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"Happy Xmas"

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1595 230165?v=glance

Another salvo in the war on Christmas.

Let's say you wanted to create a world as complicated as earth - what knowledge and technology would this require?

That's easy to find out. Just go ask the Malgratheans. They should know, since they've done it twice, including the fjords and fake fossils.

OK; you might have to wake them up first.

Check out the Coding4Fun site. You can get free downloads of lightweight versions of many of MS's development tools, plus lots of ideas, resources, message boards, etc.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/coding4fun/

Me personally, I like playing with things like Amazon.com's API or Google's various tool APIs and building my own hacks.

Amazon's AWS/Alexa

Google Desktop API

"Many public key cryptosystems, such as RSA, will become obsolete if Shor's algorithm is ever implemented in a practical quantum computer."

EA's Laptop Collection is pretty damn awesome: SMAC, SMACX, Red Alert 2, and Sim City 3000.

I'd buy it in a trice, if I could find anywhere in New Zealand that sells it...

(Amazon won't ship it overseas)

Well, of course. If there isn't a dress code at all (basics will do, it doesn't mean suits) that indicates that the company really has no idea of what they're doing.

Gee, I'd better go tell Jeff and Bill that they're doing it all wrong.

Excellent list. I had to chuckle a bit reading it, as I have every one of those compilations you list. I agree they're well worth tracking down.

I personally would also add

The Zork Legacy Collection (I know, text adventure and not RPG, but still worthwhile): http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000 8GMVWG/104-0940037-0294322?v=glance
(Zork 1 - 5, Zork Nemesis, Return to Zork)

The King's Quest Collection:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000 AYFPKG/qid=1135049473/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_unbuck_1/1 04-0940037-0294322?v=glance&s=videogames&n=229534
(King's Quest 1 - 7)

Excellent list. I had to chuckle a bit reading it, as I have every one of those compilations you list. I agree they're well worth tracking down.

I personally would also add

The Zork Legacy Collection (I know, text adventure and not RPG, but still worthwhile): http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000 8GMVWG/104-0940037-0294322?v=glance
(Zork 1 - 5, Zork Nemesis, Return to Zork)

The King's Quest Collection:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000 AYFPKG/qid=1135049473/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_unbuck_1/1 04-0940037-0294322?v=glance&s=videogames&n=229534
(King's Quest 1 - 7)

TFA was nice. Old games can be hard to find. Compilations (or reissues) make it a lot easier. Even not-so-old games (2-6 years old) can be difficult to find at times.

Speaking of compilations, I've got a few of my own. I'm an old-school RPG fan. My personal favorites are:

The Ultima Collection: http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/ultimacollection/
(Ultima I-VIII)

The Ultimate RPG Archives: http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/ultimaterpgarchives /index.html?q=rpg%20archives

The Ultimate Wizardry Archives: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000 01QEP9/103-7875370-8027035?v=glance
(Wizardry I-VII)

Forgotten Realms Archives: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000 01QEP7/qid=1135045711/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8__i1_xgl63/10 3-7875370-8027035?v=glance&s=videogames&n=229534
(Pool of Radiance, Curse of the Azure Bonds, Secret of the Silver Blades, Pools of Darkness, Gateway to the Savage Frontier, Treasures of the Savage Frontier, Hillsfar, Eye of the Beholder, Eye of the Beholder II, Eye of the Beholder III, Dungeon Hack, Menzoberranzan, Blood and Magic, and the Baldur's Gate interactive demo.)

The Ultimate Might & Magic Archives: http://www.mobygames.com/game/ultimate-might-and-m agic-archives
(Might & Magic I-V)

Nothing beats old-school gameplay. These collections aren't for you if you're looking for eye-candy though. The games are at least 10 years old, maybe more.

TFA was nice. Old games can be hard to find. Compilations (or reissues) make it a lot easier. Even not-so-old games (2-6 years old) can be difficult to find at times.

