Not really, it's a case of considering the product in question.
In this case the US government has probably made the decision because money is tight and right now the upfront cost is more important than the longer term cost so sure they may have saved a bit in the long run from doing it in house but right now the US economy doesn't have the luxury of stumping cash up front for a longer term saving- the US is desperate for cash right now. It's also likely that there is a belief in US government that the loss of skills wont be too big a deal because the US has a growing commercial space market. It's not therefore as if their decision is without merit, but if the US wasn't just recovering from a financial crisis then it would be better placed to stump up the higher initial cost for the longer term benefits.
For mundane manufacturing there's not really so much to be gained in terms of keeping it in house, particularly if the company which a product is being manufactured for gets the lion's share of the profits anyway- think Apple, sure the products are made in and imported from China, but most the money still goes to Apple in the US.
There is also of course situations where a country doesn't necessarily even have the skills or resources to create a product, again, in that case, importing is really the only option.
Another reason is speed- in the UK for example we still import some military kit from countries like Israel, but we do this because Israel is already producing the equipment and we need it for our front line soldiers now, whilst we could build a home grown industry to make it for us that takes time and again, more money upfront. Even when the industry is up and running it takes time to reach the same level of quality as is available from another country that has experience in the field- would you really want to delay say, new flak jackets for troops for a year so you can build a home grown industry, which even then might not be of equivalent quality in terms of saving lives as a foreign competitors offering?
So certainly there's nothing to suggest international trade should stop because of this, although there are considerations to be taken into account in cases like this- particularly these kind of cutting edge markets like defence and space as I pointed out above there might be good reason for buying it, it's just not necessarily optimal, and not necessarily the preferred option. It's not something you can realistically extrapolate to the entire global economy though.
The thing to bear in mind with this sort of calculation is the fact that when you pay overseas for such a thing then that's money straight out your economy, whilst if you in house then even if it costs a little more much of that will come back as income and corporate tax, as well as maintaining highly skilled engineers and perhaps in some sections of such a programme even fostering an export market for certain items which in itself leads to greater tax income.
It's a similar point with military contracts- many in the UK criticise the expense of the Eurofighter programme for example, but ultimately when you factor in tax returns from workers, and factor in the export market it's not a terribly unreasonably priced project overall with added benefits of maintaining skillsets and avoiding independence on too many outside factors. Certainly we'd be far worse off economically and politically here in the UK had we chosen to simply buy in say the French Rafale, or a US or Russian alternative even if the initial price per plane was lower.
I'm paid to write software, not write software to sell.
It wouldn't matter if my employer decided to start passing on freely the software I write for them, they'd still need to pay me to write software in the first place.
The more software they can bring in for free from elsewhere also means the more advanced and cutting edge software I get to write.
Software doesn't have to be sold on for developers to get paid. For many companies the software their developers write for them pays for itself in increased staff productivity so there's no need to try and monetise the software directly.
"However, when I say "cross-platform" I actually don't mean "different versions of Windows and the XBox" (Microsoft's hijacked definition). I actually mean *cross platform*."
Right, so you mean some arbitrary definition that suits your world view then?
Sorry but just because two platforms are from the same manufacturer doesn't mean it's not cross platform. I completely agree if you don't want to target these platforms that DirectX is a non-starter, but my point is that if you're going to go through the hassle of supporting an OpenGL application across such varied implementation on platforms with such different input methods and so forth then you may as well chuck DX into the fold on Windows/360 anyway.
Obviously it all depends on context, but when with DirectX you get a unified API for doing full game development then it may well be sensible to just focus on Windows simply because it's the single largest platform anyway.
Personally I barely use DX or OpenGL nowadays, I'm mostly using XNA because it's such a quick and easy route to developing Windows, Xbox, and WP7- development of games is so quick with it the ratio of speed of development to income as a result of development blows fucking around with DX and OpenGL out the water for indies but different people have different situations.
What I use DirectX for (which is very little now the work is done) is tools development, because I only care if my tools work in Windows and it gives me the power I need then coupled with MFC it still seems one of the best options for creating tools, although even there I've written a couple of newer tools in XNA now it plays a bit better with the Windows Forms world.
What I use OpenGL for is Android, but that's been a pain because of the different ES implementations between Android versions, however now everything is moving to 2.0 it's a lot less of a worry.
Best tool for the job and all that, but if I'm honest I still find working with OpenGL a bit more of a chore than DirectX, but I guess that's really just personal preference, and I'm somewhat spoilt by the pleasure that is XNA.
"Perhaps you don't think China carries any weight at the UN? Pardon me while I laugh in your face."
You have a very warped few of the world if you think China represents and controls the views of every country in the world.
I agree that world governmental views towards censorship are a concern as even the US has engaged in censorship by removing domain names of sites it does not agree with (seized gambling sites, file sharing sites and so forth), but this is inherently a problem that exists in the US as well. It is not a problem that would arrive with the moving of powers to the UN, nor is it a problem that would go away. It is a problem however that would at least be held up and mitigated by competing world views- US censorship of gambling domains would not fly with countries such as China, Antigua, Britain and so forth who have business interests in that.
It is this lack of international consensus that acts as protection but of course you're assuming such a body even has internet censorship powers in the first place- why assume that, why wouldn't it be just like the ITU which just concentrates on ensuring compatibility between networks and assignment of addresses etc.?
No it's not, consensus requires a shared viewpoint that is identical or at least very very similar.
What every country says goes would be a cluster fuck of competing ideologies with no agreement between countries as to whether the things each country puts forward are acceptable or not but implementation of them regardless.
The point is Iran couldn't force Iranian ideals on, say, the US's internet because Europe would side with the US as would many other anti-Iranian states.
That's because sometimes the best way to encourage such countries into behaving better is to try and bring them into the fold.
It didn't work, they removed them, with other countries it's worked fine. The world isn't simple. What's the problem? What's the UN human rights council got to do with running international infrastructure?
