> First, a neural network is more of the same "if/else" logic as any other AI engine.
At the neuron level, sure, but AI is largely seen as a matter of the emergent properties -- behavior coming out of a system not specifically designed for it. Now you CAN get passable emergent AI out of triggers (passable for the limited scope of a game), and indeed that's what the real masters of game programming AI get paid the big bucks to do, but it's never going to get to "True" AI that people are demanding.
"True AI" always seems to be "whatever we can't do yet". If you analyze it too far, you might find out that WE don't have intelligence:)
Oh, and if you think there's an uncanny valley for visuals, imagine an AI soldier that has all his complex scripts replaced with an intelligence... of a three-year-old.
So could it be that Jack Thompson is really working for the game industry, out there embarassing into silence anyone who would voice a similar opinion if it weren't for his incessant babbling?
No, but he's certainly a useful idiot to have on the other side. He's been tilting at various culture-war windmills for his whole professional life. I wonder how much 2 Live Crew eventually pulled in because of him.
The editors don't even write the articles, they just click an extra button in firehose and fill in the "from the $department dept." field. Sometimes they stick a breezy little comment in.
Unless you're using postgres, in which case your performance goes to shit if you DON'T use one. My results with oracle have been mixed -- I suspect, as with all things oracle, it depends on the configuration.
>... Why do you want to hold up the entire database when someone accidentally pulls the network cable on your PC?
What kind of brain-dead database would implement all transactions with a global lock?
As for Dynamic SQL, it certainly has its place, but when you need variable numbers of columns and you're not working with some crazy-ass 200-column table or you have LOBs or vertical partitions, you're usually better off just selecting * and picking out the columns you want. You are using a cursor, right?
> I would like to know what slashdotters think is a good level of stuff to be putting into stored procedures.
That's like asking how much abstraction you should use in an app. There's no one right answer.
Ideally, pretty much everything that constitutes an "API call" should be a SP. Single inserts, reads, deletes, updates, especially when they have to use a transaction to coordinate across tables. Anywhere where you're using a cursor but don't want it leaking out to have an indefinite lifetime. Anything that a user can do with different privileges than their own pretty much has to be a SP.
Bulk inserts usually can't leverage SP's easily, and using SP's just to give names to ad hoc queries isn't usually appropriate (it's ok in if you put it in another user's schema, it just doesn't belong in the same schema).
If you're using an ORM like hibernate, there's no point in putting basic CRUD operations into SP's. In fact, most of the time, you just use the DB as a storage layer then.
> As a manager now, I would fire anyone who uses stored procedures. Even if it is "faster."
And your boss would fire you pretty fast. But I doubt you've ever fired anyone over it or even threatened it. Pretty much everyone who pulls out this "I would fire anyone who xxx" gem is full of shit, has never managed anyone, never should, and thankfully never will.
Every complaint about the PS3 has been related to the games themselves and how there isn't really a single "killer app" for the system.
They're in the pipe -- GTA4 would sell one for me.
Most of the complaints I've heard from actual owners of the PS3 have to do with its lack of scaling. Playing a 720p game on a 1080-only screen? Tough luck bitch, it's 480i for you. Playing a 1080 blu-ray movie on a 720-only screen? You're back to 480i.
They can find time to update the firmware for a goddam folding@home client though. Screw them.
When I was a CSR, the instant anyone pulled out the legal threat, it meant "please hold" for five minutes. We call that "giving them some quiet time". Actually filing a legal threat would be just fine, meant legal got to deal with it and not me.
I learned quickly never to give out my extension. I do not enjoy being someone's personal support bitch because they decide to bypass the support queue by routing every problem of theirs to me. Sometimes even other peoples problems.
You get my first name, you get a tracking number, and if you want more, then would you like to speak to a customer service manager sir?
I learned that angry people aren't even worth getting angry back at. But for me, they still ate at my soul even when I laughed them off afterward.
I thank my stars every day that I'm not in customer service anymore. I think I'd rather shovel shit.
> So broken code generates warnings, the programmer elects to ignore those warnings and then wonders why things break.
Standard usage is flagged as "broken code", and it's unavoidable. This is a situation that does not occur with C++. Blaming the user for the type system's failings is completely unacceptable.
There is an option buried deep in the registry that gets rid of the confirmation dialog and makes windows effectively kill-9 the process after the timeout. Shutdowns never hang indefinitely after setting that. If anyone can remember what it is, I'd love to know so I can set it.
