Of course what could be done is to simply have a hash of the hardware id's created at startup compared to the last boot config. If they're the same then just load a boot image, if they're not or there is no stored hash then rebuild the boot image with a nice polite message and some animation on screen.
Agreed. Division by zero is an error condition for good reasons. When a program encounters a division by zero then you get a flashing red sign saying that something unexpected happened. In development this sort of red flashing sign is much better than trying to pin down strange effects from a rogue sqrt(2) returning a 1 or something much deeper buried and therefore much more likely.
The thing that bugs me though is that nullity is binary state and non-scalar. So if you get over the familiar number line to recognize a number space (which would be required to conceptualize any number not on the real number line), where does nullity fit into this space? Looking at complex numbers you can imagine real numbers on the x-axis and imaginary numbers on the y-axis; now if you were to add a third axis to hold nullity then you'd have to eventually deal with the concept of scaling nullity. Unfortunately 0/0 does not preserve any scalars that apply to it. This becomes a further problem if you have a vector in the number space that includes a nullity component since with vector v and some scalar a, ||a*v||/= a*||v||. Bad mojo there.
Next, consider trying to cancel {nullity}; with itself. With real numbers a and b, attempt to figure out the value of (a*{nullity})/(b*{nullity};) given that {nullity}=0/0 and {nullity}^-1=0/0 therefore {nullity}={nullity}^-1 so the previous expression may evaluate to either a/b, (a*{nullity}^2)/b, a/(b*{nullity}^2) or may just simplify down to {nullity}. Which is it? Why?
Are you talking about a sliding subscription system?
The point of subscription fees is not to reimburse SOE or Blizzard for the value of however much gold or plat you have on your characters, it is to pay for servers and their upkeep, bandwidth costs, developer time, admin time and profits that can be sunk into development on new games or distributed to shareholders. Whether I choose to run around all day killing wild boars and wolves in Dun Morogh or the assorted residents of the Sanctum of the Scaleborn makes no difference to the cost associated with maintaining an open connection to their servers.
Perhaps a case could be made for sliding subscriptions based on the time connected but really I doubt that most players would want a system where they worry about paying for afk time while they make dinner or a system where you have to choose a package with the right amount of nights and weekends hours and anytime minutes.
Back to the topic of taxation. The premise that I can be taxed on virtual property owned by the MMO based solely on the fact that access to said property is linked to my account is ridiculous. Imagine getting directly taxed for the value of every book in a library just because you hold a library card that grants you access to that library. Even better is imagining that you could get taxed, by the state and not simply charged by said library, for every book that you sit there and read based on the notion that your head now contains knowledge that has value in that it could be used to help you make money. Virtual goods in an MMO and knowledge obtained from a library have no monetary value until you actually cash out by selling your Sword of a Thousand Truths on eBay or the manuscript for your great American novel to a publishing house. Even then you are being taxed on the transaction and not the value of the (virtual||intellectual) property.
I've seen 35mm film cameras that eat batteries faster than a modern DSLR. Mainly I'm referring to the Canon EOS-10S which managed to consume a $9.00 battery every 8-10 rolls of film (with autofocus off). I imagine most of the power went into the auto frame advance and film rewind features.
Of course I still hold a special place in my heart for my old Canon AV-1 which only used a battery to operate the light meter and exposure length and therefore only consumed a battery after several months of active use. All the mechanical energy for advancing the frame and moving the shutter came from the thumb lever on the back. Sadly though all my good lenses with the exception of a 28mm fixed length have all died off.
I think he's talking about how many 1-hour photo labs will develop 35mm film by chemically developing the negative, digitizing and image of it and then printing from the digital capture using an ink jet process rather than optically projecting the image onto the print paper. Unfortunately, in his case, the equipment used by the "photo lab" is either really crappy, badly adjusted or configured for high speed at snapshot quality rather than low speed at portrait quality.
Actually the power consumption numbers they gave were for complete systems. They were just there to give an idea of how it stacked up, power wise, to the competitor's current flagship.
Well, so long as you avoid Einsteinian physics and stick to the Newtonian stuff, the laws of thermodynamics say that energy can neither be created or destroyed within a closed system. If you view your house as such a system (yes, pretend your insulation is that good), then any energy that enters your house through the mains will remain there. While it may perform any number of useful tasks in the home, it will eventually convert into the sort of common denominator form of energy, heat.
