Thank you! Nice to hear someone looking at it from their (New Orleans) point of view. I have family in the Biloxi MS. area. Everyone is alive. One house that had bad damage, but totally fixable. I live in upstate NY now and it really seems that most people are indifferent to the whole thing. Not to say they don't care...just seem to be indeferent.
What would be really interesting is if the next openGL implementation provided GLU triangulation algorithms. why oh why do I have to continue t implement these when there has been so much research published on how to do this?
I must agree with you here. RS and FSF are not the only opinions in town. I think that it is great that you want to develop a peice of software to give away for free. I also respect your right to choose how it is used by others. Same as I respect other commercial venders (myself included).
Oh and yes I have contributed to open source projects. But I (not someone else) will determine the philosophy that I live by.
Cheers to you and thanks for the contribution.
Oh BTW I think you should just change the license to something that fits your needs instead of looking for a preexsisting one.
I think you hit the nail on the head. I love OSS software but people are taking this fanaticism to far. If you want to create a peice of software that has zero chance of being used commercially just put a line in your license that says.
You may not use this program to build other commercial programs.
Since you have defined a system with at most two states because you are using log2. Why not extend this to Shannons Entropy and say:
H = -sum(plog2p)
Now one method that I have recently used to help solve a data-mining/similarty problem in chemistry is to use an Information Gain metric to select a set of features that are useful in searching for compounds with similar properties to a query set:
I = H1 - H2;
In essnece I want to select features from the query subset the show a low Entropy in H2 but a high Entrpy in H1. Thus creating a net gain in information.
Now what if we plug your -2 in for H2? Net negative information gain?
Not really sure what the implications of this are but it is interesting non-the-less.
What? 3 or 4 major game developers? what are you smoking crack....most assembler these days, as in day's past, is done by scientific programmers. I can assure you that the art is alive and well.
"Actually, if your hand written assembly doesn't look like compiler generated assembly, you're probably missing out on things like multi-functional unit parallel scheduling etc. The number of people who can code in a way that will feed instructions to a modern cpu successfully is very small."
Yeah maybe if you write the whole program in assembler. Most people, game developers, scietists, etc only optimze specific functions. It isn't even that hard to do. Takes maybe 1-2 weeks to get pretty good at writing descent SSE code. I hand optimize functions probably once maybe twice a month and I can see significant performance gains when I do so....regardless of the compiler.
No way in hell do modern compilers give the most optimised code in all situations.
Granted not many people write code this way but believe me there are those of us who do...and it isn't a black art as some might have you believe.
That is an interesting idea indeed. I like it because it promotes innovation and sharing of knowledge. It also forces companies to release old knowledge back to the public. This is also a good thing. Unfortunately us little guy's simple don't have the money or the lobbying power to pull this off....but if you start the process by all means give me a shout. I need a new cause worth fighting for.
Cheers
I think you have a good point. However if you taking a course (or going through an entire book) you will likely learn many new way's of doing things you already know. In fact you will learn it much better (and faster) than everyone else. you WILL be a better programmer for it...and that is would you want correct?
WTF?
"4) politics. we were getting really tired of the war.
Yeah, and Hitler was really getting tired of Jews and homosexuals..."
So hitler was right?
"Even if US victory was good, that doesn't justify the use of the atomic bomb."
Easy for you to say this many years later.
"The US always says remember Pearl Harbor, remember 9-11, but neither were attacks on residential zones or as sustained an attack as ones experienced in other parts of the world."
WTF again? Trade center not civilian casualties? What were the men and women that died that day?
"The US is the world's single super power yet it has not been the target of the the same level of tragedy it is capable of inflicting."
Correct...but then only one country has. Hopefully one one country ever will. It was a horrible thing. NOone will ever deny that. But it DID bring about a quick end to a war that was dragging on and on. Guess you have never fought in a war so you wouldn't know what that's like.
"The sorry thing about nuclear weapons is that they're not useful strategically because conventional explosives already can be used effectively on strategic targets"
Yeah and Bin Laden is dead? Fact is conventional bombs only destroy a small area. Nukes destroy very very large area....kinds hard to hind in a nearby building when Nukes are used. No one likes them. Hell I wish they had never been invented. But they are here now and we as a world need to help insure that they will never be used again.
"Nuclear weapons now thousands of times more powerful than the one dropped on Hiroshima are only good for genocide."
