If you can't find life, put it there! Seriously though, if the algae could live and inhabit the place, it would be a step toward proving terra-forming even it it did "pollute" the thing. It's not like there's a magic bullet to prevent pollution in the future anyway. Your bound to get cross planetary pollution if/when we get to mass travel in space.
Yup, I recently had email conversations with a friend who is doing just that. With Bush screwing up, he's classified ALL Republicans in a category he likes to call "Republican't" and feels that there is absolutely no way any Republican is sane. Not a single one. He's even gone so far as to proclaim that all past Democrats were setup by Republicans to take the fall for their mistakes. The only way I can sum up his failure is that he's allowing the Democratic party get away with murder because they are not Republican at this point. Anything they suggest is good in his eyes, and he's falling victim to misplaced aggression. (I'd even say brainwashing.)
I have always looked for ways to thread loops in my programs. I've been on the verge of writing a personal threadeach that works like a foreach loop and would send the functions in the block to new threads to process on individual elements of an object(array.) This of course doesn't work for every situation, and I have some things to figure out like a good way to "stall" the main thread so I don't spawn a bunch of threads that will finish processing after the main execution path has past their usefulness. I was mainly thinking of this for multiple file processing. Open 4-5 files, read into memory, parse and upload to a database or similar projects that can be parallelized. Lately though, I've been creating a file queue and assigning cores to functionality as they are needed in the queue or even as simple as stepping the queue in steps of the number of cores (itemCount mod processorCount) just to get some work done so the boss doesn't come down on me.
Anyway, loop parallelization is something I've been fiddling with for a little while now and I'd be very interested to read some of their ideas if you know of any links.
Though you really didn't need to go the route of name calling, I have thought about a similar pattern for a while. I'm no engineer, nor would I really want to be in this but I think you're suggesting is akin to instruction sets where each core is assigned to process a specific set of data. Sort of. I had always thought it would be like telling the CPU to calculate the square of a number and have it send that process to a dedicated squaring core. Of course, you'd have to identify specific re-used functions and design cores specifically to process such things. You want to target your processor to ray tracing? Create a set of cores to calculate ray casting functions. The bad part of this idea is that you can't change the function of the cores as your brain can probably adapt to different circumstances and you find yourself with a very specific function that needs to be replaced often as needs change.
I think the biggest issue is that these patterns you suggest from higher brain functions are merely 1s and 0s to the computer which looks not at patterns, but each bit individually. Maybe if we had 256-bit+ machines that could register multiple "words" to determine function per cycle and reroute the command, but as it is, we are struggling to register a few bytes per cycle.
(Sorry, this is a very "brain dump" post, and I don't feel like editing it... read at your own risk.)
I'm a Linux ideology fan, dislike Microsoft tactics/marketing, and consider myself an avid gamer. Hell, I even develop training games for a living for a company that is primarily Windows, and it's really hard to get my bosses to think outside the blue cloudy box with quad colored window flags on it. Anyway, I guess I would consider myself a pretty hardcore gamer, and I have to tell you. I've been there, and done that. Gaming for me is what's new. Linux is not. Linux is like the turtle. It might eventually win by taking the slow and steady, but right now the hair is much more entertaining to watch. I have slipped from my previous activities of buying the absolute latest hardware (mainly because I don't want to take out a mortgage to pay for the ever increasing cost of DirectX__ hardware being crammed down our throats. I buy hardware that works with Linux, everything from my nVidia 8800GT to the Areca RAID controller I use. But as far as gaming, CoH, OpenArena (yet another FPS) Diablo 2, and Doom 3 are all "old" games. Like I said, been there, done that. I'm always looking for the newest piece of software that enhances the experience. I once read an article on getting bored of games. The author pointed out that once you find the pattern, it's boring. Well, the patterns have been found. I have yet to find a game that can hold my interest more than a few weeks, let alone years. (The last of which was Everquest at 4 years, WoW had me for 45 days. CoH had me a few weeks until I hit level 14 with my Fire/Fire character and I was sick of the grind.) Lately, all the games coming out are pretty dull. They have no twist or difference. It's become a watered down "feature plug-in" fest (I'm pointing at you Vanguard!) and I'm having a harder time getting attached to games like I used to. They just aren't unique anymore. I will give credit where it's due. Dwarf Fortress for all it's downfalls does pique my interest at this time, but I more often than not get sick of the mix of ASCII art and BMP tile sets. I'd give my right foot for even an Isometric version.