On the note of generating information, however, I do have something to say about that. Information is not equivalent to energy. I could drag an ink pen across a linear mile of paper and produce a great masterwork of poetry or a collection of random lines and curves; either way the friction of the pen on the paper will produce exactly the same amount of heat. I could turn on a series of lights to represent binary digits or I can turn on the same number of lights to illuminate my kitchen; again, both produce the same heat. Information is distinct from energy but energy can be used to alter or rearrange information.
Here's a better question to ponder. Can information ever be created or destroyed? Certainly it can be recorded, moved, rearranged and duplicated, but can anything new ever really come from the ether? Did Newton create the law of physics or did he simply observe and record them? What about our knowledge of mathematics? Did it originally appear out of nowhere or did it come from our observation of finite quanta? When we solve a quadratic equation, are we creating something new or simply duplicating and rearranging the existing information until we have a new and useful form? If Vincent Van Gogh had lived in a different time or place, had seen different things throughout his life and/or interacted with different people, would he have painted the same images on canvas? Is Starry Night the result of a complex interaction between the lifetime experiences and observations of one man and a physiology defined by genetics and a growth environment or was it inspired by some divine muse?
As for destruction, ask a forensic scientist whether information or, perhaps, evidence of such information is ever really destroyed or whether it is simply "sufficiently scattered."
Yet another entry into the hypothesis that "Any system or technology created by human intellect can be described using a car analogy"
While not all applications have been thus far proven, I am optimistic that an analogy that uses whole cars to represent quantum components of subatomic particles of atomic particles of [...] of whole cars could be used to both derive a Grand Unification Theory and explain it to the lay person at the same time.
Re:So in case you were wondering...
on
Slashdot's Vastu
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· Score: 1
Funny how, to me, whenever I see yellow on a website my first thought is "something broke, let's see what it looks like in IE."
Although I would like to ammend my previous post to say that I don't honestly think that the whole sci-fi future of haves and have nots will persist indefinately. While there will most likely be an awkward period while we try to figure out what we can and should do to our genetic code, we will eventually come to a point where the novelty has worn off and the general masses will only use such tools to prevent serious problems while leaving distinguishing characteristics up to chance. And while there will still be a market for designer babies, most people will realize that there is a line somewhere that distinguishes the necessary from the frivelous, similar to the line that exists between such mundane medicines such as innoculations, stitches, casts and heart surgery and the less neccessary plastic surgeries such as liposuction, breast implants and general facial rearranging. Some things will be clear cut like decreasing the odds of heart disease, cancer or tumorous growths, changing natural hair and eye color or the shape of the nose, while other things such as metabolic adjustments and visual or auditory accuity correction will be a little harder to place since they are not neccessary in the strictest sense but they do offer genuine practical value.
Honestly I think that we will replace natural evolution in our species with direct genetic engineering once the technology catches up and we get past the taboo associated with messing with some random deities work.
It will start with eliminating genetic diseases, metabolism and tendancies for mental disorders. Then we will pick and choose which traits are inherited from which parent. Eventually having a kid will involve a multiple choice, fill in the bubble form that allows you to define enough parameters so that it is difficult to notice if the source DNA came from the right parents.
Future advertisments could read, "Why spend two month's salary on an engagment ring when it can never say forever like spending one month's on your first child." (of course once you're in there, they'll try to upsell you on the extra incubation service so that she'll never even have to deal with that whole pregnency thing)
Actually my main reason for chosing WMA is that my car CD player supports MP3 or WMA but not AAC, FLAC, OGG or anything else. If AAC was supported I would have tested that as an option for personal use.
I've sworn off of iTMS due to the fact that I've changed computers enough (bought a new Athlon64 a while back and installed Win32->Win64->Vista Beta2->Win64) to invalidate my purchases. DRM should be more like Everquest or Steam, I can install them on as many systems as I like but I can only log into one at a time. If iTunes would take the time to notice that previous authorizations are never heard from again after I authorize a new install, it should just allow me to go along my merry, non-infringing way and let me listen to the music that I paid for.
PGP is a lossless encryption whereas fairplay uses a watermark technique. Big difference in algorithms and quantum theory has nothing to do with it.