Yes, I've seen many comments on Slashdot that letting the UN handle it would be countries like Iran could choose to have things censored, but that's complete and utter bollocks- how would Iran get consensus? The UN isn't based on what every country says goes, it's based on international consensus. There are also often attempts to discredit the UN's ability to handle this sort of thing by pointing to issues with the security council and so forth too.
But the problem is, that's also a load of complete and utter bollocks. The fact is that the UN already runs important international infrastructure just fine, so fine that it doesn't even break the news because it does it so well and so transparently most people aren't even aware. The UN has bodies which handle international telephony, international maritime standards, international airline standards, and international postage standards. It does this so that different countries systems can interoperate just fine, whatever the UNSC does is completely irrelevant as these bodies are run by completely different people in completely different places. It makes sense to add ICANN to this set off bodies which the UN already handles so well because the UN's track record of handling such things is thus far excellent, whilst the US' record with the internet is becoming ever worse- from small town US Judges ordering foreign company's domain names be seized through to government backed seizure of domain names, the US just isn't a trustworthy overseer of the internet anymore.
"Otherwise, you are better off developing in OpenGL, where you can target PCs, PS3, iPhone, iPad, Mac OS X, WebGL, industrial Unix (not all 3D apps are games, dontchaknow?). The only thing you can't do much with is the Xbox (technically possible, but deliberately closed by Microsoft)."
This would be true if it weren't for the fact that OpenGL wasn't so painfully fragmented that, well, it's not true.
Between OpenGL Core profile, OpenGL Compatibility profile, ES 1.x, ES 2.x, Sony and Nintendo's bastardised implementations and all coupled with the fact very useful features often spend too long as extensions all coupled with inconsistency in implementation across hardware means that generally writing OpenGL that spans more than a couple of platforms is no harder than writing DX that spans a couple of platforms.
I quite like OpenGL, but it's cross platform nature is something that's been repeatedly gang raped into near non-existence over the years so isn't really a valid argument for OpenGL in the first place. You're going to have to abstract a lot of things away if you want to support a reasonable number of platforms regardless, and creating a DX implementation for those abstraction layers is no more difficult than making OpenGL play happily across them.
"I have not tried net beans for C++, mostly because Eclipse CDT has lead me to believe that java IDE's shoe-horned to C++ IDE's don't seem to work that well. I could give Code::Blocks another shot as well."
It's a shame, I too was massively dissapointed with Eclipse having long been a Visual Studio user (Borland C++ before that!). Having heard about Eclipse being the open source answer for Java, C++, PHP etc. to Visual Studio it seemed the obvious choice. Eclipse just isn't even in the same class as Visual Studio, Eclipse is slow, buggy, it's plugin system seems to regularly fuck up meaning if you really want to use multiple languages you're best off having multiple Eclipse installs. I don't like the workspace concept either, it's just stupid.
I figured I'd give NetBeans ago, not expecting much because well, Eclipse is the one that got all the hype, and honestly I was pleasantly suprised. I actually really really like NetBeans, it's still not quite Visual Studio but it's much better than Eclipse, definitely gets a big thumbs up from me.
I'll admit I haven't tried IntelliJ, I hear it get consistently positive nods from those who have used it. I hope to give it a go some day.
Yeah except in Europe there's on average a period each year where the whole continent sees next to no wind.
Pray tell what you expect us to do in that period? just go without electricity for a couple of weeks and then try and get the whole European grid up and running agan when it starts blowing again?
Not to mention the low output of wind, plastering the entire UK in wind farms would only net us 20% of our power.
So no, wind is not a solution. As we don't get particularly high levels of solar energy compared to some parts of the world it's not really an option either.
Tidal is slightly more hopeful but means wrecking various ocean ecosystems which in itself is a bad idea.
People do speak out whilst in office but then they quickly find themselves out of office. I suspect many figure it's better to keep their mouths shut and influence things the best they can in office, than be kicked out to be replaced by a puppet.
I don't know US politics terribly well but isn't this basically what happened with Colin Powell when he realised he'd been duped over the WMD claim and started to speak out about it? He was quickly replaced with a more subservient puppet - Condoleeza Rice.
"Whatever Microsoft does, my mind wanders off to Nintendo and what they might have up their sleeves."
Why? They rarely innovate.
Look at the gameboy, the original was a great innovation, followed by over a decade of lacklustre new iterations, they finally got to the DS, and now seem to be repeating what they did with the gameboy- lacklustre new versions.
I'm not sure the Wii is even any different- just another of Nintendo's infrequent innovations, with a lacklustre followup in recent years hence their plummeting sales.
"The trouble for Microsoft is that as soon as they develop a way of commanding FPS games that is on par with a mouse and a keyboard, their PC-Gaming business is soon cannibalized"
Judging by sales and player stats it would seem for most gamers that control pads are just fine. I know that's not a popular view on Slashdot but, it wont change the numbers. For most people the control pad doesn't seem to be the stumbling block PC gamers make out. I'm sure it'll be rationalised by the idea that console gamers are all misled and that kind of thing but those arguments are really pointless and irrelevant. The fact is console FPS games are the most popular choice and are continuing to grow in popularity at a rate that vastly outpaces PC FPS sales growth.
Regarding Kinect one point is that it could originally track per finger movements, but the final release had it's resolution halved so that it couldn't to bring down it's price. I imagine the next XBox will have this higher resolution version as cost of the technology drops, or perhaps higher resolution again from that. There's no reason such a system couldn't be coupled with a control pad to allow players to gesture friendly AI to go to certain points, perhaps even coupled with voice orders (something that was briefly dabbled with already in Endwar). There's no reason games like Guitar Hero (or whatever replaces it) can't be mixed with games like Dance Central and Lips to give the full music experience of singing, dancing, and instrument playing combined. I suspect it's this increased level of immersion that we'll see a movement towards where we don't simply use a single control interface like control pad, keyboard, mouse, but we use the things we would use to interact with in the real world- our limbs, our voice, our facial gestures and Kinect seems very well placed for that kind of technology.
