I respectfully disagree. (although I am involved in neither project).
"If only a tenth of the resources were placed into Firebird as are placed into PostgreSQL, I seriously wonder if PostgreSQL wouldn't be largely abandoned within the next two years."
This may be true, but it is not relevant. The logically and morally correct answer to this situation would not change even if FirebirdSQL were well known.
--- "just as they're really starting to get the code base they inherited under control and figured out, a much bigger and well known crew picks that same name. It isn't that the Mozilla team couldn't keep the Firebird name - it's that they shouldn't. It isn't that anyone will confuse a web browser with a RDBMS, it's that it's a completely unnecessary risk that anyone could." ---
I can't put it more bluntly: you're mistaken, as is anyone on the Firebird team that buys into this. It isn't a risk that someone could confuse these two things; this assumption is founded on the idea that someone will discover your database by googling 'Firebird' or some other method based on the name of the project, at which point they'd get presented with the browser and the RDBMS.
Now, it is my experience -- and do feel free to jump in if yours varies -- that people don't just browse the web for databases and then go 'hey, a database! I will install this database!' Furthermore, nobody who -does- need a database is going to think: "I want a database that rises from the dead after I have deleted it. Perhaps there is a database called Phoenix. (looks, doesn't find one). Okay, perhaps there is a database called firebird."
OR: "I am interested in a database built along the same lines as a macho American car, because my database is compensating for other areas of my personal life."
It just isn't going to happen. The whole notion that a database succeeds or fails based on its name is preposterous. I sure as hell would never wonder if perhaps 'Postgres' had a database. I don't even know what a Postgres is.
Marketing and branding have very little importance for a database project; the only possible benefit I can see is in getting your name out there, because, as you say, FirebirdSQL hasn't had the attention it deserves; a browser, on the other hand, does benefit from these things. If anything, FirebirdSQL will benefit from having the same name, because people -will- google Firebird and you will come up, and people might just go 'Hey, look, I wonder what that is.' Take advantage of the situation. Don't get up on some high horse and claim that Mozilla is damaging the open source movement.
I'm the lead designer of the FreeOrion project. We found out that there was a Free-Orion project that was doing exactly the same thing as us. We said 'Hey, cool,' and went about our business. We like our neighbors.
The best advice I can give you is to consult a doctor. Take my own opinion with a grain of salt, as I am not any kind of health practitioner. I'm just lucky to know a few good ones.
It seems unlikely to me that, by drinking coke, you are actually giving your body anything it needs. Look at the ingredient list and see what each of those do -- most of it is just syrups and sugar, -neither of which your body needs in any significant amount-.
If you have problems with fainting, it is possible that it is protein-related. As another poster mentioned, provided you get a healthy amount of exercise and don't overdo it, you can eat plenty of meat, eggs, and dairy (although moderate bread products). If you're opposed to meat, then stop by your local health store and get some protein shakes. It seems very odd to me that having an enormous sugar intake would keep you from fainting. It is more likely that trying to cut your level from 2 litres to zero all at once may not be something your body can handle; as in all things, do it gradually. Switch 1 litre with water. If you feel faint, then eat something solid, with protein -- don't drink carbonated crap. Given the amount of soda you drink, you are probably very dehydrated; add that to the level of coffee you drink, and you're basically stripping away your body's nutrients as fast as you can take them in.
Personally, I don't have a problem with coffee, so long as it's done in moderation (you're better off than me in that you don't drink it with sugar) -- but 2 pots in five hours is not moderation.:) But caffeine is mildly addictive, so it will be very difficult to come down from this. I highly reccommend that you consult your doctor for a way to reduce those levels. Substituting tea helps; I tried switching entirely to tea but found that I really do need one cup of coffee in the morning, but drinking tea in the afternoon works for me. YMMV, though.
At any rate, you have some very bad habits, but nothing you can't fix over time! Don't try to erase all of them at once, because it's easy to get frustrated and give up on everything. Set reasonable goals; work on cutting down on the soda first, and then the coffee. The most important thing from my point of view is that you need a process after whic you will -not feel bad- about it. I used to guzzle mountain dew like there was no tomorrow, but I don't even miss the stuff now.
For those of you who have tried and been unsuccessful on this or any other plan -- the key is to take it one step at a time.
The biggest problem I hear about (and see in any office) is that people have two modes of operation: 'regular' and 'diet,' so -- at best -- they diet and work out until they get what they want and then stop, and then this repeats indefinitely.
If you have trouble keeping up the willpower to follow one of the regimens linked to in these comments, don't do at all once. The BEST ADVICE YOU CAN TAKE AS A NERD:
Give up soda. No real soda, no diet soda. The worst thing in the world to put into your body is sugar, and that's all you're getting with soda. Replace it with water. If you drink a lot of coffee, a) cut the sugar down to the minimum you need for the coffee, and b) drink even more water. Soda does nothing but dehydrate you and fill your body with shit. At @200 calories a pop for non-diet, you can easily shave 400-800 calories off of your daily diet. That's about how many calories you burn when you run a few miles -- down the crapper in the couple of minutes it takes you to drink a coke.
The key is to make these habits routine, so you don't have to think 'oh, I'm on a diet this week.' Even the best 'whiz' diet will not help you if you do not adapt a healthy living style. Don't aim for going to the gym twice a week. Aim for doing something EVERY DAY (even if it's the 11-minute 5BX Plan) -- and then augment that daily routine with a few _serious_ work outs.
