"Unless the game companies start designing games for multiple platforms to begin with"
Both the Unreal 3 engine and the Tech 5 engine can/do use OpenGL. In the case of Unreal 3, a lot of games are already based on this engine. In the case of Tech 5, a lot of games will most likely also use this engine, especially as its got a lot of cross platform support.
A lot of games companies have moved away from rewriting the entire game including a use once 3d engine, every time they want to write a new game. So they have their own 3d engines or they use engines like Unreal 3 or Tech 5 etc...
"Any douche who doesn't realise a misspelt function name will fail to compile clearly hasn't written any code yet."
You clearly fail to see a programmer can also create their own function names, as well as use other peoples functions. So you prove you are a very inexperienced programmer, (and close minded), which adds weight to the idea you are either young or just arrogant. Also your very apparent need to show hostility, shows a degree of insecurity, where you are over compensating, by verbally hitting out at others, in an attempt to appear to be more knowledgeable than you really are.
The easiest way to become a better programmer, is to be more open minded. So far you have failed to demonstrate this.
As a side note, (back in the DOS days of programming), I found the the spell checker in Multiedit very useful (especially when having to work very late at night, after the coffee stopped working!;)
I agree the cost is high (for the FABs) but more to the point, while this is an interesting new manufacturing method, its not likely to be such a big advance, (for the chip industry) as the title to this news implies. Also I think that around about 2011, they are talking about having production 32nm fabrication. So within about 4 years from now, 32nm is going to seem very small, compared with this relatively large 60nm groves in the chip.
Where this technology sounds potentially very useful, is in maybe applications like sensors. As its nano-scale patterns can be applied to large surface areas. That could potentially be very interesting.
It is very good news, but I hope this fail safe also works for everyone in the installer. I had a machine which wasn't possible to install Feisty Fawn on it, via the graphical Ubuntu install program. This was due to the default resolution being lower than required, for the window size of the install program. (So it wasn't possible to complete options in the installer windows and so continue with the install, using that program). (It occured with the on board graphics card on a new PC build at work, so the quickest work around was simply to put a better graphics card in which I had to hand and was planning on using it at some point anyway. A software only solution would have taken longer and isn't going to be so easy for non-technical users who just hope to try out Ubuntu. (I would expect it to be unfortunately enough to put off some non-technical users).
So anything they can do to improve the graphical support is very good news. The more Ubuntu users the better.:)
While your words are aggressive, I agree about one point, the data mining.
I suspect data mining is the true ulterior motive for both Microsoft and Google. Its why they want to support fair use. Its in their interests, as they want to data mine everyone and any copyright rules can get in the way of exploiting other people's information (especially if any of that datamining was based in turn, on copyright information).
Both Microsoft and Google stand to gain from the public continuing to have access to fair use of media data, as then Microsoft and Google can mine and profile all our views etc.. and sell that information onto anyone they wish.
But I love the way their PR teams spin the news, as if its all done in our interest. Like all companies, they do not do anything unless there are good business reasons to justify doing something. They are doing it for themselves, not for us. Its just one more business "chess" move for them... and as usual, ultimately, we are the pawns.
Just be thankful they can't (yet) translate COBOL into English and back again.
When they create a translator for C++ to and from English, I'm out of a job. (Either that or the bosses will finally find out what the hidden Hex codes mean in our source code).
"Interestingly, many of the people who fit your description call themselves Christians"
Unfortunately it applies to many religious and even political beliefs, both now and throughout history.
It can also even been seen in George Orwell's story, "Animal Farm". Its not specific to any one belief. Loss of feedback is a way of behaving. Its so ironic, as we are all born with the ability to learn, but some people learn a way of thinking, which closes themselves off from learning they can be wrong. Its also not an absolute thing, its a biasing toward becoming more close minded.
But realising this behaviour is the root of the problem, is so difficult for most people to comprehend. Its no wonder it sometimes fails to get recognised enough. People usually have to go through something very difficult in life, (so they can glimpse some of the extremes of this behaviour), before some of them finally see the answer, but they do not make up the majority of people, so often what they say fails to have sufficient impact to convince everyone else of what they say.
Its also very ironic for anyone who is scientific in their thinking, as this kind of behaviour is even more difficult to comprehend, as its totally against the core idea of a questioning mind. We are all born with the ability to learn, its so easy to assume and expect to assume everyone thinks this way, but some do not. Some people learn to be close minded and a minority of these are capable of truly horrific levels of failure to comprehend the horrors of their behaviours and actions resulting in harm to others.
For example, every street mugger/robber who attacks someone justifies their actions, at the point in time of them committing the crime. (Later they may realise how bad their actions are, but at the moment they commit the crime, they have a justification in their mind). They can even know their actions are seen by others as wrong, yet to them, they have some extenuating circumstance that (they believe) justifies their actions to them, at that point in time. Some street muggers have even been shown to commit the crimes not for money, but for the feeling of power over someone. To terrify and intimidate their "victim", yet as they behave like this, just like any extremist view, they truly believe their is a justification for their actions.
