I'm not saying that we shouldn't use wind power, or solar power, or thermal power, or even combustion engines. BUT, we need to every bit of energy we take from the world -- in WHATEVER form -- depletes it, and that the only real solution is to cut back on how much we take. Technically speaking, you're correct, but talking of "depleting" wind, solar, or thermal power is not really an issue. These forms of energy are already depleting (wind is essentially another form of solar power, if you get right down to it). Both the earth and sun are radiating an unbelievable amount of energy, whether we collect it or not. Depletion is really only an issue, practically speaking, when it comes to natural resources used to generate power. As such, it only makes sense regarding combustion engines, and only then when the fuel being used is non-renewable.
Regarding calling it "green", it's a silly buzzword that's overused today because the environment is a hot topic. It's a different way of saying they've found a way of extending it's operation life (i.e. it uses less power).
Call me crazy, but I thought I remembered seeing something like this on the Discovery Channel (or somewhere on cable) a year or two ago... It's a pretty clever device, using the up and down motion to propel itself forward through the water for a reduced energy expenditure. Still, I'll bet they have a ways to go before these things can safely navigate the real hazards of long-term ocean research (I wish the article had working links to more info). Power consumption is a big part of that, but I'd imagine there's a lot of other stuff that can go wrong. The ocean is a pretty unforgiving environment for machines of any sort.
I have no problems with authors wishing to be paid. I am, in fact, a published author who has written my own book, and contributed to half a dozen more, including one textbook. Honestly, I would have no problem if books I've worked on were available in a DRM-free format. I spent a year of my life writing my book, so believe me, I'm well aware of the implications involved, and the enormous effort that goes into writing.
My problem with DRM is that you're at the mercy of the encrypted format and whatever scheme is in place to prevent it's copying. Who's to say that particular type of encryption will be long supported? Granted, for a technical book, this is less of an issue, as these tend to have rather short shelf lives anyhow, but why take the chance? These schemes tend to be cumbersome and error-prone (I've helped to support DRM-supported add-ons for a game I work on), and are generally a worse user-experience than a non-DRM format.
Believe me, I'm the last person you'll find that authors shouldn't be compensated for their work. I was, in fact, refering to "DRM-free". Call it a limitation of the English language. I believe the phrase is something like "free as in free speech, not as in free beer".
As a slightly off-topic question, how do you get HTML tags to show up without the [domain.com] tag?
Hmmm, sounds like the same arguments that people made about $400 iPods. Those things will never take off.... I did think about that analogy as I was typing this. I think books are slightly different than iPods, for the following reasons:
1) You can store a huge volume of music on it. While this is an advantage for e-readers, books are read in a more linear fashion. Random access of a huge library typically isn't necessary. 2) Small size and light weight is a huge advantage in a music player, where all you care about is the music. Small size is, in fact, a detriment to readers. As such, the advances in miniaturization mean less. Most paperbacks are not too unreasonably heavy. 3) There isn't a really good alternative for portable music playback. A single CD or cassette only plays an hour of music, and so you'd need a fairly good stack of music to last a weekend. Not so with books.
I'm not trying to sound like a Luddite. These things will eventually catch on, but I think manufacturers will eventually catch on to the fact that a simple, cheap, and open reader will ultimately sell better than one that forces the user into expensive proprietary formats.
Oh, and btw, how successful do you think the iPod would be if it didn't play unprotected MP3 files?
The use of AI for air traffic control has many potential wins. Figuring out which flights might come too close at what point in time and determining an alternative vector is exactly the sort of thing that computers could be very good at. My understanding is that there's a reason that flights currently are prescribed to well-established air corridors: there's no way human air traffic controllers could handle the volume of data if pilots were to select their own routes. It seems that this could do a lot at alleviating the traffic problems our skyways are experiencing, and helping to optimize traffic flow. That being said, I'd imagine that with such a mission-critical task, there would always be both redundant watchdog software as well as humans to monitor traffic and act as emergency controllers, or to handle any abnormal or special issues that come up.
I'd love to hear some real commercial pilots thoughts on the current issues with air traffic control are, and if technology could be helped to alleviate them. I'm a programmer with some experience in AI programming*, but that's useless without a thorough understanding of the domain problem to be solved.
* That's technicaleze for "I don't *really* know what I'm talking about, but because it involves software, and I'm a programmer, I'd like to imagine I do."
I'm encouraged to see e-books taking a stronger position in the market, but I'm saddened that so much attention is being paid to products that are tied to DRM. When I buy a book, I tend to look at it as a long term investment in my personal library. That is, I'm buying a copy to own forever. This early in the industry, I have no confidence that any DRM scheme implemented now will last any significant length of time. Will I still be able to read the book 20 or (hopefully) 40 years from now?