Being in shape half the time and spending the other half trying to get back in shape doesn't help your health very much. Change your lifestyle and then you can 'cheat' without it being even being cheating, because you do the right thing 95% of the time.
This is somewhat OT, but I'm really curious about it. In '98, when Forbes was running for President, my family supported him because they'd met him, my dad worked with him a little bit many years ago, and they were big fans of 'that kind' of republican-ism. I disagree with them on most everything, but I found it much more difficult to argue against several of Forbes' platforms. I was also 18 at the time, so not really in a position to be able to.
What do slashdotters think of the flat tax, especially? I understand the principles but am not very well educated in the specifics of the pros and cons (the cons, mostly). It certainly sounds like a good idea on paper.
As an alumnus ('02) and employee, your accusation that they are 'trying to limit your contact with civilization' is bullshit.
Perhaps you haven't noticed the skyrocketing costs of ResNet over the last few years? When I was a freshman in '98, we paid some ridiculously low price of around $75 per semester. I think it's something like triple that now.
You're not going to go far over 2GB with ESPN scores. And even if you do -- let's say you double that. You get FOUR GIGABYTES of ESPN scores. You have committed to memory an enormous sports matrix of the planet earth for the entire month. So you end up paying a few dollars more that month. Big deal.
The people that CIT is going after are the KaZaa users and the warez groupies. Yes, it sucks that you can't download many many ISOs every single month, but you can still download a distro a month and not worry too much. You think roadrunner is an alternative? That's what I have now, about 100 feet from campus. For $40/mo., I get an average speed of about 100kbps down, half that up. No bandwidth limit, sure. 2 IPs.
For $26/mo., I get TEN TIMES that speed on campus and as many IPs as I want. You know how far over the cap you'd have to go before you hit $40/mo.? I don't either, but I can assure you that it's A Lot(tm).
Oh, and to everyone who says "augh, all those poor CS students, I hope they all leave Cornell." This is just the main campus network, operated by CIT (Cornell Information Technologies). There is a whole seperate network that the CS folks get. I don't have any idea how it works or who it's with, but it's Very Special, better than ours, and I guarantee you that they are downloading and uploading things a lot bigger than ISOs there all the time. There is no way that the CS faculty would allow anyone to hamper them like that.
It is stating under penalty of perjury that it has the authority to act on behalf of Joe Bob Copyright holder. Not that you have broken the law. That's like suing the prosecution for perjury during your trial because you think they're lying.
Seems like a very simple misunderstanding. Like it or not, the BSA exists, and is full of people who are trying to do their jobs. If it were you, tell me that the notion of a net spider wouldn't appeal to you.
...and to think just a few days ago, Renee was all 'his article's going to be in SALON,' and I was all 'ohhh Salon okay fine' and now it's on SLASHDOT, which is so much more significant since you can get feedback from the unwashed mashes like myself!
Seriously, though, nice job man. Personally, I don't think it's impossible to isolate those components -- special effects are amazing but you can never really 'reproduce' an actor like you can 'reproduce' an effect; subtract and replace Serkis and you get something completely different and incomparable. Subtract and replace the effects team and you'll get something else, but those things that make him seem so human will still be there, because Serkis provides the basis of the performance. In fact, I'd even say Serkis provides the performance, and the FX team provides the makeup.
But then I am hardly unbiased. So should there be a whole new category, like some other./ers mention? 'Best Supporting Half-Actor?' 'Best supporter of a supporting actor?'
Short answer: Me! I'm an actor! Hire me and pay me a lot of money!
Long answer:
All of those different bits of acting you mention require acting talent, and, usually, training. Voice acting is no exception. Voice acting can be very challenging, since a lot of actors I know (and myself) benefit greatly from having a real set and real costumes to put us where we want to be. Voice actors usually sit in a studio with headphones and a mic, so it's a lot more imginative. There's also a lot of books devoted to dialect study and even 'standard American,' or how American English is supposed to sound even though nobody actually speaks that way; for example, the word 'our' is often pronounced 'are' while it's supposed to sound more like 'hour' and 'what you' (like what you did that time) is supposed to be 'whaT you' and not 'whatchyou,' which is how nearly everybody says it.
There are many other things like those that will contribute to a seamless performance, even though not knowing about them doesn't necessary detract very much -- whatchyou and are/our sound natural to many people. Similarly, learning a Cockney accent or an Irish accent is technically challenging, but even if you master the accent, there are cultural things related to the vernacular in each and how words are used together (especially slang) that no engineer or computer will ever replace.
Personally, I believe that Serkis should've been nominated, but I also can't argue with the author's point (Hi Ivan!) that it gives future quasi-digital characters an unfair advantage. Most digital characters have actors behind them that contribute something, even if its just reacting to other characters in the scene during rehearsal and initial filming -- if the guy they have doing Jar Jar really sucks, for example, then Ewan MacGregor has a harder time doing scenes he has with Jar Jar, because a single character's bad acting can bring a whole scene down even if the actual character is digitally removed and replaced with something else for the film. Every single thing in the composition of a scene will affect an actor somehow.
But then, if you argue that you don't want to consider actors who get computerized help, shouldn't that disqualify anybody who has FX in their scenes? Doesn't the whole movie affect your attitude towards any actor in it just as anything in the movie affects the actor's performance?