Even this one example is just one of so many behaviours. Its just one more example of a belief. Its not a political belief and its not a religious belief, it simply a belief about an action and it applies to any and all beliefs. These kinds of close minded people think they are right and fail to learn they are wrong. They fail to want to learn they are wrong. Whatever biases they have in their mind, justify their actions, at the point in time they are carrying out their actions. They may very well live to regret it, but at the moment they act, then this is how they think. Its truly horrific the more you think about it and more you realise its true. In a way, ironically loss of feedback is a very simply mistake, yet so much horror stems from this behaviour. All societies have to learn to recognise the danger. Everyone has to recognise it, even for their own protection against such behaviour.
"who are involved with bad things probably don't show true remorse; it seems to most people that they are just sad because they got caught."
This is because most people who commit bad actions, think they are right. The more you realize that statement is true, the more terrifying the extreme actions of a minority of people becomes. It is so shocking, it takes me years to fully comprehend that bad people think they are right.
Ironically so many evil actions in this world are committed by people who refuse to question their own actions. They do not want to hear they can be wrong, and so they will not listen to anyone tell them they are wrong. They consider they are right and so anyone telling them they are wrong, is in their interpretation, considered an insult. So as they react with anger at being told their thoughts or actions are wrong, so they increase the probability of them failing to learn they are wrong. You see this pattern repeated time and time again once you realize, bad people think they are right.
It is a loss of feedback. Everyone can make mistakes. Everyone's actions can have foreseeable and unforeseeable repercussions which can in some situations cause harm to other people. But for the minority of people with some loss of feedback; some of them can cause harm by accident, others intentionally cause harm to other people. Some people can even justify killing other people, because they believe they are justified in punishing and harming another person. If their beliefs teach them it is right to harm others, who do not believe as they do, then a minority of these people can (and do) intentionally harm other people.
Political beliefs and religious beliefs are some of the most polarized beliefs in the world. The leaders of these beliefs want people to follow them and their beliefs and want the beliefs to continue unquestioned and unchanged. So they want and teach their followers to ignore the beliefs of other people. They actively teach a way of loosing feedback. They teach others to close their mind against other beliefs. The end result is some leaders can cause loss of feedback in their follows, just as some close minded people can loose feedback themselves.
Bad people think they are right, just as much as good people think they are right. The difference is loss of feedback. Some people do not learn the harm they cause others. Others justify harming others through lack of feedback against their own beliefs. Ultimately its loss of feedback. I'm sure I will get flamed for saying this, but its taken me years to realize this utterly horrify fact is true, so I'm sure some people will be hostile against ever believing its true.
For years I was like, but surely that can't be the way they think?!. I not only didn't want to believe it was true, it was beyond what I could comprehend how they failed to see the horror of their own actions. But in time, I could see the pattern repeated over and over again, in so many examples and even at times in what they say and how they say things. The more you realize its true, the more horrifying it becomes.
I wish the whole world finally realized it was true. Because then we together would finally have a chance to end so much suffering around the world. To finally bring an end to the harm a minority causes to so many people.
"So, there are about 2500 * 20 = 50000 reasons they should be allowed to vote."
Spending $50000 has probably saved M$ a lot more money (and time) they would have spent working on the changes other organisations wanted. (The OOXML ISO standardization documentation is said to be around 6000 pages long!)
Although I can only hope it costs them in the long run, as they have now shown one more very good example of how corrupt and arragant they are to others. Each move like this turns more people against them and less people trust them in the future.
As for the "standard", well that I suspect is now nothing of the sort. It just goes back to being another microsoft standard. Sad as it could have been good (and useful).
No its not compression as such, but it looks in theory, possible to use this methodology, as another way of doing lossy image compression. It would be interesting to see what kind of results are possible by using this as a means of image compression?.
It looks very interesting research work. Perhaps it could also be combined with other forms of compression, to get even better image compression ratios?.
"performance hit is obviously expected behaviour" and from the article, "Windows Vista will trade off network performance in order to improve multimedia playback"
That is utter BS. On a decade old machine, its possible to run a network and audio playback at real time speeds. Given the power of even low end PCs these days (minimum spec Vista machines) its crazy they cannot handle both together.
"We all know that everyone who doesn't believe as we do is evil and wants to kill babies."... "Can't we just stick with insulting people etc.."
Unfortunately science has to contend with being performed by humans. So human bias can creep in.
One of the parent posts shows this...
"All scientists by definition are aiming for heretical status every time they write a paper or perform an experiment."
That's the ideal of science, but unfortunately humans rarely live up to ideals.
That statement about "every time they write a paper" etc. also overlooks the pressure on scientists, who's career can be seriously damaged by them speaking out against current accepted ideas in science. This leads to a tendency forcing scientists to, toe the line, so to speak. We are pack animals after all and unfortunately that pack mentality creeps in. (A pack is only a pack when everyone stays in the pack. So packs form with behavioural pressures on the members of the pack, which bias them to staying in a pack). Fear is a good motivator and fear of being thrown out of the pack is something a pack animal will try hard to avoid. (Being thrown out of a pack means you are easy prey). Unfortunately pack behaviour still persists in humans.
We need heretics to stress test every idea not just in science, but also in society. Every idea needs to be continuously stress tested to find faults in it and find holes in it.
