. Every single book came down to: "See? SEE?! This is why you fucking scientists shouldn't do anything remotely exprimental!!!"
I just want to blow things up or shoot imaginary people or fly planes or drive race cars or plan and manage beautiful cities without having to pay attention to a plot. Oh and make it look and run great. More time/money needs to go into graphics and game optimization not some boring plot that 99% of the time gets skipped over in favor of getting back into action.
I don't see why you would be complaining. With the current state of the industry, you should be in heaven! However, for those of us with tastes for a great story and more depth, our choice is much more limited. Great games of our focus are few and far between. Thus we are complaining.
I remember the first time the soldiers in front of me were laying down suppressing fire as two more were rapidly making a wide pincer move to get to my flank. I was crying the tears of joy! After all the useless, pointless bots that only knew how to run towards you and died in the hundreds, I finally had a game where developers actually focused on AI. Fear had good AI as well unfortunately you couldn't get the full appreciation of it because all the environments were so closed in that there wasn't much area to show off manuverability. Hell, the reason Half Life 1 was so damn awesome was because of the AI of the grunts.
And then... The focus on AI died as if it was a brief fad. FPS returned to being fancy graphical demos with gameplay equivalent of Quake 2. Worse: Quick Time Events just became extremely common!
I just can't comprehend why. Is it because the focus now is on casual gamers and they compain about the extra difficulty of the AI? Surely you can just add dificulty levels that adjusts damage and health of enemies instead of removing all the intelligence altogether!
I also live in Australia and do tollerate tempetures over 40C. However, I am only able to do this because outback area is a desert with very low humidity. Just keep drinking and stay out of the sun.
Compare it with US where the humidity is high: Even 38C is dangerous because the body has no natural facilities to bring the tempetures down. Sweat doesn't work if the surrounding air doesn't remove it! This situation is particularly deadly to the elderly.
Just because the product/company is very finicky and short-lived does not necessarily mean that it is to be avoided in terms of investment.
Social media companies are in essence bubbles. If you are careful, you buy the shares before or in its early stages of popularity and then sell them before everyone gets sick of it. Just like Pump-and-Dump only without the false positive misinformation (Owners do all that for you for free).
It is quite a risky endevour though: You have to be extremely careful of the timing, it is very hard to measure the current state of popularity and when it will turn bad. It is also not an ethical thing to do, since you are contributing to the inflation of the value of stock in order for other investors to bite and be screwed over later.
Well the graphical assets and the rights are probably owned by Atari.
However, check out Spring open source engine. It was developed to run Total Annihilation, but expanded to be quite an impressive RTS engine in its own right.
Perhaps if enough interest, someone will champion porting TA: Kingdoms assets to run under Spring.
If you think that you have less options, you _will_ have less options
Oh very much so. But the thing to remember that modifying your thought process is right up there with some of the hardest things in life.
Low self-esteem is something that feeds off of itself and just gets worse with time. Depression is not far behind, which puts the person into real trouble because that kills any motivation to try to improve yourself.
The sad part is that there is still this common misconception that low self-esteem and depression are easily overcome. The sufferer just simply can't "Start feeling better". Without professional help, there is really no way out, thus limiting his/her options for life and careers.
'He who conquers others is strong;
He who conquers himself is mighty.'
-Lao Tse
There have been too many "First posts" and racist rantings
Honest question: Were you reading Slashdot during the GNAA days?
Honestly, the signal to noise ratio is very good. Trouble is that the signal is no longer tech, but politics. Ever since coverage of 9/11 the community visibly changed. YRO is where all the views are, with tech-oriented articles hardly gets any comments.
There is being solitary and then there is solitary confinement. Much like yourself I also live alone and love it, but I see the difference between the two.
The main difference is control. While I am alone, this is the main beauty of it: I can just trully relax and do whatever I need/want knowing that I am ultimately in control of the situation. I can spend it doing various chores at home, indulge myself on the net, go for a walk in the woods and even end my solitude for a brief while to talk to a good friend when I got some insight to share.