Anyway, long story short, gaming is very much a bleeding edge hobby for me. Even if it's not the hardware, it's very important to keep the software fresh and new. To me at least. And I know I'm not alone. IMHO, the best "idea" for a Linux game that has tremendous replay would be like Oblivion, but about 30 times it's size with more dungeon variation, more quest lines, and more "sand box". Not everyone goes for RPGs, but if I could get lost in a world on Linux for a few years, I'd be tickled pink. I know it doesn't sound fresh, but if you had varied landscapes, maybe weather, vegetation changes, et al... I'd even agree to downloading content form the net as I adventure into new areas to keep it fresh. Snow capped mountain ranges to lava filled trenches and vast underground caverns. Unfortunately, many developers assume that Linux must equal open and now (even more) most developers would look at that game as an MMO (which I could care less about anymore... I just want a huge sandbox without skill balancing, grinds, and all the crap that comes with money as a motivator.)
Sorry for the brain dump, honestly. I'm going back to my dwarfs for now. Have fun with your games. I really hope you can enjoy them more than I did.
Isolationism has nothing to do with military power, at all. You can be an economic force in the world without having tanks to prove something. By your statement, having a military makes us social. The GP, I assume, is talking about our ever constant struggle to make the rest of the world play by our rules. How would you feel if China decided to "liberate" us from our improper ways and our monopolistic corporations?
You forgot to mention that he'd be honking his horn and calling you all kinds of racist names because you got in his way.
Honestly though there is all this talk about automated cruise control and driver-less vehicles, but nobody is going to get behind one until every single vehicle on the road is out of the control of humans. This is why I think Star Trek/Star Wars/Firefly/et al still have pilots. If/when we get to space, we'll have trajectory maps for every single flight pre-mapped by the computers in milliseconds by then. All you would need was someone to watch for flying debris (though, I'd argue that, by then, a computer could track better) and give it a destination.
I have a serious question if anyone is still reading this far down. (Sorry to tag to your post, but it seems most "on-topic" with what I'm asking.)
Isn't this considered regional pricing? If they sell it for $400 per copy in the US and only $200 in India (just examples) wouldn't that violate the regional pricing restriction for the Antitrust workings? Your gouging one market to give another market a break. If you offer Windows for $30 to one country, shouldn't you be required by law to sell it for $30 to every country (not including local taxes)? I hate to bring cars into it (as it seems to be a most hated analogy) but when you buy a BMW in the US you pay import taxes. Otherwise the car is a close relative price to what would be charged in another country. Right?
Again, if you take my stance and ask yourself one question when you buy anything, there shouldn't be a problem here: What will I do if [maker] goes out of business tomorrow?
If you don't ask yourself that question, it's your own damn fault. Especially if you run your business with it. I say let them go bankrupt. Maybe people would learn a lesson and control monopolies before they get to this point.
anything much more than that and it would bankrupt microsoft. They can't possibly refund all the copies
How should that be any concern of mine (the customer)? If they provided a faulty program, they should have to pay. I'm not going to pick and choose who can give me a refund on certain products. If you buy a faulty food, vacuum cleaner, car, etc. you have the legal right to get your money back within a reasonable time period. (at least in my state) It would be incentive for all these half baked programs hitting the market in "Beta mode" but labeled as release. Labeling it a beta is one thing, releasing it as a "release version" when it's clearly flawed (as noted in the internal conversations) is not.
That's alright, I work with designers on a daily basis and they define "Brand Loyalty." Be it a famous designer, a large company, a product with an "i" as it's first letter...
Not everyone is good at coding... I'd prefer quality over quantity any day. (Not saying the GP is bad... but you can't tell what the person does for a living by post/name alone...)
if Europeans aren't fighting for us, why should we fight for them?
