The "Games for Windows" campaign. I'm unsure on what the sticker requirements are for that MS programme, but I know this: I've not seen a single Games for Windows game that didn't require XP or Vista.
The requirements do not require exclusivity. And that's probably because you went to http://www.gamesforwindows.com/ where the downplay crossplatform compatibility.
In my opinion, it's Microsoft exercising a monopoly position in the Gaming Industry, but try proving it
I can prove it is not: Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy.
There may be two versions (I don't know) but I know it is an offical "Games for Windows" game and has an OS X version.
Atheism is simply not believing in a god. It is comparable to you not believing that there is an invisible pink aardvark sitting in the chair next to you.
Agnosticism is not believing in a god. Atheism is believing no god (not a god).
Why would the burden of proof be with the guy who refuses to believe the religious crap? For astrology, crystals, healing, tarot cards and the idiotic things some women believe, most everyone agrees that it's all nonsense and that the burden of proof is on them. For the idiotic things that some men believe, i.e. organized religion, the burden of proof is on the atheists? WTF?
Because religion is non-falsifiable, as it makes no verifiable claims about the future. Crystal healing and tarot cards on the other hand purport to predict the near future and thus are testable. Hence, it is not illogical to believe in any organized religion, just as it is not illogical to not to believe in any organized religion. But it is illogical to believe in tarot-driven futures and illogical not to believe in gravity.
Windows Media Player provides a superior Windows experience than RealPlayer
And you blame Microsoft? Real decided to become nasty at one point (I think v. 10), running all the time, and being impossible to remove. WMP always was better.
Any time any MS product succeeds, do you assume it must be because of anticompetitive practices. Office is better than OpenOffice for many corporate uses, due to the annoying features that 80% of consumers don't use.
The problem is not when their software works better on than their competitor's software. The problem is when their software works better because of unfair advantages.
To my pedantic mind, these are poor examples. Water is not wet, instead objects immersed in water become wet. And as for rocks being hard, it depends on the rock. Talc for example is a very soft rock, scratchable by glass, a knife or even a fingernail. See Moh's work (he figured all this out a while ago.)
Starting in 1952, the Bureau of Health Statistics which is part of the CDC, decided that you couldn't just die of old age, you had to have a reason, like you fell on your knitting needles, got hit by a bread truck, or something like that. I think they listed 130 official reasons for death.
Since he died after 1952 and was American, he died of some cause other than old age. Hence, Raise Dead, Resurrection, and True Resurrection all work.
Good thing I've been maxing out Rules Lawyering since I was a level 1 rollplayer.
1. Prereq's: I don't want to take into to biology in order to take a zoology course. I don't want to take (this is probably a better example) Psych 101 in order to take a course on the pathology of brain disorders and the functions of the brain on a chemical level. I know that for some of these courses I can have the prerequisites waived by the instructor, but I don't want to have to go through that with every class.
Okay, I understand this. Personally, I always tried to get the prereqs waived, but sometimes was unable to. That's not really 'filler' in that I thought about it. I mean, I was taking the course because they wouldn't let me skip straight to the advanced level, not because I wanted an easy course.
Your next two points boil down to errors in the decision process. I agree sometimes you think a course will be great, and isn't. Sometimes the first week is great and it subsequently sucks. I understand that. Although I found asking upperclassmen for opinions helped. But what I don't understand is the next, arbitrary leap of logic:
I do mean to say that arbitrary breadth requirements by universities lead to large numbers of students taking Astronomy 100 and so forth.
Why would a class of uncertain greatness be replaced by an almost certainly bland one? Astro 100 seems like it is obviously as challenging as "rocks for jocks" or "physics for poets".
I never understood students who choose filler. There are so many interesting courses, I was struggling with fitting them all in. With the exception of a foreign language, I never had to take any class I did not want to take. And yes, a foreign language is a good thing to know, but I found it extraordinarily difficult.
The user experience was: OS X told me that the network required a password and prompted me to enter it. I entered it. And presto, I was hooked up to the network. Where exactly is the "hell" part?