Now immagine you are locked up between four concrete walls with a toilet and bed. The first few days (Week at the very most) will probably be nice and relaxing. Afterwards I will just simply be going insane from boredom. I will probably hang myself or smash my head open within two months of this.
Of course solitary confinement as it actually happens is probably different than just locking someone up for years with nothing to ocupy him/her. Still, it is very different to choose to be alone rather than being forced to be alone.
They really, really do help. You will not be looked down upon, you will be given specific to you help rather than just the generic "How to feel better" crap you find in books and online. Also it will not be the "Here take this pill and go away" treatment that you get from general practitioners. It might be a little pricy (Especially if you don't have insurance), but worth every single penny! This is your direct quality of life and means to make a living we are talking about here.
At the very least they will advise you on how to get out of this self-feeding loop. Without proffessional help (Your family and friends are doing all they know to help you, but they just don't know how to do that) you will not be able to break out of this and things will just get steadily worse. Take it from someone that have been in this situation for several years before finally biting the bullet and seeking help.
Finally if it gets so bad that you seriously start planning out your suicide, you owe it to everyone that care or ever cared about you to seek proffessional help immediately! Taking your own life will send the people you know right into deep depression themselves: Do you really want them to go through what you are in now?
Well, how about you make it constructive rather than just stating that you hate something along with cynicism towards the community your are trying to reach. What is your alternative to the Turing Machine that will work with existing Von Neuman architecture and bypasses the "Parallel Programming Crisis"?
I will be over here doing great work, advocating the high value practices of the industry, and getting higher and higher salaries from smart employers.
The whole point of the article is that these employers are few and far between, while vast amount of programmers turn 40 and get laid off in short order. Thus next time you get laid off, you will need to compete against massive number of very experienced 40 year olds all trying to get hired by that rare smart employer that did not discard the resume as soon as he/she saw the birth date.
Or you can do what everyone does and become a contractor. If you are able to market yourself very well, this is the best option. If not, you are fucked.
So then they just double the amount of shares effectively cutting their value/dividents in half. New shares are of course distributed among the upper management and you get shafted.
Sorry, I am still bitter from learning this the hard way.
EE Majors are not idiots. They are well aware of the predicaments you listed. Even if you tell them all this they will still go into EE just as CS students don't all change into Law or Finance.
It is because they are passionate about what they do and don't like CS. Would you really want to spend vast majority of your life doing something that you just can't stand? Will you be able to go this extra mile (That all supervisors will judge you by) in a position that you abhore? When (Not if) you will get screwed over and need to look for another job, will you be able to get motivated to do it all over again?
In my opinion, career must be more than just money. You must enjoy what you are doing in order to persevere through all the downsides of the job.
So, you get rid of the wealthy then everyone will be rich and there will be no crime?
That is the jist of the rallying cry of Bolshevics during the Civil War and it seems to have worked very well in getting people to follow them. Lets hope that the world will learn from that incident of history and will never see a repeat of it.
According to Wikipedia Helen Keller was both deaf and blind.
In practical terms, it is impossible to design our roadways to work with such pedestrians in mind. A current, loud vehicle design is just as dangerous as a silent one to these people.
Slashdot Mirror
it must be tax-funded as a public-good without a profit motive
His point is science should be done for knowledge, if somebody can use that knowledge to make a profit that's fine- but that somebody must not be the scientist.
That would be ideal. Unfortunately that only works if people at large are happy to pay taxes to fund the science. In the real world we live in, majority of people bitch and whine about taxes that don't bring them direct, immediate benefits.
Science investment brings with it incredible returns, but in incomprehensible forms that can only be put into practical inventions many years later. Majority of people would rather have more money in their pocket to spend on whatever they feel like at the moment, rather than being put towards something that they don't understand nor can imagine ever being useful. Another aspect is the anti-intellectual slant that seems to be quite prevalent.
Thus taxes get cut, government science programs are on the top list to get slashed (Since majority of voters care about them the least and don't employ as many people), so researchers must turn towards profit-looking private investors to survive.
Idealism just doesn't survive in the real world.