It's a bit sad how so much effort is being made to obfuscate what is essentially the simplest of all computer formats: a text file. As others have repeatedly pointed out, there are some killer markets for these things in education. Saying goodbye to all those textbooks would be an unbelievable win for schools AND students.
I think three things need to happen before these things take off (and they eventually will):
1) The price needs to come down. A lot. $400 is just waaaay to much to make these things ubiquitous. Think about attractive one of these might be at $50. It would be hard to resist. 2) Lose the DRM / stop with the proprietary formats. Books, even more so than software, yearn to be free. 3) Major publishers and popular authors need to get on board. Unless the authors who people really want to read are available, the whole exercise is sort of pointless.
I can certainly afford a current-generation e-book reader, but until I can actually read the stuff I want to read, it's somewhat pointless. Here's hoping...
My understanding is that cable is essentially neighborhood-shared bandwidth, while DSL is not. And, generally speaking (you may be an exception) I think DSL tends to be slower than cable. As such, DSL may not be as impacted by "overuse" as cable is.
But I know what you're saying - I've been pretty happy with my Verizon DSL service for going on 7 or 8 years now. I don't have a huge amount of bandwidth, but enough for gaming, with consistently decent ping times.
Re:XML needs to be easier to read
on
The Future of XML
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· Score: 4, Interesting
I'll save the discussion for XML on the web for others - I'm a game programmer, so I deal with XML as file-based data sources.
At the game studio where I work, all our newest tools are written in C#, and use XML as a data source (typically indirectly though serialized objects). Heavyweight objects (textures, models, audio) are naturally stored in a binary format, which is optimized for the task at hand. The XML-based formats are essentially our game data's source files, and tends to function in a metadata-type capacity. As a simple example, our audio scripts store a lot of parameters about how to play a sound (pitch and volume variations, choosing among multiple variants, category and volume data, etc), and this metadata simply references external binary audio files, typically stored in a standard format like Ogg Vorbis or ADPCM compressed wave files. This metadata is compiled into a binary run-time version using a proprietary format designed to allow us to easily filter versions. These binary formats are then packed into larger containers for simpler management. Since I work on an MMO, we have to think about versioning our binary data, which tends to be challenging.
XML is a great format for us, being so widely supported, since we use both native parsing libraries as well as a lightweight custom parser for our C++ tools (or if we need to support in-game loading for the in-house version of the game). It's easy to look into a file format to see what might be going wrong using just a text editor, and with.NET's reflection capabilities, it's absolutely brainless to easily serialize any data structure. We've decided to use XAML (an XML-based object declaration format) / WPF as well. The artists love the flexibility in the tools, and can even participate in helping to design the interfaces by creating styles.
I don't know what the argument about not knowing what every tag means, like in HTML. The entire point of XML is to be extensible, meaning that it's the client application that determines what the tags ultimately mean. And using SweetXML, btw, misses one of the great benefits of using XML, which is that's it's a standard for which you're likely never going to have to write parsing libraries. It's fine if you want to go that route, but just be aware that you may not have the choice of libraries that you would have by using standard XML.
XML does tend to suffer from the "golden hammer" syndrome. Honestly, I'm not a huge fan of it's verbosity or general readability either, but if you take it for what it is, and use it sensibly, it's just another nifty tool you as a programmer can make good use of. After all, wouldn't you rather be working on more important parts of your project than fiddling with a text parser?
If robots can replace all the non creative jobs, perhaps it will be time for a form of socialism. Ugh, what does robotics have to do with the government confiscating and redistributing my money? And "not allow corporations to own robots", and "only let people own 1 robot"? I don't suppose an individual's personal freedom factors at all into this future utopia?
Think about what would happen if robots are so common, intelligent, and ubiquitous that they can replace most of the mundane jobs... Prices would absolutely plummet, because *labor costs* are largely the prime cost in any product you buy. As such, if prices are reduced by 50%, you'll only need to work half as much in order to maintain your current standard of living. This means a lot of discretionary spending, which means jobs for people to produce that products that you'd like to spend your discretionary income on.
The thing about a free market is that you only need to deliver a product or service that people are willing to pay for, and you have a market. There are markets that simply didn't even exist years ago because a) the technology didn't exist, and b) average people have a lot of disposable income relative to most other times in history. I happen to make my living as a game programmer, which is a great example of a relatively new technologically-driven market of a completely non-essential nature. Such an industry couldn't exist without people's need for entertaining diversions coupled with a bit of surplus income.