Personally I'm platform agnostic, I'll go whereever I can have the most fun without care for platform fanboyism. I'm sure I'll be hated here for it, but for me right now that's the 360. Starcraft 2 pulled me away for a while, and I'll admit I had a go at some classic Command and Conquer, and also Generals this weekend but for the most part it's still the 360.
He's not the problem, your lack of understanding is.
Selection of existing gene variants is the process by which selection (natural or unnatural) can force greater prominence of certain traits.
Mutation is the method by which new traits can enter the gene pool, traits that arise through mutation can then be selected for for prominence.
It seems to be the mutation part that you are unaware of that is causing your failure to understand what is being said to you.
With these mechanisms you have what you need for new species and large diversity to arise. Your final paragraph seems to imply you still don't actually understand what evolution is. As always, feel free to read the perfectly good article here to get the basics:
Read the introduction and come back and explain to me what part of selecting for specific traits does not fall under this. If you are still struggling with the concept, then try the very definition of evolution from whichever dictionary you prefer:
There's already a term for all that, it's called emergence.
Evolution is merely one of many emergent processes, and I happen to agree that the real genius behind Darwin's discovery of natural selection was not merely that he had discovered how different species could arise, but that he had discovered something much bigger- a large scale rather spectacular real world example of emergence.
Whilst he didn't discover emergence himself, I believe the recognition of such a powerful example of emergence allowed for people to start questioning what other natural systems could be similar examples of emergence and I think it was an important catalyst in this respect.
We don't need to change the defintion of evolution, it's just fine as is. What we do need is greater teaching and awareness of emergence as a phenomenon as I sincerely believe it's one of the greatest ideas to get people thinking and to help them realise that there's no need to explain things away with god and so forth but that instead complex entities and occurances can arise from even simple components.
Thank you for acting as another example of the problem, you comment, yet you don't even understand the basic principles.
The concept of a species is not entirely distinctive, the line between when one species is classed as another species is fairly arbitrary.
Evolution is merely the process by which one species changes to some degree, so breeding where there is a change in genetic makeup absolutely is evolution. When we speak of evolution we normally speak about natural selection which is the emergent process by which nature selects for certain traits over others, it is merely one way in which something can evolve. In my case I was using unnatural selection- I was forcing evolutionary change by selecting for specific traits- germination rate, flower colour. Over time this can lead to gene variants dissapearing altogether- for example, in my case, with the flower colours it's possible that I can select out the gene variants for other flower colours altogether. If I'm doing this with say cacti, then I can also select for plants that have longer spines rather than shorter spines too, I can select for those that survive the cold better by keeping them in temperatures that are borderline for survival. If I have a random mutation, such as crested growth I can select for that too so that fundamentally I will end up with a plant of completely different characteristics, I will end up with a plant that would, based on it's new genetic structure, be classified as a distinct species in the wild.
I'm amazed someone on Slashdot would struggle with this understanding that selective breeding is very much a demonstrable way of proving some of the fundamental mechanisms of evolution precisely because you are evolving a species by changing it's traits, it's pretty simple high school stuff. You must be either very young, or a high school dropout to not understand these basic principles.
Your argument is precisely what TFA is talking about, you don't provide any evidence that evolution isn't real, instead you say that it might not be by asserting that someone has seen no evidence for it, when in reality what you're actually saying is "How do you know evolution is real? I'm too lazy to research it myself, so why should I believe you have?"
Well here's a shock for you, I have seen evidence for it, I can even replicate it in my greenhouse. I can take a set of plants and sow seeds from them, say 10 out of 1000 seeds germinate in the first 5 days, if I take these 10 seedlings and grow them on to produce seeds themselves cross pollinating between each other I can get a higher proportion within 10 days from those seeds- maybe 50 in 10 days, if I repeat this then over just a few generations I can get high germination rates within 10 days- I can personally select for certain characteristics.
Similarly in a species of plant with multiple flower colours if I continuously cross pollinate plants with the same colour flowers I can select for a certain colour creating a population where pretty much only this colour ever comes through when the plant flowers. In nature this may occur where there is an abundance of a pollinator that is attracted to certain coloured flowers, meaning that colour is selected for and thrives more than plants with other coloured flowers.
There are plenty of easily reproducible (albeit sometimes time consuming) examples like this where you can force selection, and it's not hard to see how your artificially forced selection might come about naturally in the wild. If you're really interested, it's not even hard to go and find some examples in the wild.
You aren't calling anyone out, you're illustrating the problem precisely, you're demonstrating that rather than use science to prove your point you'd rather insist that your viewpoint is valid, even though you have not an ounce of evidence to back your viewpoint. Your method is entirely anti-science, and it is based on nothing more than pure laziness. Yes there's little we can prove without a doubt but you have to make your choices on the balance of evidence, yet people like you wont even look at the evidence, you'll just claim your opinion holds equal merit when it simply does not because you have not done the groundwork to warrant equal treatment for your viewpoint.
This is what fact free science is, you speculate and question but you do not add to the discussion, you do not provide evidence counter to the viewpoint you disagree with. This is the kind of idiocy that we need to wipe out, if you're going to imply someone might be wrong, provide some degree of evidence beyond your simple preference that it is wrong to back up that point, and most importantly, be willing to accept that YOU might be wrong. If you have a hunch that something is wrong and can't prove it then state that, but do not under any circumstances claim you are definitely right when you don't have the balance of evidence to back up your assertion, else if you do that you are simply put, a fucking idiot.
There are companies I'd like to swear off but do struggle to, I'd like to ignore the MPAA companies but sometimes there's just a film I want to see or my friends invite me to see one so I do.
Companies like Apple can do wrong and people will still buy because they enjoy their products too much to ignore them. But Sony, well, it's not hard to ignore them. I've not bought a Sony product in over a decade, I don't really miss anything. Sony TV's used to be the thing to buy but they really don't seem great now, I much prefer TVs from manufacturers like Samsung and seeing them all stood together in the TV section of an electrical retailer doesn't make the choice hard.