The stress testing forms the role of feedback in a system keeping it from going widely out of control. Loose feedback and the system fails by going to an extreme. (The corrupted thinking of the Taliban prove this with the extremes they went to before 911 with how they were silencing anything which could tell them they were wrong. The Nazis also proved this with again silencing anything which could tell them they were wrong. One a religious belief the other a political belief, (like so many other examples from history of extreme beliefs), yet underneath the specifics of the belief, a behaviour which leads to a system failing by going to an extreme). (A system, as in a group of people).
Unfortunately the ones who seek to be the pack leaders want people to stay in their pack. They want people to toe the line. Dissenters will be thrown out of their pack or publicly discredited or even destroyed as a warning to others to toe the line.
This pack behaviour works against science. Scientific progress can only be achieved, if people step outside of the pack. Hence they are identified and labelled as heretics.
What Freeman Dyson is saying about the need for heretics in science makes complete sense.
Our societies need heretics because without them our whole social system is a machine without feedback, so it will go wrong and run to extremes.
The unfortunate thing is that with the ever present pressure from the pack leaders to get people to toe the line, we face a growing danger in the years to come. The Internet provides the pack leaders with an unprecedented level of identifying and controlling dissenters. We need heretics more than ever. As soon as people can no longer speak out against other beliefs, the social system fails by going to extremes and there are no good extremes, as for every winner there are loosers. Create too many loosers and you head towards civil unrest and even wars.
We need heretics more than every to identify and prevent injustice. Yet in a world rightly fearful of terrorists, we have a world running to the other extreme of Big Brother. A world that will not allow heretics. The irony is the terrorists are run by pack leaders who want people to toe their line.
Science is getting caught up in the global battle for power over which beliefs will dominate the planet. The irony is the pack leaders "toe the line" behaviour which results in a social loss of feedback, which occurs in all societies, is ultimately the central cause of the worlds problems. And we have had this problem throughout human h
"Mostly, the reason that PC gaming is dying is because of the relative ease in copying games compared to consoles. "
Which means they are going to want DRM on PCs to stop copying. As they are already pushing adverts in games (which I hate), its not much more to make every PC game a client which requires phone home authorisation from a server each time the game starts up etc. They can also serve patches this way as well. We are just seeing the start of online distribution of games. Up until very recently the publishers and especially the distributors have been scared of downloadable games. (No wonder as most disk based distributors would go out of business). Its only recently we have something like Value's Steam. Now we have ID wanting to use Steam. Online distribution of games is going to evolve and its still very early days for it.
PC gaming is not going to die as you keep saying. We have two pressures on PC games. One is from console companies who want people to believe PC gaming is failing. The other is from companies afraid of online distribution and so want to make us believe PC gaming is going to fail. Both types of companies PR departments are pushing these ideas in the news/press and its an ongoing theme with them.
Also in a way, custom hardware is also another way to control a console, as it provides some lockin to prevent or limit cross platform development. This lockin also provides a degree of control over who develops for the closed platform. But even then developers are moving towards more generic games engines to allow easier development on multiple platforms. (Which unfortunately means they are less likely to really push a home computer or console the way developers did in the 1980s and 1990s. Again we see a tread towards more generic solutions, in this case from the software developers).
DRM and custom hardware lockin are two forms of control. Many of these companies want control and closed systems provide more control. That doesn't mean PC games are going to die. It just means the companies want more control, but ultimately they want money more than they want control. If they could access a future market with 100 million consoles or a future market with 2 billion TVs (with embedded PC cores) then they would still want to access both markets. They may complain about the future TV PC core market... they want better DRM on it etc... but even if they were loosing 90% of the games to piracy, they would still be earning serious money. The PC in the future is going to become a lot more wide spread than it is now.
I don't think they will ever stop piracy, no matter how much they try to control everyone. So they are just going to continue to complaining about it. PC gaming is here to stay.
"I know what you meant -- they limit homebrew and indie games. But it's precisely because of that that consoles get to start out so much cheaper than an equivalent PC, if, indeed, an equivalent exists."
Think further than just games. 10 years ago, consoles made a lot of sense, as back then, far less people were on the Internet. So non-technical people had less need for a PC. Now a lot of non-technical people have a PC.
Also in the past, it was possible to make big cost advantages between building a PC and building a console. But look at the trend with PCs. My first home PC (back in 1995), cost £3000 and it was (for a few months) a high end PC. My second PC in 2000 cost £1800 and was also a high end PC. Now a good high end PC can be put together for less than £1000. Also I can (and have) built very good PCs for less than £250 excluding the price of a high end graphics card. Also we are now seeing projects to build low end PCs for less than $100... yet the specification of these low end PCs are actually way beyond my original home PC from 1995 which cost about 60 times as much!... and that is over a period of just 12 years!
This trend is going to continue.
Also, older generations of consoles relied heavily on very specialised custom hardware. But now its becoming more cost effective to build a console using more off the shelf technology.
