Mentoring is NOT pair programming. Pair programming only happens when both developers are roughly equal in skill level. This is not to say mentoring is bad but I get tired of people confusing the two ideas as they are completely different concepts. I think you need to read up on what pair programming is actually about.
A) I'm not "left wing" nor am I a Democrat. B) You are case and point to my argument. C) Thanks for doing that for me.
For the record, I'm really sorry that you lack the imagination to go beyond monetary compensation for children. I don't blame you, but your parents and any and all schools you ever attended.
I don't know you so I can only go by what you have written and the message in your post is very clear. Now, if you don't like the perception generated by your message, you need to adjust it to properly reflect what you're trying to say.
US Corporate taxes are some of the lowest in the industrialised world. Many corporations pay little or no taxes as all, and I'm not talking about corps making no profit either. Now, if you just look at the numbers on paper, such as Fed tax rate + state tax rate, then we're a smidge higher that the others but that's not the rate most companies actually pay. There are so many deductions and subsidies that it's insane. Why do you think there's so many lobbyists? CSX, the largest railroad co. in the US, actually gets millions in taxes back from the government 3 out of 4 years even though they earn hundreds of millions in profits every year.
I'm incorporated and I pay no corporate taxes other than for payroll. There are actual laws written very cleverly to give tax breaks to very specific companies without naming such companies, not to mention that most states will offer all kinds of tax exemptions for companies opening offices in their state. In truth, the smaller companies are the ones who get boned by the most taxes because they don't have lobbyists but a company like Microsoft (as mentioned in the article) sure as hell does.
It doesn't matter though because low taxes don't save you anyway. Dell moved from the US to Ireland and is now in Poland and will probably move to Asia in a few years. It's not that Ireland has higher taxes than Poland (Poland is actually much higher) it's that the cost of labor is much lower (literally half that of Ireland). I can guarantee you that if Microsoft thought it could replace everyone in Redmond WA with a guy in a small village in India, they would do it without blinking twice or shedding a tear for the thousands of jobs lost in the US. They simply don't give a shit about that.
It's called globalization and somehow we're supposedly all lucky we have it!
It was "fine" until people realized there was a problem. In fact, it was encouraged for women to go into teaching for many years because most people believed (rightly or wrongly) that they were better teachers. Considering that now any adult male who even glances at a child the wrong way is likely to be accused of being a pervert/molester/statutory rapist, have fun getting men into teaching. I wouldn't consider it even if they quadrupled the salary. The funny part of this is that female teachers are having sex with students all over the country but nobody ever questions whether women are evil perverts or whether they should be trusted. Double standards for everyone I say!
I've worked on Java for 8 years now. I've worked on MANY java projects in that time. Sorry but for the last 6 years I've never had a problem with write once, run anywhere. In fact, ever corp I've worked at in recent years works based on that very assumption. 90% of the places I work at the developers will develop on Windows, produce the executable, and make it available to WebSphere or Weblogic admins who simply have to deploy it. Every server-side Java developer I know of works in similar fashion. So I'm by no means a rare exception.
That would not be possible without write once, run anywhere. The only times I've heard problems with this arrangement is when people write bad Java code and do things that make assumptions about the operating system and of course if you use JNI then all bets are off.
Wrong. And unlike you, I can actually backup my statement.
Write once, run anywhere = very cool. Always backwards compatible = very cool. Much cleaner than C and C++ code that it was competing with = very cool. It does all of this while offering performance superior to most languages.
There are newer nifty-neato languages out there but Java is a workhorse language that is still extremely valuable to corporations around the world. Sun actually has a pretty remarkable achievement on their hands, and I can assure you that I have no problems criticizing Sun.
Having dealt with addiction in myself (twice) and once in a good friend, I can tell you in no uncertain terms that there's absolutely nothing you can do (not legally anyway). The person has to hit bottom. "Bottom" means different things to different people so some have to pretty much ruin their lives before they straighten up but in the end, the person who is addicted has to want to fix it before you can do anything. Addiction is a like a short circuit or malfunction in the brain, rationality has nothing to do with it and you cannot rationalize with an addicted person who has not realized they have a problem, nor can you make them see the problem. One day, the light bulb will come on but until then, you're screwed. The only thing you can do is not help them feed their addiction in any way (like giving them money). The faster they hit bottom, the better.
It's unfortunate too because Objective-C is a truely horrible language. Smalltalk inspired my ass! I'm a Java developer who finds Java getting long in the tooth and Objective-C is far more primitive.
I've found that Apple doesn't give a damn about developers, only consumers. Their development tools are out of a museum. I used an IDE 20 years ago that was better than Xcode.