Sony simply just do not release quality enough products to get away with their arrogant anti-consumer stance like other companies such can. They do nothing that has consumers wanting to come back for more no matter how hard they beat them. Even PS3 fanboys, perhaps Sony's most rabid followers seem to be a bit of a dying breed nowadays with a clear decline in numbers.
Of course there is no overseer, the only thing that comes close is the people, the average joe in the street, the people who, en masse, make up most of the world and can overthrow leaders democratically or otherwise.
That's precisely who he did get the information to and the assertion that his actions changed nothing is completely wrong, whilst far from the only reason it was part the reason in the revolts in Tunisia, in Egypt, in Lybia.
He did not fail, because even on the small scale he exposed the fact that US diplomats were being asked to spy illegally in international territory- the UN, grossly breaching international laws, and even if nothing was done to censure the US, the UN at least is now aware of the problem and can better block it.
I get it you're a patriot, you love your country, you hate Manning, that's fine, but in the world you're a minority, it doesn't really matter what you try and assert, the fact is that Manning really did make a difference and sure the scale of that difference is debateable, from very small, to very large, but I have respect for a person who gave his freedom to make that difference, however small. At the end of the day he's done far more and shown far more courage than you have, and you saying he hasn't simply will not change that fact.
Yes, because corruption and breach of international law was obviously endemic and seen as acceptable throughout the entire US government past and present.
When that's the case, the only option is to release to the world, as it is then only the world that can hold a country with such a thoroughly corrupt government to account.
But it was even better than that, the cables even exposed corruption in other governments at the same time, so releasing them had the effect of exposing corrupt governments across the globe so that all their actions were brought into question.
Who is this mystical overseer of the world you suggest he should release to who has the power to correct things on a global scale?
"1. "Terrorist" is an extremely hard word to define, because almost everything that people generally considered terrorists do, governments also do. For instance, the US government has blown up apartment buildings in Yemen to try to influence Yemeni policy. All too often, "terrorist", like "communist" 50 years ago, just means "some guy a government doesn't like"."
Well it's not, not at all. A terrorist is simply someone who uses terror to try and influence politics.
The fact that even governments use terrorist tactics doesn't muddy the waters with respect to the definition, it just means that these governments are engaging in terrorism and are hence themselves acting as terrorists. Confusion only exists when people suggest someone isn't a terrorist simply because they agree with the terrorist's cause, but that's their problem and not a difficulty in defining the term, the term is well defined, it's just abused.
If you want to know whether someone is a terrorist or not simply look to see if they have used terror tactics to push a political agenda, it really is that simple and being a member of government doesn't free you from the definition at all as much as governments guilty of taking part in terrorism would like that to be the case.
"2. Known terrorists can in fact make peace. The IRA were terrorists, yet they made peace with the UK. The ANC were at times terrorists, but Nelson Mandela made peace with the South African government."
Well of course known terrorists can make peace, if they achieve their political goals from terrorism and are content with having achieved that then they have no more reason to continue using terror tactics. Some will then go on to make more demands and continue to act as terrorists indefinitely. The IRA fits the bill in this respect- they used terrorism to force concessions and when they felt enough concessions had been made they stopped terrorising (to a degree- some IRA members are still committing terrorist acts to this day).
The real debate isn't whether terrorists can allow for peace, it's whether they deserve to be rewarded for allowing for peace when the whole reason there wasn't peace in the first place was because of their actions. I would argue absolutely not, the type of people who should be rewarded for peace are those who achieve it in the face of aggressors whilst remaining as peaceful as reasonably possible themselves.
That's slanted by the US though, which along with Australia has always had a higher percentage of Apple computers in the install base than elsewhere.
In Europe in Asia the figure is much lower, and pulls the global average down to below 10%. Here in the UK I know of only one Mac user at home in our office of 160 people and I don't know anyone in my personal life that owns a Mac. This doesn't stop iPhones being popular, I know lots of people with them but Macs? Not so.
If I had to guess I'd bet the UK Mac install base is absolutely tiny- probably less than 5% in fact. These figures from last year show Apple was only at 6.8% across Europe:
What's interesting though is these stats are from pro-Apple's sites and based on browser visits, so are likely even inherently biased towards Apple systems too meaning the actual figure could well be a fair bit lower again.
Whilst Apple's iPod did well globally, and the iPhone has made good penetration into Europe, the US is very much an anomally in terms of Apple related statistics as their market penetration there is distinctly higher than almost everywhere else.
"when was the last time Iran invaded anyone? More than 100 years ago?"
All the time unless you're one of those people truly gullable enough to fall for the fact that Iran breaks every rule in the book by carrying out war by proxy in funding, training, and equipping militants.who are willing to attack their enemies. Shaped charge IEDs busting through the bottom of M1 Abrams in Iraq? A fine Iranian export. Flat suicide vests that can't be spotted by visual inspection and don't need hiding under suspiciously large clothing? another fine Iranian export. Iran and Syria combined have basically completely taken over Lebanon with their puppet Hezbollah. Iran is very much involved in invasions- it just does them very differently and wont admit to it.
Yes yes, I know Israel's mossad also carries out covert operations, but these are done to target specific entities- buildings or people, whilst Iran's covert action is indiscriminate - it's entirely about destabilisation and imposition of Iranian friendly power bases.
This is precisely why Iran can't be allowed to have nuclear weapons- for all Israel's faults it has shown itself to be responsible with nuclear weapons- if it's going to use a weapon, or go to war, it warns people beforehand, and actually outright goes to war. With Iran you don't have that, you simply don't know when or who they'd hand nuclear materials or weapons over to, and for use against whom.
I don't really like Israel much either nowadays if I'm honest, because the PA is showing itself to be a bit more reasonable now, whilst Israel isn't and it's populace have moved their government further to the right, and Israel's use of British, Australian passports etc. for a Mossad hit was a kick in the face to it's allies- you just don't do that. But pretending Iran isn't an aggressor and can be trusted with nukes no less than Israel? That's just fucking stupid.
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Not really, it's a case of considering the product in question.