In the future, they are going to combine ever more off the shelf components (and off the shelf IP cores). With the volumes of production on some components these days, it makes a lot of sense to just use off the shelf components. For example, combine a motherboard, CPU, PSU, Hard Disk and some RAM and you have the basis of a generic console. Its just a generic processing box. What separates that generic console specification from a PC is peripherals like a keyboard and mouse etc. The choice of peripherals define the purpose of the generic processing box.
Also look at the trend with a company like VIA with their Nano ITX and now Pico ITX motherboards. More and more consolidation of components into an ever smaller form factor.
Looking further, many companies are looking into 3d layered chips. It provides a lot of advantages, like far higher memory access speeds etc. (which is great news for future advanced 3d graphics:)... but beyond that, it also provides another way to continue component consolidation.
Its not hard to imagine a future embedded PC combining CPU, RAM and some kind of Flash like Hard disk into one chip package (even if that chip package is formed from a multi-layered 3d chip). That effectively gives a future PC on a chip. Now give that chip a video output and also give it high speed serial connections to things like external Hard Disks etc.. then also give the future PC chip a wireless transceiver to connect to things like a Keyboard, Joypad, Mouse etc.
So we end up with a PC on a chip with many connection pins into the chip still available to use for things like extra external RAM etc. Also with the volumes of production on some components, these future generic PC on a chip style packages will likely end up becoming very cheap to make. Imagine when its less than say $50 for the core generic processing box. Imagine when its less than $30.
So the cost advantages of a console are not going to last. Why buy a closed box when it will be possible to buy an open box which I can put whatever I like on it. Being closed becomes a reason not to buy it.
Imagine a time when every TV has one of these PC on a chip modules in it or used with it. With a market of billions of TVs, the current console market is going to look very small.
That's just PR talk from the console companies... They say similar things with each new generation of consoles. They "speculate" about the "end of PC gaming". When in reality, its not speculation, its a sales pitch. Also the PC always ends up with more powerful processors and graphics cards than the consoles. They want us to believe their consoles are so much better than the PC.
If anything, we could be nearing the end of the consoles. Within 5 years we are likely to have cheap Terra-scale processing power, so its likely we will be doing things like real time ray tracing of 3D worlds. Beyond that, we are likely to be getting into diminishing returns on graphical improvements. With entry level PCs getting ever cheaper, even low end PCs in even just 5 years from now will be far better than any current console... plus the Wii is doing well on game play not technology. The trend is towards technology becoming less important.
The PC is here to stay, but I can't say the same for future generations of closed source consoles, which limit the number of applications on their systems.
... And when they get hacked, they can get ton's of free publicity telling the whole world of the dangers of hackers... They would probably be only too happy to get hacked, for all the extra free news coverage it would get them on other networks.
"visiyous trols"... with spelling that bad, your entertainment value makes you almost worth feeding... almost.
Anyway, from the main info page, "Given that the analog hole will always exist as far as I can imagine in such scenarios, is this even possible"... this hole has existed on radios for decades (ever since tape recorders have existed). So that's no reason to prevent streaming audio.
No, the fault in her logic, is simply apparent ignorance about the business world. I use the word ignorance not to cause offence, but to simply highlight a lack of understand of issues outside of her spheres of core knowledge. She is a "Carnegie Mellon computer scientist", and its not the first (and most likely not the last) time, I will hear a university scientist show a lack of understanding of the business world.
"she calls for changes in the way present and future computer scientists are trained."
Yeah, great, but one problem. Programmers in be corporations most usually don't call the shots. They are told what to write. (I say this as a programmer with 27 years experience of the business world).
"more influence they have, the more they are wielding their power with flagrant disregard for their fellows"
Yeah, unfortunately that's so often true.
The only solution to preventing the erosion of privacy will need to be a legal solution, setting laws in place to prevent people (and companies) data mining the hell out of everyone. However I have no faith in such a law every working. Because of one simple fact, which is an ever present pressure against any law working.
Its like the old saying, "Knowledge Is Power"... so until that stops being true, some people are going to data mine the hell out of everyone else.
Re:what does Google want with a male stripper?
on
Google to Acquire Postini
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I wish it was just nasty coffee. Google owning a company that handles things like email "information security" is like a wolf owning a Chicken Farm. So I guess that means the emails etc.. will be secure (provided you don't mind Google also taking a look as well).
So Google takes one more step along the road from "Do No Harm" to "1984 Big Brother"
Spyware manages it just fine. Looks like Microsoft is going into the Spyware business. (Which puts it even ahead of Google). Which I guess is one of Microsoft's main goals. Google tracks data for marketing, but having access to the entire OS gives Microsoft unlimited opportunities to do "no harm".;)
Slashdot Mirror
"Unless the game companies start designing games for multiple platforms to begin with"
Both the Unreal 3 engine and the Tech 5 engine can/do use OpenGL. In the case of Unreal 3, a lot of games are already based on this engine. In the case of Tech 5, a lot of games will most likely also use this engine, especially as its got a lot of cross platform support.
A lot of games companies have moved away from rewriting the entire game including a use once 3d engine, every time they want to write a new game. So they have their own 3d engines or they use engines like Unreal 3 or Tech 5 etc...
"Any douche who doesn't realise a misspelt function name will fail to compile clearly hasn't written any code yet."
