No kidding... is MS going to figure out how to, I dunno, INDEX the mail properly for fast searching?
When I can search thousands of GMail messages instantly, and then it takes Outlook a minute or two to search fucking TEXT on my LOCAL HARD DISK, you know there's a problem.
"it needs to be identical by default. It's pretty darned important for people to see the page as it was intended"
I'd like to make the same complaint about Word's new "Reading Layout" crap. Completely destroys the proper flow and pagination of every document I've seen with it. Seriously, WTF? Do I have a "Completely Retarded Reading Layout" checkbox turned on somewhere?
This is "insightful"? The problems you mention are both very easy to fix.
80% of the vote being counted electronically on insecure machines by Republican-supporting corporations with no paper trail... now THAT is dangerous, on a national scale.
Something is very wrong when Centipede, Pacman, and Mario top these lists, while games which pathologically GLORIFY violence like Mortal Kombat, GTA, Postal, etc, don't even place.
I think "Mankind is reduced to a fleet of ships" is interesting to think about for a minute or two, but beyond that it's just depressing.
I can certainly understand you finding the show grim. I guess I just like apocalyptic settings.:)
they miss many of the interesting conflicts in machine sentience [...] they've set up a perfect opportunity to question human identity [...] it just doesn't feel like science fiction to me. The writers aren't really giving us new concepts to ponder
I guess this is where we will have to agree to disagree. Some of the concepts they have explored which I find fascinating are:
Technology-as-vulnerability: The Cylons can effectively 'hack' anything, meaning a reliance on automation has to be abandoned. Human skill becomes paramount for a real reason that makes perfect sense. To compare to Firefly, we might reasonably ask, why is Wash's skill as a pilot even important? Why aren't complex flight maneuvers controlled by a computer? The answer of course, is that it is a contrivance for dramatic effect.
Conflicts in machine sentience: Cylons have religion and believe in love, but they disagree about it. Some of them feel guilt over their genocide of humanity. There are multiple copies of the same Cylon "person", who turn out very differently due to their experiences (AI meets the nature vs nurture debate). Some of them thought they were human at one point, and are traumatized to learn they are machines (I don't know how much closer to Philip K. Dick you could get than that last)
Questions of human identity: Cylons look like us, talk like us, act like us. They have emotions and can conceive children with humans. Even under extensive physical examination, we can't find any differences. What then, makes them different from us, then? What defines a human?
Origins of humanity: What is the connection between the fleet and Earth? Each of the twelve colonies represents one of the Zodiac constellations we know on Earth. Did they come from Earth in the distant past? Will they seed Earth later, forming the precursor to our ancient civilizations?
Many other issues that parallel problems in our own world... you've said there's no need to go to sci-fi to explore these, and I agree (with an emphasis on NEED), but at the same time I feel it gives the show more relevance and issues people can relate to, and attracting more people to sci-fi can only be a good thing;)
[aren't really giving us] puzzles about how to use a variety of new technologies to solve a problem
All I can say about this one is thank heavens! I for one am sick to death of all the technobabble solutions prevalent in certain other sci-fi franchies.
I can certainly understand your opinions about BSG and I know I won't change them, but what I still don't get is why you think Firefly succeeds where BSG fails? All of your complaints about BSG would seem to apply to Firefly. It's a Western in space, "there's no need to resort to science fiction" for the stories and characters presented. There are no real sci-fi concepts presented, just Whedon's standard "big bad of the episode/season" formula and yet another troubled girl who kicks ass. They don't present puzzles to be solved with technology. Frankly, it's portrayal of space is weak at best, like randomly "running into people" in deep space as easily as you would say, sailing the seas. ("It's getting awfully crowded in my sky"? Gimme a break.. and don't even get me started on the absurdity of the Reaver planetary blockade in the movie)
About the only two quasi-futuristic concepts in Firefly are the idea that Asian culture would be more predominant, including in common language (yet we see no Asians in the show??????), and that prostitution is accepted and even a position of status.
Firefly is a good show, with great characters and writing, but I just can't see it as superior "sci-fi" to BSG. Anyway thanks for the discussion!:)
- I'm a Whedon fan. You're preaching to the converted about Firefly, I thought it and Serenity were awesome.:)
- I was actually replying to your comment about finding BSG boring, but typed B5 by accident. I tried to post a correction immediately after, but/. in its infinite wisdom does not allow this, and I had to leave work.