Short version of my question: There always seems to be a lot of wonder whenever a lawyer knows his or her techiespeak; everyone wishes that lawyers knew their technology better and that techies knew their law better. How should a quasi-geek like myself prepare to apply to a good law school?
Long(er) version: I am a geek with a liberal arts background (so not quite as hard-core in the geek arena as many around here, but enough to make a living out of it these days!). I have a BA in English and theatre arts (acting) from Cornell and am employed as a web developer with a focus on web accessibility (practical, technical aspects as well as legal). So what should a reasonably well-rounded person who is fascinated by law in cyberspace be doing to stand out when admissions time comes? (to an NYC-area school like Columbia or NYU, hopefully!)
Rear bumber? Why, sonny, you don't know how good you had it! Where I grew up, they certainly didn't have those bumber gadgets. You lept in front of that oncoming bus and prayed to high heaven that it was going fast enough to take you where you wanted to go before you slid off the grill.
You probably had all your own ribs all the way up to adulthood! Rear bumbers...
Wannabe audiophile here. I'd like to use my PC as a center piece (if not the center piece) of my home audio system. That means, in descending order of importance, DVDs, home studio/music production, CDs, mp3s, and games.
Now, I know the moment I put 'music production' in there it opens up a whole can of worms. When I do serious music production I go to a studio, but I like to dink around on my home system so I don't spend any more time (and $) in a studio than I have to. Also, as I have just a nice-action MIDI controller and no piano (Fatar SL-990), I practice on it as well.
Right now I have a Sound Blaster Audigy Platinum with old Creative 4.1 surround speakers. The speakers were nice a few years ago as computer speakers, but in a few months I'd like to invest in something more suited to what I use all this stuff for. Given the plethora of outputs on the Audigy, I'm happy to pick up any kind of stereo receiver and/or speakers, but I know very little about stereo receivers or speakers.
Is it a lost cause to try and use your PC as a general purpose sound system in this way? Like, should I just stick with the computer speakers for computery stuff and get real speakers for music production & CDs? That's a bit cumbersome and ugly in terms of wires going everywhere.:/
I suspect you can write a page that works in every browser that looks decent. I also suspect that, in doing so, you are violating W3C WAI guidelines, or at least being shortsighted in your compliance with them.
(I could be wrong about that, I have no idea who you are or what work you do. This is simply my general experience and please pardon me for jumping on you!)
The biggest problem with supporting every browser is that you're mixing up content with layout. You are most likely using tables for layout; if you know how to make a page look good in NS4 without doing that, let me know. The problem with this is that assistive devices try to comprehend your page by seperating content from layout, and tables are supposed to be used for content, and CSS for layout. But NS4 doesn't even begin to support that properly. This is an issue right now for WAI people and those of us who have to make our sites 508 compliant, but it's going to be more of an issue in the future as all browsers will need to clearly differentiate between layout and content.
We made the decision to simply stop supporting NS4 and comply with HTML 4.0 and CSS2. These are no longer cutting edge standards, and it does give our designers a lot more freedom in how a site looks. Yes, they -could- design something to work in every browser (and we did, until recently) but it is a whole lot of extra work to design something with tables and deal with all of the stuff that entails. So it's not a 'we're too dumb' thing, it's a 'we'd rather devote our creative energies to something that complies with standards that are now a couple years old than support a browser > 3% of people still use.'
And if we get someone who complains that they can't access our stuff with NS4, we mail them a CD with Mozilla or Phoenix. Your tax dollars at work.
Cheers, Aquitaine Program on Employment and Disability Cornell University
Re:Recommended reading on K5
on
Columbia Coverage
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· Score: 1, Insightful
How is this interesting?
It's extraordinarily easy to bash the media. (And sometimes appropriate.)
It's not extraordinarily easy to organize the logistics of getting people and equipment to the right place and filtering the information that comes in into newsworthy and white noise.
Of course we have media overload. Supply and demand. Is your point that Americans spend too much time glued to their TV sets? If it is, I absolutely agree. But why would you pick this as an example? I don't even own a TV, but I'd have been glued to it last Saturday if I did (instead I was glued to cnn.com).
Supply and demand. Until people get off their arse and choose not to eat what the media is all too happy to spoon feed them, you can't blame the media for doing their jobs. If you don't like how a certain media outlet does their jobs, then you can pick another! Or another!
The last time I went through the game, though, I kept him alive, and I think he shows up later. He doesn't do or say much of anything, but he stays alive (I think?) for the whole game.
IIRC, the scene where I had thought he died no matter what was when he's in the hotel room and injured and the UNATCO goons bust into the hotel. Usually he charges them head on and gets killed, but if you are reckless/careful enough to take them out yourself before he can get killed, I think he lives. could be mistaken though, it's been a while.
Re:This won't fix bad games.
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Infinite Games?
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· Score: 1
Not sure if your question is serious or not (I'm assuming not) but my answer is that intelligence and creativity are certainly not the same, and only somewhat linked.
Mozart wasn't especially intelligent.
This won't fix bad games.
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Infinite Games?