;)
You clearly fail to see a programmer can also create their own function names, as well as use other peoples functions. So you prove you are a very inexperienced programmer, (and close minded), which adds weight to the idea you are either young or just arrogant. Also your very apparent need to show hostility, shows a degree of insecurity, where you are over compensating, by verbally hitting out at others, in an attempt to appear to be more knowledgeable than you really are.
The easiest way to become a better programmer, is to be more open minded. So far you have failed to demonstrate this.
As a side note, (back in the DOS days of programming), I found the the spell checker in Multiedit very useful (especially when having to work very late at night, after the coffee stopped working!
I agree the cost is high (for the FABs) but more to the point, while this is an interesting new manufacturing method, its not likely to be such a big advance, (for the chip industry) as the title to this news implies. Also I think that around about 2011, they are talking about having production 32nm fabrication. So within about 4 years from now, 32nm is going to seem very small, compared with this relatively large 60nm groves in the chip.
Where this technology sounds potentially very useful, is in maybe applications like sensors. As its nano-scale patterns can be applied to large surface areas. That could potentially be very interesting.
"done a long time ago"
:)
It is very good news, but I hope this fail safe also works for everyone in the installer. I had a machine which wasn't possible to install Feisty Fawn on it, via the graphical Ubuntu install program. This was due to the default resolution being lower than required, for the window size of the install program. (So it wasn't possible to complete options in the installer windows and so continue with the install, using that program). (It occured with the on board graphics card on a new PC build at work, so the quickest work around was simply to put a better graphics card in which I had to hand and was planning on using it at some point anyway. A software only solution would have taken longer and isn't going to be so easy for non-technical users who just hope to try out Ubuntu. (I would expect it to be unfortunately enough to put off some non-technical users).
So anything they can do to improve the graphical support is very good news. The more Ubuntu users the better.
While your words are aggressive, I agree about one point, the data mining.
... and as usual, ultimately, we are the pawns.
I suspect data mining is the true ulterior motive for both Microsoft and Google. Its why they want to support fair use. Its in their interests, as they want to data mine everyone and any copyright rules can get in the way of exploiting other people's information (especially if any of that datamining was based in turn, on copyright information).
Both Microsoft and Google stand to gain from the public continuing to have access to fair use of media data, as then Microsoft and Google can mine and profile all our views etc.. and sell that information onto anyone they wish.
But I love the way their PR teams spin the news, as if its all done in our interest. Like all companies, they do not do anything unless there are good business reasons to justify doing something. They are doing it for themselves, not for us. Its just one more business "chess" move for them
I knew someone would have to translate it. :) ... its like waving a red rag in front of a bull ;)
Just be thankful they can't (yet) translate COBOL into English and back again.
When they create a translator for C++ to and from English, I'm out of a job. (Either that or the bosses will finally find out what the hidden Hex codes mean in our source code).
int gVeryImportantInt[]=
{
0x49206861
0x74652074
0x68697320
0x6a6f622c
0x20737475
0x70696420
0x626f7373
0x2e00
};
"Interestingly, many of the people who fit your description call themselves Christians"
Unfortunately it applies to many religious and even political beliefs, both now and throughout history.
It can also even been seen in George Orwell's story, "Animal Farm". Its not specific to any one belief. Loss of feedback is a way of behaving. Its so ironic, as we are all born with the ability to learn, but some people learn a way of thinking, which closes themselves off from learning they can be wrong. Its also not an absolute thing, its a biasing toward becoming more close minded.
But realising this behaviour is the root of the problem, is so difficult for most people to comprehend. Its no wonder it sometimes fails to get recognised enough. People usually have to go through something very difficult in life, (so they can glimpse some of the extremes of this behaviour), before some of them finally see the answer, but they do not make up the majority of people, so often what they say fails to have sufficient impact to convince everyone else of what they say.
Its also very ironic for anyone who is scientific in their thinking, as this kind of behaviour is even more difficult to comprehend, as its totally against the core idea of a questioning mind. We are all born with the ability to learn, its so easy to assume and expect to assume everyone thinks this way, but some do not. Some people learn to be close minded and a minority of these are capable of truly horrific levels of failure to comprehend the horrors of their behaviours and actions resulting in harm to others.
For example, every street mugger/robber who attacks someone justifies their actions, at the point in time of them committing the crime. (Later they may realise how bad their actions are, but at the moment they commit the crime, they have a justification in their mind). They can even know their actions are seen by others as wrong, yet to them, they have some extenuating circumstance that (they believe) justifies their actions to them, at that point in time. Some street muggers have even been shown to commit the crimes not for money, but for the feeling of power over someone. To terrify and intimidate their "victim", yet as they behave like this, just like any extremist view, they truly believe their is a justification for their actions.
Even this one example is just one of so many behaviours. Its just one more example of a belief. Its not a political belief and its not a religious belief, it simply a belief about an action and it applies to any and all beliefs. These kinds of close minded people think they are right and fail to learn they are wrong. They fail to want to learn they are wrong. Whatever biases they have in their mind, justify their actions, at the point in time they are carrying out their actions. They may very well live to regret it, but at the moment they act, then this is how they think. Its truly horrific the more you think about it and more you realise its true. In a way, ironically loss of feedback is a very simply mistake, yet so much horror stems from this behaviour. All societies have to learn to recognise the danger. Everyone has to recognise it, even for their own protection against such behaviour.