As for changing their general attitude toward Java, sorry but your reasoning is bullshit. Java is used for a lot more than writing client applications. They promised that it would be a first class citizen and they lied. They did this after MANY java developers switched to using Macs as their primary laptop or even desktop. All those developers are now rewarded with retardedly late implementations of the JVM. Apple doesn't even deign to let those developers know when a new JVM might be available. In short they treat these people, who went to their platform in droves after announcing Java being a first class citizen, like complete shit.
No but it can have a significant impact on how fast the game looks. In fact, advanced players typically adjust their pov based on the weapon loaded (via macro). I was responding to your sense of fast the game feels, and this specifically addresses that issue.
What you're describing is more or less instagib gameplay via a specific weapon which you can also do on UT2k3/4. However, instagib != twitch. "Twitch" is simply reaction time + accuracy oriented gameplay which UT2k3/4 has in spades regardless of whether you are on an instagib server. I find UT2k4 much more twitchy due to the fact that movement is vastly faster than it is in Q3 and similar games. Source and target can be moving in different directions at very high rates of speed and it requires a great deal of skill (and twitch) to make those shots regardless of whether they result in instant kills.
UT2k3/4 does support more strategic game modes however, it still supports good ol' death match (and variations of death match). UT has MUCH faster movement than the other games which is why faster reflexes are required. In addition to the spam weps you referred to, there are the sniper rifle and lighting gun which are the same thing as the rail gun. However, the shock rifle is probably the ultimate twitch weapon. The only people in UT2k4 who rely on spam weps like the chaingun and flak canon are noobs and those who for some reason refuse to learn how to shoot but they get owned most of the time regardless.
Q3 is hardly the pinnacle of twitch gaming. UT2k4 is the pinnacle of twitch gaming. There's nothing more twitch than that. I know, I've played every FPS you've ever heard of. There is no game that moves as fast or requires as rapid and accurate a response as UT2k4. Unfortunately, U3 moved away from that. They killed the skill of the game and as far as I'm concerned FPSs are in a downward spiral where it's all about great graphics and gameplay is a distant second. Btw, I'm 44 and I LOVE twitch. I expect to always love it so please don't speak for everyone by saying that twitch has no future. Twitch gamers still exist, they still LOVE twitch, it's the game producers who have abandoned us. Every game is dumbed down so that any no talent hack can play and have a chance. It's the LCD formula that so pervades society. I don't mind the existence of such games per se except for the fact that publishers know there's more money in making them so real gamers get left out in the cold.
Sadly, I have a feeling I'll still be playing UT2k4 ten years from now.
Actually, we have a spider like that which is fairly common across the South in the US: Brown Recluse Spider. It can actually kill children. The spider you are referring to in Australia probably uses the same kind of necrotic venom.
The example you site is pretty bogus since Kentucky has ZERO chance of making that happen. For starters, trade that extends beyond the borders of the state is a federal matter and completely beyond the jurisdiction of a state. This is governed by the US constitution. The only reason the case exists is to influence voters in the state.
Finally, I guess Europeans have never heard the expression, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." As an American, I can assure you that if the US did start doing a bad job of managing things, I wouldn't hesitate to protest our sole control of the internet. We tend to fuck up a lot of things but as it stands right now, it doesn't serve much purpose to turn it over other than to assuage fears that have little foundation in reality.
I still call bullshit unless you got some referencable stats. I get sick of people on/. making all kinds of assertions with nothing whatsoever to back them up. So I assume they are lying or making it up unless they do.
Every so often you hear about how easy it would be to take down the internet. Yet, it has never happened. It hasn't even come close to happening. I don't doubt it's possible but if it were so easy, it would have been done by now. Some a-holes would have done it just for grins or to prove they could do it. Remember, the world is filled with a-holes.
Finally, people confuse DNS with the Internet. DNS is a feature of the Internet -- it is not THE Internet.
Right on brother! I play UT2k4 quite a bit even though it's pretty old now. Even when I periodically get a new game, I find myself drawn to UT2k4 while I'm playing it.
I was really looking forward to UT3 but it was a disaster and I couldn't believe how badly they ruined it. UT3 was clearly dumbed down for console play.
With what I've seen coming out of the gaming factories lately, it looks like I will be playing UT2k4 for many more years to come.
How is pro video gaming any different than pro golf or pro football? The bottom line is you're being paid to play a game and that's it. Neither is a productive activity. You also need to realize that pro gamers take their craft very very seriously and dedicate many hours a day to improving their skills. These aren't kids goofing around for a couple of hours a day to beat on their friends. They are as serious about competitive gaming as any pro athlete is about their sport. To be even a good amateur gamer takes quite a bit of effort.
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Mentoring is NOT pair programming. Pair programming only happens when both developers are roughly equal in skill level. This is not to say mentoring is bad but I get tired of people confusing the two ideas as they are completely different concepts. I think you need to read up on what pair programming is actually about.