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· Score: 3, Insightful
No AI is ever going to be a substitute for good game design and a good story. The article talks about rebuilding the game world if you kill some important ally or destroy an important object, but that's really only applicable for games like Unreal (that they showcase in the article). Unreal isn't a story; sure, it may have some story cobbled together, but Unreal and most games like it are only good for playing against other people and showcasing graphics cards. Something like Deus Ex is infinitely harder to design, because not only do you have to write a compelling story, but you also have to implement it.
Games like the Quest for Glory series were built around the theory that the player will want to be able to do just about anything, to break just about anything, and to be just about anything. They did this very well. It's not about scripting or AI that can allow the player to do anything; it's about using the story and scripting to guide the player without making them feel like they're being guided. Deus Ex is a good example. There are levels that you have to finish, so it's static in that respect, but the manner in which you finish them is completely up to you, and so you feel like you are in control, even though you're doing exactly what the designers wanted you to for most of the game.
People are easily wowed by the next generation of Unreal, and they certainly are quite impressive and expertly done. But they are also quite forgettable. When the last Quest for Glory game came out in '98, I'll bet you that most people pulled out the first four and re-did them (games from the 80's!) just so they could keep their character. Or if they didn't redo them, they had a dusty old floppy somewhere that had it.
Even if we had an AI smart enough to behave like a human, we will never have an AI smart enough to be as creative as humans can.
I graduated last year from an ivy league university with a BA. Most of my studies were in English, acting, or CS. Different types of grading in each one.
I had about 30 credits of CS when I graduated, and all of it was with the same professor (fortunately for me). So I learned early on what he looked for, and it seemed quite fair. A lot of people have been saying 'in Engineering/math/physics it's RIGHT or WRONG and there is NO ROOM FOR ARGUMENT beyond a regular curve/standard deviation.' In a perfect class, this is true. Another CS professor who taught the same class that mine did (CS 100, Java Until You Can't Java Anymore) had a lot of in-class tests where you had to write out your java code by hand. My professor had those as well (required by the dept.) but he weighted them much less, and weighted our homework and projects much more, because he could tell from those things how much effort you were putting in and what you were getting out. So you could take these two identical courses -- same syllabus, books, assignments -- and perform precisely the same way, and get a higher grade in my class than you would have with the other professor's. Is this grade inflation? I don't think so. It's simply a different means of measuring a student's success.
In all of my English courses, it came down to (surprise) paper writing. Some English courses like to take a history class approach and just see how many facts you memorized from each book/play/scroll you read that semester. I personally don't do well with the regurgitation method and lucked out because none of the courses I took had that, although several others did. It has already been pointed out by other posters that grading an English paper is subjective, but it's certainly not just opinion; it is often as easy to tell when someone has cobbled together an unsupported, juvenile argument as it is to tell when they've declared that 2+2=5. But like the CS grader, it's the weight that counts. I've had professors who would fail your paper if it had certain 'grade school' grammar and mechanical errors because he didn't feel that was appropriate for an ivy league institution. Others dismiss those unless they are really debilitating and give 99% of the weight to your arguments. Still others don't care about your arguments unless your conclusion is well done. Consequently, you will find English majors hanging out before grades are released who have absolutely no idea what they're going to get, while the Engineers are already either partying or packing their bags.
Lastly, my acting courses are the best example of a 'huh?' approach. Talent-based classes such as acting (and singing and playing instruments, to a lesser degree) simply do not fit into the academic model of 72% versus 86%, et cetera. For my first three years, the theatre department had what I thought was a good method for evaluating your performance -- to progress into the next course, you had to audition, regardless of the grade you got. So your actual grade for the class was dependent on things like whether or not you studied the material (a lot of reading, and it was easy to tell who could talk about the technique and who couldn't), whether or not you'd spent appropriate time rehearsing outside of class, and your general preparedness for your final scenes. It's a fine line, though, but it's not terribly difficult to tell the difference between an actor who is completely unprepared and hasn't put in any work and an actor who simply may not be an excellet performer. The department's view was that you can't help how talented you are, but you can help how much you improve.
During my last year, though, the theatre department came under fire for handing out a lot of As, because their system was working. People who didn't cut it or didn't care enough didn't make the audition into the high level workshops and classes. So in those higher level courses, you had small classes of people who really cared and were going to put in the work, so you had a lot of As. And having ninety-five percent of your class get an A apparently sets of alarms there, because my school was sensitive to the grade inflation that Harvard was doing (something like 80% of their graduates graduated with honors, as opposed to 10-20% of ours).
I don't agree with professors who are afraid to give out Cs because it's 'not expected' any more than I agree with professors who fail their entire class. That's a sure sign of very poor course design and I am always glad when those professors go. I remember that I got a D on an English paper once, though, and it was one hell of a wake up call. I wouldn't want to have the writing technique that went into that reinforced with any mark of approval...
...and they made their PDF format completely inaccessible to many types of disabled people. Since it's bad business to have sites offer a PDF version and then an alternate 'accessible' version of things, they're correcting the situation. Similarly, a scanned image is impossible for a screen reader to comprehend or for a text editor to search.
Slashdot Mirror
Troll and overrated? What, does no-one here read Douglas Adams?
Goodness. You people take yourselves awfully seriously.
You, sir, are a jerk. A real kneebiter.
-Sam
I respectfully disagree. (although I am involved in neither project).
"If only a tenth of the resources were placed into Firebird as are placed into PostgreSQL, I seriously wonder if PostgreSQL wouldn't be largely abandoned within the next two years."