"who are involved with bad things probably don't show true remorse; it seems to most people that they are just sad because they got caught."
This is because most people who commit bad actions, think they are right. The more you realize that statement is true, the more terrifying the extreme actions of a minority of people becomes. It is so shocking, it takes me years to fully comprehend that bad people think they are right.
Ironically so many evil actions in this world are committed by people who refuse to question their own actions. They do not want to hear they can be wrong, and so they will not listen to anyone tell them they are wrong. They consider they are right and so anyone telling them they are wrong, is in their interpretation, considered an insult. So as they react with anger at being told their thoughts or actions are wrong, so they increase the probability of them failing to learn they are wrong. You see this pattern repeated time and time again once you realize, bad people think they are right.
It is a loss of feedback. Everyone can make mistakes. Everyone's actions can have foreseeable and unforeseeable repercussions which can in some situations cause harm to other people. But for the minority of people with some loss of feedback; some of them can cause harm by accident, others intentionally cause harm to other people. Some people can even justify killing other people, because they believe they are justified in punishing and harming another person. If their beliefs teach them it is right to harm others, who do not believe as they do, then a minority of these people can (and do) intentionally harm other people.
Political beliefs and religious beliefs are some of the most polarized beliefs in the world. The leaders of these beliefs want people to follow them and their beliefs and want the beliefs to continue unquestioned and unchanged. So they want and teach their followers to ignore the beliefs of other people. They actively teach a way of loosing feedback. They teach others to close their mind against other beliefs. The end result is some leaders can cause loss of feedback in their follows, just as some close minded people can loose feedback themselves.
Bad people think they are right, just as much as good people think they are right. The difference is loss of feedback. Some people do not learn the harm they cause others. Others justify harming others through lack of feedback against their own beliefs. Ultimately its loss of feedback. I'm sure I will get flamed for saying this, but its taken me years to realize this utterly horrify fact is true, so I'm sure some people will be hostile against ever believing its true.
For years I was like, but surely that can't be the way they think?!. I not only didn't want to believe it was true, it was beyond what I could comprehend how they failed to see the horror of their own actions. But in time, I could see the pattern repeated over and over again, in so many examples and even at times in what they say and how they say things. The more you realize its true, the more horrifying it becomes.
I wish the whole world finally realized it was true. Because then we together would finally have a chance to end so much suffering around the world. To finally bring an end to the harm a minority causes to so many people.
"So, there are about 2500 * 20 = 50000 reasons they should be allowed to vote."
Spending $50000 has probably saved M$ a lot more money (and time) they would have spent working on the changes other organisations wanted. (The OOXML ISO standardization documentation is said to be around 6000 pages long!)
Although I can only hope it costs them in the long run, as they have now shown one more very good example of how corrupt and arragant they are to others. Each move like this turns more people against them and less people trust them in the future.
As for the "standard", well that I suspect is now nothing of the sort. It just goes back to being another microsoft standard. Sad as it could have been good (and useful).
"It's not compression as we know it, Jim"
No its not compression as such, but it looks in theory, possible to use this methodology, as another way of doing lossy image compression. It would be interesting to see what kind of results are possible by using this as a means of image compression?.
It looks very interesting research work. Perhaps it could also be combined with other forms of compression, to get even better image compression ratios?.
"performance hit is obviously expected behaviour" and from the article, "Windows Vista will trade off network performance in order to improve multimedia playback"
That is utter BS. On a decade old machine, its possible to run a network and audio playback at real time speeds. Given the power of even low end PCs these days (minimum spec Vista machines) its crazy they cannot handle both together.
"We all know that everyone who doesn't believe as we do is evil and wants to kill babies." ... "Can't we just stick with insulting people etc.."
Unfortunately science has to contend with being performed by humans. So human bias can creep in.
One of the parent posts shows this...
"All scientists by definition are aiming for heretical status every time they write a paper or perform an experiment."
That's the ideal of science, but unfortunately humans rarely live up to ideals.
That statement about "every time they write a paper" etc. also overlooks the pressure on scientists, who's career can be seriously damaged by them speaking out against current accepted ideas in science. This leads to a tendency forcing scientists to, toe the line, so to speak. We are pack animals after all and unfortunately that pack mentality creeps in. (A pack is only a pack when everyone stays in the pack. So packs form with behavioural pressures on the members of the pack, which bias them to staying in a pack). Fear is a good motivator and fear of being thrown out of the pack is something a pack animal will try hard to avoid. (Being thrown out of a pack means you are easy prey). Unfortunately pack behaviour still persists in humans.
We need heretics to stress test every idea not just in science, but also in society. Every idea needs to be continuously stress tested to find faults in it and find holes in it.