In this case the US government has probably made the decision because money is tight and right now the upfront cost is more important than the longer term cost so sure they may have saved a bit in the long run from doing it in house but right now the US economy doesn't have the luxury of stumping cash up front for a longer term saving- the US is desperate for cash right now. It's also likely that there is a belief in US government that the loss of skills wont be too big a deal because the US has a growing commercial space market. It's not therefore as if their decision is without merit, but if the US wasn't just recovering from a financial crisis then it would be better placed to stump up the higher initial cost for the longer term benefits.
For mundane manufacturing there's not really so much to be gained in terms of keeping it in house, particularly if the company which a product is being manufactured for gets the lion's share of the profits anyway- think Apple, sure the products are made in and imported from China, but most the money still goes to Apple in the US.
There is also of course situations where a country doesn't necessarily even have the skills or resources to create a product, again, in that case, importing is really the only option.
Another reason is speed- in the UK for example we still import some military kit from countries like Israel, but we do this because Israel is already producing the equipment and we need it for our front line soldiers now, whilst we could build a home grown industry to make it for us that takes time and again, more money upfront. Even when the industry is up and running it takes time to reach the same level of quality as is available from another country that has experience in the field- would you really want to delay say, new flak jackets for troops for a year so you can build a home grown industry, which even then might not be of equivalent quality in terms of saving lives as a foreign competitors offering?
So certainly there's nothing to suggest international trade should stop because of this, although there are considerations to be taken into account in cases like this- particularly these kind of cutting edge markets like defence and space as I pointed out above there might be good reason for buying it, it's just not necessarily optimal, and not necessarily the preferred option. It's not something you can realistically extrapolate to the entire global economy though.
Well, to be fair even EA released Create, which was something different.
The thing to bear in mind with this sort of calculation is the fact that when you pay overseas for such a thing then that's money straight out your economy, whilst if you in house then even if it costs a little more much of that will come back as income and corporate tax, as well as maintaining highly skilled engineers and perhaps in some sections of such a programme even fostering an export market for certain items which in itself leads to greater tax income.
It's a similar point with military contracts- many in the UK criticise the expense of the Eurofighter programme for example, but ultimately when you factor in tax returns from workers, and factor in the export market it's not a terribly unreasonably priced project overall with added benefits of maintaining skillsets and avoiding independence on too many outside factors. Certainly we'd be far worse off economically and politically here in the UK had we chosen to simply buy in say the French Rafale, or a US or Russian alternative even if the initial price per plane was lower.
I'm paid to write software, not write software to sell.
It wouldn't matter if my employer decided to start passing on freely the software I write for them, they'd still need to pay me to write software in the first place.
The more software they can bring in for free from elsewhere also means the more advanced and cutting edge software I get to write.
Software doesn't have to be sold on for developers to get paid. For many companies the software their developers write for them pays for itself in increased staff productivity so there's no need to try and monetise the software directly.
"However, when I say "cross-platform" I actually don't mean "different versions of Windows and the XBox" (Microsoft's hijacked definition). I actually mean *cross platform*."
Right, so you mean some arbitrary definition that suits your world view then?
Sorry but just because two platforms are from the same manufacturer doesn't mean it's not cross platform. I completely agree if you don't want to target these platforms that DirectX is a non-starter, but my point is that if you're going to go through the hassle of supporting an OpenGL application across such varied implementation on platforms with such different input methods and so forth then you may as well chuck DX into the fold on Windows/360 anyway.
Obviously it all depends on context, but when with DirectX you get a unified API for doing full game development then it may well be sensible to just focus on Windows simply because it's the single largest platform anyway.
Personally I barely use DX or OpenGL nowadays, I'm mostly using XNA because it's such a quick and easy route to developing Windows, Xbox, and WP7- development of games is so quick with it the ratio of speed of development to income as a result of development blows fucking around with DX and OpenGL out the water for indies but different people have different situations.
What I use DirectX for (which is very little now the work is done) is tools development, because I only care if my tools work in Windows and it gives me the power I need then coupled with MFC it still seems one of the best options for creating tools, although even there I've written a couple of newer tools in XNA now it plays a bit better with the Windows Forms world.
What I use OpenGL for is Android, but that's been a pain because of the different ES implementations between Android versions, however now everything is moving to 2.0 it's a lot less of a worry.
Best tool for the job and all that, but if I'm honest I still find working with OpenGL a bit more of a chore than DirectX, but I guess that's really just personal preference, and I'm somewhat spoilt by the pleasure that is XNA.
"Perhaps you don't think China carries any weight at the UN? Pardon me while I laugh in your face."
You have a very warped few of the world if you think China represents and controls the views of every country in the world.
I agree that world governmental views towards censorship are a concern as even the US has engaged in censorship by removing domain names of sites it does not agree with (seized gambling sites, file sharing sites and so forth), but this is inherently a problem that exists in the US as well. It is not a problem that would arrive with the moving of powers to the UN, nor is it a problem that would go away. It is a problem however that would at least be held up and mitigated by competing world views- US censorship of gambling domains would not fly with countries such as China, Antigua, Britain and so forth who have business interests in that.
It is this lack of international consensus that acts as protection but of course you're assuming such a body even has internet censorship powers in the first place- why assume that, why wouldn't it be just like the ITU which just concentrates on ensuring compatibility between networks and assignment of addresses etc.?
No it's not, consensus requires a shared viewpoint that is identical or at least very very similar.
What every country says goes would be a cluster fuck of competing ideologies with no agreement between countries as to whether the things each country puts forward are acceptable or not but implementation of them regardless.
The point is Iran couldn't force Iranian ideals on, say, the US's internet because Europe would side with the US as would many other anti-Iranian states.
That's because sometimes the best way to encourage such countries into behaving better is to try and bring them into the fold.
It didn't work, they removed them, with other countries it's worked fine. The world isn't simple. What's the problem? What's the UN human rights council got to do with running international infrastructure?
Yes, I've seen many comments on Slashdot that letting the UN handle it would be countries like Iran could choose to have things censored, but that's complete and utter bollocks- how would Iran get consensus? The UN isn't based on what every country says goes, it's based on international consensus. There are also often attempts to discredit the UN's ability to handle this sort of thing by pointing to issues with the security council and so forth too.
