Do I really CARE that our president is a funny looking nappy headed non-white?
I found parts of your post such as this to be extremely objectionable. Seriously, this sort of thing is agony to read.
Please don't capitalise part of a sentence like that. Emphasis like that doesn't help everyone hear your tone, it just makes those of us who don't hear your tone wince. Think about caps as shouting. Would you really SAY something like that, shouting out one word in the middle of everything?
Quake was a surprisingly "modern" multiplayer game. While one had to enable mouse look in the console, the fundamentals of playing Quake with both the keyboard and mouse across a network have lived on. It's the earliest 3D game that I played with that gaming style, and the first I played very competitively against friends.
I specifically remember when one of my friends assembled us, and opened with the monumental line: "What do you guys know about Ethernet cards?". We each bought one and pitched in on a hub, and the LAN party was born into our world, specifically to play Quake.
Mosaic was nice in it's own way and helped start the ball rolling but it was Netscape (like Lotus) that ultimately brought the idea to the masses.
Netscape was also a major commercial application that was released as open source, certainly the first of that kind that I noticed. I'm not saying it changed everything; I certainly don't buy the "without this there would be no ______" line for any program (because without "this" there could just have easily been something else that lead to "______"). Still notable, IMHO.
Sure, I suppose code quality is a better descriptor. It was reviewed as part of the development process, where quality determined how much had to be revisited. Each WTF was something that had to be worked on again, so in that sense it was a measure of productivity.
Are there objective standards for how productive a coder is? It doesn't seem an easy thing to measure.
Back in 2000 we were taught by our CS instructors that 10 lines of code per hour was a good measurement for a productive programmer, all things considered. It was an old school faculty (some had never used Windows before), and I've no idea how accurate that was or is now, as there's only one realistic metric I've used to review programmers' work, perfectly illustrated by that xkcd comic I can't find (dammit).
Coder productivity is measured by how many "WTF?"s come up when the code is reviewed.
The wacky shit that Scientologists are taught to believe is no more wacky than the shit Christians are taught to believe in.
In regards to fraud, the only difference is that the Christians have been around longer, so the only lies they tell are the ones that are not verifiably false.
If you didn't RTFA, it's not about theology, but a specific case of fraud (as it's specifically defined under French law, to be determined in trial, obviously).
"Lawyers for Aude-Claire Malton claim Scientologists preyed upon her at a time when she was "very psychologically fragile", pressuring her into spending â21,000 (£18,000) â" her life savings â" on products including "purification packs" and vitamins."
If the evidence shows that what took place was illegal, then there will be criminal punishment. The church issue only comes in as the prosecution will try to show that the allegedly illegal behaviour is Scientology procedure, and so if the court rules against them, the leaders of the now criminal organisation will subject to punishment.
IANAFL, of course, but I believe this situation to be different from religious claims made by a religion, or specific use of an established religion by a specific individual.
If you're responding to Iran being "the most Islam nation", are you considering all the secular Islam-majority nations that came out of the former Soviet Union (that are much more secular), or are you making a separate point?
In the clearest of terms, the Slashdotter "OeLeWaPpErKe" is wrong, very wrong.
As for what's right, read some history, and make your own judgements. As a head start, I can definitely assure you that that Thomas Jefferson was dead decades before the American Civil War, and that the Barbary Wars were in his time, and about sea passage rights in the Mediterranean Sea (not slavery).
I can also direct you to look for more than 10 Muslim nations that are considered secular (a large percentage of them former Soviet states).
As for non-violent approach to non-believers, draw your own conclusion, but include search terms such as "the inquition" and "Spanish conquistadors".
I was discussing tattoos with a friend, and when I mentioned forearm tattoos, she pointed out that forearm tattoos can affect future employment, otherwise she would have full sleeves done already.
After thinking about that for a moment, I pointed out that our choices affect the direction of our lives. Her last job was a mindless office job (think Happy Times in "Dead Like Me", Office Space, etc). If she's someone who sees having her arms beautifully tattooed, who's to say it won't have a positive effect on her life? It might close some doors, fairly or not, in something like the corporate world, but it might lead her to a career she loves and may not have discovered otherwise.