Honestly, I can see most of our 'subsistence' industries moving towards near-complete automation in the future*, with the result that it will be possible to live comfortably even on quite modest wages. However, most people will still work (probably reduced hours) in order to get enough money for some of the non-essential perks in life. It could be that most jobs in the future will either be highly skilled / technical in nature, service-oriented (where robots can't manage), or entertainment-related.
* Of course, that will set us up perfectly for our robot overlords...
but for elections, I like a plain ballot box and normal paper ballots. You're obviously not the poor schmuck that has to count them. Seriously, have you considered how many pieces of paper are generated in an election? How many people have to touch the data to process that? And how the chance for abuse and corruption increases with each person that touches a physical ballot? Here in Washington State, the governor's race required a number of re-counts. They recounted twice, with the last time finding a number of previously misplaced ballots, swinging the count in favor of our now governor.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_gubernatorial_election,_2004
Just *use the paper trail* as the primary way to vote for the election in the first place, skip the thousand buck computers and rube goldberg nonsense in the first place Let's see... the problem is that we need to count and keep track of a large amount of data, and keep it centralized for easy processing. You're right, computers are awful at things like counting very large numbers of things accurately, and storing lots of data securely. We should look to the financial institutions, who still operate with good old reliable paper transactions. Cash is good enough for them, right? Surely they wouldn't entrust the entire fortunes of the collective world to these new-fangled, thousand buck computers, right? I mean, we'd need to invent some sort of software - a 'base', if you will, that stores arbitrary 'data'.
Let's be completely honest about this. Any problems in creating an effective electronic voting system are either political or bureaucratic in nature. The problems are not technological in nature.
I guess I phrased it "middle class" because I was rebutting the notion that it's the power-movers and shakers that are solely to blame for this. It was just supposed to be a synonym for an average person, nothing more.
Those on Slashdot (and your colleagues) tend to be of a specific demographic, which tends to vehemently oppose any such encroachment. Perhaps it's because we better understand the power of information, and how susceptible such information is to abuse? Who knows... But regardless, I'd be careful in using you and your friends and colleagues to draw any conclusion about what people may think in general.
I'm not really trying to insult the average person, btw. But I'd suspect people would simply view this as some 'political' issue, since it involves the government. And I've met a very large number of people who care nothing for politics. They're concerned with mortgage payments, putting food on the table, their kids' education and safety, and a million other things that, in day-to-day life, just seem a whole lot more important.
To someone like this, if you phrase the question just right, it doesn't seem like such a ridiculous or horrible notion to have national ID cards, especially if they believe it could help reduce the threat of a bomb going off on board an airliner. Why exactly is that so hard to believe?
BTW, you may notice that I did qualify my statement by mentioning that it was a good thing that this was making news, implying that people may not be as willing to roll with something like this as I may have suspected. Believe me, nothing would make me happier. And honestly, you're probably in a position to gauge the public mood in the UK better than I, seeing as I'm a few thousand miles removed from you. But given how many Big-Brother-like devices and programs are already operating in the UK, you'll forgive me if I remain skeptical.
Funny you wrote that. I actually added 'perceived' after I had written the line, but then deleted it again. Here's why: I actually believe that removing freedoms can, in fact, actually increase security in some situations. The old Soviet Russia (sorry, cue the jokes...), from what I've heard, was a pretty secure place in many ways. Not so much freedom, though. The old American wild west was a dangerous place, but a libertarian paradise.
I'll grant you that many policies don't do a damned thing while chewing up personal freedom, though, so your point is certainly valid.
I'm not sure I agree that the ruling class is entirely at fault here. I'd lay the blame squarely on the large middle class who are often all too willing to trade away their freedom for additional security. It seems to be a tendency of human nature to value something less when no effort was expended in obtaining it. Many of us are fortunate enough to live in a time and place where our freedom has been paid for by the blood of others, but the unfortunate result of this may be that we can never truly understand the value of freedom until it's taken away again.
Make no mistake - politicians can only get away with this because not enough average citizens care (although the fact that a stink is being made over this is encouraging). They simply promise more handouts to various constituencies, and all it costs is more and more of your money and your freedom.
I'll have to agree that the 360 has a lot going for it - especially the online experience. Honestly, the other consoles don't really even come close in this aspect. And yes, I do have a PS3 as well. The 360 gets about 95% of my time, while the PS3 contributes to distributed computing projects. And I'll probably buy a Wii when EBGames stops selling bundles like this: http://www.ebgames.com/search.asp?N=138+83
I don't mean to discount the value that software has added to the console's user experience - after all, my argument is that the *primary* software (games) is one of the most important pieces to be factored in. But the hardware-failure debacle pretty much guarantees its elimination from the all-time best list. All the fantastic games and online services don't matter much when the red ring comes a-knocking (my brother's 360 was the latest casualty among those I know).
