But to take that photo you still need to find the perfect tree or building, then drag some cameras out and take pictures of it. Then once it's uploaded, set up light and do some manual adjusting because that branch is just a few degrees off. And that's just one tree or building, you need thousands for a movie.
Indie movies will upload their back yard or buy stock trees, and it will show. That's what separates big budget from small budget - perfectionism and meticulous attention to the tiniest details. Computers doesn't understand beauty or emotion, so you need fine grained human control every step of the way.
It's the composition that is expensive and not the ability to perfectly reproduce reality.
Video games are there today -- computers and mocap rigs all the way down. Still they are approaching hollywood movies in terms of budget. Tangled and Avatar are some of the most expensive movies of all time.
There are no shortcuts to that level of polish. Doesn't matter how advanced your rendering is, you still need an army of 3D artists. Makeup isn't going to be much cheaper just because you do it in Maya.
They were uploading movies to megavideo and streaming them through divx using a plugin.
Difference between Ninjavideo and most other streaming sites is they didn't even try to hide behind safe harbor. Only people who could post links were staff and a handful of trusted uploaders. They plastered banners all over the front page advertising new movies (like "new dvd rip out today woot!"). Talked constantly about how they were pirates.
Even Piratebay comes of as timid and diplomatic. It was just a matter of time before something really bad was going to happen.
EDIT: They weren't just linking to videos, but admitting to uploading them.
After spending some time exploring different functional languages, if FP does make it at all - my money would be on Haskell. There is something to be said for focused languages that does one thing but does it really well, and the feeling of security when a certain style is enforced over a codebase.
I probably wouldn't use it for anything today, but in another couple years maybe. The ecosystem seems like it's reaching critical mass.
Yeah, I'm absolutely not advocating an invasion. Best thing that can happen is a successful revolution. It seems to have been close last time so there's still hope.
Iranians ARE youthful, energetic, entrepreneurial and liberal. That's why they're constantly trying to revolt against the ass-backwards represive government they're stuck with. It's a country of huge constrasts.
There is definitely some kind of propaganda war going on to, but that doesn't mean Iran's government isn't horrible.
You need to learn enough Java to get around, and how to interact with it through Clojure. Java libraries are very comprehensive and well documented, but if you're fresh to both languages the learning curve is steep.
It's sorta possible to get around with pure Clojure, but not very practical.
Leiningen is the de-facto package manager so use that for everything. Clojars and Maven are the two repositories.
Freemium is the dominant model among online games for a reason. Dropbox is another example. Anything addictive that has the potential of hooking a customer long term. Noone is going to shelve out until they've put x amount of hours into it.
Christmas cards is the worst product imaginable. It's a one-off thing with no addictive potential and lots of free alternatives.
A decade ago - ALL my friends were using direct connect. Few of them were nerds, most were barely computer literate. But free movies made them motivated enough to learn. Some even ran their own hubs even though they had no interest in computers otherwise.
Things like this spread fast, especially among young people. The reason people stick with streams today is because they have no motivation to learn anything else.
This goes both ways. If it becomes commonplace, there will be a business in SEO'ing your social media profile. I wouldn't be surprised if a large portion of facebook will consist of networks with good credit scores all friending eachother and blogging about savings tips.
It's hardly a language that will give you any new revalations in itself (if you already know the ones you mentioned). On the other hand, CL does have some grreeat books. Peter Norvig's and PG's books in particular are fantastic and will make you a better clojure/scheme programmer.
Where AI has consistently failed is creating a real thinking machine that can reason and adapt. That's not what we're building today though.
The problem is to many peoples jobs are to easy and highly specialized. They don't require strong AI - just good enough "dumb" algorithms, and we're getting really good at those. Doing paperwork by strict specifications. Driving a truck from point A to B. Assemble a circuitboard from a blueprint. As long as you keep a handful of humans in the loop incase something unexpected happens, this is all stuff robots can do today.
By the time strong AI rolls around, robots will probably be able to perform most tasks people could. It might not even need humans. And even if it did - humans are easy to bribe and manipulate.
If an AI could outperform a human CEO, they would eventually replace them. It's just evoluation. More conservative corporations would get left in the dust. I imagine it could become a similar scenario to the nuclear arms race, everyone's afraid of them - but they still feel forced to build them out of fear.
What really got me was the lack of context. Here's some math - learn this stuff. Had the teacher just taken a few minutes to explain "look these equations are used in machine learning and powers google", that might've ticked your interest. Instead you developed this suspicious mindset where you couldn't really tell if they were wasting your time or not (which they often were).
It gets even worse because you spent six years in grade school grinding long division (oh god) then finding out it's almost useless. The introduction of more interesting math times out well with the rebellious phase where you stop trusting adults.
Only reason I ever got into math was programming. I'm just so happy none of the highschool computer teachers knew how to program and had us memorizing MS Word instead, because I'm sure they would've ruined that to.
As a tangent I was talking to a friend who studies astronomy. She does math for fun, but haaates programming and sees it as dull busywork. Her first introduction to it was through school and it's all "punch in these numbers and see what it does".
Yep! What I like about html is how predictable its limitations make it. I can visit a decade old website created by a 14-year old and have the smoothest user experience imaginable. Everything behaves the way you'd expect it.
Javascript is more powerful, but that also means more power to screw up. Sometimes the results are amazing (like Gmail) - but more often than not it just ends up confusing and frustrating, with vital parts of the UI hidden behind a clusterfuck of menus and widgets.
Say you're into poker and a bank buys your data. You're now tagged as a gambler and considered a liability, so you will have a harder time getting a loan. A future employer could buy it and decide they don't like some certain thing about you. Etc.
Maybe they will never sell your data, but maybe they will. There's unlimited potential for abuse from the corporate sector. What the FBI knows about me doesn't worry me much.
Indie movies will upload their back yard or buy stock trees, and it will show. That's what separates big budget from small budget - perfectionism and meticulous attention to the tiniest details. Computers doesn't understand beauty or emotion, so you need fine grained human control every step of the way.
It's the composition that is expensive and not the ability to perfectly reproduce reality.