Comment Vote, n. (Score 1) 572
"VOTE, n. The instrument and symbol of a freeman's power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country."
â" Ambrose Bierce
Comment Re:Capitalist flight (Score 5, Informative) 1142
To be fair, the US labor market of Carnegie's day was on par with that of most other countries, his railroad empire was largely built on the back of indentured labor (a substantial portion of which had consisted of Chinese immigrants). He maintained a private army to hedge against an armed workforce uprising, which eventually happened -- and during which he retreated to the safety of his personal Scottish castle. Afterward said labor force was promptly replaced with a force entirely composed of desperate immigrants.
It is widely believed his later philanthropic activities were entirely motivated by his damaged reputation and desire to right a fortune built on questionable ethics and ruthless business practices. What do you buy someone who already has everything? Posterity.
Submission + - Emergent AI in an indie RTS game. (blogspot.com)
x4000 writes: "My recent RTS game uses a new style of AI that hybridizes rules-based AI with emergent AI logic. As a disclaimer, I'm really not an AI programmer at all — my background is in databases, financial modeling, etc. But it just so happens that database experience, which often involved distilling data points from multiple sources and then combining them into suggested decisions for executives, also makes a great foundation for certain styles of AI. The approach I came up with leans heavily on my database background, and what concepts I am familiar with from reading a bit about AI theory (emergent behavior, fuzzy logic, etc). The results are startlingly good.
Total development time on the AI was less than 3 months, and its use of tactics is some of the best in the RTS genre. I'm very open to talking about anything and everything to do with the design I used, as I think it's a viable new approach to AI to explore in games, and I'd like to see other developers potentially carry it even further. Here's an overview of how the AI in AI War: Fleet Command works."
Total development time on the AI was less than 3 months, and its use of tactics is some of the best in the RTS genre. I'm very open to talking about anything and everything to do with the design I used, as I think it's a viable new approach to AI to explore in games, and I'd like to see other developers potentially carry it even further. Here's an overview of how the AI in AI War: Fleet Command works."
Comment No need to single anyone out (Score 2, Insightful) 665
No ban need mention a party by name, rather simply enumerate policy violations that merit said ban. Done.
Wikipedia Bans Church of Scientology 665
El Reg writes "Showing a new-found resolve to crack down on self-serving edits, Wikipedia has banned contributions from all IP addresses owned or operated by the Church of Scientology. According to Wikipedia administrators, this marks the first time such a high-profile organization has been banished for allegedly pushing its own agenda on the 'free encyclopedia anyone can edit.'"
Comment Re:Ready to go (Score 1) 400
"you just take it out of the box and it's ready to
go"
Manageable challenge there, In fact, it's more ready to go than just about anything else on the market once the package manager is fired up.
Submission + - Is Apache or GPL better for open-source business? (ibiblio.org)
mjasay writes: "While the GPL powers as much as 77% of all Sourceforge projects, Eric Raymond argues that the GPL is "a confession of fear and weakness" that "slows down open-source adoption" because of the fear and uncertainty the GPL provokes. Raymond's argument seems to be that if openness is the winning strategy, an argument Michael Tiemann advocates, wouldn't it make sense to use the most open license? Geir Magnusson of the Apache Software Foundation suggests that there are few "pure" GPL-only open-source projects as GPL-prone developers have to "modify it in some way to get around the enforcement of Freedom(SM) in GPL so people can use the project." But the real benefit of Apache-style licensing may not be for developers at all, and rather accrue to businesses hoping to drive adoption of their products: Apache licensing may encourage broader, deeper adoption than the GPL. In sum, the old GPL vs. BSD/Apache debate may not be about developer preferences so much as new business realities."
Comment Re:Open source moonlight? (Score 1) 388
Please share with us the many Microsoft patent timebombs embedded in Mono and Moonlight. The code is open because it is GPL -- the Novell agreement has no bearing on the nature of the project.
Comment Re:boy am I glad (Score 1) 236
Please do let us know if you have any luck ending your contract.
New Ads That Watch You 238
Pandanapper writes to tell us Yahoo is reporting that if you find yourself watching an ad on a video screen in a public venue, the ad may be watching you as well. "Small cameras can now be embedded in the screen or hidden around it, tracking who looks at the screen and for how long. The makers of the tracking systems say the software can determine the viewer's gender, approximate age range and, in some cases, ethnicity -- and can change the ads accordingly. That could mean razor ads for men, cosmetics ads for women and video-game ads for teens."
Comment Re:You will resign anyway (Score 1) 315
A 10% stake in the company is a unique invitation to join its executive team. Ergo, your ideas may translate to action that may directly translate to value. If change is what you're looking for, you've found it whether you decide to stay or not.
Comment Re:Thank you Sun (Score 1) 221
Which is basically redundant considering the market's assessment of an organization's value at any given point in time is mankind's most reliable assessment of its future value. Your first post was fine as is.
Comment Re:Linux has UAC too (Score 1) 898
Even without "UAC" (gui-integrated sudo) temporarily gaining root access via a GNU/*nix gui is simply a matter of running the executable in question via sudo from the command line (i.e., sudo nautilus, sudo thunar, sudo systemsettings, etc.). That's been the case for the past decade or so anyway.
Comment Re:New model? (Score 1) 580
Well users may "benefit" in ways not related to cost, i.e., access to the software from any computer/device, and automatic upgrades. They also benefit having the ability to use the service to import/export files to/from these formats (and perform any last-minute cleanup) when using free alternatives for the bulk of the work.
Suppliers may also benefit if these users otherwise either pirate the software or rent time on public use systems, etc.
So the user may appreciate the extra "value-add" and spend $5 where they may have spent $0 before. A potential win-win.
Comment Re:This is the printer's job. (Score 1) 540
Actually there is no need to embed knowledge of this particular font in the document -- this font (or any font modified via this process for that matter) can simply be substituted by the printer to produce a higher-quality economy-mode result. Good news for many routine printing application not traditionally well-suited to economy mode printing.