And for what it's worth, I think 360 achievements are probably one of the most brilliant features I've seen in a long time. Essentially, achievements / gamerscores are the new videogame high scores. Technically, I'd guess they're probably pretty damn simply to implement, but they're a brilliant hook that tap into the psychology of gamers natural competitive and/or collecting instincts.
the holder must defend it or risk losing the patent I believe you're thinking of trademarks, which do require active defense in the face of illegitimate use. To my (layperson) knowledge, there is no such requirement of patents once they are issues.
I don't think it's possible to separate the games from the consoles. After all, the games are the reason we purchase, play, and enjoy the consoles in the first place. Note the phrasing of "best" is a particularly ambiguous term. Here's how I'd define the "best" system:
* It should have a reasonable percentage of games that would make it onto any "100 all time best game list". Like I mentioned, games are the reason we buy the hardware. * It should be reasonably popular (although not necessarily the most). Why? In order to significantly impact the video gaming world, the console should have been enjoyed by a reasonably number of gamers. * It should have definable qualities which distinguish it from other consoles. As much as I like my 360, it's really not innovative in any way - more of a refinement of existing trends and technologies. Likewise, the PS3 is mostly about bigger and better hardware. * It should have a cultural impact beyond the gaming world.
If I had to vote now, I think I'd cast my ballot for the NES. It re-invigorated a stagnate market. It launched (or re-ignited) a number of gaming properties that are still going strong to this day. And, the Nintendo became synonymous with home video gaming.
The Dreamcast was an awesome system, but I just don't think it had enough of an impact on the market in general to be considered the best console ever.
You'll have to forgive me if I don't consider a place "safe" when you have to put qualifiers about what users might start saying, or when talking about having to know the correct people to bribe...
I wonder what the odds are that it will actually hit a person on the ground? Obviously, the math gets more complicated as you figure in the path of the satellite. I'm guessing it would be a polar orbit, then? This means that the odds are proportionally higher that it will fall on a particular spot the farther north or south you go. And, how big large an area would we consider a kill-zone for a satellite of this size?
There are plenty of restrictions about how one can advertising in the real world. I have no problem with a modest amount of advertising. I'm probably a bit more capitalistic and libertarian in my thinking than many slashdotters. My parents own a sign shop, so while I myself have nothing to do with the business, I do understanding the importance of advertising one's business interest to the world.
That being said, I would absolutely oppose the elimination of all signage codes. One thing many libertarian-minded folks often forget is that living as part of a community dictates the adherence to rules established to ensure the community functions well. This means that I'm not allowed to build a 100 ft pink neon sign that dominates the visual landscape. In the end, it would only mean that everyone has to build a 100 ft sign to visually compete (see: Las Vegas). While that would mean a lot of great work for my parent's business, that's not the kind of town most people would want to live in.
Likewise, with any advertising methodology, both in the physical world or on the web, we must ask ourselves: Does this method of generating revenue impose too great a burden upon the community on which it relies? In the case of unobtrusive advertisements that help to pay for our free content, I would argue, absolutely not. In the case of e-mail or other spam... absolutely. I would argue that link-farms exist primarily to fool search engines, and thus contribute nothing of real value except for creating an artificial advertising market. Money that comes through links is similar to arguing that there is nothing wrong with spam because some people do apparently click on those links, and thus do "find them valuable" While this doesn't actively place a burden on users like spam (other than the annoyance of finding these pages), it does place a burden in the sense that it invalidates real-world search results.
Ensuring that advertising is not too obtrusive not only makes sense from a moral viewpoint, I believe it ultimately works best from a business viewpoint as well. Yes, loud and obnoxious advertising may pull in viewers to some extent, but I honestly believe that advertising that's relevant, useful, and tasteful does not offend nearly so much, and can still do a fine job of creating a win-win environment for end-users.
Sigh... Is it only funny if it has a +Funny moderation next to it? I can't believe you called a Star Trek joke a "false dilemma". Fine, here's the humor-impaired version:
It's not necessarily a virtue to make all decisions based on logic, just like it's a terrible mistake to allow one's emotions to rule decision-making. My point in pointing out hypocrisy is simply to counter the absurd "conviction" some people show toward protecting the environment, but only when their own immediate interests are not at stake.
And you know, I find it amusing that you believe the emotion driving my decision-making must be revenge, or some bizarre hatred of mosquitoes. I mean, what other possible emotion could possibly account for someone wanting to save 5 million people a year from an agonizing death?