You got it. That is why it is imperative that all countryies...the US included get rid of them. Problem is the world doen't exists in black and white. Someone some where will have them. Now I know for certain that the US has never been involved in Genocide....even though about 10 well placed Nukes in the middle east region would end centuries of conflict in a matter of seconds.
I liken programming too being a musician. Both are very hard in the beggining but with a little practice one can learn to play simple songs and even impress friends in music. Same in programming. Dig a little deeper (ok a lot deeper) into the world of music and one is aquainted with the word "improvisation". It is at this point that a musician transforms into an artist. So it is with the coder. After a few years a sort of intuitivness takes over and the coder can easily see how to get from point A to point B. The real difference is that code is used in real world settings. It is ok for the improving jazz musician to make a mistake. However, the code for a rocket launch must work right the first time. To that end you need to adhere to strong engineering principles ( for real world projects). But I almost always prefer to code up a quick solution to test my ideas as opposed to drawng a bunch of UML. Not to say that I don't do a significant amount of pen and paper design for large projects. But I usually like to "improvise" my way through the code...heck I just plain enjoy the creative process. Sometimes these first drafts are excellent and sometimes a rm *.cpp comes in handy.
So I guess my opinion is that you can program with out being an artist just as a musician can play a song without being an artist...but to be really good at either one you have to have a certain amount of art.
I think that I might have to give serious consideration to moving my business as well. My company is small and would go unoticed as an addition to Europe or as a removal from the US. Howver if enough small companies actually did move to the EU then a pretty strong message would be sent to the USA. After all it is usaully small businesses the help turn around bad economic times with new inovations etc.
Along the same lines I was wondering if perhaps communism (true communism) will once again try and take center stage as information becomes increasingly free?
Perhaps in the grand scheme of things capitalism will be a short puff of smoke?
Being a competitive person by nature I would guess that this will simply not be the case. Greed, feer and power will continue to affect man in the future even as it does today. But I think you are right. Some types of business models will simply have to go away. I have no clue what will replace them, but I am pretty sure that it will involve a system were a certain group of individuals make significant sums of money while others do not. Probably not much different than that it is today. Those with power and money now will continue to force change laws to fit THEIR needs. As developing nations begin to have more wealth the greed and power mentality will affect them more and more.
In the end we have always been a survival of the fittest creature. Right now it would appear that those with the most money and power are the fittest. History says those individuals and there mentality will live on. While the less fit will die out.
Sad really.
I was required to take 2 years of foreign langage in High school...er...maybe it was only 1 year. But I also had to take it in college as well. The problem (for me at least) was not learning the language but never using the language. In Europe people are lucky to be surrounded by other languages while in this country (USA) we only hear English for the most part.
Perhaps you should go back and read the parent to the parent and then see what I said. I was pretty objective considering the slight taken against my country in the beginning.
Oh and quit with the {sic}....please.
Fuck you. I will speak/type when I wish...remember It is one of those rights of ours that you probably didn't get from YOUR education.
"Try using a spell-checker or take spelling lessons."
Sorry I have a real job that requires real time.
"Try learning about sentence structure. "
Boring...I am one of those Americasn who IS good at math and science and could care less about you sentence structure...when I am ranting that is.
"You're perfectly exemplifying the "ignorant/arrogant American" "
What? Because I stand up for my country? I will stand up for my country when ever I choose. It is people like you who will stand by and let OTHERS tell you all about how messed up iyour country is when you could be trying to change the view of others.
So again Fuck you.
Oh and for the record have you ever even left this country? You do realize that the slashdot opinioni is not the prevailing world opinion right? You do realize that most people on this board are simply trying to start flame wars...such as your self?
I have no problem critisizing my country. But I will be damned if some idealistic computer geek on the other side of the planet is gonna do it. You don't like it. The filter my posts.
BTW. I did not spell check this...so Fuck you one last time.
Sorry to burst your bubble there buddy...but us clowns aren't going to be going anywhere any time soon. Will our economic environment go through ups and downs...you bet. Will we always be the richest..nope..nor do we care (contrary to what you believe most americans could simply care less). Will we always do everything right. Nope! Name one country that has?
Will we be the laughing stock of the world. Yep as long as we are in "first" palce so to speak. As soon as India, China, Singapore, etc... surpasses us then the world will focus their attention on those "clowns". Including Americans.