The difference between a DRM'd song and one that you rip yourself is an issue of control. With iTunes you are stuck with 128kbps AAC encoded by their in house encoding/DRM software. When you rip a song yourself you have the option of using any one of myriad different encoders, algorithms, bitrates, configurations, and etc. I usually use 240-355 VBR WMA encoding for personal use.
Personally I've only purchased one album from iTunes (unfortunatly I can no longer play it because I've changed computers too many times) and while their encoding method is fine for listening through earbuds, it shows noticable degredation vs. PCM on my 7.1 home theater setup. But it has nothing to do with watermarking DRM and it definately has nothing to do with quantum theory and schrodinger's cat, it is all about the bitrate and the encoding software. And Apple uses a substandard encoder set to a bitrate that is almost pallatable to AOL dial-up customers.
My parenthetical statement in the previous post was intended to point out one of the points of the current system that I disagreed with. I probably should have worded it better but I was desperately trying to land within the first 100 posts of the discussion.
I just got one of these last week asking for my opinion about the film and tv ratings systems. When I started to actually say what I thought about the system ( three digit body count = PG13 while a nipple = NC17 ) she hung up without even bothering to cut me off. I may have spent as much as 40 seconds discussing the issue with dead air and I was very disappointed that I wasn't really given a chance to string her along for as long as I'd have liked.
The police and fire department charities are a bit more pleasant to work with. My best for a police call was when I asked if they'd found my car yet. My best fire call, I had a friend nearby to help me with this, I set off the smoke detector with a cigarette, dropped the phone on the counter and yelled at my friend for not watching the stove while I got the phone. That one went through some cursing, clanking and the sound of me unloading a bottle of shaving cream next to the phone (to simulate a fire extinguisher) before I picked up the phone asked "who are you again?" and then following their response with "Oh.. thank you for calling but I think we have it handled."
Who are they going to push the alternatives to? They just pissed off their existing customer base by selling pirated software while claiming that it was legitimate. They've destroyed their reputation so that their word of mouth refferals are going to plummet. And there is also the distinct possibility that if they were selling pirated copies to inflate their margins then they were probably small enough or dependant enough on that extra margin that they will not survive a serious lawsuit.
Most likely, the customers will be looking for alternatives to that retailer and not for alternatives to Windows.
But if you'll notice, they aren't suing end users (ala RIAA), they are suing businesses or people that have made a business out of selling the pirated copies. I wouldn't be surprised if, in many of these cases, it was the end users that turned to Microsoft to report a bogus copy after having issues with their illegitimate and possibly cracked version that they purchased with good faith that it was a legitimate, albeit possibly discounted, copy.
The actions of Microsoft in these cases show that they are trying to improve their image with the end users by persuing the business that deceived them while simultaneously offering said end user a discounted or complimentary legitimate copy to help resolve the situation. Furthermore these actions are also considered to be defence of copyright so that they do not lose that copyright.
You shouldn't have to code for a specific number of cores so long as your code is written with parallelization in mind. PC games will most likely be written in a manner that creates as many discrete processes as makes sense for the game. If you were to write a game that had, let's say, five discrete processes, the system should be able to schedule them as 2/3 or 1/4 on a dual core and 2/1/1/1 on a quad core. Considering that modern chips are very good at context switching, there wouldn't be that great of a penalty for running a multi-process game on a single core system compared to a game coded to run in a single process.
What you get from a good CS education is very different from a RHSE or MCSE certificate.
The most important thing that you learn as a CS major is not a particular language or architecture. It's not Calculus or DiffEq. Nor is it compiler or algorithm theory. The most important thing for you to accomplish as a CS major is to really learn how to learn. All those other things are just tools to help you get there; although later many of them will serve as tools to help you practice your trade as well.
As for practical knowledge, you'll often find yourself learning more about how something works rather than how to use it. You may spend a couple weeks learning the TCP/IP protocol with no more than an "Oh, by the way" mention of how to tweak your network settings in Win / *nix. You may have months of lecture on how to build a compiler but your instructor, on the point of using a compiler, may only tell you to "play with the command line options on Visual C++ or gcc and test it with a few algorithms" so that you can see what effect they have on speed, executable size and memory footprint.