Considering that I program computer games for a living... I suppose that's sort of a given for me. Still, among my engineering and CS peers in college, video gaming was pretty much universal, as I recall. Another universal: Legos!
In New Orleans, we eliminated centuries of Yellow Fever by draining the swamps, not by targeting a species with untested genetic engineering weapons. Call me crazy, but that sounds more devastating to the environment than the proposals we're discussing. I wish I could find a link, but I seem to recall how scientists are just now discovering that draining the swamps has a more serious impact than they figured (although I can't remember the specifics).
Fortunately, public health decisions aren't made by one guy calling themself "Dutch Gun" who wants to just walk around pulling triggers because of their single personal benefit. And thank God for that. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want that responsibility, which is why I presented it in what I thought was a purely hypothetical context as a way to indicate my support of the scientists' efforts. Also, I'm not sure what sort of "personal benefit" I would receive from eliminating those mosquitoes, other than the warm, fuzzy feeling I'd get from saving so many lives.
Instead, people with that kind of power typically don't make decisions with at the neural level that slaps at a sting. Instead we think of the actual costs of human intervention, and how that's different from the more integrated processes in nature eliminating species, and learning from when it's the same, and causes a ripple effect that we'd rather not be injured by. All snarkiness and bravado aside, I do very much agree with you on this. Obviously, I'm neither in a position to eliminate a species from the face of the earth, nor do I have the foresight or specific education to reliably predict what the effect on the ecosystem will be with the introduction of genetically-modified mosquitoes. That being said, I feel it's equally foolish to automatically react against any sort of genetic solution to a problem because of a lot of worst-case "what-if" postulation by people who aren't remotely qualified to understand the full ramification of genetic modifications and our eco-system. I do sincerely hope, as I'm sure you do, that these decisions are made with the utmost consideration of consequences, both large and small.
Slashdot Mirror
Ah, thanks very much.
Regarding calling it "green", it's a silly buzzword that's overused today because the environment is a hot topic. It's a different way of saying they've found a way of extending it's operation life (i.e. it uses less power).
Call me crazy, but I thought I remembered seeing something like this on the Discovery Channel (or somewhere on cable) a year or two ago... It's a pretty clever device, using the up and down motion to propel itself forward through the water for a reduced energy expenditure. Still, I'll bet they have a ways to go before these things can safely navigate the real hazards of long-term ocean research (I wish the article had working links to more info). Power consumption is a big part of that, but I'd imagine there's a lot of other stuff that can go wrong. The ocean is a pretty unforgiving environment for machines of any sort.
My problem with DRM is that you're at the mercy of the encrypted format and whatever scheme is in place to prevent it's copying. Who's to say that particular type of encryption will be long supported? Granted, for a technical book, this is less of an issue, as these tend to have rather short shelf lives anyhow, but why take the chance? These schemes tend to be cumbersome and error-prone (I've helped to support DRM-supported add-ons for a game I work on), and are generally a worse user-experience than a non-DRM format.
Believe me, I'm the last person you'll find that authors shouldn't be compensated for their work. I was, in fact, refering to "DRM-free". Call it a limitation of the English language. I believe the phrase is something like "free as in free speech, not as in free beer".
As a slightly off-topic question, how do you get HTML tags to show up without the [domain.com] tag?
1) You can store a huge volume of music on it. While this is an advantage for e-readers, books are read in a more linear fashion. Random access of a huge library typically isn't necessary.
2) Small size and light weight is a huge advantage in a music player, where all you care about is the music. Small size is, in fact, a detriment to readers. As such, the advances in miniaturization mean less. Most paperbacks are not too unreasonably heavy.
3) There isn't a really good alternative for portable music playback. A single CD or cassette only plays an hour of music, and so you'd need a fairly good stack of music to last a weekend. Not so with books.
I'm not trying to sound like a Luddite. These things will eventually catch on, but I think manufacturers will eventually catch on to the fact that a simple, cheap, and open reader will ultimately sell better than one that forces the user into expensive proprietary formats.
Oh, and btw, how successful do you think the iPod would be if it didn't play unprotected MP3 files?
The use of AI for air traffic control has many potential wins. Figuring out which flights might come too close at what point in time and determining an alternative vector is exactly the sort of thing that computers could be very good at. My understanding is that there's a reason that flights currently are prescribed to well-established air corridors: there's no way human air traffic controllers could handle the volume of data if pilots were to select their own routes. It seems that this could do a lot at alleviating the traffic problems our skyways are experiencing, and helping to optimize traffic flow. That being said, I'd imagine that with such a mission-critical task, there would always be both redundant watchdog software as well as humans to monitor traffic and act as emergency controllers, or to handle any abnormal or special issues that come up.