Euporeans??? like yourself need to get a grip you are about as retarded as the fundamental morons in Kansas that the artical was about. Get over your selves. Oh BTW every american I know understands world politics pretty well. We don't live in a dark void. We still invent a large portion of the worlds technology...we finance most of the rest of it. So get over the stupid shit we do. Why not focus on fixing your gov and let us focus on fixing ours. Remember at least 49% don't like the current president and many more of us only voted for the current president so the job would be finished. I would say that at least 90% of americans know good and well that we need to fix shit...and we are trying. So scurry along back to your middle evil cave and try to fix you own clan instead of busting our balls all the damned time.
Oh and next time the is a large uprising from some crazed man in Europe perhaps we will just stay out of it. Since we are obviously to stupid and ignorant to do science!
God damnit you are a total dipshit. I am going back to work...oh yeah that is somthing we do in America. Try raising your job level back up and quit all the damned bitching
"and I may force you to give it to me by court's order!)"
Get your facts straight. This is a myth that needs to die. The GPL does not rewrite copyright law.
As an american I would like to second the parent. It's time for the American people to wake up. We have the ability to curve this but we need to do it before it gets any worse....
As a computational scientist I assure you it does not work well for me. My Boss...he is a die hard FORTRAN coder and we bicker back and forth. Yeah he may compile a small program to run faster than my C++. However when the project goes from 100-1000 lines of code to 10000 lines and up he can't even come close in time to code and speed of execution.
But I must admit I have a rant against FORTAN code because I have had to debug some of my bosses and he is a horrible coder at best.
I don't think I would agree with the 90%. As I scientist I have used Matlab, Mathmatica, Maple, etc...but only under linited circumstances. Mostly I would say it is C/C++/Fortran...I hate Fortran.
I am a computational chemist and most of our algorithms/programs would be a nightmare in a Matlab like environement. However biologist and other sciences that focus more on statistics vs. algorithms are likey to use something like Matlab.
Of course I am only giving my limited opinion on the subject.
Or perhaps we could quit babing computer users and require them to be licensed...much like a drivers license. You need to get your license updated every few years. I think it is time to quit playing into the dum computer user. Why not force people to learn basic security and administration. Then you could fine them if simple exploits are occuring on there computer just like speeders get fined on the roads.
Slashdot Mirror
Thank you! Nice to hear someone looking at it from their (New Orleans) point of view. I have family in the Biloxi MS. area. Everyone is alive. One house that had bad damage, but totally fixable. I live in upstate NY now and it really seems that most people are indifferent to the whole thing. Not to say they don't care...just seem to be indeferent.
What would be really interesting is if the next openGL implementation provided GLU triangulation algorithms. why oh why do I have to continue t implement these when there has been so much research published on how to do this?
I must agree with you here. RS and FSF are not the only opinions in town. I think that it is great that you want to develop a peice of software to give away for free. I also respect your right to choose how it is used by others. Same as I respect other commercial venders (myself included). Oh and yes I have contributed to open source projects. But I (not someone else) will determine the philosophy that I live by. Cheers to you and thanks for the contribution. Oh BTW I think you should just change the license to something that fits your needs instead of looking for a preexsisting one.
I think you hit the nail on the head. I love OSS software but people are taking this fanaticism to far. If you want to create a peice of software that has zero chance of being used commercially just put a line in your license that says.
You may not use this program to build other commercial programs.
Done.
Since you have defined a system with at most two states because you are using log2. Why not extend this to Shannons Entropy and say:
H = -sum(plog2p)
Now one method that I have recently used to help solve a data-mining/similarty problem in chemistry is to use an Information Gain metric to select a set of features that are useful in searching for compounds with similar properties to a query set:
I = H1 - H2;
In essnece I want to select features from the query subset the show a low Entropy in H2 but a high Entrpy in H1. Thus creating a net gain in information.
Now what if we plug your -2 in for H2? Net negative information gain?
Not really sure what the implications of this are but it is interesting non-the-less.
What? 3 or 4 major game developers? what are you smoking crack....most assembler these days, as in day's past, is done by scientific programmers. I can assure you that the art is alive and well.
"Actually, if your hand written assembly doesn't look like compiler generated assembly, you're probably missing out on things like multi-functional unit parallel scheduling etc. The number of people who can code in a way that will feed instructions to a modern cpu successfully is very small."
Yeah maybe if you write the whole program in assembler. Most people, game developers, scietists, etc only optimze specific functions. It isn't even that hard to do. Takes maybe 1-2 weeks to get pretty good at writing descent SSE code. I hand optimize functions probably once maybe twice a month and I can see significant performance gains when I do so....regardless of the compiler.