I'm sorry, but that's pretty arrogant. I understand the notion, but you have to look at it this way. We are considered the evil war monger superpower now. That's not a good thing. If we were to take a step back, let the world work it's magic and help them instead of inhibiting them, we might actually make it off this planet and on to better things. The whole idea behind living a cooperative existence is to NOT go to war unless absolutely necessary. This is why it should take a paramount shift in the popular vote of Congress to go to war. This allows time for minor skirmishes all over the globe to play out... good or bad. If it gets bad. We are there to help. Like your neighbor stepping in and calling the police when your house is broken into. (Or are you the same type of person that assumes that your house value will not depreciate because your neighbor was broken into?)
There was a reason that everyone wanted to live in America in the past. It was a goal (of sorts) for many people to aspire to. Today? We are "stupid ignorant Americans with our tanks and bombs." The reason people want to live here now? The Feds will pay for your health care, education and Social Security. I'm sorry, but that's not the America I feel my ancestors bled for.
You know why we were able to bail them out? Because we didn't have our military spread to the four corners of the Earth trying to police the world. We were able to mobilize a fairly nimble economy into producing TONS of goods and support. All that is vanishing increasingly with more and more Socialist policies and our stretched budget.
Don't get me wrong. I support the idea of the Fair Tax. I'm strictly speaking of lobbyist power. If you can remove that, you'd alleviate most of this crap in the first place. Money should never be an influence in laws, though it almost always is.
I actually disagree here. I think Europeans have taken the high ground in this. The only reason we are in Iraq is oil. The President, intentionally, is a seat to make peace and forge trade agreements... not to make war. The only role the President plays in war is to lead the armies when Congress votes it necessary to go to war. Other than that, the President's job is to kiss as much ass as possible.
Slashdot Mirror
John Carmack == Commander Keen == id Software == Doom = Wolfenstein == Quake == ??
You've never heard of any of those? the guys you mention might not even be in gaming if it weren't for Carmack and John Romero.
If you can't find life, put it there! Seriously though, if the algae could live and inhabit the place, it would be a step toward proving terra-forming even it it did "pollute" the thing. It's not like there's a magic bullet to prevent pollution in the future anyway. Your bound to get cross planetary pollution if/when we get to mass travel in space.
Disco is NOT dead. Disco is LIFE!
Yup, I recently had email conversations with a friend who is doing just that. With Bush screwing up, he's classified ALL Republicans in a category he likes to call "Republican't" and feels that there is absolutely no way any Republican is sane. Not a single one. He's even gone so far as to proclaim that all past Democrats were setup by Republicans to take the fall for their mistakes. The only way I can sum up his failure is that he's allowing the Democratic party get away with murder because they are not Republican at this point. Anything they suggest is good in his eyes, and he's falling victim to misplaced aggression. (I'd even say brainwashing.)
Or maybe on underwater living environments. ;)
I have always looked for ways to thread loops in my programs. I've been on the verge of writing a personal threadeach that works like a foreach loop and would send the functions in the block to new threads to process on individual elements of an object(array.) This of course doesn't work for every situation, and I have some things to figure out like a good way to "stall" the main thread so I don't spawn a bunch of threads that will finish processing after the main execution path has past their usefulness. I was mainly thinking of this for multiple file processing. Open 4-5 files, read into memory, parse and upload to a database or similar projects that can be parallelized. Lately though, I've been creating a file queue and assigning cores to functionality as they are needed in the queue or even as simple as stepping the queue in steps of the number of cores (itemCount mod processorCount) just to get some work done so the boss doesn't come down on me.
Anyway, loop parallelization is something I've been fiddling with for a little while now and I'd be very interested to read some of their ideas if you know of any links.
Though you really didn't need to go the route of name calling, I have thought about a similar pattern for a while. I'm no engineer, nor would I really want to be in this but I think you're suggesting is akin to instruction sets where each core is assigned to process a specific set of data. Sort of. I had always thought it would be like telling the CPU to calculate the square of a number and have it send that process to a dedicated squaring core. Of course, you'd have to identify specific re-used functions and design cores specifically to process such things. You want to target your processor to ray tracing? Create a set of cores to calculate ray casting functions. The bad part of this idea is that you can't change the function of the cores as your brain can probably adapt to different circumstances and you find yourself with a very specific function that needs to be replaced often as needs change.