I'd love to hear some real commercial pilots thoughts on the current issues with air traffic control are, and if technology could be helped to alleviate them. I'm a programmer with some experience in AI programming*, but that's useless without a thorough understanding of the domain problem to be solved.
* That's technicaleze for "I don't *really* know what I'm talking about, but because it involves software, and I'm a programmer, I'd like to imagine I do."
I'm encouraged to see e-books taking a stronger position in the market, but I'm saddened that so much attention is being paid to products that are tied to DRM. When I buy a book, I tend to look at it as a long term investment in my personal library. That is, I'm buying a copy to own forever. This early in the industry, I have no confidence that any DRM scheme implemented now will last any significant length of time. Will I still be able to read the book 20 or (hopefully) 40 years from now?
It's a bit sad how so much effort is being made to obfuscate what is essentially the simplest of all computer formats: a text file. As others have repeatedly pointed out, there are some killer markets for these things in education. Saying goodbye to all those textbooks would be an unbelievable win for schools AND students.
I think three things need to happen before these things take off (and they eventually will):
1) The price needs to come down. A lot. $400 is just waaaay to much to make these things ubiquitous. Think about attractive one of these might be at $50. It would be hard to resist.
2) Lose the DRM / stop with the proprietary formats. Books, even more so than software, yearn to be free.
3) Major publishers and popular authors need to get on board. Unless the authors who people really want to read are available, the whole exercise is sort of pointless.
I can certainly afford a current-generation e-book reader, but until I can actually read the stuff I want to read, it's somewhat pointless. Here's hoping...
My understanding is that cable is essentially neighborhood-shared bandwidth, while DSL is not. And, generally speaking (you may be an exception) I think DSL tends to be slower than cable. As such, DSL may not be as impacted by "overuse" as cable is.
But I know what you're saying - I've been pretty happy with my Verizon DSL service for going on 7 or 8 years now. I don't have a huge amount of bandwidth, but enough for gaming, with consistently decent ping times.
I'll save the discussion for XML on the web for others - I'm a game programmer, so I deal with XML as file-based data sources.
.NET's reflection capabilities, it's absolutely brainless to easily serialize any data structure. We've decided to use XAML (an XML-based object declaration format) / WPF as well. The artists love the flexibility in the tools, and can even participate in helping to design the interfaces by creating styles.
At the game studio where I work, all our newest tools are written in C#, and use XML as a data source (typically indirectly though serialized objects). Heavyweight objects (textures, models, audio) are naturally stored in a binary format, which is optimized for the task at hand. The XML-based formats are essentially our game data's source files, and tends to function in a metadata-type capacity. As a simple example, our audio scripts store a lot of parameters about how to play a sound (pitch and volume variations, choosing among multiple variants, category and volume data, etc), and this metadata simply references external binary audio files, typically stored in a standard format like Ogg Vorbis or ADPCM compressed wave files. This metadata is compiled into a binary run-time version using a proprietary format designed to allow us to easily filter versions. These binary formats are then packed into larger containers for simpler management. Since I work on an MMO, we have to think about versioning our binary data, which tends to be challenging.
XML is a great format for us, being so widely supported, since we use both native parsing libraries as well as a lightweight custom parser for our C++ tools (or if we need to support in-game loading for the in-house version of the game). It's easy to look into a file format to see what might be going wrong using just a text editor, and with
I don't know what the argument about not knowing what every tag means, like in HTML. The entire point of XML is to be extensible, meaning that it's the client application that determines what the tags ultimately mean. And using SweetXML, btw, misses one of the great benefits of using XML, which is that's it's a standard for which you're likely never going to have to write parsing libraries. It's fine if you want to go that route, but just be aware that you may not have the choice of libraries that you would have by using standard XML.
XML does tend to suffer from the "golden hammer" syndrome. Honestly, I'm not a huge fan of it's verbosity or general readability either, but if you take it for what it is, and use it sensibly, it's just another nifty tool you as a programmer can make good use of. After all, wouldn't you rather be working on more important parts of your project than fiddling with a text parser?
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/02/06
Think about what would happen if robots are so common, intelligent, and ubiquitous that they can replace most of the mundane jobs... Prices would absolutely plummet, because *labor costs* are largely the prime cost in any product you buy. As such, if prices are reduced by 50%, you'll only need to work half as much in order to maintain your current standard of living. This means a lot of discretionary spending, which means jobs for people to produce that products that you'd like to spend your discretionary income on.