I'm not sure how this story fits in with college indiscretions not fading into the past, except maybe a zen-like acceptance that they were choices that shape your life now, and if you don't get that promotion as a result, it might be your drunken, half-naked, publicly urinating 19 year old self sending a message from the past that you're in the wrong job.
Unfortunately, people tend to look down as anything not requiring a college education as lesser work.
I'm trying to get over that prejudice myself, and not feel so embarrassed about being a web developer. Well, I'm not REALLY a web developer, it's a temporary thing. Just easy money, really. I'll move on to something else, I'm still young!
Seriously though, I did get into it for convenience rather than career, and I do want to find something else. This topic interests me not in the sense that working with my hands will make me better at a job where I don't work with my hands, but rather because I want a job where I do get outside and work with my hands. I haven't worked to advance my programming career because I just haven't found spending so much time in front of a computer personally rewarding.
It's true I didn't get classes like shop growing up, but I had other opportunities. One thing I have noticed, though, is that I'm woefully unprepared to look for careers that are intrinsically out in the field, both in terms of knowing what's out there, and knowing just what the jobs entail.
I don't necessarily want to commit to a career path in my twenties (I'm a ways away from the settling down, starting a family sort of thing), and so many "blue collar" jobs seem to require spending a lot of money to get your certification before you even set out to see if anyone will hire you.
Actually all those reasons are the reason that I buy at amazon and others. I once had a logitech headset that broke because of flimsy build quality. Within the year I went back to the store, but they wouldn't accept it. The only time I will buy something at a brick & mortar store will be if I need it on exactly that day and precise specifications don't count so much, for example empty cds.
In defence of Circuit City, they provided the best return policy and customer service of all the brick & mortar stores I've experienced.
Not so. My son (who is 5) enjoys 2D Mario games on the Nintendo better than he does Mario 64 on the N64 (the first of the genre to have full 3D, IIRC).
To be fair, those early 3D implementations of traditionally platformer titles were pretty terrible.
I wish I had mod points, as this long and bizarre invention of history has to be one of the funniest posts I've read on Slashdot in ages. Whether it's a skilled troll or a "selectively informed" and passionate individual, the gaping omissions, obvious contradictions, and glaring historical inaccuracies contrast the serious and informative tone quite well.
For the tl;dr crowd, some highlights:
- Christianity is the ONLY religion to oppose slavery from the start, however citations about religion and slavery conveniently omit those in the New Testament.
- American Civil War lead to the Barbary Wars through some sort of time vortex, and 19th Century piracy is now referred to as "terrorism"
- Through a super time vortex, Thomas Jefferson was around in this Civil War period, and "created" the American Marines after having purchased and read a Koran
- Iran is "just about the most open Muslim nation"
- There is only one existing secular Muslim country
- Christianity is known for it's non-violent approach to non-believers (from it's inception to present day, I assume)
Not any more. If you're a good boy, you get to disable ads on/. while you're logged in. I now just get a little box saying "Ads disabled [tick] Thanks again for helping make Slashdot great!".
Dear Slashdot policy makers,
The feature introduced to allow active participants the option of disabling advertisements on the site has to be one of the most awesome things I've seen implemented re: ads on community driven sites.
If he was spending all his time shut away in his room reading books, this wouldn't be post-worthy, it'd just be someone with a reclusive personality.
How many people have you heard of that wake up in the morning and read all day until 3AM the next morning, only stopping for meals and potty breaks?
Reading books may be too specific for that to be a good analogy of reclusive personality, but I like the partying example better anyway. Besides, how many people have you known to be obsessive like that with an MMO and then ended up growing out of it?
I went through a phase of playing WoW pretty intensely, and I (along with every friend that played with me), just grew out of it. The same went for wildly irresponsible nights on the town. However, only one of those two phases brings the phrase "thank god I don't have an STD or a felony record" to mind when I think back to it.