Also on the point of practical knowledge, if you don't know what Calculus is all about then you really need to take a good 4 quarter series on the topic. Once you have your Eureka! moment in there, you will begin to see math in an etirely new way. Be warned though, Calc has a reputation as being a filter to remove students who aren't really interested in learning. But those that stick through it until the end will come out with the realization that if you find yourself looking at both sides of a problem then you aren't thinking in enough dimensions. On the practical side you will learn ways to manipulate deadly complicated Trig and Algebra equations until you arive at somthing that is both elegantly precise and short. We wouldn't have 3D anything on computers without either a little bit of Calculus or much bigger rendering farms.
For those that want to program with as little school as possible I'll offer a Crash Course Essentials list for you to work off of. Take the Calculus series, an intro to engineering class, intro to C ( to learn procedural programming), intro to Java ( to learn OOP) and a management course or two. I recommend the management courses because, quite honestly, with them you will get a much larger salary than without. There is a definate place in this world for people that have a basic understanding of technology and a strong grasp of managing teams. Also I recommended management because, frankly, if you cannot sit through 4-6 years of algorithms, processor theory and data structures then you'll be better off working your way up the ladder after you get tired of being a code monkey rather than going off to some commune in Utah to rediscover yourself when you're in your 30's.
What I would like to see is a way to 2 mice, 2 keyboards and 2 monitors to the same system to allow 2 different people to log in to the same machine with their own desktops. This could be useful in situations where you have multiple terminals sitting right next to each other since you would only have to purchase and maintain one system per two terminals. If you consider that most retail video cards support two independant displays and dual core processors are hitting the mainstream, the hardware is more than ready to cope with the demand but the software still has that annoying assumption that only one user can log on locally while all other sessions must log in over the network.
Think about public libraries or school computer labs where the disks are restored to a pristine state every night and nobody should be running any programs that are demanding enough to block another user. I could see this as being a viable alternative to the use of thin clients in the right situations.
Don't forget slight differences in muzzle velocities from one bullet to the next. Not too big of a problem if your working within human+scope line of sight, but it becomes significant if you're trying to lob a couple ounce slug over obstacles toward your target. It would be best to use a small spread if you want to be sure of hitting your target or find another method if you can't have collateral damage.
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Of course what could be done is to simply have a hash of the hardware id's created at startup compared to the last boot config. If they're the same then just load a boot image, if they're not or there is no stored hash then rebuild the boot image with a nice polite message and some animation on screen.
The thing that bugs me though is that nullity is binary state and non-scalar. So if you get over the familiar number line to recognize a number space (which would be required to conceptualize any number not on the real number line), where does nullity fit into this space? Looking at complex numbers you can imagine real numbers on the x-axis and imaginary numbers on the y-axis; now if you were to add a third axis to hold nullity then you'd have to eventually deal with the concept of scaling nullity. Unfortunately 0/0 does not preserve any scalars that apply to it. This becomes a further problem if you have a vector in the number space that includes a nullity component since with vector v and some scalar a, ||a*v|| /= a*||v||. Bad mojo there.
Next, consider trying to cancel {nullity}; with itself. With real numbers a and b, attempt to figure out the value of (a*{nullity})/(b*{nullity};) given that {nullity}=0/0 and {nullity}^-1=0/0 therefore {nullity}={nullity}^-1 so the previous expression may evaluate to either a/b, (a*{nullity}^2)/b, a/(b*{nullity}^2) or may just simplify down to {nullity}. Which is it? Why?
Are you talking about a sliding subscription system?
The point of subscription fees is not to reimburse SOE or Blizzard for the value of however much gold or plat you have on your characters, it is to pay for servers and their upkeep, bandwidth costs, developer time, admin time and profits that can be sunk into development on new games or distributed to shareholders. Whether I choose to run around all day killing wild boars and wolves in Dun Morogh or the assorted residents of the Sanctum of the Scaleborn makes no difference to the cost associated with maintaining an open connection to their servers.
Perhaps a case could be made for sliding subscriptions based on the time connected but really I doubt that most players would want a system where they worry about paying for afk time while they make dinner or a system where you have to choose a package with the right amount of nights and weekends hours and anytime minutes.