But the problem is, that's also a load of complete and utter bollocks. The fact is that the UN already runs important international infrastructure just fine, so fine that it doesn't even break the news because it does it so well and so transparently most people aren't even aware. The UN has bodies which handle international telephony, international maritime standards, international airline standards, and international postage standards. It does this so that different countries systems can interoperate just fine, whatever the UNSC does is completely irrelevant as these bodies are run by completely different people in completely different places. It makes sense to add ICANN to this set off bodies which the UN already handles so well because the UN's track record of handling such things is thus far excellent, whilst the US' record with the internet is becoming ever worse- from small town US Judges ordering foreign company's domain names be seized through to government backed seizure of domain names, the US just isn't a trustworthy overseer of the internet anymore.
"Otherwise, you are better off developing in OpenGL, where you can target PCs, PS3, iPhone, iPad, Mac OS X, WebGL, industrial Unix (not all 3D apps are games, dontchaknow?). The only thing you can't do much with is the Xbox (technically possible, but deliberately closed by Microsoft)."
This would be true if it weren't for the fact that OpenGL wasn't so painfully fragmented that, well, it's not true.
Between OpenGL Core profile, OpenGL Compatibility profile, ES 1.x, ES 2.x, Sony and Nintendo's bastardised implementations and all coupled with the fact very useful features often spend too long as extensions all coupled with inconsistency in implementation across hardware means that generally writing OpenGL that spans more than a couple of platforms is no harder than writing DX that spans a couple of platforms.
I quite like OpenGL, but it's cross platform nature is something that's been repeatedly gang raped into near non-existence over the years so isn't really a valid argument for OpenGL in the first place. You're going to have to abstract a lot of things away if you want to support a reasonable number of platforms regardless, and creating a DX implementation for those abstraction layers is no more difficult than making OpenGL play happily across them.
"I have not tried net beans for C++, mostly because Eclipse CDT has lead me to believe that java IDE's shoe-horned to C++ IDE's don't seem to work that well. I could give Code::Blocks another shot as well."
It's a shame, I too was massively dissapointed with Eclipse having long been a Visual Studio user (Borland C++ before that!). Having heard about Eclipse being the open source answer for Java, C++, PHP etc. to Visual Studio it seemed the obvious choice. Eclipse just isn't even in the same class as Visual Studio, Eclipse is slow, buggy, it's plugin system seems to regularly fuck up meaning if you really want to use multiple languages you're best off having multiple Eclipse installs. I don't like the workspace concept either, it's just stupid.
I figured I'd give NetBeans ago, not expecting much because well, Eclipse is the one that got all the hype, and honestly I was pleasantly suprised. I actually really really like NetBeans, it's still not quite Visual Studio but it's much better than Eclipse, definitely gets a big thumbs up from me.
I'll admit I haven't tried IntelliJ, I hear it get consistently positive nods from those who have used it. I hope to give it a go some day.
Yeah except in Europe there's on average a period each year where the whole continent sees next to no wind.
Pray tell what you expect us to do in that period? just go without electricity for a couple of weeks and then try and get the whole European grid up and running agan when it starts blowing again?
Not to mention the low output of wind, plastering the entire UK in wind farms would only net us 20% of our power.
So no, wind is not a solution. As we don't get particularly high levels of solar energy compared to some parts of the world it's not really an option either.
Tidal is slightly more hopeful but means wrecking various ocean ecosystems which in itself is a bad idea.
Really, nuclear is still the sensible option.
People do speak out whilst in office but then they quickly find themselves out of office. I suspect many figure it's better to keep their mouths shut and influence things the best they can in office, than be kicked out to be replaced by a puppet.
I don't know US politics terribly well but isn't this basically what happened with Colin Powell when he realised he'd been duped over the WMD claim and started to speak out about it? He was quickly replaced with a more subservient puppet - Condoleeza Rice.
"Whatever Microsoft does, my mind wanders off to Nintendo and what they might have up their sleeves."
Why? They rarely innovate.
Look at the gameboy, the original was a great innovation, followed by over a decade of lacklustre new iterations, they finally got to the DS, and now seem to be repeating what they did with the gameboy- lacklustre new versions.
I'm not sure the Wii is even any different- just another of Nintendo's infrequent innovations, with a lacklustre followup in recent years hence their plummeting sales.
"The trouble for Microsoft is that as soon as they develop a way of commanding FPS games that is on par with a mouse and a keyboard, their PC-Gaming business is soon cannibalized"
Judging by sales and player stats it would seem for most gamers that control pads are just fine. I know that's not a popular view on Slashdot but, it wont change the numbers. For most people the control pad doesn't seem to be the stumbling block PC gamers make out. I'm sure it'll be rationalised by the idea that console gamers are all misled and that kind of thing but those arguments are really pointless and irrelevant. The fact is console FPS games are the most popular choice and are continuing to grow in popularity at a rate that vastly outpaces PC FPS sales growth.
Regarding Kinect one point is that it could originally track per finger movements, but the final release had it's resolution halved so that it couldn't to bring down it's price. I imagine the next XBox will have this higher resolution version as cost of the technology drops, or perhaps higher resolution again from that. There's no reason such a system couldn't be coupled with a control pad to allow players to gesture friendly AI to go to certain points, perhaps even coupled with voice orders (something that was briefly dabbled with already in Endwar). There's no reason games like Guitar Hero (or whatever replaces it) can't be mixed with games like Dance Central and Lips to give the full music experience of singing, dancing, and instrument playing combined. I suspect it's this increased level of immersion that we'll see a movement towards where we don't simply use a single control interface like control pad, keyboard, mouse, but we use the things we would use to interact with in the real world- our limbs, our voice, our facial gestures and Kinect seems very well placed for that kind of technology.
Personally I'm platform agnostic, I'll go whereever I can have the most fun without care for platform fanboyism. I'm sure I'll be hated here for it, but for me right now that's the 360. Starcraft 2 pulled me away for a while, and I'll admit I had a go at some classic Command and Conquer, and also Generals this weekend but for the most part it's still the 360.
