In fact far from being a dictator he introduced new legislation that actually gives the people the power to remove any official from office mid-term. That's not the kind of thing a dictator does. Didn't he also introduce legislation to pass laws by decree? That is the kind of thing a dictator does.
For me, the biggest problems with the sequels is that they brought back the main villian after destroying him in the first movie. How lazy and cliche is that?
I understand that the way to keep any kind of sanity when doing multithreading is to keep the communication between threads well defined and to use immutable objects. Basically what you are recommending is Erlang, but instead of the Actor model you are still using shared locks and an imperative language that doesn't even have a proper const (final is weak). The problem is you have to be religious in your design, the language doesn't help you, and you will eventually make a mistake that will be a pain in the ass to track down.
So I vehemently disagree with all the posts that say it isn't that hard, that we just need really smart/educated/careful programmers. There are other approaches to concurrency that are much better than threads and locks, and they should be pushed as the default way to do concurrency.
That's a really good point, one that I haven't seen mentioned before. Amdahl's law was limiting my enthusiasm for multicore, but I had a nagging feeling about it because it seemed that you could always make use of more computers for a big service operation like Google. It's good to know the theory of why this works! Too bad "Gustafson's law" isn't a memorable name:)
Wouldn't it be nice if everyone who didn't have firsthand experience just shut the hell up? No, because sometimes even second-hand information is better than no information. Other than that, I agree with your skepticism about "parallel" thinking.
it is, after all, a nice language with a GPLd IDE and compiler suite GPL Eiffel sucks if you aren't writing GPL apps. Even GPL'd Java has the Classpath exception so that you don't have to license your application under the GPL. There are too many good, free, unencumbered languages around to consider proprietary ones like Eiffel.
Proper multi-threaded programming in Java isn't easy but it isn't that hard either. Yeah right. Is it easy to make a threading mistake? Does the compiler warn you when you make a threading mistake? Do you get bugs that don't occur in testing, but occur in production under heavy load? Are the bugs easily reproducible? Is it easy to reason about code in the presence of threads? Is the Java library clear about what code is thread-safe and what isn't? Is your code?
I'm not sure where you get this idea. The folks I've met in the functional programming community were extremely helpful and friendly. Yeah, like calling people "too dumb" is friendly. I've seen this attitude over and over again. Here's a perfect example: http://www.defmacro.org/ramblings/concurrency.html
Note that the author springs the idea of Erlang and message passing concurrency on interview canditates, and gets all haughty when they don't immediately understand how it works. And yet, he says about himself:
"In the case I'm about to describe, the difference between me and the people I've interviewed was that I was fortunate enough to stumble upon the right resources supported by a reasonably persistent group of advocates."
So he would have been exactly like the people he's interviewing, but he spent a lot of effort and climbed the mountain. Yet he acts like a jerk when giving interviews and writing about them later. This attitude is very common. I understand it, it's human nature (as described by Paul Graham and "Blub"), but ultimately unhelpful and a turnoff. These "Blub" programmers aren't stupid. It's just hard to come to grips with a dramatically different way of doing things, after multiple years of C-style imperative programming.
In defense of the blogger, he actually has a much better article that describes his turmoils when trying to "get" Lisp and macros. In that article, he doesn't denigrate the target -- instead, he uses relevant examples: http://www.defmacro.org/ramblings/lisp.html/
By the way, the people on #haskell are friendly and helpful, but now and then some of the hard-core advocates exhibit the above behavior.
Are they really all that caricatured? Do you really believe they are less human than the Oblivion character? The problem with the Oblivion guy is that there's detail, but he looks like a stitched together corpse. The detail in Shrek 2 is blended together quite well. Everything fits. The hair and physics is important when the characters are moving so that they don't look like zombies or animated robots. The lighting on the skin is important, otherwise you get a mannequin look.
In my book, anything on the right of the valley, you would have to look at it closely to determine if it were a photograph or a CGI. Shrek's characters are clearly CGI.