I think the biggest issue is that these patterns you suggest from higher brain functions are merely 1s and 0s to the computer which looks not at patterns, but each bit individually. Maybe if we had 256-bit+ machines that could register multiple "words" to determine function per cycle and reroute the command, but as it is, we are struggling to register a few bytes per cycle.
(Sorry, this is a very "brain dump" post, and I don't feel like editing it... read at your own risk.)
I'm a Linux ideology fan, dislike Microsoft tactics/marketing, and consider myself an avid gamer. Hell, I even develop training games for a living for a company that is primarily Windows, and it's really hard to get my bosses to think outside the blue cloudy box with quad colored window flags on it. Anyway, I guess I would consider myself a pretty hardcore gamer, and I have to tell you. I've been there, and done that. Gaming for me is what's new. Linux is not. Linux is like the turtle. It might eventually win by taking the slow and steady, but right now the hair is much more entertaining to watch. I have slipped from my previous activities of buying the absolute latest hardware (mainly because I don't want to take out a mortgage to pay for the ever increasing cost of DirectX__ hardware being crammed down our throats. I buy hardware that works with Linux, everything from my nVidia 8800GT to the Areca RAID controller I use. But as far as gaming, CoH, OpenArena (yet another FPS) Diablo 2, and Doom 3 are all "old" games. Like I said, been there, done that. I'm always looking for the newest piece of software that enhances the experience. I once read an article on getting bored of games. The author pointed out that once you find the pattern, it's boring. Well, the patterns have been found. I have yet to find a game that can hold my interest more than a few weeks, let alone years. (The last of which was Everquest at 4 years, WoW had me for 45 days. CoH had me a few weeks until I hit level 14 with my Fire/Fire character and I was sick of the grind.) Lately, all the games coming out are pretty dull. They have no twist or difference. It's become a watered down "feature plug-in" fest (I'm pointing at you Vanguard!) and I'm having a harder time getting attached to games like I used to. They just aren't unique anymore. I will give credit where it's due. Dwarf Fortress for all it's downfalls does pique my interest at this time, but I more often than not get sick of the mix of ASCII art and BMP tile sets. I'd give my right foot for even an Isometric version.
Anyway, long story short, gaming is very much a bleeding edge hobby for me. Even if it's not the hardware, it's very important to keep the software fresh and new. To me at least. And I know I'm not alone. IMHO, the best "idea" for a Linux game that has tremendous replay would be like Oblivion, but about 30 times it's size with more dungeon variation, more quest lines, and more "sand box". Not everyone goes for RPGs, but if I could get lost in a world on Linux for a few years, I'd be tickled pink. I know it doesn't sound fresh, but if you had varied landscapes, maybe weather, vegetation changes, et al... I'd even agree to downloading content form the net as I adventure into new areas to keep it fresh. Snow capped mountain ranges to lava filled trenches and vast underground caverns. Unfortunately, many developers assume that Linux must equal open and now (even more) most developers would look at that game as an MMO (which I could care less about anymore... I just want a huge sandbox without skill balancing, grinds, and all the crap that comes with money as a motivator.)
Sorry for the brain dump, honestly. I'm going back to my dwarfs for now. Have fun with your games. I really hope you can enjoy them more than I did.
Isolationism has nothing to do with military power, at all. You can be an economic force in the world without having tanks to prove something. By your statement, having a military makes us social. The GP, I assume, is talking about our ever constant struggle to make the rest of the world play by our rules. How would you feel if China decided to "liberate" us from our improper ways and our monopolistic corporations?
You forgot to mention that he'd be honking his horn and calling you all kinds of racist names because you got in his way.
Honestly though there is all this talk about automated cruise control and driver-less vehicles, but nobody is going to get behind one until every single vehicle on the road is out of the control of humans. This is why I think Star Trek/Star Wars/Firefly/et al still have pilots. If/when we get to space, we'll have trajectory maps for every single flight pre-mapped by the computers in milliseconds by then. All you would need was someone to watch for flying debris (though, I'd argue that, by then, a computer could track better) and give it a destination.