He's not the problem, your lack of understanding is.
Selection of existing gene variants is the process by which selection (natural or unnatural) can force greater prominence of certain traits.
Mutation is the method by which new traits can enter the gene pool, traits that arise through mutation can then be selected for for prominence.
It seems to be the mutation part that you are unaware of that is causing your failure to understand what is being said to you.
With these mechanisms you have what you need for new species and large diversity to arise. Your final paragraph seems to imply you still don't actually understand what evolution is. As always, feel free to read the perfectly good article here to get the basics:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution
Read the introduction and come back and explain to me what part of selecting for specific traits does not fall under this. If you are still struggling with the concept, then try the very definition of evolution from whichever dictionary you prefer:
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/evolution
You will find that you are completely wrong in both your paragraphs.
There's already a term for all that, it's called emergence.
Evolution is merely one of many emergent processes, and I happen to agree that the real genius behind Darwin's discovery of natural selection was not merely that he had discovered how different species could arise, but that he had discovered something much bigger- a large scale rather spectacular real world example of emergence.
Whilst he didn't discover emergence himself, I believe the recognition of such a powerful example of emergence allowed for people to start questioning what other natural systems could be similar examples of emergence and I think it was an important catalyst in this respect.
We don't need to change the defintion of evolution, it's just fine as is. What we do need is greater teaching and awareness of emergence as a phenomenon as I sincerely believe it's one of the greatest ideas to get people thinking and to help them realise that there's no need to explain things away with god and so forth but that instead complex entities and occurances can arise from even simple components.
Thank you for acting as another example of the problem, you comment, yet you don't even understand the basic principles.
The concept of a species is not entirely distinctive, the line between when one species is classed as another species is fairly arbitrary.
Evolution is merely the process by which one species changes to some degree, so breeding where there is a change in genetic makeup absolutely is evolution. When we speak of evolution we normally speak about natural selection which is the emergent process by which nature selects for certain traits over others, it is merely one way in which something can evolve. In my case I was using unnatural selection- I was forcing evolutionary change by selecting for specific traits- germination rate, flower colour. Over time this can lead to gene variants dissapearing altogether- for example, in my case, with the flower colours it's possible that I can select out the gene variants for other flower colours altogether. If I'm doing this with say cacti, then I can also select for plants that have longer spines rather than shorter spines too, I can select for those that survive the cold better by keeping them in temperatures that are borderline for survival. If I have a random mutation, such as crested growth I can select for that too so that fundamentally I will end up with a plant of completely different characteristics, I will end up with a plant that would, based on it's new genetic structure, be classified as a distinct species in the wild.
I'm amazed someone on Slashdot would struggle with this understanding that selective breeding is very much a demonstrable way of proving some of the fundamental mechanisms of evolution precisely because you are evolving a species by changing it's traits, it's pretty simple high school stuff. You must be either very young, or a high school dropout to not understand these basic principles.
Your argument is precisely what TFA is talking about, you don't provide any evidence that evolution isn't real, instead you say that it might not be by asserting that someone has seen no evidence for it, when in reality what you're actually saying is "How do you know evolution is real? I'm too lazy to research it myself, so why should I believe you have?"
Well here's a shock for you, I have seen evidence for it, I can even replicate it in my greenhouse. I can take a set of plants and sow seeds from them, say 10 out of 1000 seeds germinate in the first 5 days, if I take these 10 seedlings and grow them on to produce seeds themselves cross pollinating between each other I can get a higher proportion within 10 days from those seeds- maybe 50 in 10 days, if I repeat this then over just a few generations I can get high germination rates within 10 days- I can personally select for certain characteristics.
Similarly in a species of plant with multiple flower colours if I continuously cross pollinate plants with the same colour flowers I can select for a certain colour creating a population where pretty much only this colour ever comes through when the plant flowers. In nature this may occur where there is an abundance of a pollinator that is attracted to certain coloured flowers, meaning that colour is selected for and thrives more than plants with other coloured flowers.
There are plenty of easily reproducible (albeit sometimes time consuming) examples like this where you can force selection, and it's not hard to see how your artificially forced selection might come about naturally in the wild. If you're really interested, it's not even hard to go and find some examples in the wild.
You aren't calling anyone out, you're illustrating the problem precisely, you're demonstrating that rather than use science to prove your point you'd rather insist that your viewpoint is valid, even though you have not an ounce of evidence to back your viewpoint. Your method is entirely anti-science, and it is based on nothing more than pure laziness. Yes there's little we can prove without a doubt but you have to make your choices on the balance of evidence, yet people like you wont even look at the evidence, you'll just claim your opinion holds equal merit when it simply does not because you have not done the groundwork to warrant equal treatment for your viewpoint.
This is what fact free science is, you speculate and question but you do not add to the discussion, you do not provide evidence counter to the viewpoint you disagree with. This is the kind of idiocy that we need to wipe out, if you're going to imply someone might be wrong, provide some degree of evidence beyond your simple preference that it is wrong to back up that point, and most importantly, be willing to accept that YOU might be wrong. If you have a hunch that something is wrong and can't prove it then state that, but do not under any circumstances claim you are definitely right when you don't have the balance of evidence to back up your assertion, else if you do that you are simply put, a fucking idiot.
Well said.
There are companies I'd like to swear off but do struggle to, I'd like to ignore the MPAA companies but sometimes there's just a film I want to see or my friends invite me to see one so I do.
Companies like Apple can do wrong and people will still buy because they enjoy their products too much to ignore them. But Sony, well, it's not hard to ignore them. I've not bought a Sony product in over a decade, I don't really miss anything. Sony TV's used to be the thing to buy but they really don't seem great now, I much prefer TVs from manufacturers like Samsung and seeing them all stood together in the TV section of an electrical retailer doesn't make the choice hard.