> The fact that "Autosave" is a known cause of corrupted documents and crashes.
Autosave is not. Quick save is. Quicksave happens for both autosaves AND manual saves. For the love of god, don't turn off autosaves.
The automagical stuff can be turned off with a couple of checkboxes in the (craptastic) options interface (why can't they do like eclipse does and have a single tree and a search box for the preferences UI?). And let's not give special pleasing to openoffice -- its autocorrect features are even worse.
C++'s templates are just as much a type system as any other. All type systems are essentially about substitution, it's just that C++ templates do it in a more literal sense. C++'s syntax for it happens to really suck, but the theory is perfectly sound.
> Note: test.java uses unchecked or unsafe operations.
Anyone who uses JPA/Hibernate queries, or works with generics much at all sees this warning come up everywhere, and thus tends to disable the warning in those places. This is fine as long as you pay attention to the warning elsewhere, but since it won't prevent the code from compiling, you can and probably still accidentally deploy something broken anyway.
Generics in C# don't let you use the backward API at all. C++ doesn't even understand the idea of not instantiating the template. Java forces you to use the old API, because even if you do use the generics syntax, it's merely syntax sugar for runtime casting from Object. It's better than nothing, but not by much.
The code runs, and it crashes. A warning is not an acceptable solution.
It's compatible in that you can code something with a Java 5/Java 6 compiler, but is still runs on the Java 4 runtime.
Which happens seldom, because by default the JDK will output a classfile version that older JVMs will refuse to run. People compiling for retrograde targets usually use a JDK from that version too, otherwise they could inadvertantly target standard library API's that don't exist in older versions. Java could make non-erased generics in the future too, just by way of changing the classfile specification and just not erasing them from version 8 on (it's too late for 7). All in all it's mystifying why they did as little as possible with respect to generics, especially in the face of superior generic systems like those in Pizza, other than that they didn't want to disturb the programmers and managers that they believe, by and large, are stupid sheep and easily frightened.
I didn't know that Wadler was behind GJ. I can call GJ's erased generics a kludge, a crock, a hack, a half-assed unsound system, but Wadler really does know his shit.
Erasure isn't the complete end of soundness anyway -- scala generics are erased too, and it still has a far superior type system.
A good chunk of SCO is held by insiders and institutions with ties to insiders. I suspect the rest is a cheap hedge that isn't even all that volatile (as it has little left to lose). It's also the most-shorted stock on Wall Street, and the only reason it isn't shorted more is because it's virtually impossible to get shares to short -- that is, no one is taking the bet.
Darl's stock would halve just like everyone else's. He could potentially stand to gain from a short squeeze (which might well happen if the floor drops after a reverse split), but only if he unloaded enough to cover the value of what was left, and I can't imagine he's even allowed to do that.
He was making a pretty decent buck off his scheduled trades; this profit was described by Redhat in its legal complaints with the very words "pump and dump". That's normally a pretty serious accusation, though I doubt it was listed as a cause of action (hard to see how it could be one). I wonder if they followed it up with letters to the SEC?
Lanham act, no 't'. And I think a takeover that results in the case being dropped, followed by a top-to-bottom purge and realignment would actually constitute estinguishment. Killing 'em is too final, letting them stand as warning of what happens to people who fuck with you also works pretty well. To the pain.
And besides, if Darl and company were ousted, it still might not get them off the hook for Lanham Act violations. Realistically though, it probably would. More realistically however, SCO appears to be a bitter-ender, and aside from their poison pill provisions (which I'll grant won't help with an insider coup), they have maneuvered much of the insider holdings to their favor, to the point of being publicly owned in name only. Why do you think their volume is so incredibly low?
Slashdot Mirror
> First, a neural network is more of the same "if/else" logic as any other AI engine.
:)
... of a three-year-old.
At the neuron level, sure, but AI is largely seen as a matter of the emergent properties -- behavior coming out of a system not specifically designed for it. Now you CAN get passable emergent AI out of triggers (passable for the limited scope of a game), and indeed that's what the real masters of game programming AI get paid the big bucks to do, but it's never going to get to "True" AI that people are demanding.
"True AI" always seems to be "whatever we can't do yet". If you analyze it too far, you might find out that WE don't have intelligence
Oh, and if you think there's an uncanny valley for visuals, imagine an AI soldier that has all his complex scripts replaced with an intelligence
oh wii like penis U R teh FUNNAY LOLZ!!!!!!!11!one!