My user experience was: OS X prompted for the password. I entered it. It never connected. I believe OS X claimed that the router's encryption method was incompatible, but I may have assumed that was the problem. So I eventually downgraded to 26-hex digit WEP.
Then, once the Mac was set up, I went home. Later, I found that the keyring randomly dumped all the passwords, and my friend was having trouble using the network. I told her the key, but still had to go back to her place to reenter it. Rinse/repeat.
What exactly did you have to fiddle with on the OS X side of things to get it to work?
I found accessing shared directories was a pain, involving a lot of work. Most of the other issues I had were probably more fairly described as fustrations using the OS than setting it up. I recall spending a lot of time in the settings, but don't remember why off hand.
And it is a mostly a matter of personal choice, familiarity, and how easy it is to find what you need on the web (which depends on experience, etc.)
Exactly, what kind of crazy employer would make office employees work such long hours they can't get 7 hours sleep?
Say an hour commuting, 3 hours for dinner etc, 1 hour breakfast etc. that means they're working 12+ hours a day. If the workload requires that, you need to hire more people.
Because I have errands to run, and also, I'll be damned if I hav to give up reading/playing at home/going to bars/etc. just because I'm expected to work 10 hours a day. Of course I could... but I'd rather show up sleep deprived at work and stumble throuh another 10 hour day than go through it bushy-tailed.
Sorry, but to repeat the meme, I'm kind of tired now.
. The fact is, I don't use my PC anymore because as much as like messing with things, I'd rather they work 99% of the time and I'm willing to sacrifice the nerdiness and wasted time getting things to work in order to successfully use my comp when I need to.
I call BS. Apples don't "just work" any more than XP machines do. Wireless networking is hell if you want WPA encryption. What Apples do do is have more preloaded software. So, if you are considering the default software package, then sure. I have had to split my time equally between OSX and XP, and I spent far more time fiddling getting stuff to work in OSX.
What annoys me so much is that XP has so many issues, but the plug-n-play/everything-works is not one of them. It denegrates the entire case against using MS products when people use that argument, because the average user doesn't notice this issue. They then assume "security" or "open-standards" is just as big a wankathon.
And weigh three times as much as the EeePC. There is a market for lower performance, light computers.
Since when is weight an issue. They already only weigh 3-5 pounds. The problem for me is size. I want something I can fold up and put in my jacket pocket, or otherwise be small. Hell, make me a 15 lb. laptop that (quickly, without a lot of work from me) folds up around my belt and I'll take that.
But you can patent using a mathematical algorithm to do something. I mean, at some level everything becomes a mathematical algorithim. The arrangement of chips to optimize [don't know enough specifics] is based on a mathematical algorithim.
So, the math behind GIF comprssion may not be patentable, but an image file format compressed in that way would be.
We do have recooping legal costs in the system (but you have to pay initially).
Because they should be made whole and not enriched perhaps?
As I pointed out, they are being compensated for punishing the company, for acting as an analog to a DA. See all my analysis as to why this is not a bad thing.
Well, if that is the case, the punitive part of the award should not go to the plaintiff.
Why not?
You might say that the amount of money is truely excessive, more so than any other person should have. And I grant that. But CEOs make obscene amounts of money, too.
So, at this point, there seem to be two objections. One would be that CEOs should also be paid less. In which case, if you want to have a tax rate of 100% above some level, apply it to punitive damages as well. Alternatively, you might claim that CEO pay is earned whereas punitive damages are not. If that is the case, I have two rebuttals. The first is that CEO pay is typically inflated beyond what they are worth, because every Sr. VP thinks they will be CEO someday. So a $1,000,000 bonus to a CEO is more productive than 20 $100,000 bonuses to Sr. VPs. Second, I would contend that the punitive damages are earned, see below.
It takes a lot of work (years of your life) to bring a successful suit against a company, and see it all the way through the appeals process. In addition, the big company can essentially pay legal fees ad inifitum or have lawyers on retainer. Because of this, the chances of winning a case tend to be fairly small. High punitive damages are given to the plantiff to compensate lawyers (who own a part of the settlement) and plantiffs who take a chance and encourage them to take them to court, to stick it out and not to settle for a non-punitive sum.