Sony simply just do not release quality enough products to get away with their arrogant anti-consumer stance like other companies such can. They do nothing that has consumers wanting to come back for more no matter how hard they beat them. Even PS3 fanboys, perhaps Sony's most rabid followers seem to be a bit of a dying breed nowadays with a clear decline in numbers.
Should just DHL it to the Iranian embassy or even overseas to China or something.
Of course there is no overseer, the only thing that comes close is the people, the average joe in the street, the people who, en masse, make up most of the world and can overthrow leaders democratically or otherwise.
That's precisely who he did get the information to and the assertion that his actions changed nothing is completely wrong, whilst far from the only reason it was part the reason in the revolts in Tunisia, in Egypt, in Lybia.
He did not fail, because even on the small scale he exposed the fact that US diplomats were being asked to spy illegally in international territory- the UN, grossly breaching international laws, and even if nothing was done to censure the US, the UN at least is now aware of the problem and can better block it.
I get it you're a patriot, you love your country, you hate Manning, that's fine, but in the world you're a minority, it doesn't really matter what you try and assert, the fact is that Manning really did make a difference and sure the scale of that difference is debateable, from very small, to very large, but I have respect for a person who gave his freedom to make that difference, however small. At the end of the day he's done far more and shown far more courage than you have, and you saying he hasn't simply will not change that fact.
Yes, because corruption and breach of international law was obviously endemic and seen as acceptable throughout the entire US government past and present.
When that's the case, the only option is to release to the world, as it is then only the world that can hold a country with such a thoroughly corrupt government to account.
But it was even better than that, the cables even exposed corruption in other governments at the same time, so releasing them had the effect of exposing corrupt governments across the globe so that all their actions were brought into question.
Who is this mystical overseer of the world you suggest he should release to who has the power to correct things on a global scale?
"1. "Terrorist" is an extremely hard word to define, because almost everything that people generally considered terrorists do, governments also do. For instance, the US government has blown up apartment buildings in Yemen to try to influence Yemeni policy. All too often, "terrorist", like "communist" 50 years ago, just means "some guy a government doesn't like"."
Well it's not, not at all. A terrorist is simply someone who uses terror to try and influence politics.
The fact that even governments use terrorist tactics doesn't muddy the waters with respect to the definition, it just means that these governments are engaging in terrorism and are hence themselves acting as terrorists. Confusion only exists when people suggest someone isn't a terrorist simply because they agree with the terrorist's cause, but that's their problem and not a difficulty in defining the term, the term is well defined, it's just abused.
If you want to know whether someone is a terrorist or not simply look to see if they have used terror tactics to push a political agenda, it really is that simple and being a member of government doesn't free you from the definition at all as much as governments guilty of taking part in terrorism would like that to be the case.
"2. Known terrorists can in fact make peace. The IRA were terrorists, yet they made peace with the UK. The ANC were at times terrorists, but Nelson Mandela made peace with the South African government."
Well of course known terrorists can make peace, if they achieve their political goals from terrorism and are content with having achieved that then they have no more reason to continue using terror tactics. Some will then go on to make more demands and continue to act as terrorists indefinitely. The IRA fits the bill in this respect- they used terrorism to force concessions and when they felt enough concessions had been made they stopped terrorising (to a degree- some IRA members are still committing terrorist acts to this day).
The real debate isn't whether terrorists can allow for peace, it's whether they deserve to be rewarded for allowing for peace when the whole reason there wasn't peace in the first place was because of their actions. I would argue absolutely not, the type of people who should be rewarded for peace are those who achieve it in the face of aggressors whilst remaining as peaceful as reasonably possible themselves.
That's slanted by the US though, which along with Australia has always had a higher percentage of Apple computers in the install base than elsewhere.
In Europe in Asia the figure is much lower, and pulls the global average down to below 10%. Here in the UK I know of only one Mac user at home in our office of 160 people and I don't know anyone in my personal life that owns a Mac. This doesn't stop iPhones being popular, I know lots of people with them but Macs? Not so.
If I had to guess I'd bet the UK Mac install base is absolutely tiny- probably less than 5% in fact. These figures from last year show Apple was only at 6.8% across Europe:
http://www.tuaw.com/2010/05/27/apple-market-share-climbs-to-6-8-in-europe/
What's interesting though is these stats are from pro-Apple's sites and based on browser visits, so are likely even inherently biased towards Apple systems too meaning the actual figure could well be a fair bit lower again.
Whilst Apple's iPod did well globally, and the iPhone has made good penetration into Europe, the US is very much an anomally in terms of Apple related statistics as their market penetration there is distinctly higher than almost everywhere else.
"when was the last time Iran invaded anyone? More than 100 years ago?"
All the time unless you're one of those people truly gullable enough to fall for the fact that Iran breaks every rule in the book by carrying out war by proxy in funding, training, and equipping militants.who are willing to attack their enemies. Shaped charge IEDs busting through the bottom of M1 Abrams in Iraq? A fine Iranian export. Flat suicide vests that can't be spotted by visual inspection and don't need hiding under suspiciously large clothing? another fine Iranian export. Iran and Syria combined have basically completely taken over Lebanon with their puppet Hezbollah. Iran is very much involved in invasions- it just does them very differently and wont admit to it.
Yes yes, I know Israel's mossad also carries out covert operations, but these are done to target specific entities- buildings or people, whilst Iran's covert action is indiscriminate - it's entirely about destabilisation and imposition of Iranian friendly power bases.
This is precisely why Iran can't be allowed to have nuclear weapons- for all Israel's faults it has shown itself to be responsible with nuclear weapons- if it's going to use a weapon, or go to war, it warns people beforehand, and actually outright goes to war. With Iran you don't have that, you simply don't know when or who they'd hand nuclear materials or weapons over to, and for use against whom.
I don't really like Israel much either nowadays if I'm honest, because the PA is showing itself to be a bit more reasonable now, whilst Israel isn't and it's populace have moved their government further to the right, and Israel's use of British, Australian passports etc. for a Mossad hit was a kick in the face to it's allies- you just don't do that. But pretending Iran isn't an aggressor and can be trusted with nukes no less than Israel? That's just fucking stupid.