Not only his life was at stake, but god forbid what if he had killed someone else? What then? This kind of bull should not be tolerated, at all, the police made a simple request to turn on said dudes phone because he could be a hazard to himself (or someone else) so what if dude 'owes' them $20 bucks, it's not going to break their system to turn on his phone for 5 or 10 mins so they can find him, instead 11 fucking hours were wasted, thats rediculous. What do they make in profit a year, $20 bucks is nothing, I could spend that doing just about anything, what I'm saying is that's a drop in the bucket for me, to them that's nothing, it costs them nothing to help out the sheriffs office, hell it even helps them, tax dollars at work right there, how many man hours of work were wasted because of them, they should have to reimburse the office for all that time, what a fucking waste.
Judges can be contacted at any time of the day to authorise a warrant. If it's a matter as important as life and death, the responsibility for efficient process lies on the police and legal system whose job it is to handle emergency situations. Right or wrong, it's not currently the duty of a corporation to provide bureaucratic clauses to cover every instance where police procedures fail.
If government is trusted to hand out the actual death penalty to living human beings defended by draftee lawyers, why not to large corporations that are surely better represented?
I might be wrong, but it's my understanding that the death penalty can not be invoked without it's use first being approved by a jury of peers. That is to say, the government is expressly not trusted to hand it out.
I think people should mind their own bloody business personally. It's not like he's poisoning his body with drugs or alcohol or hurting other people with his "addiction".
How to help a friend? Leave them the hell alone to live their life how they want and stop being so bloody pretentious in thinking this person needs to be "saved".
I'm pretty much on board with this perspective. At some point he's an adult and takes responsibilities for his own actions. He might look back years later and lament the lost time (and quite possibly a delayed education), but that will have been his choice. The potential to be doing other things doesn't mean that he'd be happier not doing what he is now.
If he was spending all his time shut away in his room reading books, this wouldn't be post-worthy, it'd just be someone with a reclusive personality. If he was out getting smashed at parties and getting laid all the time, it wouldn't be post-worthy either. Still, it's just as easy to look back with regret on a year of partying as it is a year of playing an MMO.
If apple says "this will kill the iphone," then it will kill the iphone. If apple says "You should buy this before you graduate you our big boy toy," people will skip the training wheels.
Then why didn't the iPhone kill the iPod Touch? It's amazingly obvious: the touch lets someone have a cool gadget when they can't afford the iPhone voice/data plan pricing. One device is an iPod, one is a phone, and there's still separate markets for each of them to be highly desirable.
That tells me 2 things: 1. You don't value your own time. Presumably you have nothing better to do than waste time learning a tool. 2. You don't value my time. I KNOW I have better things to do.
So you've just put yourself down and disrespected me also. Do you think I'm going to put a lot of weight on what you think?
Your post tells me that you don't know what the word "but" means. Having time as an exception obviously is placing value on time.
I work in a computer science department (albeit at a minor university). Windows is king, and we have instructors who tell the students that there is no point in even looking at any other OS as the only OS worth anything is Windows. Makes teaching our (required, but currently eviscerated) unix course rather painful (whines of "Why?" erupt from the classroom).
I had a CS professor (brilliant programmer) who went from undergrad to the Navy to MIT, and arrived at RHIT not having ever used MS Windows despite spending years working with computers.
When we had our mips assembly section in the Comp Arch class he was teaching, he informed us that the emulator had a bug, and he had fixed it in the source code, so everyone would have to use the *nix version unless one of the students could show him how to properly build the program under Windows (for extra credit). It's likely there was some degree of just not being interested in making the effort with Windows, but I'm sure Windows just not being an intuitive work environment for an "old school" programmer was the biggest factor (he happened to be my youngest professor, I believe).
I don't even know how you'd go about teaching a proper course in Operating Systems using Windows.
Slashdot Mirror
Do I really CARE that our president is a funny looking nappy headed non-white?
I found parts of your post such as this to be extremely objectionable. Seriously, this sort of thing is agony to read.
Please don't capitalise part of a sentence like that. Emphasis like that doesn't help everyone hear your tone, it just makes those of us who don't hear your tone wince. Think about caps as shouting. Would you really SAY something like that, shouting out one word in the middle of everything?
Try using italics. It WILL NOT BE as annoying.
Quake was a surprisingly "modern" multiplayer game. While one had to enable mouse look in the console, the fundamentals of playing Quake with both the keyboard and mouse across a network have lived on. It's the earliest 3D game that I played with that gaming style, and the first I played very competitively against friends.