So... sorry about that, but what I was really interested in is why you find BSG so boring compared to Firefly? It has tons of backstory (to subvert your first Firefly point, "Adama and Tighe survived a terrible war and have a lot of history"), it most certainly has stories that take longer than a single episode to tell, the setting (mankind reduced to a fleet of ships) is compelling, and it deals grippingly with contemporary issues, ie, is it moral to torture Cylons-as-terrorists? Plus, a hot underwear model to stare at (who can actually ACT!) and the occasional (but not overused) gigantic space battle. Where's the bore?
There are so many factors that determine the scalability of any given platform. [...] I've seen tons of LAMP installs where PHP was compile with every bloody extension under the sun when only a handful were needed. Slow 7200 rpm ide disks. Lack of ram. Poorly tweaked apache installs. Literally, all kinds of reasons.
PHP scales quite well, as does MySQL and Apache.
Exactly... PHP itself is rarely, if ever, any sort of bottleneck. I've never really seen a webapp that wasn't I/O bound in some form or another, unless it's doing something wickedly fun like image processing.
There are plenty of valid criticisms against PHP, but I've yet to see one that clearly demonstrates poor scalability at the language level. (Which is actually why I was interested in the OP in the first place, only to be disappointed that his link didn't have anything to do with PHP or language scalability whatsoever)
"(idots) who kept strapping magnets to themselves"
I am interested in this new Apple product you have mentioned, the iDot, and how it is affected by having magnets strapped to it. Where can I read more about it?
"So, if PHP is scalable, why is Digg so painfully slow?"
Well, as clearly identified in both the article and the quote I provided, all the scalability issues they encountered were related to their DATABASE LAYER. So my first guess (based on this case study) would be that Digg's database architecture is still inferior to Slashdot's, instead of a knee-jerk condemnation of PHP. YMMV.
"Scalability is about not needing to keep throwing hardware at the problem..."
Wrong... scalability is precisely about the ability to meet increased demand gracefully with modest increases in resources (usually hardware).
Scalability does NOT mean, "the ability to handle increasing load with the same resources".
Season 1 is unanimously considered far and away the worst season. Season 1 of ST:TNG was a steaming pile too, IIRC.
Go watch seasons 3 and 4 of B5 if you want a real taste of the show. s2 is excellent as well. s5 feels like a padded epilogue, because they resolved everything major in s4, 'cuz they thought s5 wasn't going to happen.
Damn... I didn't even know Katsulas had passed away until reading the AICN piece.:(
B5 was already an excellent sci-fi show... but G'Kar and Londo made it priceless.
Think I'll go watch "The Long, Twilight Struggle" (G'Kar's speech at the end always gives me shivers), the last few episodes of season 5, and cry for a while...
This one's for you, G'Kar:
The Universe speaks in many languages but only one voice. A language which is not Narn or Human or Centauri or Gaium or Minbari.
It speaks in the language of hope. It speaks in the language of trust. It speaks in the language of strength and the language of compassion.
It is the language of the heart and of the language of the soul; but always it is the same voice; it is the voice of our ancestors speaking through us, and the voice of our inheritors waiting to be born; it is the small still voice said says:
"We are one, no matter the blood, no matter the skin, no matter the world, no matter the star.
We are one, no matter the pain, no matter the darkness, no matter the loss, no matter the fear.
We are one, here, gathered together in common cause we agree to recognize this singular truth and this singular rule, that we must be kind to one another because each voice enriches us and enobles us, and each voice lost diminishes us.
We are the voice of the universe, the soul of creation, the fire that will light the way to a better future.
Um, care to explain just what in the hell that statement is based on, since the article you linked doesn't even mention PHP? It compares different webservers and cache settings. Differences in programming languages don't even enter into it.
Here's an article on scalability that's actually relevant to PHP, a case study about Digg.
Conclusion:
"It turns out that it really is fast and cheap to develop applications in PHP. Most scaling and performance challenges are almost always related to the data layer, and are common across all language platforms. [...] There is simply no truth to the idea that Java is better than scripting languages at writing scalable web applications. [...] it just isn't true to say that PHP doesn't scale, and with the rise of Web 2.0, sites like Digg, Flickr, and even Jobby are proving that large scale applications can be rapidly built and maintained on-the-cheap, by one or two developers."
If you really want a pure static site that you upload, instead of a CMS why not just use something like Dreamweaver.. you can put together a nicely consistent site via its templates and library items, and it will output a completely static site. (It will have some HTML comments for template markup, but yuo can strip these out during export if you want)
It can be argued that some qualify for both... Homeworld and Rise of Nations both come to mind as games that benefit from long term strategic planning, in addition to your standard faire skirmish-level battle tactics.
