I checked out your link and it confirmed what I suspected to be true all along!!!! GoDaddy and Oil Change Coupons are the fuckers providing all of this sensitive info to wiki leaks. Let's go lynch them.
"Oh, welcome back to Citibank, Mr. Smith. Your portfolio indicates that all of your investments are 4% down, but we think the difference is so infinitesimal small that it might defy belief that you cared."
"Hi Ms. Smith. Your cancer cell growth has increased 4%, but we think the difference is so infinitesimal that it might defy belief that you cared."
"Little Timmy scored an 86.6 (grade B) instead of 90 (grade A), but we think the difference is so infinitesimal small that it might defy belief that he cared."
Why "lament the decline of that kind of deep knowing?" Shouldn't we just encourage teens, students, hobbyists, computer science majors (e.g., anyone with an interest in this kind of thing) to get out there and buy a C64 or a kit or an open source game machine or an embedded device or any of the other numerous projects in which we could pursue "deep knowing"?
Frankly, it's a great time to be interested in computers: absurd amounts of power for cheap, _along with_ easy access (thank you Internet) to kits, information, software, books, older devices, embedded devices, game devices, community help, etc.
Sure, this crowd is going to push back a lot. And it's prime material for jokes. But, in short, a lot of web addicts have underlying problems of which excessive use of the internet is really a symptom. People get legitimately addicted to all kinds of things, and the internet happens to be a completely ubiquitous, invasive entity... so I'll be curious to see if this group is capable of weeding through this primary symptom with an eye towards lower-level issues.
At the most extreme end of the spectrum -- and sometimes that's all an addiction is, normal behavior taking to an extreme -- they'll have to deal with people who might use the internet to escape all human interaction, who always use pornography in lieu of meaningful relationships, who have trouble separating fantasy violence from real life situations in which violence has consequences, who have general-category neurological issues like autism, aspergers syndrome, etc.
On one hand, in light of this, a kayak trip is a joke. On the other hand, sometimes these things are all it take to get people thinking about bigger issues, especially if they can be directed to long-term, more appropriately fine-tuned help.
You'll get a lot of decent answers, and I won't try to duplicate any of them here. My addition: amidst many mediocre books about Game Design, there are a couple that really stand out. The first one to come to mind is "The Art of Game Design":
I understand this predicament all too well. And working out substantially is critical to your mental and physical well-being. Try asking yourself what you can do at the gym in order to save time at home (or the office). Here is what I recommend:
- Find a 24/7 gym, or at least a gym with very good hours. Preferably on the way to work.
- If, for example, you shower in the "morning", then don't shower at home. Wake up. Bring a change of clothes on way to work. Use gym. Shower / shave. Head to work.
- Do this for 2 or 3 of your work days per week. And work out on the 2 days that you get off. Obviously, this varies.
- Plan on working out for an hour or so.
- Bring the paper if you typically read this at home.
- Or bring journals, reading edification, potentially email on a smartphone, etc., -- anything that gains back a little time for you at work or home.
- I'll leave the specifics (cardio, weights, stretching) up to the professionals.
I know it's obvious. But nothing is going to give you a good concentrated workout quite like 60 to 90 minutes at the gym. And since you shower there, you are discussing 4 to 6 hours / week... well worth it. I gained back about 1 hour of that time per week reading the paper in-between sets. And I do answer critical, quick emails on my iPhone. Yes, get up and walk around and stretch at work and all that, but it's going to be hard to come anywhere close to this regime using any off-the-cuff or "creative" solutions.
A modest home in a lot of 7 abandoned (or un-sellable) homes is worth very little. But, if the home owners are willing to relocate, they could potentially own a similar home, closer to a "living" civilization, and bordering the nice new woods that has now been created out of all the empty districts. That home is worth a lot more.
It's obvious that the kind of home growth that we saw over the last ten years is not sustainable for any substantial amount of time. And it's a little ironic that many of the same construction companies that were thrown together to build the homes might transition into companies that are hired to tear down the very same homes... but, having said that, nothing makes me happier to think that we might rollback at least some of the ugly brown areas and return them to Nature.
Actually, what we are most likely going to see is incremental -- but significant! -- updates to the existing consoles. Updates that are large enough to be considered a "new release" but small enough not to be totally new architectures. We know, for example:
- Microsoft is planning an all-out marketing campaign + release schedule around Natal. It's not quite a new console roll-out, but Microsoft is treating it as such. Fully backwards compatible.