I specifically remember when one of my friends assembled us, and opened with the monumental line: "What do you guys know about Ethernet cards?". We each bought one and pitched in on a hub, and the LAN party was born into our world, specifically to play Quake.
wow thats a big icq number, noob :D
2951034
How is that your ICQ number is a whole digit shorter than mine, but your Slashdot ID is 8 times larger? Your geek credentials are now suspect.
Mosaic was nice in it's own way and helped start the ball rolling but
it was Netscape (like Lotus) that ultimately brought the idea to the
masses.
Netscape was also a major commercial application that was released as open source, certainly the first of that kind that I noticed. I'm not saying it changed everything; I certainly don't buy the "without this there would be no ______" line for any program (because without "this" there could just have easily been something else that lead to "______"). Still notable, IMHO.
Sure, I suppose code quality is a better descriptor. It was reviewed as part of the development process, where quality determined how much had to be revisited. Each WTF was something that had to be worked on again, so in that sense it was a measure of productivity.
Are there objective standards for how productive a coder is? It doesn't seem an easy thing to measure.
Back in 2000 we were taught by our CS instructors that 10 lines of code per hour was a good measurement for a productive programmer, all things considered. It was an old school faculty (some had never used Windows before), and I've no idea how accurate that was or is now, as there's only one realistic metric I've used to review programmers' work, perfectly illustrated by that xkcd comic I can't find (dammit).
Coder productivity is measured by how many "WTF?"s come up when the code is reviewed.
The wacky shit that Scientologists are taught to believe is no more wacky than the shit Christians are taught to believe in.
In regards to fraud, the only difference is that the Christians have been around longer, so the only lies they tell are the ones that are not verifiably false.
If you didn't RTFA, it's not about theology, but a specific case of fraud (as it's specifically defined under French law, to be determined in trial, obviously).
"Lawyers for Aude-Claire Malton claim Scientologists preyed upon her at a time when she was "very psychologically fragile", pressuring her into spending â21,000 (£18,000) â" her life savings â" on products including "purification packs" and vitamins."
If the evidence shows that what took place was illegal, then there will be criminal punishment. The church issue only comes in as the prosecution will try to show that the allegedly illegal behaviour is Scientology procedure, and so if the court rules against them, the leaders of the now criminal organisation will subject to punishment.
IANAFL, of course, but I believe this situation to be different from religious claims made by a religion, or specific use of an established religion by a specific individual.
Hence, TRUE Muslims must remove Jewish and Christian references from Quran.
If you're responding to Iran being "the most Islam nation", are you considering all the secular Islam-majority nations that came out of the former Soviet Union (that are much more secular), or are you making a separate point?
In the clearest of terms, the Slashdotter "OeLeWaPpErKe" is wrong, very wrong.
As for what's right, read some history, and make your own judgements. As a head start, I can definitely assure you that that Thomas Jefferson was dead decades before the American Civil War, and that the Barbary Wars were in his time, and about sea passage rights in the Mediterranean Sea (not slavery).
I can also direct you to look for more than 10 Muslim nations that are considered secular (a large percentage of them former Soviet states).
As for non-violent approach to non-believers, draw your own conclusion, but include search terms such as "the inquition" and "Spanish conquistadors".
I was discussing tattoos with a friend, and when I mentioned forearm tattoos, she pointed out that forearm tattoos can affect future employment, otherwise she would have full sleeves done already.
After thinking about that for a moment, I pointed out that our choices affect the direction of our lives. Her last job was a mindless office job (think Happy Times in "Dead Like Me", Office Space, etc). If she's someone who sees having her arms beautifully tattooed, who's to say it won't have a positive effect on her life? It might close some doors, fairly or not, in something like the corporate world, but it might lead her to a career she loves and may not have discovered otherwise.
I'm not sure how this story fits in with college indiscretions not fading into the past, except maybe a zen-like acceptance that they were choices that shape your life now, and if you don't get that promotion as a result, it might be your drunken, half-naked, publicly urinating 19 year old self sending a message from the past that you're in the wrong job.
Unfortunately, people tend to look down as anything not requiring a college education as lesser work.