They've been the first (only?) company to construct their logo with individual atoms -
To be perfectly fair to other companies, IBM has a very simple logo. It is also black and white. Now that we can finally see atoms in color, other companies can get in on that action.
If you could make circuits like that, it would be really interesting, although useless. For instance, I can imagine an Air where the CPU (at the atomic level) looked like the Apple logo tesselated again and again.
You appear to be blissfully unaware of how close your argument comes to the Nazi case for anti-Semitism
Actually, the Nazi case was predicated to a large degree on Aryan genetic superiority. They didn't offer the Jews a chance to convert to Catholicism (or Atheism, or any other -ism) to save their lives. Or say that they had to have every believed any ideology. One grandparent who was a practicing Jew was considered sufficent reason to warrant death.
No, a man does not ever forfeit his right to free speech. And no-one ever forfeits any right "through voluntary association".
I will agree that no man ever forfeits his right to his opinion. However, some opinions are clearly inferior to others. The reason for free speech is ultimately, to allow better ideas/opinions to rise to the top. While you can do whatever you like in your home (or the home of someone who allows you do so) Nazi idealogy, as with Scientology and the Flying Spaghetti Monster, are such clearly broken thought patterns that serious advocation in the public sphere ought not be allowed.
The counter-argument probably being formulated now is "who draws the line" or some slippery slope. I'm perfectly willing for the rule to be "no ideology that advocates government racism or genocide" is allowed the public sphere, because such philosophies dictate the destruction of the pluralistic state necessary to guarantee the freedom of speech.
I'll add one more: no stupid Microsoft-ish riddles.
Some of us enjoy riddles as a pass time. I don't understand why it would matter if they were programming problems in disguise. In fact, thinly disguised problems from textbooks is the exact wrong type of riddle. The purpose of riddles is to show that you have a brain and it can work. Now, if the right answer to a riddle is considered necessary, that's a poor condition. But I see nothing wrong with asking a difficult question. Difficult problems will come up in the job, and how you deal with them (as well as how well you deal with them) is a vital question the interview seeks to resolve.
A great programmer will love to talk shop. Have one of your existing coders talk to him.
So, you want me to help one of your programmers do his job before hiring me? Just spending enough time thinking about a problem to be able to discuss a solution can lead to awkward pauses.
But make sure you have something interesting to let them work on, otherwise you'll lose them, probably to the banks where they will be paid at least six or seven times what you can afford - make sure your projects are at least that much more fun for them to work on. And never EVER EVER put a math/science person in charge of any sort of UI, no matter how good a coder they are. Seriously, don't do it!
Yes, as my boss has learned from experience. It's not that I don't want to do a good job, it is that the UI exists as I would expect it to be laid out, while following the sketches I have as accurately as possible. My names are apparently especially confusing. But it is how I think about it.
On the other hand, give me a problem that can be solved by creating a general system, with far too many parameters, and let someone else design a GUI with (what I consider) nonsensical rules to drive those functions specifically, and that person and I make a very efficent, very powerful team. Far better than either of us could do with a likeminded person.
Slashdot Mirror
Small knives (and I believe 4" counted as 'small') were legal to carry on planes in the early 90's.
The requirements do not require exclusivity. And that's probably because you went to http://www.gamesforwindows.com/ where the downplay crossplatform compatibility.
I can prove it is not: Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy.
There may be two versions (I don't know) but I know it is an offical "Games for Windows" game and has an OS X version.
Qua? Are these just random words?
He has many; to which are you referring?
Agnosticism is not believing in a god. Atheism is believing no god (not a god).
Because religion is non-falsifiable, as it makes no verifiable claims about the future. Crystal healing and tarot cards on the other hand purport to predict the near future and thus are testable. Hence, it is not illogical to believe in any organized religion, just as it is not illogical to not to believe in any organized religion. But it is illogical to believe in tarot-driven futures and illogical not to believe in gravity.