Given how Malcolm's self-righteous, philosophical bitching takes up quite a bit of the book, the whole novel comes off as preachy. The Lost World (sequel) just follows up with the same message.
I will admit that I was referring to every single book of his that I have read. And to be fair, it was only three: The Terminal Man, Jurassic Park and The Lost World that followed this convention. Rising Sun was thinly covered up racism. Haven't read any others afterward.
I have read several of his books and came to the conclusion that either he is really afraid of all science and technology or just writing his books targeting the audience that are. Every single book came down to: "See? SEE?! This is why you fucking scientists shouldn't do anything remotely exprimental!!!"
http://seenonslash.com/
I just want to blow things up or shoot imaginary people or fly planes or drive race cars or plan and manage beautiful cities without having to pay attention to a plot.
Oh and make it look and run great. More time/money needs to go into graphics and game optimization not some boring plot that 99% of the time gets skipped over in favor of getting back into action.
I don't see why you would be complaining. With the current state of the industry, you should be in heaven! However, for those of us with tastes for a great story and more depth, our choice is much more limited. Great games of our focus are few and far between. Thus we are complaining.
Far Cry I with AI that would flank
This!
I remember the first time the soldiers in front of me were laying down suppressing fire as two more were rapidly making a wide pincer move to get to my flank. I was crying the tears of joy! After all the useless, pointless bots that only knew how to run towards you and died in the hundreds, I finally had a game where developers actually focused on AI. Fear had good AI as well unfortunately you couldn't get the full appreciation of it because all the environments were so closed in that there wasn't much area to show off manuverability. Hell, the reason Half Life 1 was so damn awesome was because of the AI of the grunts.
And then... The focus on AI died as if it was a brief fad. FPS returned to being fancy graphical demos with gameplay equivalent of Quake 2. Worse: Quick Time Events just became extremely common!
I just can't comprehend why. Is it because the focus now is on casual gamers and they compain about the extra difficulty of the AI? Surely you can just add dificulty levels that adjusts damage and health of enemies instead of removing all the intelligence altogether!
I also live in Australia and do tollerate tempetures over 40C. However, I am only able to do this because outback area is a desert with very low humidity. Just keep drinking and stay out of the sun.
Compare it with US where the humidity is high: Even 38C is dangerous because the body has no natural facilities to bring the tempetures down. Sweat doesn't work if the surrounding air doesn't remove it! This situation is particularly deadly to the elderly.
Just because the product/company is very finicky and short-lived does not necessarily mean that it is to be avoided in terms of investment.
Social media companies are in essence bubbles. If you are careful, you buy the shares before or in its early stages of popularity and then sell them before everyone gets sick of it. Just like Pump-and-Dump only without the false positive misinformation (Owners do all that for you for free).
It is quite a risky endevour though: You have to be extremely careful of the timing, it is very hard to measure the current state of popularity and when it will turn bad. It is also not an ethical thing to do, since you are contributing to the inflation of the value of stock in order for other investors to bite and be screwed over later.
Well the graphical assets and the rights are probably owned by Atari.
However, check out Spring open source engine. It was developed to run Total Annihilation, but expanded to be quite an impressive RTS engine in its own right.
Perhaps if enough interest, someone will champion porting TA: Kingdoms assets to run under Spring.
...
I love Slashdot.
Guess we will call the lake "Clear Lake".
And a device that will help you overcome your or your partner's obsessive-compulsive disorder.
It's all in the mind
If you think that you have less options, you _will_ have less options
Oh very much so. But the thing to remember that modifying your thought process is right up there with some of the hardest things in life.
Low self-esteem is something that feeds off of itself and just gets worse with time. Depression is not far behind, which puts the person into real trouble because that kills any motivation to try to improve yourself.
The sad part is that there is still this common misconception that low self-esteem and depression are easily overcome. The sufferer just simply can't "Start feeling better". Without professional help, there is really no way out, thus limiting his/her options for life and careers.
'He who conquers others is strong; He who conquers himself is mighty.' -Lao Tse
There have been too many "First posts" and racist rantings
Honest question: Were you reading Slashdot during the GNAA days?