The stress testing forms the role of feedback in a system keeping it from going widely out of control. Loose feedback and the system fails by going to an extreme. (The corrupted thinking of the Taliban prove this with the extremes they went to before 911 with how they were silencing anything which could tell them they were wrong. The Nazis also proved this with again silencing anything which could tell them they were wrong. One a religious belief the other a political belief, (like so many other examples from history of extreme beliefs), yet underneath the specifics of the belief, a behaviour which leads to a system failing by going to an extreme). (A system, as in a group of people).
Unfortunately the ones who seek to be the pack leaders want people to stay in their pack. They want people to toe the line. Dissenters will be thrown out of their pack or publicly discredited or even destroyed as a warning to others to toe the line.
This pack behaviour works against science. Scientific progress can only be achieved, if people step outside of the pack. Hence they are identified and labelled as heretics.
What Freeman Dyson is saying about the need for heretics in science makes complete sense.
Our societies need heretics because without them our whole social system is a machine without feedback, so it will go wrong and run to extremes.
The unfortunate thing is that with the ever present pressure from the pack leaders to get people to toe the line, we face a growing danger in the years to come. The Internet provides the pack leaders with an unprecedented level of identifying and controlling dissenters. We need heretics more than ever. As soon as people can no longer speak out against other beliefs, the social system fails by going to extremes and there are no good extremes, as for every winner there are loosers. Create too many loosers and you head towards civil unrest and even wars.
We need heretics more than every to identify and prevent injustice. Yet in a world rightly fearful of terrorists, we have a world running to the other extreme of Big Brother. A world that will not allow heretics. The irony is the terrorists are run by pack leaders who want people to toe their line.
Science is getting caught up in the global battle for power over which beliefs will dominate the planet. The irony is the pack leaders "toe the line" behaviour which results in a social loss of feedback, which occurs in all societies, is ultimately the central cause of the worlds problems. And we have had this problem throughout human h
Maybe we should patent the idea of patent trolling. Then finally we can all have some peace.
"Mostly, the reason that PC gaming is dying is because of the relative ease in copying games compared to consoles. "
... they want better DRM on it etc... but even if they were loosing 90% of the games to piracy, they would still be earning serious money. The PC in the future is going to become a lot more wide spread than it is now.
Which means they are going to want DRM on PCs to stop copying. As they are already pushing adverts in games (which I hate), its not much more to make every PC game a client which requires phone home authorisation from a server each time the game starts up etc. They can also serve patches this way as well. We are just seeing the start of online distribution of games. Up until very recently the publishers and especially the distributors have been scared of downloadable games. (No wonder as most disk based distributors would go out of business). Its only recently we have something like Value's Steam. Now we have ID wanting to use Steam. Online distribution of games is going to evolve and its still very early days for it.
PC gaming is not going to die as you keep saying. We have two pressures on PC games. One is from console companies who want people to believe PC gaming is failing. The other is from companies afraid of online distribution and so want to make us believe PC gaming is going to fail. Both types of companies PR departments are pushing these ideas in the news/press and its an ongoing theme with them.
Also in a way, custom hardware is also another way to control a console, as it provides some lockin to prevent or limit cross platform development. This lockin also provides a degree of control over who develops for the closed platform. But even then developers are moving towards more generic games engines to allow easier development on multiple platforms. (Which unfortunately means they are less likely to really push a home computer or console the way developers did in the 1980s and 1990s. Again we see a tread towards more generic solutions, in this case from the software developers).
DRM and custom hardware lockin are two forms of control. Many of these companies want control and closed systems provide more control. That doesn't mean PC games are going to die. It just means the companies want more control, but ultimately they want money more than they want control. If they could access a future market with 100 million consoles or a future market with 2 billion TVs (with embedded PC cores) then they would still want to access both markets. They may complain about the future TV PC core market
I don't think they will ever stop piracy, no matter how much they try to control everyone. So they are just going to continue to complaining about it. PC gaming is here to stay.
"I know what you meant -- they limit homebrew and indie games. But it's precisely because of that that consoles get to start out so much cheaper than an equivalent PC, if, indeed, an equivalent exists."
... yet the specification of these low end PCs are actually way beyond my original home PC from 1995 which cost about 60 times as much! ... and that is over a period of just 12 years!
:) ... but beyond that, it also provides another way to continue component consolidation.
Think further than just games. 10 years ago, consoles made a lot of sense, as back then, far less people were on the Internet. So non-technical people had less need for a PC. Now a lot of non-technical people have a PC.
Also in the past, it was possible to make big cost advantages between building a PC and building a console. But look at the trend with PCs. My first home PC (back in 1995), cost £3000 and it was (for a few months) a high end PC. My second PC in 2000 cost £1800 and was also a high end PC. Now a good high end PC can be put together for less than £1000. Also I can (and have) built very good PCs for less than £250 excluding the price of a high end graphics card. Also we are now seeing projects to build low end PCs for less than $100
This trend is going to continue.
Also, older generations of consoles relied heavily on very specialised custom hardware. But now its becoming more cost effective to build a console using more off the shelf technology.