No way in hell do modern compilers give the most optimised code in all situations.
Granted not many people write code this way but believe me there are those of us who do...and it isn't a black art as some might have you believe.
That is an interesting idea indeed. I like it because it promotes innovation and sharing of knowledge. It also forces companies to release old knowledge back to the public. This is also a good thing. Unfortunately us little guy's simple don't have the money or the lobbying power to pull this off....but if you start the process by all means give me a shout. I need a new cause worth fighting for. Cheers
I think you have a good point. However if you taking a course (or going through an entire book) you will likely learn many new way's of doing things you already know. In fact you will learn it much better (and faster) than everyone else. you WILL be a better programmer for it...and that is would you want correct?
WTF? "4) politics. we were getting really tired of the war. Yeah, and Hitler was really getting tired of Jews and homosexuals..." So hitler was right? "Even if US victory was good, that doesn't justify the use of the atomic bomb." Easy for you to say this many years later. "The US always says remember Pearl Harbor, remember 9-11, but neither were attacks on residential zones or as sustained an attack as ones experienced in other parts of the world." WTF again? Trade center not civilian casualties? What were the men and women that died that day? "The US is the world's single super power yet it has not been the target of the the same level of tragedy it is capable of inflicting." Correct...but then only one country has. Hopefully one one country ever will. It was a horrible thing. NOone will ever deny that. But it DID bring about a quick end to a war that was dragging on and on. Guess you have never fought in a war so you wouldn't know what that's like. "The sorry thing about nuclear weapons is that they're not useful strategically because conventional explosives already can be used effectively on strategic targets" Yeah and Bin Laden is dead? Fact is conventional bombs only destroy a small area. Nukes destroy very very large area....kinds hard to hind in a nearby building when Nukes are used. No one likes them. Hell I wish they had never been invented. But they are here now and we as a world need to help insure that they will never be used again. "Nuclear weapons now thousands of times more powerful than the one dropped on Hiroshima are only good for genocide." You got it. That is why it is imperative that all countryies...the US included get rid of them. Problem is the world doen't exists in black and white. Someone some where will have them. Now I know for certain that the US has never been involved in Genocide....even though about 10 well placed Nukes in the middle east region would end centuries of conflict in a matter of seconds.
I liken programming too being a musician. Both are very hard in the beggining but with a little practice one can learn to play simple songs and even impress friends in music. Same in programming. Dig a little deeper (ok a lot deeper) into the world of music and one is aquainted with the word "improvisation". It is at this point that a musician transforms into an artist. So it is with the coder. After a few years a sort of intuitivness takes over and the coder can easily see how to get from point A to point B. The real difference is that code is used in real world settings. It is ok for the improving jazz musician to make a mistake. However, the code for a rocket launch must work right the first time. To that end you need to adhere to strong engineering principles ( for real world projects). But I almost always prefer to code up a quick solution to test my ideas as opposed to drawng a bunch of UML. Not to say that I don't do a significant amount of pen and paper design for large projects. But I usually like to "improvise" my way through the code...heck I just plain enjoy the creative process. Sometimes these first drafts are excellent and sometimes a rm *.cpp comes in handy. So I guess my opinion is that you can program with out being an artist just as a musician can play a song without being an artist...but to be really good at either one you have to have a certain amount of art.
I think that I might have to give serious consideration to moving my business as well. My company is small and would go unoticed as an addition to Europe or as a removal from the US. Howver if enough small companies actually did move to the EU then a pretty strong message would be sent to the USA. After all it is usaully small businesses the help turn around bad economic times with new inovations etc.
Along the same lines I was wondering if perhaps communism (true communism) will once again try and take center stage as information becomes increasingly free? Perhaps in the grand scheme of things capitalism will be a short puff of smoke? Being a competitive person by nature I would guess that this will simply not be the case. Greed, feer and power will continue to affect man in the future even as it does today. But I think you are right. Some types of business models will simply have to go away. I have no clue what will replace them, but I am pretty sure that it will involve a system were a certain group of individuals make significant sums of money while others do not. Probably not much different than that it is today. Those with power and money now will continue to force change laws to fit THEIR needs. As developing nations begin to have more wealth the greed and power mentality will affect them more and more. In the end we have always been a survival of the fittest creature. Right now it would appear that those with the most money and power are the fittest. History says those individuals and there mentality will live on. While the less fit will die out. Sad really.