Maybe we should stop running schools like businesses and start running them like schools.
But that would be un-American!
A) I'm not "left wing" nor am I a Democrat. B) You are case and point to my argument. C) Thanks for doing that for me. For the record, I'm really sorry that you lack the imagination to go beyond monetary compensation for children. I don't blame you, but your parents and any and all schools you ever attended.
I don't know you so I can only go by what you have written and the message in your post is very clear. Now, if you don't like the perception generated by your message, you need to adjust it to properly reflect what you're trying to say.
It's unfortunate that the only rewards you can comprehend come in the form of monetary compensation. But hey, I guess that's as American as apple pie!
This country is so fucked.
US Corporate taxes are some of the lowest in the industrialised world. Many corporations pay little or no taxes as all, and I'm not talking about corps making no profit either. Now, if you just look at the numbers on paper, such as Fed tax rate + state tax rate, then we're a smidge higher that the others but that's not the rate most companies actually pay. There are so many deductions and subsidies that it's insane. Why do you think there's so many lobbyists? CSX, the largest railroad co. in the US, actually gets millions in taxes back from the government 3 out of 4 years even though they earn hundreds of millions in profits every year.
I'm incorporated and I pay no corporate taxes other than for payroll. There are actual laws written very cleverly to give tax breaks to very specific companies without naming such companies, not to mention that most states will offer all kinds of tax exemptions for companies opening offices in their state. In truth, the smaller companies are the ones who get boned by the most taxes because they don't have lobbyists but a company like Microsoft (as mentioned in the article) sure as hell does.
It doesn't matter though because low taxes don't save you anyway. Dell moved from the US to Ireland and is now in Poland and will probably move to Asia in a few years. It's not that Ireland has higher taxes than Poland (Poland is actually much higher) it's that the cost of labor is much lower (literally half that of Ireland). I can guarantee you that if Microsoft thought it could replace everyone in Redmond WA with a guy in a small village in India, they would do it without blinking twice or shedding a tear for the thousands of jobs lost in the US. They simply don't give a shit about that.
It's called globalization and somehow we're supposedly all lucky we have it!
It was "fine" until people realized there was a problem. In fact, it was encouraged for women to go into teaching for many years because most people believed (rightly or wrongly) that they were better teachers. Considering that now any adult male who even glances at a child the wrong way is likely to be accused of being a pervert/molester/statutory rapist, have fun getting men into teaching. I wouldn't consider it even if they quadrupled the salary. The funny part of this is that female teachers are having sex with students all over the country but nobody ever questions whether women are evil perverts or whether they should be trusted. Double standards for everyone I say!
I've worked on Java for 8 years now. I've worked on MANY java projects in that time. Sorry but for the last 6 years I've never had a problem with write once, run anywhere. In fact, ever corp I've worked at in recent years works based on that very assumption. 90% of the places I work at the developers will develop on Windows, produce the executable, and make it available to WebSphere or Weblogic admins who simply have to deploy it. Every server-side Java developer I know of works in similar fashion. So I'm by no means a rare exception.
That would not be possible without write once, run anywhere. The only times I've heard problems with this arrangement is when people write bad Java code and do things that make assumptions about the operating system and of course if you use JNI then all bets are off.
Wrong. And unlike you, I can actually backup my statement.
Write once, run anywhere = very cool. Always backwards compatible = very cool. Much cleaner than C and C++ code that it was competing with = very cool. It does all of this while offering performance superior to most languages.
There are newer nifty-neato languages out there but Java is a workhorse language that is still extremely valuable to corporations around the world. Sun actually has a pretty remarkable achievement on their hands, and I can assure you that I have no problems criticizing Sun.
A lot of their stuff is made in China and the Philippines now. They were never great to begin with (only good) but now you can't even count on that.
Having dealt with addiction in myself (twice) and once in a good friend, I can tell you in no uncertain terms that there's absolutely nothing you can do (not legally anyway). The person has to hit bottom. "Bottom" means different things to different people so some have to pretty much ruin their lives before they straighten up but in the end, the person who is addicted has to want to fix it before you can do anything. Addiction is a like a short circuit or malfunction in the brain, rationality has nothing to do with it and you cannot rationalize with an addicted person who has not realized they have a problem, nor can you make them see the problem. One day, the light bulb will come on but until then, you're screwed. The only thing you can do is not help them feed their addiction in any way (like giving them money). The faster they hit bottom, the better.
It's unfortunate too because Objective-C is a truely horrible language. Smalltalk inspired my ass! I'm a Java developer who finds Java getting long in the tooth and Objective-C is far more primitive.
I've found that Apple doesn't give a damn about developers, only consumers. Their development tools are out of a museum. I used an IDE 20 years ago that was better than Xcode.