- Nintendo needs to get on the HD bandwagon, but doesn't necessarily need to push the envelope for HD gaming. Expect something that meets 720p criteria and is approximately [some smaller integer greater than 1 but less than 5]x as powerful as the Wii. Fully backwards compatible.
- Sony: not entirely clear. Open to suggestions. They have a PS3 slim in the works. No, not a new console. They released the PSP Go, dropping UMG support. That's interesting. The Cell is a pain-in-the-ass to develop for, but various shops are starting to get the hang of it. Maybe we will see a PS3, Mach II with 2 Cells, slim body and, of course, the now-mandatory motion tracking controllers.
The fact that future games are going to cost somewhere in the $60M ballpark is precisely why we will NOT see brand new architectures any time soon. No one, except maybe 1st party entities, is going to give up all of the applied dev resources to hop to an untested platform.
If you want to commence an interesting dialogue, I propose something like "What, exactly, constitutes a NEW console?"
...other assets like models, graphics, animation, sound, maps, and data files? These are enormous, time-consuming and expensive assets that also face extinction with failed projects. Or what about assets for projects that are... older and discontinued?
I often wonder how great it would be for new (or smaller, or hobbyist, or cash-starved, or early in SDLC, or whatever) developers if more companies open-sourced these assets.
To believe for a moment that the "days of Windows is numbered" is idiotic. Consider a few points:
1. The PC continues to be a dominant gaming platform which will never fly with a thin client OS or internet OS.
2. 9 out of 10 (my guess, might be higher) businesses out there will never consider an OS that is entirely dependent on a working internet connection. (And don't counter with "well, what about web services companies?" I mean top to bottom activities in a single company such as accounting, HR, project management, security services, legal, design, PR, etc.)
3. There will be a relative correlation between productivity and your internet speed. Not exciting.
4. Most of us would like to remain reasonably productive in environments where there is no internet connection (planes, trains, parks, beach, over seas, etc.)
5. People seem to forget that the browsers themselves as well as many of the browser features that they depend on (Flash, Movies, ActiveX, PDF, Java) all depend on some version of an OS with a "more than thin client and more than kernal" layer to begin with...
Singularity OS is a smart move (managed code, new process security measures). And you'll see a MAJOR uptick in SaaS and "cloud computing" (whatever the hell that means these days) from Microsoft, but we will not be rid of a client OS from Microsoft in this lifetime.
I'm just surprised that I haven't seen anyone mention that this machine is actually quite capable and very reasonably priced.
You get a decent Intel Core2 Duo processor, a fantastic graphics card and, oh, by the way, a 4 SPE unit Cell processor. You also get two 250 GB drives that you could probably run in RAID to increase speed, an 18.4 (!!) inch LCD screen. All for around $1550.
Seems like an ideal machine for someone who might want to start developing for the Cell or for entire research, business or educational departments that could benefit from SPEs/ And, unlike typical niche products, this machine seems reasonably priced.
ATI and Microsoft developed this chip together over a period of two years. The XBOX 360 GPU has been known since conception as an ATI GPU.
Furthermore, the recall was for overheating in general which -- though unquestionably affected by the GPU -- is a more comprehensive system design failure, not just a single component. (Look at the stability success they have had simply by reducing the size of the CPU.)
I'm looking forward to "Jasper", the code name for the next XBOX 360 mother board that will include a 65 nanometer graphics chip, smaller memory chips and HOPEFULLY a price reduction.
Actually, you have it backwards. The correct answer is not that the "graphics" are lagging, but that the "interpretation of the hand and finger gestures". In other words, the lag happens at the beginning of the process and not at the end. I'm sure the graphics engine and card are quite capable.
So, why the lag? Well, in the same way that it takes a computer some time to interpret voice commands, it takes a computer some time to interpret gestures. There is also the inherent delay in figuring out if the start of a touch is a tap, a swipe, a double tap, etc. In other words, you need to collect a certain amount of information before you can even start to make sense of it.
Having said all of this, my iPhone seems snappier. So does my Wii. Here is to hoping that you are correct and that optimized code, better gesture prediction, a knowledge of frequently used commands, etc. will definitely help...
Why is 2.6M for one of the most recognized words in the English (and other) languages ridiculous?
Dominos Pizza Market Cap: $843,000,000
Papa John's Market Cap: $725,000,000
Pizza Hut 2007 Sales: $26,000,000
The more I learn about Amazon's AWS offerings... the more confused I get. I've read a TON of material, reviewed the APIs, looked at sites built on this platform and have read many blog entries. I feel like I "know" a lot, but understand very little. Someone help?