This may be true, but it is not relevant. The logically and morally correct answer to this situation would not change even if FirebirdSQL were well known.
---
"just as they're really starting to get the code
base they inherited under control and figured
out, a much bigger and well known crew picks
that same name. It isn't that the Mozilla team
couldn't keep the Firebird name - it's that they
shouldn't. It isn't that anyone will confuse
a web browser with a RDBMS, it's that it's a
completely unnecessary risk that anyone could."
---
I can't put it more bluntly: you're mistaken, as is anyone on the Firebird team that buys into this. It isn't a risk that someone could confuse these two things; this assumption is founded on the idea that someone will discover your database by googling 'Firebird' or some other method based on the name of the project, at which point they'd get presented with the browser and the RDBMS.
Now, it is my experience -- and do feel free to jump in if yours varies -- that people don't just browse the web for databases and then go 'hey, a database! I will install this database!' Furthermore, nobody who -does- need a database is going to think: "I want a database that rises from the dead after I have deleted it. Perhaps there is a database called Phoenix. (looks, doesn't find one). Okay, perhaps there is a database called firebird."
OR: "I am interested in a database built along the same lines as a macho American car, because my database is compensating for other areas of my personal life."
It just isn't going to happen. The whole notion that a database succeeds or fails based on its name is preposterous. I sure as hell would never wonder if perhaps 'Postgres' had a database. I don't even know what a Postgres is.
Marketing and branding have very little importance for a database project; the only possible benefit I can see is in getting your name out there, because, as you say, FirebirdSQL hasn't had the attention it deserves; a browser, on the other hand, does benefit from these things. If anything, FirebirdSQL will benefit from having the same name, because people -will- google Firebird and you will come up, and people might just go 'Hey, look, I wonder what that is.' Take advantage of the situation. Don't get up on some high horse and claim that Mozilla is damaging the open source movement.
I'm the lead designer of the FreeOrion project. We found out that there was a Free-Orion project that was doing exactly the same thing as us. We said 'Hey, cool,' and went about our business. We like our neighbors.
-Aquitaine
The best advice I can give you is to consult a doctor. Take my own opinion with a grain of salt, as I am not any kind of health practitioner. I'm just lucky to know a few good ones.
:) But caffeine is mildly addictive, so it will be very difficult to come down from this. I highly reccommend that you consult your doctor for a way to reduce those levels. Substituting tea helps; I tried switching entirely to tea but found that I really do need one cup of coffee in the morning, but drinking tea in the afternoon works for me. YMMV, though.
It seems unlikely to me that, by drinking coke, you are actually giving your body anything it needs. Look at the ingredient list and see what each of those do -- most of it is just syrups and sugar, -neither of which your body needs in any significant amount-.
If you have problems with fainting, it is possible that it is protein-related. As another poster mentioned, provided you get a healthy amount of exercise and don't overdo it, you can eat plenty of meat, eggs, and dairy (although moderate bread products). If you're opposed to meat, then stop by your local health store and get some protein shakes. It seems very odd to me that having an enormous sugar intake would keep you from fainting. It is more likely that trying to cut your level from 2 litres to zero all at once may not be something your body can handle; as in all things, do it gradually. Switch 1 litre with water. If you feel faint, then eat something solid, with protein -- don't drink carbonated crap. Given the amount of soda you drink, you are probably very dehydrated; add that to the level of coffee you drink, and you're basically stripping away your body's nutrients as fast as you can take them in.
Personally, I don't have a problem with coffee, so long as it's done in moderation (you're better off than me in that you don't drink it with sugar) -- but 2 pots in five hours is not moderation.
At any rate, you have some very bad habits, but nothing you can't fix over time! Don't try to erase all of them at once, because it's easy to get frustrated and give up on everything. Set reasonable goals; work on cutting down on the soda first, and then the coffee. The most important thing from my point of view is that you need a process after whic you will -not feel bad- about it. I used to guzzle mountain dew like there was no tomorrow, but I don't even miss the stuff now.
Good luck,
SWK
For those of you who have tried and been unsuccessful on this or any other plan -- the key is to take it one step at a time.
The biggest problem I hear about (and see in any office) is that people have two modes of operation: 'regular' and 'diet,' so -- at best -- they diet and work out until they get what they want and then stop, and then this repeats indefinitely.
If you have trouble keeping up the willpower to follow one of the regimens linked to in these comments, don't do at all once. The BEST ADVICE YOU CAN TAKE AS A NERD:
Give up soda. No real soda, no diet soda. The worst thing in the world to put into your body is sugar, and that's all you're getting with soda. Replace it with water. If you drink a lot of coffee, a) cut the sugar down to the minimum you need for the coffee, and b) drink even more water. Soda does nothing but dehydrate you and fill your body with shit. At @200 calories a pop for non-diet, you can easily shave 400-800 calories off of your daily diet. That's about how many calories you burn when you run a few miles -- down the crapper in the couple of minutes it takes you to drink a coke.
The key is to make these habits routine, so you don't have to think 'oh, I'm on a diet this week.' Even the best 'whiz' diet will not help you if you do not adapt a healthy living style. Don't aim for going to the gym twice a week. Aim for doing something EVERY DAY (even if it's the 11-minute 5BX Plan) -- and then augment that daily routine with a few _serious_ work outs.