Back to the topic of taxation. The premise that I can be taxed on virtual property owned by the MMO based solely on the fact that access to said property is linked to my account is ridiculous. Imagine getting directly taxed for the value of every book in a library just because you hold a library card that grants you access to that library. Even better is imagining that you could get taxed, by the state and not simply charged by said library, for every book that you sit there and read based on the notion that your head now contains knowledge that has value in that it could be used to help you make money. Virtual goods in an MMO and knowledge obtained from a library have no monetary value until you actually cash out by selling your Sword of a Thousand Truths on eBay or the manuscript for your great American novel to a publishing house. Even then you are being taxed on the transaction and not the value of the (virtual||intellectual) property.
I've seen 35mm film cameras that eat batteries faster than a modern DSLR. Mainly I'm referring to the Canon EOS-10S which managed to consume a $9.00 battery every 8-10 rolls of film (with autofocus off). I imagine most of the power went into the auto frame advance and film rewind features.
Of course I still hold a special place in my heart for my old Canon AV-1 which only used a battery to operate the light meter and exposure length and therefore only consumed a battery after several months of active use. All the mechanical energy for advancing the frame and moving the shutter came from the thumb lever on the back. Sadly though all my good lenses with the exception of a 28mm fixed length have all died off.
I think he's talking about how many 1-hour photo labs will develop 35mm film by chemically developing the negative, digitizing and image of it and then printing from the digital capture using an ink jet process rather than optically projecting the image onto the print paper. Unfortunately, in his case, the equipment used by the "photo lab" is either really crappy, badly adjusted or configured for high speed at snapshot quality rather than low speed at portrait quality.
Actually the power consumption numbers they gave were for complete systems. They were just there to give an idea of how it stacked up, power wise, to the competitor's current flagship.
Well, so long as you avoid Einsteinian physics and stick to the Newtonian stuff, the laws of thermodynamics say that energy can neither be created or destroyed within a closed system. If you view your house as such a system (yes, pretend your insulation is that good), then any energy that enters your house through the mains will remain there. While it may perform any number of useful tasks in the home, it will eventually convert into the sort of common denominator form of energy, heat.
On the note of generating information, however, I do have something to say about that. Information is not equivalent to energy. I could drag an ink pen across a linear mile of paper and produce a great masterwork of poetry or a collection of random lines and curves; either way the friction of the pen on the paper will produce exactly the same amount of heat. I could turn on a series of lights to represent binary digits or I can turn on the same number of lights to illuminate my kitchen; again, both produce the same heat. Information is distinct from energy but energy can be used to alter or rearrange information.
Here's a better question to ponder. Can information ever be created or destroyed? Certainly it can be recorded, moved, rearranged and duplicated, but can anything new ever really come from the ether? Did Newton create the law of physics or did he simply observe and record them? What about our knowledge of mathematics? Did it originally appear out of nowhere or did it come from our observation of finite quanta? When we solve a quadratic equation, are we creating something new or simply duplicating and rearranging the existing information until we have a new and useful form? If Vincent Van Gogh had lived in a different time or place, had seen different things throughout his life and/or interacted with different people, would he have painted the same images on canvas? Is Starry Night the result of a complex interaction between the lifetime experiences and observations of one man and a physiology defined by genetics and a growth environment or was it inspired by some divine muse?
As for destruction, ask a forensic scientist whether information or, perhaps, evidence of such information is ever really destroyed or whether it is simply "sufficiently scattered."
200 Watts of heat is 200 Watts of heat, and the ceiling heater in my apartment doesn't fold or download anything when it's running.
Yet another entry into the hypothesis that "Any system or technology created by human intellect can be described using a car analogy"
While not all applications have been thus far proven, I am optimistic that an analogy that uses whole cars to represent quantum components of subatomic particles of atomic particles of [...] of whole cars could be used to both derive a Grand Unification Theory and explain it to the lay person at the same time.
Funny how, to me, whenever I see yellow on a website my first thought is "something broke, let's see what it looks like in IE."
Thank you,
Although I would like to ammend my previous post to say that I don't honestly think that the whole sci-fi future of haves and have nots will persist indefinately. While there will most likely be an awkward period while we try to figure out what we can and should do to our genetic code, we will eventually come to a point where the novelty has worn off and the general masses will only use such tools to prevent serious problems while leaving distinguishing characteristics up to chance. And while there will still be a market for designer babies, most people will realize that there is a line somewhere that distinguishes the necessary from the frivelous, similar to the line that exists between such mundane medicines such as innoculations, stitches, casts and heart surgery and the less neccessary plastic surgeries such as liposuction, breast implants and general facial rearranging. Some things will be clear cut like decreasing the odds of heart disease, cancer or tumorous growths, changing natural hair and eye color or the shape of the nose, while other things such as metabolic adjustments and visual or auditory accuity correction will be a little harder to place since they are not neccessary in the strictest sense but they do offer genuine practical value.