Honestly, the signal to noise ratio is very good. Trouble is that the signal is no longer tech, but politics. Ever since coverage of 9/11 the community visibly changed. YRO is where all the views are, with tech-oriented articles hardly gets any comments.
It was actually shortly after I joined that I started noticing the downward spiral in comments.
So it was YOU?!
There is being solitary and then there is solitary confinement. Much like yourself I also live alone and love it, but I see the difference between the two.
The main difference is control. While I am alone, this is the main beauty of it: I can just trully relax and do whatever I need/want knowing that I am ultimately in control of the situation. I can spend it doing various chores at home, indulge myself on the net, go for a walk in the woods and even end my solitude for a brief while to talk to a good friend when I got some insight to share.
Now immagine you are locked up between four concrete walls with a toilet and bed. The first few days (Week at the very most) will probably be nice and relaxing. Afterwards I will just simply be going insane from boredom. I will probably hang myself or smash my head open within two months of this.
Of course solitary confinement as it actually happens is probably different than just locking someone up for years with nothing to ocupy him/her. Still, it is very different to choose to be alone rather than being forced to be alone.
Please see a psychiatrist.
They really, really do help. You will not be looked down upon, you will be given specific to you help rather than just the generic "How to feel better" crap you find in books and online. Also it will not be the "Here take this pill and go away" treatment that you get from general practitioners. It might be a little pricy (Especially if you don't have insurance), but worth every single penny! This is your direct quality of life and means to make a living we are talking about here.
At the very least they will advise you on how to get out of this self-feeding loop. Without proffessional help (Your family and friends are doing all they know to help you, but they just don't know how to do that) you will not be able to break out of this and things will just get steadily worse. Take it from someone that have been in this situation for several years before finally biting the bullet and seeking help.
Finally if it gets so bad that you seriously start planning out your suicide, you owe it to everyone that care or ever cared about you to seek proffessional help immediately! Taking your own life will send the people you know right into deep depression themselves: Do you really want them to go through what you are in now?
Well, how about you make it constructive rather than just stating that you hate something along with cynicism towards the community your are trying to reach. What is your alternative to the Turing Machine that will work with existing Von Neuman architecture and bypasses the "Parallel Programming Crisis"?
I will be over here doing great work, advocating the high value practices of the industry, and getting higher and higher salaries from smart employers.
The whole point of the article is that these employers are few and far between, while vast amount of programmers turn 40 and get laid off in short order. Thus next time you get laid off, you will need to compete against massive number of very experienced 40 year olds all trying to get hired by that rare smart employer that did not discard the resume as soon as he/she saw the birth date.
Or you can do what everyone does and become a contractor. If you are able to market yourself very well, this is the best option. If not, you are fucked.
So then they just double the amount of shares effectively cutting their value/dividents in half. New shares are of course distributed among the upper management and you get shafted.
Sorry, I am still bitter from learning this the hard way.
EE Majors are not idiots. They are well aware of the predicaments you listed. Even if you tell them all this they will still go into EE just as CS students don't all change into Law or Finance.
It is because they are passionate about what they do and don't like CS. Would you really want to spend vast majority of your life doing something that you just can't stand? Will you be able to go this extra mile (That all supervisors will judge you by) in a position that you abhore? When (Not if) you will get screwed over and need to look for another job, will you be able to get motivated to do it all over again?
In my opinion, career must be more than just money. You must enjoy what you are doing in order to persevere through all the downsides of the job.
Nice troll, alas too easily idenitified as soon as you get to third sentence. 6/10
So, you get rid of the wealthy then everyone will be rich and there will be no crime?
That is the jist of the rallying cry of Bolshevics during the Civil War and it seems to have worked very well in getting people to follow them. Lets hope that the world will learn from that incident of history and will never see a repeat of it.
According to Wikipedia Helen Keller was both deaf and blind.
In practical terms, it is impossible to design our roadways to work with such pedestrians in mind. A current, loud vehicle design is just as dangerous as a silent one to these people.