I'm trying to get over that prejudice myself, and not feel so embarrassed about being a web developer. Well, I'm not REALLY a web developer, it's a temporary thing. Just easy money, really. I'll move on to something else, I'm still young!
Seriously though, I did get into it for convenience rather than career, and I do want to find something else. This topic interests me not in the sense that working with my hands will make me better at a job where I don't work with my hands, but rather because I want a job where I do get outside and work with my hands. I haven't worked to advance my programming career because I just haven't found spending so much time in front of a computer personally rewarding.
It's true I didn't get classes like shop growing up, but I had other opportunities. One thing I have noticed, though, is that I'm woefully unprepared to look for careers that are intrinsically out in the field, both in terms of knowing what's out there, and knowing just what the jobs entail.
I don't necessarily want to commit to a career path in my twenties (I'm a ways away from the settling down, starting a family sort of thing), and so many "blue collar" jobs seem to require spending a lot of money to get your certification before you even set out to see if anyone will hire you.
Don't forget Action Man. Elite hackers work in Windows, too.
c:\dos> vol
Volume in drive C is DOS
Volume Serial Number is 12A1-1C20
c:\dos> label
Volume in drive C is DOS
Volume Serial Number is 12A1-1C20
Volume label (11 characters, ENTER for none)? 3L1T3H4CK3R
c:\dos> vol
Volume in drive C is 3L1T3H4CK3R
Volume Serial Number is 12A1-1C20
c:\dos> damn i rool
Bad command or file name
c:\dos> root
Bad command or file name
c:\dos> give actionman root
Bad command or file name
c:\dos> password root actionman
Bad command or file name
c:\dos> FUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCK
Bad command or file name
c:\dos> whyamisolameohgodpleasesomeonekillme
Bad command or file name
c:\dos> ohgodimafourstarloser
Bad command or file name ]
Actually all those reasons are the reason that I buy at amazon and others. I once had a logitech headset that broke because of flimsy build quality. Within the year I went back to the store, but they wouldn't accept it. The only time I will buy something at a brick & mortar store will be if I need it on exactly that day and precise specifications don't count so much, for example empty cds.
In defence of Circuit City, they provided the best return policy and customer service of all the brick & mortar stores I've experienced.
Not so. My son (who is 5) enjoys 2D Mario games on the Nintendo better than he does Mario 64 on the N64 (the first of the genre to have full 3D, IIRC).
To be fair, those early 3D implementations of traditionally platformer titles were pretty terrible.
The fact that you were younger and less jaded then.
Plus, we're older and nostalgic now.
You might note how just about every religion[...]
I wish I had mod points, as this long and bizarre invention of history has to be one of the funniest posts I've read on Slashdot in ages. Whether it's a skilled troll or a "selectively informed" and passionate individual, the gaping omissions, obvious contradictions, and glaring historical inaccuracies contrast the serious and informative tone quite well.
For the tl;dr crowd, some highlights:
- Christianity is the ONLY religion to oppose slavery from the start, however citations about religion and slavery conveniently omit those in the New Testament.
- American Civil War lead to the Barbary Wars through some sort of time vortex, and 19th Century piracy is now referred to as "terrorism"
- Through a super time vortex, Thomas Jefferson was around in this Civil War period, and "created" the American Marines after having purchased and read a Koran
- Iran is "just about the most open Muslim nation"
- There is only one existing secular Muslim country
- Christianity is known for it's non-violent approach to non-believers (from it's inception to present day, I assume)
Not any more. If you're a good boy, you get to disable ads on /. while you're logged in. I now just get a little box saying "Ads disabled [tick] Thanks again for helping make Slashdot great!".
Dear Slashdot policy makers,
The feature introduced to allow active participants the option of disabling advertisements on the site has to be one of the most awesome things I've seen implemented re: ads on community driven sites.
Keep the great ideas coming.
How many people have you heard of that wake up in the morning and read all day until 3AM the next morning, only stopping for meals and potty breaks?
Reading books may be too specific for that to be a good analogy of reclusive personality, but I like the partying example better anyway. Besides, how many people have you known to be obsessive like that with an MMO and then ended up growing out of it?