But, like it or not, "strategy" has been enshrined as a game genre, while "tactics" has not, so I think we're stuck with RTS. =|
In my day, we had to carry the bits by hand to the server and back (betcha didn't know that's where the term 'carry bit' originally came from, didja??), uphill, BOTH WAYS, in 10 feet of snow! And we LIKED it! Packet loss meant you'd been trampled by a horse.
Tracy Hickman came up with the ideas for Dragonlance while driving across the country in his car to his new job at TSR. It then became a campaign world with adventure modules written by professional game designers. The novels were then written to accompany the game modules, and soon eclipsed them in terms of popularity.
So yes, the novels came about after the campaign setting, but these were professionally designed and written adventure modules, not a bunch of players sitting around rolling dice as some would characterize it.
If the death WAS faked (I don't really believe that, but I recognize it as at least a possibility for any rich fucker about to land hard time), obviously something believable would've been chosen as a cover. The more believable and fitting the better.
You make it sound like a believable death PROVES there's nothing more to it.
If Ken Lay was killed by, oh, say a falling circus elephant accidentally dropped out of a plane, would that make you more or less likely to believe the death was faked?
Slashdot Mirror
No kidding... is MS going to figure out how to, I dunno, INDEX the mail properly for fast searching?
When I can search thousands of GMail messages instantly, and then it takes Outlook a minute or two to search fucking TEXT on my LOCAL HARD DISK, you know there's a problem.
"it needs to be identical by default. It's pretty darned important for people to see the page as it was intended"
I'd like to make the same complaint about Word's new "Reading Layout" crap. Completely destroys the proper flow and pagination of every document I've seen with it. Seriously, WTF? Do I have a "Completely Retarded Reading Layout" checkbox turned on somewhere?
Hey, this was done by fanatic fanGIRLS too, you insensitive clod.
Ref
When I want to play MULE, I fire up the NES version on a handheld emulator. ;)
I use my C64 emulator for Impossible Mission though... truly one of the greats.
He's got my vote.
;)
Kevin "I know I can act" Costner can play Sarek.
I'm going to coat the earth in gasoline and light a match to prove you wrong.
This is "insightful"? The problems you mention are both very easy to fix.
80% of the vote being counted electronically on insecure machines by Republican-supporting corporations with no paper trail... now THAT is dangerous, on a national scale.
http://news.php.net/php.internals/25044
Something is very wrong when Centipede, Pacman, and Mario top these lists, while games which pathologically GLORIFY violence like Mortal Kombat, GTA, Postal, etc, don't even place.
I guess this is where we will have to agree to disagree. Some of the concepts they have explored which I find fascinating are:
All I can say about this one is thank heavens! I for one am sick to death of all the technobabble solutions prevalent in certain other sci-fi franchies.
I can certainly understand your opinions about BSG and I know I won't change them, but what I still don't get is why you think Firefly succeeds where BSG fails? All of your complaints about BSG would seem to apply to Firefly. It's a Western in space, "there's no need to resort to science fiction" for the stories and characters presented. There are no real sci-fi concepts presented, just Whedon's standard "big bad of the episode/season" formula and yet another troubled girl who kicks ass. They don't present puzzles to be solved with technology. Frankly, it's portrayal of space is weak at best, like randomly "running into people" in deep space as easily as you would say, sailing the seas. ("It's getting awfully crowded in my sky"? Gimme a break.. and don't even get me started on the absurdity of the Reaver planetary blockade in the movie)
About the only two quasi-futuristic concepts in Firefly are the idea that Asian culture would be more predominant, including in common language (yet we see no Asians in the show??????), and that prostitution is accepted and even a position of status.
Firefly is a good show, with great characters and writing, but I just can't see it as superior "sci-fi" to BSG. Anyway thanks for the discussion!
"You can't take the sky from me..."
Hi there! Thanks for your reply.
:)
/. in its infinite wisdom does not allow this, and I had to leave work.
A few things...
- I'm a Whedon fan. You're preaching to the converted about Firefly, I thought it and Serenity were awesome.
- I was actually replying to your comment about finding BSG boring, but typed B5 by accident. I tried to post a correction immediately after, but
So... sorry about that, but what I was really interested in is why you find BSG so boring compared to Firefly? It has tons of backstory (to subvert your first Firefly point, "Adama and Tighe survived a terrible war and have a lot of history"), it most certainly has stories that take longer than a single episode to tell, the setting (mankind reduced to a fleet of ships) is compelling, and it deals grippingly with contemporary issues, ie, is it moral to torture Cylons-as-terrorists? Plus, a hot underwear model to stare at (who can actually ACT!) and the occasional (but not overused) gigantic space battle. Where's the bore?