Being in shape half the time and spending the other half trying to get back in shape doesn't help your health very much. Change your lifestyle and then you can 'cheat' without it being even being cheating, because you do the right thing 95% of the time.
Wilkes-Barre is also the birthplace of HBO, for what it's worth.
This is somewhat OT, but I'm really curious about it. In '98, when Forbes was running for President, my family supported him because they'd met him, my dad worked with him a little bit many years ago, and they were big fans of 'that kind' of republican-ism. I disagree with them on most everything, but I found it much more difficult to argue against several of Forbes' platforms. I was also 18 at the time, so not really in a position to be able to.
What do slashdotters think of the flat tax, especially? I understand the principles but am not very well educated in the specifics of the pros and cons (the cons, mostly). It certainly sounds like a good idea on paper.
As an alumnus ('02) and employee, your accusation that they are 'trying to limit your contact with civilization' is bullshit.
Perhaps you haven't noticed the skyrocketing costs of ResNet over the last few years? When I was a freshman in '98, we paid some ridiculously low price of around $75 per semester. I think it's something like triple that now.
You're not going to go far over 2GB with ESPN scores. And even if you do -- let's say you double that. You get FOUR GIGABYTES of ESPN scores. You have committed to memory an enormous sports matrix of the planet earth for the entire month. So you end up paying a few dollars more that month. Big deal.
The people that CIT is going after are the KaZaa users and the warez groupies. Yes, it sucks that you can't download many many ISOs every single month, but you can still download a distro a month and not worry too much. You think roadrunner is an alternative? That's what I have now, about 100 feet from campus. For $40/mo., I get an average speed of about 100kbps down, half that up. No bandwidth limit, sure. 2 IPs.
For $26/mo., I get TEN TIMES that speed on campus and as many IPs as I want. You know how far over the cap you'd have to go before you hit $40/mo.? I don't either, but I can assure you that it's A Lot(tm).
Oh, and to everyone who says "augh, all those poor CS students, I hope they all leave Cornell." This is just the main campus network, operated by CIT (Cornell Information Technologies). There is a whole seperate network that the CS folks get. I don't have any idea how it works or who it's with, but it's Very Special, better than ours, and I guarantee you that they are downloading and uploading things a lot bigger than ISOs there all the time. There is no way that the CS faculty would allow anyone to hamper them like that.
It is stating under penalty of perjury that it has the authority to act on behalf of Joe Bob Copyright holder. Not that you have broken the law. That's like suing the prosecution for perjury during your trial because you think they're lying.
Seems like a very simple misunderstanding. Like it or not, the BSA exists, and is full of people who are trying to do their jobs. If it were you, tell me that the notion of a net spider wouldn't appeal to you.
9:56 AM: ActiveWin is displaying screenshots of Office2003 Beta.
(thundering noise, something catches on fire)
9:59 AM: ActiveWin sincerely regrets ever having displayed screenshots of Office2003 Beta. Move along, please.
...and to think just a few days ago, Renee was all 'his article's going to be in SALON,' and I was all 'ohhh Salon okay fine' and now it's on SLASHDOT, which is so much more significant since you can get feedback from the unwashed mashes like myself!
./ers mention? 'Best Supporting Half-Actor?' 'Best supporter of a supporting actor?'
Seriously, though, nice job man. Personally, I don't think it's impossible to isolate those components -- special effects are amazing but you can never really 'reproduce' an actor like you can 'reproduce' an effect; subtract and replace Serkis and you get something completely different and incomparable. Subtract and replace the effects team and you'll get something else, but those things that make him seem so human will still be there, because Serkis provides the basis of the performance. In fact, I'd even say Serkis provides the performance, and the FX team provides the makeup.
But then I am hardly unbiased. So should there be a whole new category, like some other
Short answer: Me! I'm an actor! Hire me and pay me a lot of money!
Long answer:
All of those different bits of acting you mention require acting talent, and, usually, training. Voice acting is no exception. Voice acting can be very challenging, since a lot of actors I know (and myself) benefit greatly from having a real set and real costumes to put us where we want to be. Voice actors usually sit in a studio with headphones and a mic, so it's a lot more imginative. There's also a lot of books devoted to dialect study and even 'standard American,' or how American English is supposed to sound even though nobody actually speaks that way; for example, the word 'our' is often pronounced 'are' while it's supposed to sound more like 'hour' and 'what you' (like what you did that time) is supposed to be 'whaT you' and not 'whatchyou,' which is how nearly everybody says it.
There are many other things like those that will contribute to a seamless performance, even though not knowing about them doesn't necessary detract very much -- whatchyou and are/our sound natural to many people. Similarly, learning a Cockney accent or an Irish accent is technically challenging, but even if you master the accent, there are cultural things related to the vernacular in each and how words are used together (especially slang) that no engineer or computer will ever replace.
Personally, I believe that Serkis should've been nominated, but I also can't argue with the author's point (Hi Ivan!) that it gives future quasi-digital characters an unfair advantage. Most digital characters have actors behind them that contribute something, even if its just reacting to other characters in the scene during rehearsal and initial filming -- if the guy they have doing Jar Jar really sucks, for example, then Ewan MacGregor has a harder time doing scenes he has with Jar Jar, because a single character's bad acting can bring a whole scene down even if the actual character is digitally removed and replaced with something else for the film. Every single thing in the composition of a scene will affect an actor somehow.
