Actually, it was a separate product entirely, which I worked on extensively in one of the ArsDigita branch offices. We did a fairly soup-to-nuts implementation of file sharing via web/Oracle/email and much else.
I wanted to like Firefly, but was dreadful in ways that only episodic television at its most banal could be. The story that I saw had utterly no connection with SF, and could easily have been ripped off from an old Bonanza script. Mourn the loss of a show you enjoyed, folks, but the critizicism to level at Fox is for spending any money on this turkey in the first place.
I wrote three articles for STart back in the 'day. I was a big CAD-3D fan (useless trivia: the initial developers of 3DS Max began with CAD-3D for the ST). By the time I had written my third article the Atari market had flamed out quite completely and I was never paid for it. Tellingly, it was for a PC emulation product. Later I sold my ST, with its excellent Mac emulator, and leapt off into the abyss of computers that are still with us today.
In early 1996, I founded the Los Angeles Java Users' group. Volunteers quickly donated free web space, several venues for monthly meetings, and a majordomo server.
We have never collected or spent money and have had speakers from nearly every major vendor (Microsoft, twice, even -- I'm sure they're still regretting it) as well as many presentations from members of the group.
By far our best-attended meeting was a recent visit from the JBoss group.
I have seen other groups of this sort die quickly simply because they were following a more closed model, or were attempting to collect dues, or impose a particular vision on the members.
Only time will tell if.NET is a powerful conceptual framework upon which good open-source solutions can be built, or if it is just another lockin tool for our friends in Redmond. When I want to take a measurement of this, I'm sure the most enjoyable way will be to show up at a DNUG or two and keep my eyes and ears open.
The STL doesn't use inheritance much, but it certainly uses polymorphism to the nth degree -- there's no interface difference between many of the container templates, for example.
Actually, one of the things that made Apollo much more successful than the shuttle (even though it wasn't 'reusable' its cost to launch a pound of payload to orbit was orders of magnitude less than the shuttle) was that they DID "throw away" a number of rockets as they refined their designs. Essentially, every launch improved the skills of the rocket designers.
What I saw looked like at least 1024 x 768, maybe higher. The framerate looked "ok" -- about a third the speed you'd want for an FPS, but if Dr. Ross could be made a bit more "interactive" then the hardware might be worth it...
We use a bunch of solar-powered, self-reproducing machines to trap the excess carbon dioxide. Perhaps the carbon can even be formed into useful products, and the oxygen released back into the atmosphere for us to breathe.
Seems to me that apt-get install works quite well, even when the dependencies are hairy. Assuming of course that the packager knows what's really necessary...
If I log into a message board, even one like this here Slashdot, I can post any amount of inflammatory BS as an anonymous coward or change my handle at will. How can a community develop when there is no responsibility or reputation for its members?
In MUDs and MMORPGs, one invests a fair amount of energy into each character. That character develops a reputation. Sully it, and there are consequences within the community of players (i.e., "Don't group with him, he's an A**hole"). Of course, there is always the threat of Kewl D00dism.
It's the combination of shared purpose, investment and reputation that help MUDs form real communities in a virtual space. I suspect that these principles will find their way into the mainstream net before too long.
I think it's wrong to look for communities in web sites and email just as it's wrong to seek them in magazines and the post office.
The only place with sufficient real-time interaction, social consequences, and communities built over time that I can point to is in the world of MUDs, MOOs, Everquest, Ultima, etc., etc.
(Me too!)
Deepness was one of the finest "classic" SF novels I have read in recent years. Humane, rich, "deep", it should be honored with the Hugo, as it was, because it sits squarely in that genre. Cryptonomicon, on the other hand, is Stephenson moving his SF leanings right into the mainstream. It's a juicy, entertaining read, but doesn't reverberate like Vinge's work. It will get its own rewards (a miniseries? millions of non-SF readers?) but I think the Hugo committee made the right choice this year!
If you watch 4GLs over time -- I'm thinking PowerBuilder particularly here, but 4th Dimension and VB have similar curves -- you'll see rapid adoption followed by abandonment. I think these tools come into existence to solve a particular class of problem, solve it very well, get widely deployed, and then just can't adapt to the real world with the same effectiveness as general-purpose programming languages.
4GL tools have also required intensive vendor backing, and as the tool vendor finds himself on the downslope of the adoption curve it becomes more likely that the tool you have based your project on will be orphaned.
Seriously, you folks who have been around for 10 years or more, are you still eager to start projects in VB or WebObjects or PowerBuilder or even Delphi? Or are C, Java, C++, Perl and Python looking a whole lot sweeter over the long haul?
In MUDs, you have something to live for within the community -- even if it's just levels and loot.
In some MOOs, you can construct an elaborate habitat.
The thing I've noticed about community is that a shared purpose is required. This is different from a shared interest. A purpose means that there is a reason you are participating in a community at that moment.
So... if we just toss a few predatory Orcs into the high school chemistry chat room, maybe it will turn into an actual community. ('Cause you can't get your homework graded until you band together to kill the Orcs?)
I have, and it works beautifully. In fact, the nastier and more complex the coding problem the better. Two people watching pointer arithmetic are always more careful than one.
That said, a few commonsense caveats must precede its adoption. Namely:
Management must allow it
If coders are of wildly differing skill levels, then they shouldn't be paired for long periods of time or swaths of code
For shorter sections, an individual can take a "first cut" at coding something while somebody else tracks him with test code. Then there should be a trade off and review period.