I went through a phase of playing WoW pretty intensely, and I (along with every friend that played with me), just grew out of it. The same went for wildly irresponsible nights on the town. However, only one of those two phases brings the phrase "thank god I don't have an STD or a felony record" to mind when I think back to it.
Not only his life was at stake, but god forbid what if he had killed someone else? What then? This kind of bull should not be tolerated, at all, the police made a simple request to turn on said dudes phone because he could be a hazard to himself (or someone else) so what if dude 'owes' them $20 bucks, it's not going to break their system to turn on his phone for 5 or 10 mins so they can find him, instead 11 fucking hours were wasted, thats rediculous. What do they make in profit a year, $20 bucks is nothing, I could spend that doing just about anything, what I'm saying is that's a drop in the bucket for me, to them that's nothing, it costs them nothing to help out the sheriffs office, hell it even helps them, tax dollars at work right there, how many man hours of work were wasted because of them, they should have to reimburse the office for all that time, what a fucking waste.
Judges can be contacted at any time of the day to authorise a warrant. If it's a matter as important as life and death, the responsibility for efficient process lies on the police and legal system whose job it is to handle emergency situations. Right or wrong, it's not currently the duty of a corporation to provide bureaucratic clauses to cover every instance where police procedures fail.
If government is trusted to hand out the actual death penalty to living human beings defended by draftee lawyers, why not to large corporations that are surely better represented?
I might be wrong, but it's my understanding that the death penalty can not be invoked without it's use first being approved by a jury of peers. That is to say, the government is expressly not trusted to hand it out.
I think people should mind their own bloody business personally. It's not like he's poisoning his body with drugs or alcohol or hurting other people with his "addiction".
How to help a friend? Leave them the hell alone to live their life how they want and stop being so bloody pretentious in thinking this person needs to be "saved".
I'm pretty much on board with this perspective. At some point he's an adult and takes responsibilities for his own actions. He might look back years later and lament the lost time (and quite possibly a delayed education), but that will have been his choice. The potential to be doing other things doesn't mean that he'd be happier not doing what he is now.
If he was spending all his time shut away in his room reading books, this wouldn't be post-worthy, it'd just be someone with a reclusive personality. If he was out getting smashed at parties and getting laid all the time, it wouldn't be post-worthy either. Still, it's just as easy to look back with regret on a year of partying as it is a year of playing an MMO.
If apple says "this will kill the iphone," then it will kill the iphone. If apple says "You should buy this before you graduate you our big boy toy," people will skip the training wheels.
Then why didn't the iPhone kill the iPod Touch? It's amazingly obvious: the touch lets someone have a cool gadget when they can't afford the iPhone voice/data plan pricing. One device is an iPod, one is a phone, and there's still separate markets for each of them to be highly desirable.
Every Italian soccer player knows that the most important skill is knowing when and how to fall.
Fixed that for you.
And it cost nothing but time to learn
That tells me 2 things:
1. You don't value your own time. Presumably you have nothing better to do than waste time learning a tool.
2. You don't value my time. I KNOW I have better things to do.
So you've just put yourself down and disrespected me also. Do you think I'm going to put a lot of weight on what you think?
Your post tells me that you don't know what the word "but" means. Having time as an exception obviously is placing value on time.
I work in a computer science department (albeit at a minor university). Windows is king, and we have instructors who tell the students that there is no point in even looking at any other OS as the only OS worth anything is Windows. Makes teaching our (required, but currently eviscerated) unix course rather painful (whines of "Why?" erupt from the classroom).
I had a CS professor (brilliant programmer) who went from undergrad to the Navy to MIT, and arrived at RHIT not having ever used MS Windows despite spending years working with computers.
When we had our mips assembly section in the Comp Arch class he was teaching, he informed us that the emulator had a bug, and he had fixed it in the source code, so everyone would have to use the *nix version unless one of the students could show him how to properly build the program under Windows (for extra credit). It's likely there was some degree of just not being interested in making the effort with Windows, but I'm sure Windows just not being an intuitive work environment for an "old school" programmer was the biggest factor (he happened to be my youngest professor, I believe).
I don't even know how you'd go about teaching a proper course in Operating Systems using Windows.