Honestly I think that we will replace natural evolution in our species with direct genetic engineering once the technology catches up and we get past the taboo associated with messing with some random deities work.
It will start with eliminating genetic diseases, metabolism and tendancies for mental disorders. Then we will pick and choose which traits are inherited from which parent. Eventually having a kid will involve a multiple choice, fill in the bubble form that allows you to define enough parameters so that it is difficult to notice if the source DNA came from the right parents.
Future advertisments could read, "Why spend two month's salary on an engagment ring when it can never say forever like spending one month's on your first child." (of course once you're in there, they'll try to upsell you on the extra incubation service so that she'll never even have to deal with that whole pregnency thing)
Actually my main reason for chosing WMA is that my car CD player supports MP3 or WMA but not AAC, FLAC, OGG or anything else. If AAC was supported I would have tested that as an option for personal use.
I've sworn off of iTMS due to the fact that I've changed computers enough (bought a new Athlon64 a while back and installed Win32->Win64->Vista Beta2->Win64) to invalidate my purchases. DRM should be more like Everquest or Steam, I can install them on as many systems as I like but I can only log into one at a time. If iTunes would take the time to notice that previous authorizations are never heard from again after I authorize a new install, it should just allow me to go along my merry, non-infringing way and let me listen to the music that I paid for.
PGP is a lossless encryption whereas fairplay uses a watermark technique. Big difference in algorithms and quantum theory has nothing to do with it.
The difference between a DRM'd song and one that you rip yourself is an issue of control. With iTunes you are stuck with 128kbps AAC encoded by their in house encoding/DRM software. When you rip a song yourself you have the option of using any one of myriad different encoders, algorithms, bitrates, configurations, and etc. I usually use 240-355 VBR WMA encoding for personal use.
Personally I've only purchased one album from iTunes (unfortunatly I can no longer play it because I've changed computers too many times) and while their encoding method is fine for listening through earbuds, it shows noticable degredation vs. PCM on my 7.1 home theater setup. But it has nothing to do with watermarking DRM and it definately has nothing to do with quantum theory and schrodinger's cat, it is all about the bitrate and the encoding software. And Apple uses a substandard encoder set to a bitrate that is almost pallatable to AOL dial-up customers.
... you can definately tell the difference between a 128kpbs song from iTunes and a song that you ripped yourself at 192 or more kbps.
My parenthetical statement in the previous post was intended to point out one of the points of the current system that I disagreed with. I probably should have worded it better but I was desperately trying to land within the first 100 posts of the discussion.
...itwillonlytake63secondsandonebreathformetoblurt outayesornoquestion...
I just got one of these last week asking for my opinion about the film and tv ratings systems. When I started to actually say what I thought about the system ( three digit body count = PG13 while a nipple = NC17 ) she hung up without even bothering to cut me off. I may have spent as much as 40 seconds discussing the issue with dead air and I was very disappointed that I wasn't really given a chance to string her along for as long as I'd have liked.
The police and fire department charities are a bit more pleasant to work with. My best for a police call was when I asked if they'd found my car yet. My best fire call, I had a friend nearby to help me with this, I set off the smoke detector with a cigarette, dropped the phone on the counter and yelled at my friend for not watching the stove while I got the phone. That one went through some cursing, clanking and the sound of me unloading a bottle of shaving cream next to the phone (to simulate a fire extinguisher) before I picked up the phone asked "who are you again?" and then following their response with "Oh.. thank you for calling but I think we have it handled."
Who are they going to push the alternatives to? They just pissed off their existing customer base by selling pirated software while claiming that it was legitimate. They've destroyed their reputation so that their word of mouth refferals are going to plummet. And there is also the distinct possibility that if they were selling pirated copies to inflate their margins then they were probably small enough or dependant enough on that extra margin that they will not survive a serious lawsuit.
Most likely, the customers will be looking for alternatives to that retailer and not for alternatives to Windows.