1. What is a perfect "typical" application for AWS? (And don't answer, "one that needs to scale...". I'm looking for a realworld example.)
2. Anyone here on Slashdot using these services? Nervous about single point of failure? (And I don't mean just technical, but also financial, legal, security, business continuity, etc.)
3. EC2 / S3: is there any value in using just one? I've noticed there are additional services now, too
4. In the days of SOx / PCI / CISP compliance, is it even possible to set up a financial app on AWS?
5. Also, finally, maybe a question to Amazon... why? Someone did the financials recently and it was a fascinating study. The short of it is that at max capacity, the net income from all of AWS for Amazon is so tiny, you have to wonder why they even bothered... [need citation]
A classic case of wanting to like the technology, but not really sure how to use it. Thanks.
Actually, very specific information about the Fat Man is widely available. For example, wikipedia -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_Man -- but you can do even better with a quick search.
Having the schematics is a nice start, but even if you manage to collect the components, handle the components safely and actually construct something similar to the Fat Man, you end up with an ENORMOUS device that is relatively weak compared to the nuclear devices of today. Your going to have trouble sneaking this monstrosity, say, through the Holland tunnel into NYC.
Now, schematics for a suitcase nucleur device made from readily available and cheap components... that would raise my eyebrows.
Slashdot Mirror
I checked out your link and it confirmed what I suspected to be true all along!!!! GoDaddy and Oil Change Coupons are the fuckers providing all of this sensitive info to wiki leaks. Let's go lynch them.
I tried to drag the little guy in Google Maps over the location but it wouldn't show me anything. I'm just curious if someone knows if Google is down?
"Oh, welcome back to Citibank, Mr. Smith. Your portfolio indicates that all of your investments are 4% down, but we think the difference is so infinitesimal small that it might defy belief that you cared."
"Hi Ms. Smith. Your cancer cell growth has increased 4%, but we think the difference is so infinitesimal that it might defy belief that you cared."
"Little Timmy scored an 86.6 (grade B) instead of 90 (grade A), but we think the difference is so infinitesimal small that it might defy belief that he cared."
Why "lament the decline of that kind of deep knowing?" Shouldn't we just encourage teens, students, hobbyists, computer science majors (e.g., anyone with an interest in this kind of thing) to get out there and buy a C64 or a kit or an open source game machine or an embedded device or any of the other numerous projects in which we could pursue "deep knowing"?
Frankly, it's a great time to be interested in computers: absurd amounts of power for cheap, _along with_ easy access (thank you Internet) to kits, information, software, books, older devices, embedded devices, game devices, community help, etc.
It doesn't have to be either or.
Has anyone posted this video of the interface yet?
http://www.windowsphone7series.com/multimedia/Media2
I hope they keep the UI design team that put this together. It's a refreshing change from the escalating UI-candy wars.
Since the beginning of time:
* Look, fire! Now I can keep my family warm and safe.
* Look, fire! Now I can go burn down the hut of my annoying neighbors.
* Look, trigonometry! Now I can build bridges.
* Look, trigonometry! Now I can launch projectiles at those bridges.
* Look, printing press! Now I can communicate broadly.
* Look, printing press! Now I can subjugate broadly.
* Look, nuclear technology! Now I can radiate cancer and use PET scans.
* Look, nuclear technology! Now I can blow cities up...
etc.
Sure, this crowd is going to push back a lot. And it's prime material for jokes. But, in short, a lot of web addicts have underlying problems of which excessive use of the internet is really a symptom. People get legitimately addicted to all kinds of things, and the internet happens to be a completely ubiquitous, invasive entity... so I'll be curious to see if this group is capable of weeding through this primary symptom with an eye towards lower-level issues.
At the most extreme end of the spectrum -- and sometimes that's all an addiction is, normal behavior taking to an extreme -- they'll have to deal with people who might use the internet to escape all human interaction, who always use pornography in lieu of meaningful relationships, who have trouble separating fantasy violence from real life situations in which violence has consequences, who have general-category neurological issues like autism, aspergers syndrome, etc.
On one hand, in light of this, a kayak trip is a joke. On the other hand, sometimes these things are all it take to get people thinking about bigger issues, especially if they can be directed to long-term, more appropriately fine-tuned help.