Speaking of compilations, I've got a few of my own. I'm an old-school RPG fan. My personal favorites are:

The Ultima Collection: http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/ultimacollection/
(Ultima I-VIII)

The Ultimate RPG Archives: http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/ultimaterpgarchives /index.html?q=rpg%20archives

The Ultimate Wizardry Archives: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000 01QEP9/103-7875370-8027035?v=glance
(Wizardry I-VII)

Forgotten Realms Archives: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000 01QEP7/qid=1135045711/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8__i1_xgl63/10 3-7875370-8027035?v=glance&s=videogames&n=229534
(Pool of Radiance, Curse of the Azure Bonds, Secret of the Silver Blades, Pools of Darkness, Gateway to the Savage Frontier, Treasures of the Savage Frontier, Hillsfar, Eye of the Beholder, Eye of the Beholder II, Eye of the Beholder III, Dungeon Hack, Menzoberranzan, Blood and Magic, and the Baldur's Gate interactive demo.)

The Ultimate Might & Magic Archives: http://www.mobygames.com/game/ultimate-might-and-m agic-archives
(Might & Magic I-V)

Nothing beats old-school gameplay. These collections aren't for you if you're looking for eye-candy though. The games are at least 10 years old, maybe more.

You sir, are a fucking idiot. Where did the original poster express support for ecoterrorism? And such attacks have had *very* little effect on medical testing on animals, and you'd know this if you actually had a clue. I know this because a close friend of mine works on radiation therapy research which routinely uses simian test subjects.

I don't know if this "argument" was intended as a strawman, but it appears several moderators have somehow taken leave of their senses and given you an "insightful" rating. The issue at hand is when certain corporations find the regulatory system in the US not to their taste, and use near-illiterate test subjects in third world countries to refine/try out dangerous products before introducing them to far more strictly regulated FDA approved trials. You have turned this serious issue into a rant about the merits of capitalism and extolling the virtues of drug companies who do no wrong (see, for instance, this book by an editor of the New England Journal of medicine, and any number of ethics scandals involving big pharma), along with putting words into the mouths of your opponents. Shame on you.

There, much better. :-)

Save yourself $7 by buying the book here: Core Web Application Development with PHP & MySQL. And if you use the "secret" A9.com discount, you can save an extra 1.57%!

There, much better. :-)

Save yourself $7 by buying the book here: Core Web Application Development with PHP & MySQL. And if you use the "secret" A9.com discount, you can save an extra 1.57%!

Save yourself $7 by buying the book here: Core Web Application Development with PHP & MySQL. And if you use the "secret" A9.com discount, you can save an extra 1.57%!

Save yourself $7 by buying the book here: Core Web Application Development with PHP & MySQL. And if you use the "secret" A9.com discount, you can save an extra 1.57%!

I urge anyone reading this thread to buy and read Unlocking the Clubhouse, which containes analysis of a study done through several hundred interviews with Carnegie-Mellon CS undergrads.

Lots of women drop out of CS because they feel like they need to be "perfect" to compete with the guys - even if they're already getting better scores than the guys. Most women in CS also don't have the same background with computers coming in to college that their male counterparts do. They probably had access to a computer, but most male CS majors already had their own PC for years before starting college.

The "socialization" (if you can call it that) in the CS world also discourages women. Even if they're not being drooled on or ignored by the guys, they're often looked down on, as if they were stupid. (Because every guy knows that having a vagina means you can't understand electronics.) They also feel that they have to be geeks and talk about nothing but computers - they see that kind of passion in the guys and figure that they have to be just as single-minded if they're going to succeed. Some simply give up and slip back into the "expected" role of women: "I don't understand these 'computer' things, they're so complicated. Can you help me?"

When I read this book, I kept saying, "That's me! I thought I was the only one!" In talking to the (few) other female CS majors I knew, I found that they felt the same way.

In a perfect world, I imagine that there would still be more men than women in CS, but it would be a much closer gap (maybe 60/40 or so). I don't pretend that this field is interesting to everyone, but there are so many girls out there who would love to try it if they could do it without becoming a "nerd". It's not that the field intentionally pushes women out, it's just that they're wired differently, and express their interest in computers differently; and because there are so many men in the field, these views are in the minority.

I guess someone is rehashing this review. If you stroll down the Amazon page for this book, you get the same review text found in this Slashdot article but dated 10/30/2005. So much for submitting an original review. Then again this is Slashdot.

If it's incoherent to you, might I suggest this?

You should not have presented the proposal. Reason is that, since you have presented it, now you are responsible for implementation. Sadly you do not have the power to complete the proposal, so you're in trouble now.

In the worst case they did this intentionally: they'll wait for signs of failure and then sh**can you. In the best case they are merely amused and want to see how well you struggle with insufficient resources.