In the future, they are going to combine ever more off the shelf components (and off the shelf IP cores). With the volumes of production on some components these days, it makes a lot of sense to just use off the shelf components. For example, combine a motherboard, CPU, PSU, Hard Disk and some RAM and you have the basis of a generic console. Its just a generic processing box. What separates that generic console specification from a PC is peripherals like a keyboard and mouse etc. The choice of peripherals define the purpose of the generic processing box.
Also look at the trend with a company like VIA with their Nano ITX and now Pico ITX motherboards. More and more consolidation of components into an ever smaller form factor.
Looking further, many companies are looking into 3d layered chips. It provides a lot of advantages, like far higher memory access speeds etc. (which is great news for future advanced 3d graphics
Its not hard to imagine a future embedded PC combining CPU, RAM and some kind of Flash like Hard disk into one chip package (even if that chip package is formed from a multi-layered 3d chip). That effectively gives a future PC on a chip. Now give that chip a video output and also give it high speed serial connections to things like external Hard Disks etc.. then also give the future PC chip a wireless transceiver to connect to things like a Keyboard, Joypad, Mouse etc.
So we end up with a PC on a chip with many connection pins into the chip still available to use for things like extra external RAM etc. Also with the volumes of production on some components, these future generic PC on a chip style packages will likely end up becoming very cheap to make. Imagine when its less than say $50 for the core generic processing box. Imagine when its less than $30.
So the cost advantages of a console are not going to last. Why buy a closed box when it will be possible to buy an open box which I can put whatever I like on it. Being closed becomes a reason not to buy it.
Imagine a time when every TV has one of these PC on a chip modules in it or used with it. With a market of billions of TVs, the current console market is going to look very small.
"just how dead pc gaming is"
... They say similar things with each new generation of consoles. They "speculate" about the "end of PC gaming". When in reality, its not speculation, its a sales pitch. Also the PC always ends up with more powerful processors and graphics cards than the consoles. They want us to believe their consoles are so much better than the PC.
... plus the Wii is doing well on game play not technology. The trend is towards technology becoming less important.
That's just PR talk from the console companies
If anything, we could be nearing the end of the consoles. Within 5 years we are likely to have cheap Terra-scale processing power, so its likely we will be doing things like real time ray tracing of 3D worlds. Beyond that, we are likely to be getting into diminishing returns on graphical improvements. With entry level PCs getting ever cheaper, even low end PCs in even just 5 years from now will be far better than any current console
The PC is here to stay, but I can't say the same for future generations of closed source consoles, which limit the number of applications on their systems.
... And when they get hacked, they can get ton's of free publicity telling the whole world of the dangers of hackers... They would probably be only too happy to get hacked, for all the extra free news coverage it would get them on other networks.
"visiyous trols" ... with spelling that bad, your entertainment value makes you almost worth feeding ... almost.
... this hole has existed on radios for decades (ever since tape recorders have existed). So that's no reason to prevent streaming audio.
Anyway, from the main info page, "Given that the analog hole will always exist as far as I can imagine in such scenarios, is this even possible"
"Scientific Proof" & "Caveman"
... so until that stops being true, some people are going to data mine the hell out of everyone else.
No, the fault in her logic, is simply apparent ignorance about the business world. I use the word ignorance not to cause offence, but to simply highlight a lack of understand of issues outside of her spheres of core knowledge. She is a "Carnegie Mellon computer scientist", and its not the first (and most likely not the last) time, I will hear a university scientist show a lack of understanding of the business world.
"she calls for changes in the way present and future computer scientists are trained."
Yeah, great, but one problem. Programmers in be corporations most usually don't call the shots. They are told what to write. (I say this as a programmer with 27 years experience of the business world).
"more influence they have, the more they are wielding their power with flagrant disregard for their fellows"
Yeah, unfortunately that's so often true.
The only solution to preventing the erosion of privacy will need to be a legal solution, setting laws in place to prevent people (and companies) data mining the hell out of everyone. However I have no faith in such a law every working. Because of one simple fact, which is an ever present pressure against any law working.
Its like the old saying, "Knowledge Is Power"
I wish it was just nasty coffee. Google owning a company that handles things like email "information security" is like a wolf owning a Chicken Farm. So I guess that means the emails etc.. will be secure (provided you don't mind Google also taking a look as well).
So Google takes one more step along the road from "Do No Harm" to "1984 Big Brother"
"coating can block Wi-Fi signals" etc...
3 9251 ;)
"tested enough, a crash would probably be the fault of a bad war driver"
I tried to put this window film on my PC to stop windows Vista leaking info, but it don't work.
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/02/1
"taxed for the data collection/transmit"
;)
Spyware manages it just fine. Looks like Microsoft is going into the Spyware business. (Which puts it even ahead of Google). Which I guess is one of Microsoft's main goals. Google tracks data for marketing, but having access to the entire OS gives Microsoft unlimited opportunities to do "no harm".
Doh, URL was slightly wrong... (it don't work with the last slash symbol).u st_law
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_antitr
I think this secure chip news is "Cryptography Research Inc" way of drumming up business. They want to sell/licence the chip to printer manufacturers.
u st_law/
But I think the wider issue is, the continuing attempts to prevent 3rd party printer cartridges, shows blatant violation of antitrust laws.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_antitr
Its about time legal action was taken against these companies.