And you blame Microsoft? Real decided to become nasty at one point (I think v. 10), running all the time, and being impossible to remove. WMP always was better.
Any time any MS product succeeds, do you assume it must be because of anticompetitive practices. Office is better than OpenOffice for many corporate uses, due to the annoying features that 80% of consumers don't use.
The problem is not when their software works better on than their competitor's software. The problem is when their software works better because of unfair advantages.
To my pedantic mind, these are poor examples. Water is not wet, instead objects immersed in water become wet. And as for rocks being hard, it depends on the rock. Talc for example is a very soft rock, scratchable by glass, a knife or even a fingernail. See Moh's work (he figured all this out a while ago.)
It is possible to slow down light. The point was impossible laws.
And those two brothers copied the board, right down to the colors for the various square types.
Never fear, he was an American!
Since he died after 1952 and was American, he died of some cause other than old age. Hence, Raise Dead, Resurrection, and True Resurrection all work.
Good thing I've been maxing out Rules Lawyering since I was a level 1 rollplayer.
Okay, I understand this. Personally, I always tried to get the prereqs waived, but sometimes was unable to. That's not really 'filler' in that I thought about it. I mean, I was taking the course because they wouldn't let me skip straight to the advanced level, not because I wanted an easy course.
Your next two points boil down to errors in the decision process. I agree sometimes you think a course will be great, and isn't. Sometimes the first week is great and it subsequently sucks. I understand that. Although I found asking upperclassmen for opinions helped. But what I don't understand is the next, arbitrary leap of logic:
Why would a class of uncertain greatness be replaced by an almost certainly bland one? Astro 100 seems like it is obviously as challenging as "rocks for jocks" or "physics for poets".
I never understood students who choose filler. There are so many interesting courses, I was struggling with fitting them all in. With the exception of a foreign language, I never had to take any class I did not want to take. And yes, a foreign language is a good thing to know, but I found it extraordinarily difficult.
I failed over to 26-digit WEP, so thanks for giving me another idea to try.
My user experience was: OS X prompted for the password. I entered it. It never connected. I believe OS X claimed that the router's encryption method was incompatible, but I may have assumed that was the problem. So I eventually downgraded to 26-hex digit WEP.
Then, once the Mac was set up, I went home. Later, I found that the keyring randomly dumped all the passwords, and my friend was having trouble using the network. I told her the key, but still had to go back to her place to reenter it. Rinse/repeat.
I found accessing shared directories was a pain, involving a lot of work. Most of the other issues I had were probably more fairly described as fustrations using the OS than setting it up. I recall spending a lot of time in the settings, but don't remember why off hand.
And it is a mostly a matter of personal choice, familiarity, and how easy it is to find what you need on the web (which depends on experience, etc.)
Because I have errands to run, and also, I'll be damned if I hav to give up reading/playing at home/going to bars/etc. just because I'm expected to work 10 hours a day. Of course I could... but I'd rather show up sleep deprived at work and stumble throuh another 10 hour day than go through it bushy-tailed.
Sorry, but to repeat the meme, I'm kind of tired now.
I call BS. Apples don't "just work" any more than XP machines do. Wireless networking is hell if you want WPA encryption. What Apples do do is have more preloaded software. So, if you are considering the default software package, then sure. I have had to split my time equally between OSX and XP, and I spent far more time fiddling getting stuff to work in OSX.
What annoys me so much is that XP has so many issues, but the plug-n-play/everything-works is not one of them. It denegrates the entire case against using MS products when people use that argument, because the average user doesn't notice this issue. They then assume "security" or "open-standards" is just as big a wankathon.
Since when is weight an issue. They already only weigh 3-5 pounds. The problem for me is size. I want something I can fold up and put in my jacket pocket, or otherwise be small. Hell, make me a 15 lb. laptop that (quickly, without a lot of work from me) folds up around my belt and I'll take that.