I know of no piece of code that I've written this way that hasn't been FAR less expensive than its more traditionally coded counterparts, once debugging and QA expenses are factored in. The interesting part is that design and refactoring remain part of the process long after they would normally, as ones assumptions must be continually re-examined as people new to the code come in.
Slashdot Mirror
Both Perforce and Subversion are client-server. Perforce is excellent -- I haven't used Subversion.
Perforce is the best I've used. CVS is slow, VSS and PCVS both blow. Maybe subversion will be good, but Perforce is just awesome and VERY fast.
Actually, it was a separate product entirely, which I worked on extensively in one of the ArsDigita branch offices. We did a fairly soup-to-nuts implementation of file sharing via web/Oracle/email and much else.
I wanted to like Firefly, but was dreadful in ways that only episodic television at its most banal could be. The story that I saw had utterly no connection with SF, and could easily have been ripped off from an old Bonanza script. Mourn the loss of a show you enjoyed, folks, but the critizicism to level at Fox is for spending any money on this turkey in the first place.
I wrote three articles for STart back in the 'day. I was a big CAD-3D fan (useless trivia: the initial developers of 3DS Max began with CAD-3D for the ST). By the time I had written my third article the Atari market had flamed out quite completely and I was never paid for it. Tellingly, it was for a PC emulation product. Later I sold my ST, with its excellent Mac emulator, and leapt off into the abyss of computers that are still with us today.
http://www.lametaverse.org
We have never collected or spent money and have had speakers from nearly every major vendor (Microsoft, twice, even -- I'm sure they're still regretting it) as well as many presentations from members of the group.
By far our best-attended meeting was a recent visit from the JBoss group.
I have seen other groups of this sort die quickly simply because they were following a more closed model, or were attempting to collect dues, or impose a particular vision on the members.
Only time will tell if .NET is a powerful conceptual framework upon which good open-source solutions can be built, or if it is just another lockin tool for our friends in Redmond. When I want to take a measurement of this, I'm sure the most enjoyable way will be to show up at a DNUG or two and keep my eyes and ears open.
The STL doesn't use inheritance much, but it certainly uses polymorphism to the nth degree -- there's no interface difference between many of the container templates, for example.
Actually, one of the things that made Apollo much more successful than the shuttle (even though it wasn't 'reusable' its cost to launch a pound of payload to orbit was orders of magnitude less than the shuttle) was that they DID "throw away" a number of rockets as they refined their designs. Essentially, every launch improved the skills of the rocket designers.
What I saw looked like at least 1024 x 768, maybe higher. The framerate looked "ok" -- about a third the speed you'd want for an FPS, but if Dr. Ross could be made a bit more "interactive" then the hardware might be worth it...
We use a bunch of solar-powered, self-reproducing machines to trap the excess carbon dioxide. Perhaps the carbon can even be formed into useful products, and the oxygen released back into the atmosphere for us to breathe.
What? We've already got that?
What, exactly, IS a "tree?".
Seems to me that apt-get install works quite well, even when the dependencies are hairy. Assuming of course that the packager knows what's really necessary...
X3D, an XML extension of the venerable VRML file format, might serve your needs.
In MUDs and MMORPGs, one invests a fair amount of energy into each character. That character develops a reputation. Sully it, and there are consequences within the community of players (i.e., "Don't group with him, he's an A**hole"). Of course, there is always the threat of Kewl D00dism.
It's the combination of shared purpose, investment and reputation that help MUDs form real communities in a virtual space. I suspect that these principles will find their way into the mainstream net before too long.
The only place with sufficient real-time interaction, social consequences, and communities built over time that I can point to is in the world of MUDs, MOOs, Everquest, Ultima, etc., etc.
(Me too!) Deepness was one of the finest "classic" SF novels I have read in recent years. Humane, rich, "deep", it should be honored with the Hugo, as it was, because it sits squarely in that genre. Cryptonomicon, on the other hand, is Stephenson moving his SF leanings right into the mainstream. It's a juicy, entertaining read, but doesn't reverberate like Vinge's work. It will get its own rewards (a miniseries? millions of non-SF readers?) but I think the Hugo committee made the right choice this year!
If you watch 4GLs over time -- I'm thinking PowerBuilder particularly here, but 4th Dimension and VB have similar curves -- you'll see rapid adoption followed by abandonment. I think these tools come into existence to solve a particular class of problem, solve it very well, get widely deployed, and then just can't adapt to the real world with the same effectiveness as general-purpose programming languages.
4GL tools have also required intensive vendor backing, and as the tool vendor finds himself on the downslope of the adoption curve it becomes more likely that the tool you have based your project on will be orphaned.
Seriously, you folks who have been around for 10 years or more, are you still eager to start projects in VB or WebObjects or PowerBuilder or even Delphi? Or are C, Java, C++, Perl and Python looking a whole lot sweeter over the long haul?
In some MOOs, you can construct an elaborate habitat.
The thing I've noticed about community is that a shared purpose is required. This is different from a shared interest. A purpose means that there is a reason you are participating in a community at that moment.
So... if we just toss a few predatory Orcs into the high school chemistry chat room, maybe it will turn into an actual community. ('Cause you can't get your homework graded until you band together to kill the Orcs?)
I have, and it works beautifully. In fact, the nastier and more complex the coding problem the better. Two people watching pointer arithmetic are always more careful than one.
That said, a few commonsense caveats must precede its adoption. Namely:
I know of no piece of code that I've written this way that hasn't been FAR less expensive than its more traditionally coded counterparts, once debugging and QA expenses are factored in. The interesting part is that design and refactoring remain part of the process long after they would normally, as ones assumptions must be continually re-examined as people new to the code come in.