But if you'll notice, they aren't suing end users (ala RIAA), they are suing businesses or people that have made a business out of selling the pirated copies. I wouldn't be surprised if, in many of these cases, it was the end users that turned to Microsoft to report a bogus copy after having issues with their illegitimate and possibly cracked version that they purchased with good faith that it was a legitimate, albeit possibly discounted, copy.
The actions of Microsoft in these cases show that they are trying to improve their image with the end users by persuing the business that deceived them while simultaneously offering said end user a discounted or complimentary legitimate copy to help resolve the situation. Furthermore these actions are also considered to be defence of copyright so that they do not lose that copyright.
You shouldn't have to code for a specific number of cores so long as your code is written with parallelization in mind. PC games will most likely be written in a manner that creates as many discrete processes as makes sense for the game. If you were to write a game that had, let's say, five discrete processes, the system should be able to schedule them as 2/3 or 1/4 on a dual core and 2/1/1/1 on a quad core. Considering that modern chips are very good at context switching, there wouldn't be that great of a penalty for running a multi-process game on a single core system compared to a game coded to run in a single process.
I know it sounds pretty amazing.
He was probably thinking of a cake of the 1.6TB discs that they're hoping to have out by 2010.
I'd just like to chime in with agreement here.
What you get from a good CS education is very different from a RHSE or MCSE certificate.
The most important thing that you learn as a CS major is not a particular language or architecture. It's not Calculus or DiffEq. Nor is it compiler or algorithm theory. The most important thing for you to accomplish as a CS major is to really learn how to learn. All those other things are just tools to help you get there; although later many of them will serve as tools to help you practice your trade as well.
As for practical knowledge, you'll often find yourself learning more about how something works rather than how to use it. You may spend a couple weeks learning the TCP/IP protocol with no more than an "Oh, by the way" mention of how to tweak your network settings in Win / *nix. You may have months of lecture on how to build a compiler but your instructor, on the point of using a compiler, may only tell you to "play with the command line options on Visual C++ or gcc and test it with a few algorithms" so that you can see what effect they have on speed, executable size and memory footprint.
Also on the point of practical knowledge, if you don't know what Calculus is all about then you really need to take a good 4 quarter series on the topic. Once you have your Eureka! moment in there, you will begin to see math in an etirely new way. Be warned though, Calc has a reputation as being a filter to remove students who aren't really interested in learning. But those that stick through it until the end will come out with the realization that if you find yourself looking at both sides of a problem then you aren't thinking in enough dimensions. On the practical side you will learn ways to manipulate deadly complicated Trig and Algebra equations until you arive at somthing that is both elegantly precise and short. We wouldn't have 3D anything on computers without either a little bit of Calculus or much bigger rendering farms.
For those that want to program with as little school as possible I'll offer a Crash Course Essentials list for you to work off of. Take the Calculus series, an intro to engineering class, intro to C ( to learn procedural programming), intro to Java ( to learn OOP) and a management course or two. I recommend the management courses because, quite honestly, with them you will get a much larger salary than without. There is a definate place in this world for people that have a basic understanding of technology and a strong grasp of managing teams. Also I recommended management because, frankly, if you cannot sit through 4-6 years of algorithms, processor theory and data structures then you'll be better off working your way up the ladder after you get tired of being a code monkey rather than going off to some commune in Utah to rediscover yourself when you're in your 30's.
What I would like to see is a way to 2 mice, 2 keyboards and 2 monitors to the same system to allow 2 different people to log in to the same machine with their own desktops. This could be useful in situations where you have multiple terminals sitting right next to each other since you would only have to purchase and maintain one system per two terminals. If you consider that most retail video cards support two independant displays and dual core processors are hitting the mainstream, the hardware is more than ready to cope with the demand but the software still has that annoying assumption that only one user can log on locally while all other sessions must log in over the network.
Think about public libraries or school computer labs where the disks are restored to a pristine state every night and nobody should be running any programs that are demanding enough to block another user. I could see this as being a viable alternative to the use of thin clients in the right situations.
Don't forget slight differences in muzzle velocities from one bullet to the next. Not too big of a problem if your working within human+scope line of sight, but it becomes significant if you're trying to lob a couple ounce slug over obstacles toward your target. It would be best to use a small spread if you want to be sure of hitting your target or find another method if you can't have collateral damage.