That seems like an artificial line. Remember, this is a curve. I think it's clear the Oblivion guy is near the bottom of the curve, and something like cell-shading is to the left, and the humans in Shrek 2 managed to crawl out of the valley. If they were as good as photographs they'd be all the way to the right.
For that to be true the Shrek 2 models would have to look less human than the repulsive examples. I don't think that's true at all. Shrek 2 got the hair right and the sub-surface scattering for lighting the skin.
Some examples and how I'd rate them along the curve:
I think Shrek 2 was the first movie I saw that managed to get realistic humans that have gotten beyond the valley. It's kinda surprising to see this regression.
I think your attitude is honestly dishonest and understandable. I mean to say, I've been there and done that (watched TV shows from bit-torrent). I didn't really feel guilty about it at the time, though when I think about it I have to admit it was against the law and unethical.
What I find hypocritical is the Slashdotters who get all indignant when the content owners crack down on Joe Sixpack, and then get equally indignant when somebody like an essay checking service stores a copy of a student's work for free. I'm not saying you personally hold this position, but many Slashdotters do.
As for a business model that works in the real world, expect to see most of the revenue generated from product placement. Sucks, but there's no free lunch, and I can't fault the producers for making a buck.
I'd think getting paid and watching over your creation should be satisfaction enough. Besides that, there is room for in-house play. Eve should have learned their lesson after the first scandal. There just isn't room for insider involvement in a game that is all about alliances -- human nature being what it is.
Eve could disallow employees from playing, and the employees would learn to deal with it. As it is, they're getting tons of negative press. On the positive side, this is a good lesson for others in how not to manage this kind of situation.
Sounds like it would be a whole lot cleaner if Eve just stopped playing in the game altogether. They can observe the game, they can copy the game and playtest in a sandbox, they can read the forums, etc. Why do they need to cross the line and actually enter the game?
If Jim invents and patents a mouse trap, then Bob comes along, looks at Jim's mouse trap and improves on it, he is free to patent his new and improved mouse trap even if it cites Jim's mouse trap as a reference. So how do royalties in this case work? Does Bob have to pay Jim any royalties? Does a company using Bob's patent have to pay royalties to both Jim and Bob?
If the 'backlash' actually does hurt Novell, then it will serve as an example to all for-profit companies that using OSS is a bad business decision because it injects an element of social danger. Or maybe it will serve as an example that there are good ways and bad ways to work with open source. Supporting a Microsoft patent tax is not a good way.
Slashdot Mirror
For me, the biggest problems with the sequels is that they brought back the main villian after destroying him in the first movie. How lazy and cliche is that?
Thanks for your reply. Do you know if there is an open source version of FDR or similar tool? I looked but didn't find any.
I understand that the way to keep any kind of sanity when doing multithreading is to keep the communication between threads well defined and to use immutable objects. Basically what you are recommending is Erlang, but instead of the Actor model you are still using shared locks and an imperative language that doesn't even have a proper const (final is weak). The problem is you have to be religious in your design, the language doesn't help you, and you will eventually make a mistake that will be a pain in the ass to track down.
So I vehemently disagree with all the posts that say it isn't that hard, that we just need really smart/educated/careful programmers. There are other approaches to concurrency that are much better than threads and locks, and they should be pushed as the default way to do concurrency.
That's a really good point, one that I haven't seen mentioned before. Amdahl's law was limiting my enthusiasm for multicore, but I had a nagging feeling about it because it seemed that you could always make use of more computers for a big service operation like Google. It's good to know the theory of why this works! Too bad "Gustafson's law" isn't a memorable name :)
Capitals at the start of sentences make your message easier to read. Slashdot isn't a chat client.
Note that the author springs the idea of Erlang and message passing concurrency on interview canditates, and gets all haughty when they don't immediately understand how it works. And yet, he says about himself:
"In the case I'm about to describe, the difference between me and the people I've interviewed was that I was fortunate enough to stumble upon the right resources supported by a reasonably persistent group of advocates."