You'll get a lot of decent answers, and I won't try to duplicate any of them here. My addition: amidst many mediocre books about Game Design, there are a couple that really stand out. The first one to come to mind is "The Art of Game Design":
http://www.amazon.com/Art-Game-Design-book-lenses/dp/0123694965
While you are perfecting everyone else's good suggestions, give this one a read...
Violets are blue.
I'm schiophrenic,
And so am I.
I see France,
I see you shopping online at Victoria's Secret for underpants...
I understand this predicament all too well. And working out substantially is critical to your mental and physical well-being. Try asking yourself what you can do at the gym in order to save time at home (or the office). Here is what I recommend:
- Find a 24/7 gym, or at least a gym with very good hours. Preferably on the way to work.
- If, for example, you shower in the "morning", then don't shower at home. Wake up. Bring a change of clothes on way to work. Use gym. Shower / shave. Head to work.
- Do this for 2 or 3 of your work days per week. And work out on the 2 days that you get off. Obviously, this varies.
- Plan on working out for an hour or so.
- Bring the paper if you typically read this at home.
- Or bring journals, reading edification, potentially email on a smartphone, etc., -- anything that gains back a little time for you at work or home. - I'll leave the specifics (cardio, weights, stretching) up to the professionals.
I know it's obvious. But nothing is going to give you a good concentrated workout quite like 60 to 90 minutes at the gym. And since you shower there, you are discussing 4 to 6 hours / week... well worth it. I gained back about 1 hour of that time per week reading the paper in-between sets. And I do answer critical, quick emails on my iPhone. Yes, get up and walk around and stretch at work and all that, but it's going to be hard to come anywhere close to this regime using any off-the-cuff or "creative" solutions.
...I forget what this article is about.
Oh well. I love lamp.
A modest home in a lot of 7 abandoned (or un-sellable) homes is worth very little. But, if the home owners are willing to relocate, they could potentially own a similar home, closer to a "living" civilization, and bordering the nice new woods that has now been created out of all the empty districts. That home is worth a lot more.
It's obvious that the kind of home growth that we saw over the last ten years is not sustainable for any substantial amount of time. And it's a little ironic that many of the same construction companies that were thrown together to build the homes might transition into companies that are hired to tear down the very same homes... but, having said that, nothing makes me happier to think that we might rollback at least some of the ugly brown areas and return them to Nature.
Actually, what we are most likely going to see is incremental -- but significant! -- updates to the existing consoles. Updates that are large enough to be considered a "new release" but small enough not to be totally new architectures. We know, for example:
- Microsoft is planning an all-out marketing campaign + release schedule around Natal. It's not quite a new console roll-out, but Microsoft is treating it as such. Fully backwards compatible.
- Nintendo needs to get on the HD bandwagon, but doesn't necessarily need to push the envelope for HD gaming. Expect something that meets 720p criteria and is approximately [some smaller integer greater than 1 but less than 5]x as powerful as the Wii. Fully backwards compatible.
- Sony: not entirely clear. Open to suggestions. They have a PS3 slim in the works. No, not a new console. They released the PSP Go, dropping UMG support. That's interesting. The Cell is a pain-in-the-ass to develop for, but various shops are starting to get the hang of it. Maybe we will see a PS3, Mach II with 2 Cells, slim body and, of course, the now-mandatory motion tracking controllers.
The fact that future games are going to cost somewhere in the $60M ballpark is precisely why we will NOT see brand new architectures any time soon. No one, except maybe 1st party entities, is going to give up all of the applied dev resources to hop to an untested platform.
If you want to commence an interesting dialogue, I propose something like "What, exactly, constitutes a NEW console?"
...I love that game. All the cards and the colors and stuff.
Someone had to say it. I bet a Minefield comment will beat me to the punch...
...other assets like models, graphics, animation, sound, maps, and data files? These are enormous, time-consuming and expensive assets that also face extinction with failed projects. Or what about assets for projects that are... older and discontinued?
I often wonder how great it would be for new (or smaller, or hobbyist, or cash-starved, or early in SDLC, or whatever) developers if more companies open-sourced these assets.
To believe for a moment that the "days of Windows is numbered" is idiotic. Consider a few points:
1. The PC continues to be a dominant gaming platform which will never fly with a thin client OS or internet OS.
2. 9 out of 10 (my guess, might be higher) businesses out there will never consider an OS that is entirely dependent on a working internet connection. (And don't counter with "well, what about web services companies?" I mean top to bottom activities in a single company such as accounting, HR, project management, security services, legal, design, PR, etc.)