As for changing their general attitude toward Java, sorry but your reasoning is bullshit. Java is used for a lot more than writing client applications. They promised that it would be a first class citizen and they lied. They did this after MANY java developers switched to using Macs as their primary laptop or even desktop. All those developers are now rewarded with retardedly late implementations of the JVM. Apple doesn't even deign to let those developers know when a new JVM might be available. In short they treat these people, who went to their platform in droves after announcing Java being a first class citizen, like complete shit.
No but it can have a significant impact on how fast the game looks. In fact, advanced players typically adjust their pov based on the weapon loaded (via macro). I was responding to your sense of fast the game feels, and this specifically addresses that issue.
You do know you can change the POV level, right?
What you're describing is more or less instagib gameplay via a specific weapon which you can also do on UT2k3/4. However, instagib != twitch. "Twitch" is simply reaction time + accuracy oriented gameplay which UT2k3/4 has in spades regardless of whether you are on an instagib server. I find UT2k4 much more twitchy due to the fact that movement is vastly faster than it is in Q3 and similar games. Source and target can be moving in different directions at very high rates of speed and it requires a great deal of skill (and twitch) to make those shots regardless of whether they result in instant kills.
UT2k3/4 does support more strategic game modes however, it still supports good ol' death match (and variations of death match). UT has MUCH faster movement than the other games which is why faster reflexes are required. In addition to the spam weps you referred to, there are the sniper rifle and lighting gun which are the same thing as the rail gun. However, the shock rifle is probably the ultimate twitch weapon. The only people in UT2k4 who rely on spam weps like the chaingun and flak canon are noobs and those who for some reason refuse to learn how to shoot but they get owned most of the time regardless.
Q3 is hardly the pinnacle of twitch gaming. UT2k4 is the pinnacle of twitch gaming. There's nothing more twitch than that. I know, I've played every FPS you've ever heard of. There is no game that moves as fast or requires as rapid and accurate a response as UT2k4. Unfortunately, U3 moved away from that. They killed the skill of the game and as far as I'm concerned FPSs are in a downward spiral where it's all about great graphics and gameplay is a distant second. Btw, I'm 44 and I LOVE twitch. I expect to always love it so please don't speak for everyone by saying that twitch has no future. Twitch gamers still exist, they still LOVE twitch, it's the game producers who have abandoned us. Every game is dumbed down so that any no talent hack can play and have a chance. It's the LCD formula that so pervades society. I don't mind the existence of such games per se except for the fact that publishers know there's more money in making them so real gamers get left out in the cold.
Sadly, I have a feeling I'll still be playing UT2k4 ten years from now.
I agree, we need more boobies on TV!!!
Actually, we have a spider like that which is fairly common across the South in the US: Brown Recluse Spider. It can actually kill children. The spider you are referring to in Australia probably uses the same kind of necrotic venom.
The example you site is pretty bogus since Kentucky has ZERO chance of making that happen. For starters, trade that extends beyond the borders of the state is a federal matter and completely beyond the jurisdiction of a state. This is governed by the US constitution. The only reason the case exists is to influence voters in the state.
Finally, I guess Europeans have never heard the expression, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." As an American, I can assure you that if the US did start doing a bad job of managing things, I wouldn't hesitate to protest our sole control of the internet. We tend to fuck up a lot of things but as it stands right now, it doesn't serve much purpose to turn it over other than to assuage fears that have little foundation in reality.
Both.
I still call bullshit unless you got some referencable stats. I get sick of people on /. making all kinds of assertions with nothing whatsoever to back them up. So I assume they are lying or making it up unless they do.
Really? Where's your references to back up such an assertion?
I call bullshit.
Every so often you hear about how easy it would be to take down the internet. Yet, it has never happened. It hasn't even come close to happening. I don't doubt it's possible but if it were so easy, it would have been done by now. Some a-holes would have done it just for grins or to prove they could do it. Remember, the world is filled with a-holes.
Finally, people confuse DNS with the Internet. DNS is a feature of the Internet -- it is not THE Internet.
Right on brother! I play UT2k4 quite a bit even though it's pretty old now. Even when I periodically get a new game, I find myself drawn to UT2k4 while I'm playing it.
I was really looking forward to UT3 but it was a disaster and I couldn't believe how badly they ruined it. UT3 was clearly dumbed down for console play.
With what I've seen coming out of the gaming factories lately, it looks like I will be playing UT2k4 for many more years to come.
How is pro video gaming any different than pro golf or pro football? The bottom line is you're being paid to play a game and that's it. Neither is a productive activity. You also need to realize that pro gamers take their craft very very seriously and dedicate many hours a day to improving their skills. These aren't kids goofing around for a couple of hours a day to beat on their friends. They are as serious about competitive gaming as any pro athlete is about their sport. To be even a good amateur gamer takes quite a bit of effort.