The thing about a free market is that you only need to deliver a product or service that people are willing to pay for, and you have a market. There are markets that simply didn't even exist years ago because a) the technology didn't exist, and b) average people have a lot of disposable income relative to most other times in history. I happen to make my living as a game programmer, which is a great example of a relatively new technologically-driven market of a completely non-essential nature. Such an industry couldn't exist without people's need for entertaining diversions coupled with a bit of surplus income.
Honestly, I can see most of our 'subsistence' industries moving towards near-complete automation in the future*, with the result that it will be possible to live comfortably even on quite modest wages. However, most people will still work (probably reduced hours) in order to get enough money for some of the non-essential perks in life. It could be that most jobs in the future will either be highly skilled / technical in nature, service-oriented (where robots can't manage), or entertainment-related.
* Of course, that will set us up perfectly for our robot overlords...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_gubernatorial_election,_2004 Just *use the paper trail* as the primary way to vote for the election in the first place, skip the thousand buck computers and rube goldberg nonsense in the first place Let's see... the problem is that we need to count and keep track of a large amount of data, and keep it centralized for easy processing. You're right, computers are awful at things like counting very large numbers of things accurately, and storing lots of data securely. We should look to the financial institutions, who still operate with good old reliable paper transactions. Cash is good enough for them, right? Surely they wouldn't entrust the entire fortunes of the collective world to these new-fangled, thousand buck computers, right? I mean, we'd need to invent some sort of software - a 'base', if you will, that stores arbitrary 'data'.
Let's be completely honest about this. Any problems in creating an effective electronic voting system are either political or bureaucratic in nature. The problems are not technological in nature.
I guess I phrased it "middle class" because I was rebutting the notion that it's the power-movers and shakers that are solely to blame for this. It was just supposed to be a synonym for an average person, nothing more.
Those on Slashdot (and your colleagues) tend to be of a specific demographic, which tends to vehemently oppose any such encroachment. Perhaps it's because we better understand the power of information, and how susceptible such information is to abuse? Who knows... But regardless, I'd be careful in using you and your friends and colleagues to draw any conclusion about what people may think in general.
I'm not really trying to insult the average person, btw. But I'd suspect people would simply view this as some 'political' issue, since it involves the government. And I've met a very large number of people who care nothing for politics. They're concerned with mortgage payments, putting food on the table, their kids' education and safety, and a million other things that, in day-to-day life, just seem a whole lot more important.
To someone like this, if you phrase the question just right, it doesn't seem like such a ridiculous or horrible notion to have national ID cards, especially if they believe it could help reduce the threat of a bomb going off on board an airliner. Why exactly is that so hard to believe?
BTW, you may notice that I did qualify my statement by mentioning that it was a good thing that this was making news, implying that people may not be as willing to roll with something like this as I may have suspected. Believe me, nothing would make me happier. And honestly, you're probably in a position to gauge the public mood in the UK better than I, seeing as I'm a few thousand miles removed from you. But given how many Big-Brother-like devices and programs are already operating in the UK, you'll forgive me if I remain skeptical.
Funny you wrote that. I actually added 'perceived' after I had written the line, but then deleted it again. Here's why: I actually believe that removing freedoms can, in fact, actually increase security in some situations. The old Soviet Russia (sorry, cue the jokes...), from what I've heard, was a pretty secure place in many ways. Not so much freedom, though. The old American wild west was a dangerous place, but a libertarian paradise.
I'll grant you that many policies don't do a damned thing while chewing up personal freedom, though, so your point is certainly valid.
I'm not sure I agree that the ruling class is entirely at fault here. I'd lay the blame squarely on the large middle class who are often all too willing to trade away their freedom for additional security. It seems to be a tendency of human nature to value something less when no effort was expended in obtaining it. Many of us are fortunate enough to live in a time and place where our freedom has been paid for by the blood of others, but the unfortunate result of this may be that we can never truly understand the value of freedom until it's taken away again.
Make no mistake - politicians can only get away with this because not enough average citizens care (although the fact that a stink is being made over this is encouraging). They simply promise more handouts to various constituencies, and all it costs is more and more of your money and your freedom.
I'll have to agree that the 360 has a lot going for it - especially the online experience. Honestly, the other consoles don't really even come close in this aspect. And yes, I do have a PS3 as well. The 360 gets about 95% of my time, while the PS3 contributes to distributed computing projects. And I'll probably buy a Wii when EBGames stops selling bundles like this: http://www.ebgames.com/search.asp?N=138+83
I don't mean to discount the value that software has added to the console's user experience - after all, my argument is that the *primary* software (games) is one of the most important pieces to be factored in. But the hardware-failure debacle pretty much guarantees its elimination from the all-time best list. All the fantastic games and online services don't matter much when the red ring comes a-knocking (my brother's 360 was the latest casualty among those I know).