But then, if you argue that you don't want to consider actors who get computerized help, shouldn't that disqualify anybody who has FX in their scenes? Doesn't the whole movie affect your attitude towards any actor in it just as anything in the movie affects the actor's performance?
Hello Professor,
Short version of my question: There always seems to be a lot of wonder whenever a lawyer knows his or her techiespeak; everyone wishes that lawyers knew their technology better and that techies knew their law better. How should a quasi-geek like myself prepare to apply to a good law school?
Long(er) version: I am a geek with a liberal arts background (so not quite as hard-core in the geek arena as many around here, but enough to make a living out of it these days!). I have a BA in English and theatre arts (acting) from Cornell and am employed as a web developer with a focus on web accessibility (practical, technical aspects as well as legal). So what should a reasonably well-rounded person who is fascinated by law in cyberspace be doing to stand out when admissions time comes? (to an NYC-area school like Columbia or NYU, hopefully!)
Thanks very much,
Samuel Knowlton
Hasn't the OSS done battle with the SS once before?
Rear bumber? Why, sonny, you don't know how good you had it! Where I grew up, they certainly didn't have those bumber gadgets. You lept in front of that oncoming bus and prayed to high heaven that it was going fast enough to take you where you wanted to go before you slid off the grill.
You probably had all your own ribs all the way up to adulthood! Rear bumbers...
Wannabe audiophile here. I'd like to use my PC as a center piece (if not the center piece) of my home audio system. That means, in descending order of importance, DVDs, home studio/music production, CDs, mp3s, and games.
:/
Now, I know the moment I put 'music production' in there it opens up a whole can of worms. When I do serious music production I go to a studio, but I like to dink around on my home system so I don't spend any more time (and $) in a studio than I have to. Also, as I have just a nice-action MIDI controller and no piano (Fatar SL-990), I practice on it as well.
Right now I have a Sound Blaster Audigy Platinum with old Creative 4.1 surround speakers. The speakers were nice a few years ago as computer speakers, but in a few months I'd like to invest in something more suited to what I use all this stuff for. Given the plethora of outputs on the Audigy, I'm happy to pick up any kind of stereo receiver and/or speakers, but I know very little about stereo receivers or speakers.
Is it a lost cause to try and use your PC as a general purpose sound system in this way? Like, should I just stick with the computer speakers for computery stuff and get real speakers for music production & CDs? That's a bit cumbersome and ugly in terms of wires going everywhere.
Thanks very much!
Aquitaine
I disagree with your disagreement completely. :)
I suspect you can write a page that works in every browser that looks decent. I also suspect that, in doing so, you are violating W3C WAI guidelines, or at least being shortsighted in your compliance with them.
(I could be wrong about that, I have no idea who you are or what work you do. This is simply my general experience and please pardon me for jumping on you!)
The biggest problem with supporting every browser is that you're mixing up content with layout. You are most likely using tables for layout; if you know how to make a page look good in NS4 without doing that, let me know. The problem with this is that assistive devices try to comprehend your page by seperating content from layout, and tables are supposed to be used for content, and CSS for layout. But NS4 doesn't even begin to support that properly. This is an issue right now for WAI people and those of us who have to make our sites 508 compliant, but it's going to be more of an issue in the future as all browsers will need to clearly differentiate between layout and content.
We made the decision to simply stop supporting NS4 and comply with HTML 4.0 and CSS2. These are no longer cutting edge standards, and it does give our designers a lot more freedom in how a site looks. Yes, they -could- design something to work in every browser (and we did, until recently) but it is a whole lot of extra work to design something with tables and deal with all of the stuff that entails. So it's not a 'we're too dumb' thing, it's a 'we'd rather devote our creative energies to something that complies with standards that are now a couple years old than support a browser > 3% of people still use.'
And if we get someone who complains that they can't access our stuff with NS4, we mail them a CD with Mozilla or Phoenix. Your tax dollars at work.
Cheers,
Aquitaine
Program on Employment and Disability
Cornell University
How is this interesting?
It's extraordinarily easy to bash the media. (And sometimes appropriate.)
It's not extraordinarily easy to organize the logistics of getting people and equipment to the right place and filtering the information that comes in into newsworthy and white noise.
Of course we have media overload. Supply and demand. Is your point that Americans spend too much time glued to their TV sets? If it is, I absolutely agree. But why would you pick this as an example? I don't even own a TV, but I'd have been glued to it last Saturday if I did (instead I was glued to cnn.com).
Supply and demand. Until people get off their arse and choose not to eat what the media is all too happy to spoon feed them, you can't blame the media for doing their jobs. If you don't like how a certain media outlet does their jobs, then you can pick another! Or another!
I remember thinking this as well.
The last time I went through the game, though, I kept him alive, and I think he shows up later. He doesn't do or say much of anything, but he stays alive (I think?) for the whole game.
IIRC, the scene where I had thought he died no matter what was when he's in the hotel room and injured and the UNATCO goons bust into the hotel. Usually he charges them head on and gets killed, but if you are reckless/careful enough to take them out yourself before he can get killed, I think he lives. could be mistaken though, it's been a while.
Not sure if your question is serious or not (I'm assuming not) but my answer is that intelligence and creativity are certainly not the same, and only somewhat linked.