3. There will be a relative correlation between productivity and your internet speed. Not exciting.
4. Most of us would like to remain reasonably productive in environments where there is no internet connection (planes, trains, parks, beach, over seas, etc.)
5. People seem to forget that the browsers themselves as well as many of the browser features that they depend on (Flash, Movies, ActiveX, PDF, Java) all depend on some version of an OS with a "more than thin client and more than kernal" layer to begin with...
Singularity OS is a smart move (managed code, new process security measures). And you'll see a MAJOR uptick in SaaS and "cloud computing" (whatever the hell that means these days) from Microsoft, but we will not be rid of a client OS from Microsoft in this lifetime.
I'm just surprised that I haven't seen anyone mention that this machine is actually quite capable and very reasonably priced.
You get a decent Intel Core2 Duo processor, a fantastic graphics card and, oh, by the way, a 4 SPE unit Cell processor. You also get two 250 GB drives that you could probably run in RAID to increase speed, an 18.4 (!!) inch LCD screen. All for around $1550.
Seems like an ideal machine for someone who might want to start developing for the Cell or for entire research, business or educational departments that could benefit from SPEs/ And, unlike typical niche products, this machine seems reasonably priced.
Why the negativity?
In that case, I recommend:
Get a Financial Life
Dating For Dummies
Paint the Sky with Stars: The Best of Enya
Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
ATI and Microsoft developed this chip together over a period of two years. The XBOX 360 GPU has been known since conception as an ATI GPU.
Furthermore, the recall was for overheating in general which -- though unquestionably affected by the GPU -- is a more comprehensive system design failure, not just a single component. (Look at the stability success they have had simply by reducing the size of the CPU.)
I'm looking forward to "Jasper", the code name for the next XBOX 360 mother board that will include a 65 nanometer graphics chip, smaller memory chips and HOPEFULLY a price reduction.
Actually, you have it backwards. The correct answer is not that the "graphics" are lagging, but that the "interpretation of the hand and finger gestures". In other words, the lag happens at the beginning of the process and not at the end. I'm sure the graphics engine and card are quite capable.
So, why the lag? Well, in the same way that it takes a computer some time to interpret voice commands, it takes a computer some time to interpret gestures. There is also the inherent delay in figuring out if the start of a touch is a tap, a swipe, a double tap, etc. In other words, you need to collect a certain amount of information before you can even start to make sense of it.
Having said all of this, my iPhone seems snappier. So does my Wii. Here is to hoping that you are correct and that optimized code, better gesture prediction, a knowledge of frequently used commands, etc. will definitely help...
Why is 2.6M for one of the most recognized words in the English (and other) languages ridiculous?
Dominos Pizza Market Cap: $843,000,000
Papa John's Market Cap: $725,000,000
Pizza Hut 2007 Sales: $26,000,000
The more I learn about Amazon's AWS offerings... the more confused I get. I've read a TON of material, reviewed the APIs, looked at sites built on this platform and have read many blog entries. I feel like I "know" a lot, but understand very little. Someone help?
1. What is a perfect "typical" application for AWS? (And don't answer, "one that needs to scale...". I'm looking for a realworld example.)
2. Anyone here on Slashdot using these services? Nervous about single point of failure? (And I don't mean just technical, but also financial, legal, security, business continuity, etc.)
3. EC2 / S3: is there any value in using just one? I've noticed there are additional services now, too
4. In the days of SOx / PCI / CISP compliance, is it even possible to set up a financial app on AWS?
5. Also, finally, maybe a question to Amazon... why? Someone did the financials recently and it was a fascinating study. The short of it is that at max capacity, the net income from all of AWS for Amazon is so tiny, you have to wonder why they even bothered... [need citation]
A classic case of wanting to like the technology, but not really sure how to use it. Thanks.
I tried to sign up with Slashdot to comment on this post, but it told me that I would need to validate a confirmation email.
I haven't received my confirmation email yet... seriously, how long does this take? Anyone? Is Slashdot broken? Do people post comments on Slashdot?
Actually, very specific information about the Fat Man is widely available. For example, wikipedia -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_Man -- but you can do even better with a quick search.
Having the schematics is a nice start, but even if you manage to collect the components, handle the components safely and actually construct something similar to the Fat Man, you end up with an ENORMOUS device that is relatively weak compared to the nuclear devices of today. Your going to have trouble sneaking this monstrosity, say, through the Holland tunnel into NYC.
Now, schematics for a suitcase nucleur device made from readily available and cheap components... that would raise my eyebrows.