So he would have been exactly like the people he's interviewing, but he spent a lot of effort and climbed the mountain. Yet he acts like a jerk when giving interviews and writing about them later. This attitude is very common. I understand it, it's human nature (as described by Paul Graham and "Blub"), but ultimately unhelpful and a turnoff. These "Blub" programmers aren't stupid. It's just hard to come to grips with a dramatically different way of doing things, after multiple years of C-style imperative programming.
In defense of the blogger, he actually has a much better article that describes his turmoils when trying to "get" Lisp and macros. In that article, he doesn't denigrate the target -- instead, he uses relevant examples: http://www.defmacro.org/ramblings/lisp.html/
By the way, the people on #haskell are friendly and helpful, but now and then some of the hard-core advocates exhibit the above behavior.
I glanced at Occam recently. One thing that stood out was the introduction of pi calculus. Do you use pi calculus in addition to CSP?
Here's some more Shrek 2 pictures.
- Prince Charming
- Queen and King
- Fairy God Mother and Prince Charming
- Bartender
Are they really all that caricatured? Do you really believe they are less human than the Oblivion character? The problem with the Oblivion guy is that there's detail, but he looks like a stitched together corpse. The detail in Shrek 2 is blended together quite well. Everything fits. The hair and physics is important when the characters are moving so that they don't look like zombies or animated robots. The lighting on the skin is important, otherwise you get a mannequin look. In my book, anything on the right of the valley, you would have to look at it closely to determine if it were a photograph or a CGI. Shrek's characters are clearly CGI.That seems like an artificial line. Remember, this is a curve. I think it's clear the Oblivion guy is near the bottom of the curve, and something like cell-shading is to the left, and the humans in Shrek 2 managed to crawl out of the valley. If they were as good as photographs they'd be all the way to the right.
For that to be true the Shrek 2 models would have to look less human than the repulsive examples. I don't think that's true at all. Shrek 2 got the hair right and the sub-surface scattering for lighting the skin.
Some examples and how I'd rate them along the curve:
Keep in mind those are still shots. In actuality, Oblivion and Polar Express look worse when moving. Shrek 2 looks better.
I think Shrek 2 was the first movie I saw that managed to get realistic humans that have gotten beyond the valley. It's kinda surprising to see this regression.
I think your attitude is honestly dishonest and understandable. I mean to say, I've been there and done that (watched TV shows from bit-torrent). I didn't really feel guilty about it at the time, though when I think about it I have to admit it was against the law and unethical.
What I find hypocritical is the Slashdotters who get all indignant when the content owners crack down on Joe Sixpack, and then get equally indignant when somebody like an essay checking service stores a copy of a student's work for free. I'm not saying you personally hold this position, but many Slashdotters do.
As for a business model that works in the real world, expect to see most of the revenue generated from product placement. Sucks, but there's no free lunch, and I can't fault the producers for making a buck.
I'd think getting paid and watching over your creation should be satisfaction enough. Besides that, there is room for in-house play. Eve should have learned their lesson after the first scandal. There just isn't room for insider involvement in a game that is all about alliances -- human nature being what it is.
Eve could disallow employees from playing, and the employees would learn to deal with it. As it is, they're getting tons of negative press. On the positive side, this is a good lesson for others in how not to manage this kind of situation.
Sounds like it would be a whole lot cleaner if Eve just stopped playing in the game altogether. They can observe the game, they can copy the game and playtest in a sandbox, they can read the forums, etc. Why do they need to cross the line and actually enter the game?
Just going by the page of links I got when I went there, I'm impressed. Thanks for the link!
I RTFA and you're wrong.
It's a big tent. There's lots of duplication and fragmentation. That is to say, the community is already broken up.
Yeah, I agree with you. Grandparent didn't make any sense. "Stop throwing money at us! Please stop!"
Obligatory Simpsons Quote
Homer: I reluctantly accept your proposal!
Gates: Well everyone always does. Buy 'em out, boys!
Bill Gates companions begin to trash the "office".
Homer: Hey, what the hell's going on!
Gates: Oh, I didn't get rich by writing a lot of checks!