If you had wanted to keep the job, you should have kept your head down, shoulder to the grindstone, etc. Now you must leave; you have no choice. Gather up your pride and, while pretending to implement your proposal, quietly find a new position elsewhere [avoid management positions - you're not ready for them yet and may never be]. Do some reading on group behavior, e.g., How To Win Friends And Influence People by Dale Carnegie. It will save you lots of suffering.

My suggestion is get a simple book on change, perferably something on Six Sigma practices. Something like this book from Amazon (or elsewhere, it's not a referrer link) would be appropriate for you I think: Lean Six Sigma for Service : How to Use Lean Speed and Six Sigma Quality to Improve Services and Transactions.

The key things to focus on to get management to see your plight is to determine a way to measure your current state (how long does it take to perform workstation maintenance per day, per week, per month? How much time is spent doing any kind of security auditing? How many security incidents have you had this year? etc.), and then present suggestions for improvement on your current state as your expected future state that will SAVE THEM MONEY. This is always what business cares about: making or saving money! So if by being able to hire a clerk or tech to offload some of your current responsibilities it will save you company twice as much as the tech's salary per year, you've just proven the obvious and glaring need to do just that.

Also, provide them with a documented measurement startegy for the future to ensure that their investment in another employee is benefitting the bottom line.

If management still says no, and you've clearly made the case that another body is necessary to help you out in your current position, keep yourself open to the possibility that another company can use your help more than your current employer. Healthy companies are open to change when its needed. Unhealthy companies bury their head in the sand and cannot look past maintaining the status quo.

This whole article reads like a 6th grade book report on the Steven Kent book.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0761536434/qid=11 34956685/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-3046164-8793630?n =507846&s=books&v=glance

Get the book, it's a better read and a lot more detailed.

Whatever happened to Robert Zubrin & Co's ideas for bounties & private enterprise (similar idea to the X-prize)? I was inspired by his book The Case for Mars, but haven't read a whole lot in this area since ... a long time ago. The ideas proposed (very well articulated in my opinion) were visionary, but also seemed practical (still useful today for sure), so I have always wondered why this never seemed to be noticed by the "decision makers". Granted, many of the ideas can seem pretty far-out, but there must be something usable!

The Mars plan as set out by Bush, in a slightly different form, had been examined and deemed less practical too. There are lessons to be learnt, but not many are paying attention. Perhaps those who know more in this area can tell me about how realistic his ideas are. I only know of a few (well maybe a lot) dedicated and keen amateurs/professionals who are working towards the dream of Mars colonisation today in this area. Check out the Mars Society site for example.

Regardless, the book (and others by author + friends) is a good and (for me) educational read, and really did set my imaginations (but not hands) a-going.

Yentl :)

Think about the question for a minute. Assume, for the sake of argument, that one starts coding for a living right out of college.

If you're 40, that's starting a job as a coder in 1987.
If you're 50, that's starting a job as a coder in 1977.
If you're 60, that's starting a job as a coder in 1967.

Do you notice anything about those dates?

I notice that they all end in 7!

But semi-seriously, I also notice that you are living a bit too much on the bleeding edge. If you had said 1966, 1976, 1986 I could have cut you some slack, but remind me not to hire you for any job requiring an actual understanding of Mathematics. I can almost infer that you were not involved in any critical Y2K maintanence projects, but in the future you may want to hone your internal (cognitive) date calculation routines.

Now ... on to the real meat and drink of my post ...

I am 38 years old. I was a highly valued employee in Engineering, and may be again if I choose to go in that direction. I got out of the whole mess in large part because I firmly believe that 80% of the people in high technology are not qualified. They do things like suggest you think about it, and then grasp on to non-sequiters like the one in this (parent) post. Follow your own advice. A person who is 50 years old, and is programming professionally, may have been doing so for much less than 30 years. There is NO correlation between a persons age, and the number of years he has been in a profession, even when there seems to be. Read your David Hume!

"Do you understand how much work goes into the hundreds of failed chemicals before the one safe and effective drug is found? "

Drug cost a lot of money to develop because drug companies spend a lot of marketing and in high profitability to investors. There are a lot of sources for this information, but a good place to start is a book called "The $800M Pill" http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0520239458/002-85 92976-7960836?v=glance&n=283155, which is the chosen name because that's the fictional figure given by drug companies as cost to develop new drugs.