I was required to take 2 years of foreign langage in High school...er...maybe it was only 1 year. But I also had to take it in college as well. The problem (for me at least) was not learning the language but never using the language. In Europe people are lucky to be surrounded by other languages while in this country (USA) we only hear English for the most part.
I do.
Perhaps you should go back and read the parent to the parent and then see what I said. I was pretty objective considering the slight taken against my country in the beginning. Oh and quit with the {sic}....please.
Fuck you. I will speak/type when I wish...remember It is one of those rights of ours that you probably didn't get from YOUR education. "Try using a spell-checker or take spelling lessons." Sorry I have a real job that requires real time. "Try learning about sentence structure. " Boring...I am one of those Americasn who IS good at math and science and could care less about you sentence structure...when I am ranting that is. "You're perfectly exemplifying the "ignorant/arrogant American" " What? Because I stand up for my country? I will stand up for my country when ever I choose. It is people like you who will stand by and let OTHERS tell you all about how messed up iyour country is when you could be trying to change the view of others. So again Fuck you. Oh and for the record have you ever even left this country? You do realize that the slashdot opinioni is not the prevailing world opinion right? You do realize that most people on this board are simply trying to start flame wars...such as your self? I have no problem critisizing my country. But I will be damned if some idealistic computer geek on the other side of the planet is gonna do it. You don't like it. The filter my posts. BTW. I did not spell check this...so Fuck you one last time.
Sorry to burst your bubble there buddy...but us clowns aren't going to be going anywhere any time soon. Will our economic environment go through ups and downs...you bet. Will we always be the richest..nope..nor do we care (contrary to what you believe most americans could simply care less). Will we always do everything right. Nope! Name one country that has? Will we be the laughing stock of the world. Yep as long as we are in "first" palce so to speak. As soon as India, China, Singapore, etc... surpasses us then the world will focus their attention on those "clowns". Including Americans. Euporeans??? like yourself need to get a grip you are about as retarded as the fundamental morons in Kansas that the artical was about. Get over your selves. Oh BTW every american I know understands world politics pretty well. We don't live in a dark void. We still invent a large portion of the worlds technology...we finance most of the rest of it. So get over the stupid shit we do. Why not focus on fixing your gov and let us focus on fixing ours. Remember at least 49% don't like the current president and many more of us only voted for the current president so the job would be finished. I would say that at least 90% of americans know good and well that we need to fix shit...and we are trying. So scurry along back to your middle evil cave and try to fix you own clan instead of busting our balls all the damned time. Oh and next time the is a large uprising from some crazed man in Europe perhaps we will just stay out of it. Since we are obviously to stupid and ignorant to do science! God damnit you are a total dipshit. I am going back to work...oh yeah that is somthing we do in America. Try raising your job level back up and quit all the damned bitching
"and I may force you to give it to me by court's order!)" Get your facts straight. This is a myth that needs to die. The GPL does not rewrite copyright law.
Also of course...the closed source company could simply screen the code for the aforementioned bug and remove it.
It is no more tedius than pointing and cicking in windows....only different. I for one find pointing and clicking to be very tedius.
As an american I would like to second the parent. It's time for the American people to wake up. We have the ability to curve this but we need to do it before it gets any worse....
As a computational scientist I assure you it does not work well for me. My Boss...he is a die hard FORTRAN coder and we bicker back and forth. Yeah he may compile a small program to run faster than my C++. However when the project goes from 100-1000 lines of code to 10000 lines and up he can't even come close in time to code and speed of execution. But I must admit I have a rant against FORTAN code because I have had to debug some of my bosses and he is a horrible coder at best.
I don't think I would agree with the 90%. As I scientist I have used Matlab, Mathmatica, Maple, etc...but only under linited circumstances. Mostly I would say it is C/C++/Fortran...I hate Fortran. I am a computational chemist and most of our algorithms/programs would be a nightmare in a Matlab like environement. However biologist and other sciences that focus more on statistics vs. algorithms are likey to use something like Matlab. Of course I am only giving my limited opinion on the subject.
Dear God No! Please say it ain't so. Worst language ever. Period
Or perhaps we could quit babing computer users and require them to be licensed...much like a drivers license. You need to get your license updated every few years. I think it is time to quit playing into the dum computer user. Why not force people to learn basic security and administration. Then you could fine them if simple exploits are occuring on there computer just like speeders get fined on the roads.