Mozart wasn't especially intelligent.
No AI is ever going to be a substitute for good game design and a good story. The article talks about rebuilding the game world if you kill some important ally or destroy an important object, but that's really only applicable for games like Unreal (that they showcase in the article). Unreal isn't a story; sure, it may have some story cobbled together, but Unreal and most games like it are only good for playing against other people and showcasing graphics cards. Something like Deus Ex is infinitely harder to design, because not only do you have to write a compelling story, but you also have to implement it.
Games like the Quest for Glory series were built around the theory that the player will want to be able to do just about anything, to break just about anything, and to be just about anything. They did this very well. It's not about scripting or AI that can allow the player to do anything; it's about using the story and scripting to guide the player without making them feel like they're being guided. Deus Ex is a good example. There are levels that you have to finish, so it's static in that respect, but the manner in which you finish them is completely up to you, and so you feel like you are in control, even though you're doing exactly what the designers wanted you to for most of the game.
People are easily wowed by the next generation of Unreal, and they certainly are quite impressive and expertly done. But they are also quite forgettable. When the last Quest for Glory game came out in '98, I'll bet you that most people pulled out the first four and re-did them (games from the 80's!) just so they could keep their character. Or if they didn't redo them, they had a dusty old floppy somewhere that had it.
Even if we had an AI smart enough to behave like a human, we will never have an AI smart enough to be as creative as humans can.
Yeah, except the RSX-S kicks your Eclipse's ass. Speaking of the Eclipse's ass, it's a little big for my taste.
I graduated last year from an ivy league university with a BA. Most of my studies were in English, acting, or CS. Different types of grading in each one.
I had about 30 credits of CS when I graduated, and all of it was with the same professor (fortunately for me). So I learned early on what he looked for, and it seemed quite fair. A lot of people have been saying 'in Engineering/math/physics it's RIGHT or WRONG and there is NO ROOM FOR ARGUMENT beyond a regular curve/standard deviation.' In a perfect class, this is true. Another CS professor who taught the same class that mine did (CS 100, Java Until You Can't Java Anymore) had a lot of in-class tests where you had to write out your java code by hand. My professor had those as well (required by the dept.) but he weighted them much less, and weighted our homework and projects much more, because he could tell from those things how much effort you were putting in and what you were getting out. So you could take these two identical courses -- same syllabus, books, assignments -- and perform precisely the same way, and get a higher grade in my class than you would have with the other professor's. Is this grade inflation? I don't think so. It's simply a different means of measuring a student's success.
In all of my English courses, it came down to (surprise) paper writing. Some English courses like to take a history class approach and just see how many facts you memorized from each book/play/scroll you read that semester. I personally don't do well with the regurgitation method and lucked out because none of the courses I took had that, although several others did. It has already been pointed out by other posters that grading an English paper is subjective, but it's certainly not just opinion; it is often as easy to tell when someone has cobbled together an unsupported, juvenile argument as it is to tell when they've declared that 2+2=5. But like the CS grader, it's the weight that counts. I've had professors who would fail your paper if it had certain 'grade school' grammar and mechanical errors because he didn't feel that was appropriate for an ivy league institution. Others dismiss those unless they are really debilitating and give 99% of the weight to your arguments. Still others don't care about your arguments unless your conclusion is well done. Consequently, you will find English majors hanging out before grades are released who have absolutely no idea what they're going to get, while the Engineers are already either partying or packing their bags.
Lastly, my acting courses are the best example of a 'huh?' approach. Talent-based classes such as acting (and singing and playing instruments, to a lesser degree) simply do not fit into the academic model of 72% versus 86%, et cetera. For my first three years, the theatre department had what I thought was a good method for evaluating your performance -- to progress into the next course, you had to audition, regardless of the grade you got. So your actual grade for the class was dependent on things like whether or not you studied the material (a lot of reading, and it was easy to tell who could talk about the technique and who couldn't), whether or not you'd spent appropriate time rehearsing outside of class, and your general preparedness for your final scenes. It's a fine line, though, but it's not terribly difficult to tell the difference between an actor who is completely unprepared and hasn't put in any work and an actor who simply may not be an excellet performer. The department's view was that you can't help how talented you are, but you can help how much you improve.
During my last year, though, the theatre department came under fire for handing out a lot of As, because their system was working. People who didn't cut it or didn't care enough didn't make the audition into the high level workshops and classes. So in those higher level courses, you had small classes of people who really cared and were going to put in the work, so you had a lot of As. And having ninety-five percent of your class get an A apparently sets of alarms there, because my school was sensitive to the grade inflation that Harvard was doing (something like 80% of their graduates graduated with honors, as opposed to 10-20% of ours).
I don't agree with professors who are afraid to give out Cs because it's 'not expected' any more than I agree with professors who fail their entire class. That's a sure sign of very poor course design and I am always glad when those professors go. I remember that I got a D on an English paper once, though, and it was one hell of a wake up call. I wouldn't want to have the writing technique that went into that reinforced with any mark of approval...
...and they made their PDF format completely inaccessible to many types of disabled people. Since it's bad business to have sites offer a PDF version and then an alternate 'accessible' version of things, they're correcting the situation. Similarly, a scanned image is impossible for a screen reader to comprehend or for a text editor to search.
In Soviet Russia, dns QUERIES YOU!