What you'll find is that most of these discoveries come *not* from within the drug companies, but rather by scientists and doctors who are not driven by any profit motive.

Do you think the Bush administration is keeping out Candian drugs to support a fragile drug industry? Or is it because they're protecting the profit margins of largely American industries?

Think a bit and do some reading before you spout someone else'e fictional numbers.

actually the fact that billg didn't donate to any charties was critisized by Bob Cringley in book Accidential empires.

In the 1996 reissue of the book he takes credit for that, but admits that he was wrong when he predicted that gates would never marry.

ironic.

You guys *REALLY* want to see the Commodore 64 come back? Take a look at Here, and here.

Dr. Williams said he had been planning to offer a course on terrorism next semester, but is reconsidering, because it might put his students at risk.
  "I shudder to think of all the students I've had monitoring al-Qaeda Web sites, what the government must think of that," he said. "Mao Tse-Tung is completely harmless."

More or less, it will be like the people who hacked the Robosapiens etc. except that its a bit more expensive to hack into...

Not to nitpick, but I think this is actually cheaper than hacking a Robosapien. A Roomba Red costs $150, while one of the newer Robosapiens costs $230.

I'm also a huge proponent of the individual rights and liberties. And this news makes me sad.

Frankly, I think the student *should* not only be permitted to read Mao's book, but it should be encouraged, and the DHS should fuck off. Only by understanding where we are coming from, and the sort of horrors for which Mao is responsible -- and doing this can centrally include reading Mao's views that helped catalyze the policies leading to them -- will we be able to avoid such brutal ideologies like communism and totalitarianism.

"Those who do not learn from their past are doomed to repeat it", after all. A free, non-totalitarian society allows its people to read books written by rulers of non-free, totalitarian societies; this is not true in reverse.

Ironically, the DHS is enforcing the sort of totalitarianism the student intended to read about. Apparently the DHS has yet to learn history too...

(His professor is unbelieveable though, saying at the end of the article "Mao Tse-Tung is completely harmless." Given that Mao was responsible for the mass-murder of as many as 70 million people, nothing could be further from the truth.)

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/offer-listing/083 512388X/ref=dp_olp_2//102-9865629-6948961?conditio n=all

Amazon.com Sales Rank:
Today: #8,978 in Books
Yesterday: #45,999 in Books
:)

For those of you who don't believe that computer games claim lives, you should check out War Games. The game came close to leveling the entire planet! (kidding)

Why does this sound like the ultimate "the dog ate my homework" excuse? Why does the student fear putting his name forward, in the age when anyone who has been the subject of percieved executive overreach complains loudly to the press about it? I need a little more evidence before I take this for granted.

On another note, the professor who noted that "Mao Tse-Tung is completely harmless." is living in some kind of bubble. Mao killed many people and his disastrous policies almost certainly resulted in the starvation of many millions. I would recommend this book for those who have not read enough of the real history behind the cultural revolution.

Jeri Ellsworth is a self-taught VLSI designer (she also built racing cars for a few years.) She gave a great talk at Stanford on her experiences growing up as a hacker, putting up with prejudice against female high-school dropouts, hanging out at computer stores and starting one, learning VLSI and learning how to work with toy and electronics manufacturers to get things manufactured in China, and about the design itself. She did two C64 emulators. Commodore-One was the first, and the newer C64DTV is built into the base of a joystick. In addition to the commodoreworld site, it's available less expensively at Amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/offer-listing/083 512388X/ref=dp_olp_2//102-9865629-6948961?conditio n=all

But, there were rumours that like radio airplay, the promoters had figured out a way to rig the charts as well. Something like spend a large sums of money on buying back your albums and then sell them back. That way the albums climb the chart even though no-one is buying the CDs.

Yup. It also helps them fiddle the books -- if they ship eg 300,000 copies of a title (that they know is crappy and won't sell) before Christmas, those go in the books as a plus, money that will be coming in. It's not until the 250,000 unsold copies are returned by the retailers that the studio has to account for the loss, which is in the next fiscal year.

This was the standard operation for disco kings Casablanca Records back in the late 70s. It also lead directly to the music industry crash of the late 70s, early 80s as other labels emulated the strategy. The companies all started shipping far more copies than they could possibly hope to sell, which backfired on them once they weren't able to ship enough to offset unsold returns.