So could it be that Jack Thompson is really working for the game industry, out there embarassing into silence anyone who would voice a similar opinion if it weren't for his incessant babbling?
No, but he's certainly a useful idiot to have on the other side. He's been tilting at various culture-war windmills for his whole professional life. I wonder how much 2 Live Crew eventually pulled in because of him.
The editors don't even write the articles, they just click an extra button in firehose and fill in the "from the $department dept." field. Sometimes they stick a breezy little comment in.
Basically, it's digg with less content.
> Transactions are really bad for performance.
... Why do you want to hold up the entire database when someone accidentally pulls the network cable on your PC?
Unless you're using postgres, in which case your performance goes to shit if you DON'T use one. My results with oracle have been mixed -- I suspect, as with all things oracle, it depends on the configuration.
>
What kind of brain-dead database would implement all transactions with a global lock?
As for Dynamic SQL, it certainly has its place, but when you need variable numbers of columns and you're not working with some crazy-ass 200-column table or you have LOBs or vertical partitions, you're usually better off just selecting * and picking out the columns you want. You are using a cursor, right?
> I would like to know what slashdotters think is a good level of stuff to be putting into stored procedures.
That's like asking how much abstraction you should use in an app. There's no one right answer.
Ideally, pretty much everything that constitutes an "API call" should be a SP. Single inserts, reads, deletes, updates, especially when they have to use a transaction to coordinate across tables. Anywhere where you're using a cursor but don't want it leaking out to have an indefinite lifetime. Anything that a user can do with different privileges than their own pretty much has to be a SP.
Bulk inserts usually can't leverage SP's easily, and using SP's just to give names to ad hoc queries isn't usually appropriate (it's ok in if you put it in another user's schema, it just doesn't belong in the same schema).
If you're using an ORM like hibernate, there's no point in putting basic CRUD operations into SP's. In fact, most of the time, you just use the DB as a storage layer then.
> If you want to tax my virtual possessions
I just got through saying that that's precisely what they're not taxing. Pay attention, son.
> As a manager now, I would fire anyone who uses stored procedures. Even if it is "faster."
And your boss would fire you pretty fast. But I doubt you've ever fired anyone over it or even threatened it. Pretty much everyone who pulls out this "I would fire anyone who xxx" gem is full of shit, has never managed anyone, never should, and thankfully never will.
> it would be illegal for them to tax you on something you don't own.
They are taxing the income, not the asset. If I sublet my apartment, I can be damn sure the government will tax that income.
Every complaint about the PS3 has been related to the games themselves and how there isn't really a single "killer app" for the system.
They're in the pipe -- GTA4 would sell one for me.
Most of the complaints I've heard from actual owners of the PS3 have to do with its lack of scaling. Playing a 720p game on a 1080-only screen? Tough luck bitch, it's 480i for you. Playing a 1080 blu-ray movie on a 720-only screen? You're back to 480i.
They can find time to update the firmware for a goddam folding@home client though. Screw them.
When I was a CSR, the instant anyone pulled out the legal threat, it meant "please hold" for five minutes. We call that "giving them some quiet time". Actually filing a legal threat would be just fine, meant legal got to deal with it and not me.
I learned quickly never to give out my extension. I do not enjoy being someone's personal support bitch because they decide to bypass the support queue by routing every problem of theirs to me. Sometimes even other peoples problems.
You get my first name, you get a tracking number, and if you want more, then would you like to speak to a customer service manager sir?
I learned that angry people aren't even worth getting angry back at. But for me, they still ate at my soul even when I laughed them off afterward.
I thank my stars every day that I'm not in customer service anymore. I think I'd rather shovel shit.
I guess I'll break another rule of mine, but this one deserves it: MOD. PARENT. UP.
> So broken code generates warnings, the programmer elects to ignore those warnings and then wonders why things break.
Standard usage is flagged as "broken code", and it's unavoidable. This is a situation that does not occur with C++. Blaming the user for the type system's failings is completely unacceptable.
> Yes, inane videocy was just what the web needed. Good going Macromedia.
I just finished playing 5 Minutes to Kill Yourself, and I can tell you, inane videocy is just what I needed. Thank god for flash.
There is an option buried deep in the registry that gets rid of the confirmation dialog and makes windows effectively kill-9 the process after the timeout. Shutdowns never hang indefinitely after setting that. If anyone can remember what it is, I'd love to know so I can set it.