I have a serious question if anyone is still reading this far down. (Sorry to tag to your post, but it seems most "on-topic" with what I'm asking.)
Isn't this considered regional pricing? If they sell it for $400 per copy in the US and only $200 in India (just examples) wouldn't that violate the regional pricing restriction for the Antitrust workings? Your gouging one market to give another market a break. If you offer Windows for $30 to one country, shouldn't you be required by law to sell it for $30 to every country (not including local taxes)? I hate to bring cars into it (as it seems to be a most hated analogy) but when you buy a BMW in the US you pay import taxes. Otherwise the car is a close relative price to what would be charged in another country. Right?
Again, if you take my stance and ask yourself one question when you buy anything, there shouldn't be a problem here: What will I do if [maker] goes out of business tomorrow?
If you don't ask yourself that question, it's your own damn fault. Especially if you run your business with it. I say let them go bankrupt. Maybe people would learn a lesson and control monopolies before they get to this point.
How should that be any concern of mine (the customer)? If they provided a faulty program, they should have to pay. I'm not going to pick and choose who can give me a refund on certain products. If you buy a faulty food, vacuum cleaner, car, etc. you have the legal right to get your money back within a reasonable time period. (at least in my state) It would be incentive for all these half baked programs hitting the market in "Beta mode" but labeled as release. Labeling it a beta is one thing, releasing it as a "release version" when it's clearly flawed (as noted in the internal conversations) is not.
I'm pretty sure they can only shift right half the time.
Just curious, but would you feel better if they appended an element to the page to give you a little message saying you typed the URL wrong?
Well, you could always go with WOW or Comcast... oh, you mean your area doesn't have all three services?
Really? MSN Search is considered a friendly error message?
Sad, but true. Instead of telling you what reports they need, they want to manipulate the numbers/charts to make their department look better.
That's alright, I work with designers on a daily basis and they define "Brand Loyalty." Be it a famous designer, a large company, a product with an "i" as it's first letter...
Not everyone is good at coding... I'd prefer quality over quantity any day. (Not saying the GP is bad... but you can't tell what the person does for a living by post/name alone...)
I beg to differ. Everything I see in life is tinted yellow... aw...hold on a sec...one of these damn beer goggles is leaking.
I'm sorry, but that's pretty arrogant. I understand the notion, but you have to look at it this way. We are considered the evil war monger superpower now. That's not a good thing. If we were to take a step back, let the world work it's magic and help them instead of inhibiting them, we might actually make it off this planet and on to better things. The whole idea behind living a cooperative existence is to NOT go to war unless absolutely necessary. This is why it should take a paramount shift in the popular vote of Congress to go to war. This allows time for minor skirmishes all over the globe to play out... good or bad. If it gets bad. We are there to help. Like your neighbor stepping in and calling the police when your house is broken into. (Or are you the same type of person that assumes that your house value will not depreciate because your neighbor was broken into?)
There was a reason that everyone wanted to live in America in the past. It was a goal (of sorts) for many people to aspire to. Today? We are "stupid ignorant Americans with our tanks and bombs." The reason people want to live here now? The Feds will pay for your health care, education and Social Security. I'm sorry, but that's not the America I feel my ancestors bled for.
You know why we were able to bail them out? Because we didn't have our military spread to the four corners of the Earth trying to police the world. We were able to mobilize a fairly nimble economy into producing TONS of goods and support. All that is vanishing increasingly with more and more Socialist policies and our stretched budget.
Don't get me wrong. I support the idea of the Fair Tax. I'm strictly speaking of lobbyist power. If you can remove that, you'd alleviate most of this crap in the first place. Money should never be an influence in laws, though it almost always is.
I actually disagree here. I think Europeans have taken the high ground in this. The only reason we are in Iraq is oil. The President, intentionally, is a seat to make peace and forge trade agreements... not to make war. The only role the President plays in war is to lead the armies when Congress votes it necessary to go to war. Other than that, the President's job is to kiss as much ass as possible.