But you can patent using a mathematical algorithm to do something. I mean, at some level everything becomes a mathematical algorithim. The arrangement of chips to optimize [don't know enough specifics] is based on a mathematical algorithim.
So, the math behind GIF comprssion may not be patentable, but an image file format compressed in that way would be.
We do have recooping legal costs in the system (but you have to pay initially).
As I pointed out, they are being compensated for punishing the company, for acting as an analog to a DA. See all my analysis as to why this is not a bad thing.
Hear, hear. "I am a lazy programmer" is a self-agrandizing way of saying "I will do whatever is expediant."
Why not?
You might say that the amount of money is truely excessive, more so than any other person should have. And I grant that. But CEOs make obscene amounts of money, too.
So, at this point, there seem to be two objections. One would be that CEOs should also be paid less. In which case, if you want to have a tax rate of 100% above some level, apply it to punitive damages as well. Alternatively, you might claim that CEO pay is earned whereas punitive damages are not. If that is the case, I have two rebuttals. The first is that CEO pay is typically inflated beyond what they are worth, because every Sr. VP thinks they will be CEO someday. So a $1,000,000 bonus to a CEO is more productive than 20 $100,000 bonuses to Sr. VPs. Second, I would contend that the punitive damages are earned, see below.
It takes a lot of work (years of your life) to bring a successful suit against a company, and see it all the way through the appeals process. In addition, the big company can essentially pay legal fees ad inifitum or have lawyers on retainer. Because of this, the chances of winning a case tend to be fairly small. High punitive damages are given to the plantiff to compensate lawyers (who own a part of the settlement) and plantiffs who take a chance and encourage them to take them to court, to stick it out and not to settle for a non-punitive sum.
To be perfectly fair to other companies, IBM has a very simple logo. It is also black and white. Now that we can finally see atoms in color, other companies can get in on that action.
If you could make circuits like that, it would be really interesting, although useless. For instance, I can imagine an Air where the CPU (at the atomic level) looked like the Apple logo tesselated again and again.
Actually, the Nazi case was predicated to a large degree on Aryan genetic superiority. They didn't offer the Jews a chance to convert to Catholicism (or Atheism, or any other -ism) to save their lives. Or say that they had to have every believed any ideology. One grandparent who was a practicing Jew was considered sufficent reason to warrant death.
I will agree that no man ever forfeits his right to his opinion. However, some opinions are clearly inferior to others. The reason for free speech is ultimately, to allow better ideas/opinions to rise to the top. While you can do whatever you like in your home (or the home of someone who allows you do so) Nazi idealogy, as with Scientology and the Flying Spaghetti Monster, are such clearly broken thought patterns that serious advocation in the public sphere ought not be allowed.
The counter-argument probably being formulated now is "who draws the line" or some slippery slope. I'm perfectly willing for the rule to be "no ideology that advocates government racism or genocide" is allowed the public sphere, because such philosophies dictate the destruction of the pluralistic state necessary to guarantee the freedom of speech.
Some of us enjoy riddles as a pass time. I don't understand why it would matter if they were programming problems in disguise. In fact, thinly disguised problems from textbooks is the exact wrong type of riddle. The purpose of riddles is to show that you have a brain and it can work. Now, if the right answer to a riddle is considered necessary, that's a poor condition. But I see nothing wrong with asking a difficult question. Difficult problems will come up in the job, and how you deal with them (as well as how well you deal with them) is a vital question the interview seeks to resolve.
So, you want me to help one of your programmers do his job before hiring me? Just spending enough time thinking about a problem to be able to discuss a solution can lead to awkward pauses.
Yes, as my boss has learned from experience. It's not that I don't want to do a good job, it is that the UI exists as I would expect it to be laid out, while following the sketches I have as accurately as possible. My names are apparently especially confusing. But it is how I think about it.
On the other hand, give me a problem that can be solved by creating a general system, with far too many parameters, and let someone else design a GUI with (what I consider) nonsensical rules to drive those functions specifically, and that person and I make a very efficent, very powerful team. Far better than either of us could do with a likeminded person.