Of course it's probably gone in vista.
> The fact that "Autosave" is a known cause of corrupted documents and crashes.
Autosave is not. Quick save is. Quicksave happens for both autosaves AND manual saves. For the love of god, don't turn off autosaves.
The automagical stuff can be turned off with a couple of checkboxes in the (craptastic) options interface (why can't they do like eclipse does and have a single tree and a search box for the preferences UI?). And let's not give special pleasing to openoffice -- its autocorrect features are even worse.
C++'s templates are just as much a type system as any other. All type systems are essentially about substitution, it's just that C++ templates do it in a more literal sense. C++'s syntax for it happens to really suck, but the theory is perfectly sound.
> Note: test.java uses unchecked or unsafe operations.
Anyone who uses JPA/Hibernate queries, or works with generics much at all sees this warning come up everywhere, and thus tends to disable the warning in those places. This is fine as long as you pay attention to the warning elsewhere, but since it won't prevent the code from compiling, you can and probably still accidentally deploy something broken anyway.
Generics in C# don't let you use the backward API at all. C++ doesn't even understand the idea of not instantiating the template. Java forces you to use the old API, because even if you do use the generics syntax, it's merely syntax sugar for runtime casting from Object. It's better than nothing, but not by much.
The code runs, and it crashes. A warning is not an acceptable solution.
It's compatible in that you can code something with a Java 5/Java 6 compiler, but is still runs on the Java 4 runtime.
Which happens seldom, because by default the JDK will output a classfile version that older JVMs will refuse to run. People compiling for retrograde targets usually use a JDK from that version too, otherwise they could inadvertantly target standard library API's that don't exist in older versions. Java could make non-erased generics in the future too, just by way of changing the classfile specification and just not erasing them from version 8 on (it's too late for 7). All in all it's mystifying why they did as little as possible with respect to generics, especially in the face of superior generic systems like those in Pizza, other than that they didn't want to disturb the programmers and managers that they believe, by and large, are stupid sheep and easily frightened.
I didn't know that Wadler was behind GJ. I can call GJ's erased generics a kludge, a crock, a hack, a half-assed unsound system, but Wadler really does know his shit.
Erasure isn't the complete end of soundness anyway -- scala generics are erased too, and it still has a far superior type system.
Imagine if a site KNEW that you just LOVED deals, so they'd mark down that 8-bit tie just when you strolled by the site.
Ever heard of a loyalty coupon? Heck, sometimes I even get free junk.
Or, maybe the site KNOWS that you just pissed off your wife and increases the prices of flowers knowing that you're going to buy anyways.
The site that marks them down will have an even bigger price difference. It's not like I have to walk any further.
You're hardly painting a Minority Report future here.
> Arguing that all texts contained in wikis toilet paper is sort of an ad hominem fallacy:
No it is fucking not. Jesus, learn what a term means before you try to look smart by using it.
> And if I'm not mistaken, open-source software does the same thing.
Indeed, I'd like to see how OpenOffice stands up against a "fuzzer".
A good chunk of SCO is held by insiders and institutions with ties to insiders. I suspect the rest is a cheap hedge that isn't even all that volatile (as it has little left to lose). It's also the most-shorted stock on Wall Street, and the only reason it isn't shorted more is because it's virtually impossible to get shares to short -- that is, no one is taking the bet.
Darl's stock would halve just like everyone else's. He could potentially stand to gain from a short squeeze (which might well happen if the floor drops after a reverse split), but only if he unloaded enough to cover the value of what was left, and I can't imagine he's even allowed to do that.
He was making a pretty decent buck off his scheduled trades; this profit was described by Redhat in its legal complaints with the very words "pump and dump". That's normally a pretty serious accusation, though I doubt it was listed as a cause of action (hard to see how it could be one). I wonder if they followed it up with letters to the SEC?
Lanham act, no 't'. And I think a takeover that results in the case being dropped, followed by a top-to-bottom purge and realignment would actually constitute estinguishment. Killing 'em is too final, letting them stand as warning of what happens to people who fuck with you also works pretty well. To the pain.
And besides, if Darl and company were ousted, it still might not get them off the hook for Lanham Act violations. Realistically though, it probably would. More realistically however, SCO appears to be a bitter-ender, and aside from their poison pill provisions (which I'll grant won't help with an insider coup), they have maneuvered much of the insider holdings to their favor, to the point of being publicly owned in name only. Why do you think their volume is so incredibly low?