And for what it's worth, I think 360 achievements are probably one of the most brilliant features I've seen in a long time. Essentially, achievements / gamerscores are the new videogame high scores. Technically, I'd guess they're probably pretty damn simply to implement, but they're a brilliant hook that tap into the psychology of gamers natural competitive and/or collecting instincts.
I don't think it's possible to separate the games from the consoles. After all, the games are the reason we purchase, play, and enjoy the consoles in the first place. Note the phrasing of "best" is a particularly ambiguous term. Here's how I'd define the "best" system:
* It should have a reasonable percentage of games that would make it onto any "100 all time best game list". Like I mentioned, games are the reason we buy the hardware.
* It should be reasonably popular (although not necessarily the most). Why? In order to significantly impact the video gaming world, the console should have been enjoyed by a reasonably number of gamers.
* It should have definable qualities which distinguish it from other consoles. As much as I like my 360, it's really not innovative in any way - more of a refinement of existing trends and technologies. Likewise, the PS3 is mostly about bigger and better hardware.
* It should have a cultural impact beyond the gaming world.
If I had to vote now, I think I'd cast my ballot for the NES. It re-invigorated a stagnate market. It launched (or re-ignited) a number of gaming properties that are still going strong to this day. And, the Nintendo became synonymous with home video gaming.
The Dreamcast was an awesome system, but I just don't think it had enough of an impact on the market in general to be considered the best console ever.
You'll have to forgive me if I don't consider a place "safe" when you have to put qualifiers about what users might start saying, or when talking about having to know the correct people to bribe...
I wonder what the odds are that it will actually hit a person on the ground? Obviously, the math gets more complicated as you figure in the path of the satellite. I'm guessing it would be a polar orbit, then? This means that the odds are proportionally higher that it will fall on a particular spot the farther north or south you go. And, how big large an area would we consider a kill-zone for a satellite of this size?
There are plenty of restrictions about how one can advertising in the real world. I have no problem with a modest amount of advertising. I'm probably a bit more capitalistic and libertarian in my thinking than many slashdotters. My parents own a sign shop, so while I myself have nothing to do with the business, I do understanding the importance of advertising one's business interest to the world.
That being said, I would absolutely oppose the elimination of all signage codes. One thing many libertarian-minded folks often forget is that living as part of a community dictates the adherence to rules established to ensure the community functions well. This means that I'm not allowed to build a 100 ft pink neon sign that dominates the visual landscape. In the end, it would only mean that everyone has to build a 100 ft sign to visually compete (see: Las Vegas). While that would mean a lot of great work for my parent's business, that's not the kind of town most people would want to live in.
Likewise, with any advertising methodology, both in the physical world or on the web, we must ask ourselves: Does this method of generating revenue impose too great a burden upon the community on which it relies? In the case of unobtrusive advertisements that help to pay for our free content, I would argue, absolutely not. In the case of e-mail or other spam... absolutely. I would argue that link-farms exist primarily to fool search engines, and thus contribute nothing of real value except for creating an artificial advertising market. Money that comes through links is similar to arguing that there is nothing wrong with spam because some people do apparently click on those links, and thus do "find them valuable" While this doesn't actively place a burden on users like spam (other than the annoyance of finding these pages), it does place a burden in the sense that it invalidates real-world search results.
Ensuring that advertising is not too obtrusive not only makes sense from a moral viewpoint, I believe it ultimately works best from a business viewpoint as well. Yes, loud and obnoxious advertising may pull in viewers to some extent, but I honestly believe that advertising that's relevant, useful, and tasteful does not offend nearly so much, and can still do a fine job of creating a win-win environment for end-users.
Sigh... Is it only funny if it has a +Funny moderation next to it? I can't believe you called a Star Trek joke a "false dilemma". Fine, here's the humor-impaired version:
It's not necessarily a virtue to make all decisions based on logic, just like it's a terrible mistake to allow one's emotions to rule decision-making. My point in pointing out hypocrisy is simply to counter the absurd "conviction" some people show toward protecting the environment, but only when their own immediate interests are not at stake.
And you know, I find it amusing that you believe the emotion driving my decision-making must be revenge, or some bizarre hatred of mosquitoes. I mean, what other possible emotion could possibly account for someone wanting to save 5 million people a year from an agonizing death?
Considering that I program computer games for a living... I suppose that's sort of a given for me. Still, among my engineering and CS peers in college, video gaming was pretty much universal, as I recall. Another universal: Legos!
Geez, don't you watch Star Trek? Cold, dispassionate logic is not always a virtue, you damn green-blooded Vulcan!