Exactly... PHP itself is rarely, if ever, any sort of bottleneck. I've never really seen a webapp that wasn't I/O bound in some form or another, unless it's doing something wickedly fun like image processing.
There are plenty of valid criticisms against PHP, but I've yet to see one that clearly demonstrates poor scalability at the language level. (Which is actually why I was interested in the OP in the first place, only to be disappointed that his link didn't have anything to do with PHP or language scalability whatsoever)
"(idots) who kept strapping magnets to themselves"
I am interested in this new Apple product you have mentioned, the iDot, and how it is affected by having magnets strapped to it. Where can I read more about it?
(Worst. Typo nitpick. Ever.)
"So, if PHP is scalable, why is Digg so painfully slow?"
Well, as clearly identified in both the article and the quote I provided, all the scalability issues they encountered were related to their DATABASE LAYER. So my first guess (based on this case study) would be that Digg's database architecture is still inferior to Slashdot's, instead of a knee-jerk condemnation of PHP. YMMV.
"Scalability is about not needing to keep throwing hardware at the problem..."
Wrong... scalability is precisely about the ability to meet increased demand gracefully with modest increases in resources (usually hardware).
Scalability does NOT mean, "the ability to handle increasing load with the same resources".
Where exactly did the stories in Firefly "go", compared to B5? I am sincerely curious about your opinion here.
Season 1 is unanimously considered far and away the worst season. Season 1 of ST:TNG was a steaming pile too, IIRC.
Go watch seasons 3 and 4 of B5 if you want a real taste of the show. s2 is excellent as well. s5 feels like a padded epilogue, because they resolved everything major in s4, 'cuz they thought s5 wasn't going to happen.
B5 was already an excellent sci-fi show... but G'Kar and Londo made it priceless.
Think I'll go watch "The Long, Twilight Struggle" (G'Kar's speech at the end always gives me shivers), the last few episodes of season 5, and cry for a while...
This one's for you, G'Kar:
"PHP just can't cut it"?
Um, care to explain just what in the hell that statement is based on, since the article you linked doesn't even mention PHP? It compares different webservers and cache settings. Differences in programming languages don't even enter into it.
Here's an article on scalability that's actually relevant to PHP, a case study about Digg.
Conclusion:
"It turns out that it really is fast and cheap to develop applications in PHP. Most scaling and performance challenges are almost always related to the data layer, and are common across all language platforms. [...] There is simply no truth to the idea that Java is better than scripting languages at writing scalable web applications. [...] it just isn't true to say that PHP doesn't scale, and with the rise of Web 2.0, sites like Digg, Flickr, and even Jobby are proving that large scale applications can be rapidly built and maintained on-the-cheap, by one or two developers."
If you really want a pure static site that you upload, instead of a CMS why not just use something like Dreamweaver.. you can put together a nicely consistent site via its templates and library items, and it will output a completely static site. (It will have some HTML comments for template markup, but yuo can strip these out during export if you want)
You're so right... 10 years ago (well OK, closer to 9), we were whining about Geocities on Slashdot.
;)
Times have changed radically.
It can be argued that some qualify for both... Homeworld and Rise of Nations both come to mind as games that benefit from long term strategic planning, in addition to your standard faire skirmish-level battle tactics.
But, like it or not, "strategy" has been enshrined as a game genre, while "tactics" has not, so I think we're stuck with RTS. =|
You kids and your fancy Telnet clients.
In my day, we had to carry the bits by hand to the server and back (betcha didn't know that's where the term 'carry bit' originally came from, didja??), uphill, BOTH WAYS, in 10 feet of snow! And we LIKED it! Packet loss meant you'd been trampled by a horse.
Thank you.
Tracy Hickman came up with the ideas for Dragonlance while driving across the country in his car to his new job at TSR. It then became a campaign world with adventure modules written by professional game designers. The novels were then written to accompany the game modules, and soon eclipsed them in terms of popularity.
So yes, the novels came about after the campaign setting, but these were professionally designed and written adventure modules, not a bunch of players sitting around rolling dice as some would characterize it.
I can't believe I read this many comments before coming across a Half-Life joke.
If the death WAS faked (I don't really believe that, but I recognize it as at least a possibility for any rich fucker about to land hard time), obviously something believable would've been chosen as a cover. The more believable and fitting the better.
You make it sound like a believable death PROVES there's nothing more to it.
If Ken Lay was killed by, oh, say a falling circus elephant accidentally dropped out of a plane, would that make you more or less likely to believe the death was faked?