Dirty, dirty, dirty business. Read this book to find out just how slimy the business is, and how it's been slimy (and infested with mobsters) from the very beginning.

The problem is that sellers usually want to get paid immediately.

Btw, Amazon handles this situation by guaranteeing the transaction, see http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/browse/-/1383 2201/ for more info.

Yes, Amazon has an auction site...

Intel had a chance to buy out MITS, the company in Arizona producing the Altair in the 1970s, but opted to instead continue selling them 8008 chips for a low price. I'm scant on details because I should probably be writing a script right now ;) , but there's a great passage about the blunder in this book, which is a must-read. Intel dropped the ball, for sure.

1) Coming here to ask your question is a bad idea. Not necessarily because of the quality of most answers, but rather because /. readers represent such a miniscule portion of the real population.

2) Which brings me to my next point. Hire HCI experts, or take some classes on HCI. Testing OSS interfaces isn't any different than testing those of commercial software. You can do either user evaluations or predictive evaluations (w/o users). In fact, doing the latter first AND then the former is [usually] the best option. A cognitive walkthrough or heuristic evaluation can eliminate ~75% of the problems if done by around 4-6 evaluators. Then design an evaluation plan to be executed w/ users. Decide on benchmark tasks. Since you're comparing KDE with Gnome, and I bet those with Windows and/or Mac, you'll want benchmark numbers for all. Look for # of errors, time to completion, etc. These are easily quantifiable and thus comparable metrics.

Just off the top of my head, make sure to study these basic principles (not exhaustive): Learnability, Retainability, Predictability, Familiarity, Consistency, Dialog Initiative, Customizability, Generalizability, Observability, Responsiveness, Efficiency, Error Prevention, Error Recovery, Feedback.

Jakob Nielson and Don Norman are 2 of the most popular experts on HCI. Read Norman's "Design of Everyday Things" and Nielson's Usability Engineering.

I bought an external drive from Seagate and my experience with the drive was absolutely horrendous.
It was so unreliable that I had to return the drive and paid a restocking fee.
I thought it was just me, but these user reviews suggest otherwise.
Personally I would not touch another Seagate product with a 10 foot pole.

Here I have one for you:
Development as Freedom by A. Sen (received the Nobel in Economics a few years ago)
at amazon

If you respond well to people, then hire somebody you know and like to bug you at the end of every day to send him or her a summary of the time you've worked that day. Give them carte blanche to bug you by any means necessary until they get that email. You should be able to remember things adequately at the end of every day. Anyhow, it'll be better than trying to remember weeks later. And having regular feedback will give you an incentive to develop the disciplne needed to use a time-tracking tool.

Two books that have helped me in this regard are Organizing from the Inside Out and Time Management from the Inside Out.

If you respond well to people, then hire somebody you know and like to bug you at the end of every day to send him or her a summary of the time you've worked that day. Give them carte blanche to bug you by any means necessary until they get that email. You should be able to remember things adequately at the end of every day. Anyhow, it'll be better than trying to remember weeks later. And having regular feedback will give you an incentive to develop the disciplne needed to use a time-tracking tool.

Two books that have helped me in this regard are Organizing from the Inside Out and Time Management from the Inside Out.

See, when cities start getting wiped off of the face of the planet and an entire generation of young men gets decimated and then decimated again, then you get to call it a "World War III." Ask Europeans or even Chinese of the proper age group to tell you what a real world war looks like.

Ziggy played guitar!

You can buy the games here: Soul Calibur III. The Movies. Civilization IV. And if you use the "secret" A9.com discount, you can save an extra 1.57%!

You can buy the games here: Soul Calibur III. The Movies. Civilization IV. And if you use the "secret" A9.com discount, you can save an extra 1.57%!

You can buy the games here: Soul Calibur III. The Movies. Civilization IV. And if you use the "secret" A9.com discount, you can save an extra 1.57%!

You can buy the games here: Soul Calibur III. The Movies. Civilization IV. And if you use the "secret" A9.com discount, you can save an extra 1.57%!

Darn. As useful as this looks, I was hoping that we'd finally have an update of that famous TCP-IP classic, Ping the Duck . (Hint: read the top-rated review)