I've heard some word (admittedly not many datapoints) that some companies are still embracing Java/J2EE, but are going for "JSPs" (hopefully a euphamism for good use of regular java objects, maybe some wrapped JDBC) instead of the fullbore EJB. In my experience, this is a very smart thing. I've had successes with using a lot of the same patterns recommended for EJB with the lighter-weight stuff, and have heard of at least 3 really collosal EJB failures.
EJB makes it easier to have physically seperate tiers, and adds enough systems-needed overhead that you'll probably need 'em...
I've started to get porn spam pretty damn regularly. Always the formula some girl name + a 5 or 6 digit number, and always a one sentence come on with a usually munged link (URL goes one place, but looks like it's a link to a diff URL). And it seems to always arrive right after I login...suspicously so.
Sometimes I wonder if AIM should change its protocol so that you can't send links to people whose buddy list you're not on...or at least not until they've responded at least once...
It's not so much a need to be more of a loser, just to feel more like one...or at least, have a realistic appraisal of your own abilities, and the fact that in a world of over 6 billion people, it's unlikely that you're the very best at any thing.
Well, keep in mind that Americans who strive to be on tv are kind of a self-selected group to begin with, off the bat more likely to be chest-thumping and with high-self-esteem-issues. I certainly have a big does of self-deprecating humor durintg competitions (and come watch me play darts in my dart league and you'll see that that humbleness is richly justified...) but maybe that's more spread out for the UK population.
Tablet technology seems like it would be great for doodlers and maybe other artists, depending on the sensitivity of the input device. It'll be great when my big ol' LCD monitor can be taken off of its stand and used on my lap for a bit of drawing.
On the other hand, right now, when I see the pictures all I can think is that it looks like a comically over-seized PDA.
Tetris Attack, while THE best head to head "action puzzle" game out there (along with its clone Pokemon Puzzle League) is definately not Tetris...in fact, the Tetris theme is just a marketing gimmick. (It's a lot better than most head to head games, like Kirby's Avalenche et al, because when you send pieces to make your opponent's life more difficult, you might also be giving them the keys to massive chain reactions, so the game has a nice see-saw feel.)
Anyway, I would guess that Tetris Attack is easier to optimise than Tetris anyway. Maybe not, since there is a variety of combos that can be used. And as someone pointed out, despite the formal "difficulty" of the game, relative to the processor power we have, playing a "good enough" game isn't that much of a feat.
But by the eighties every science fiction writer and his dog had written about these subjects with far more detail.
In 1987 they had a Scientific American article on this...was that the old "Computer Recreations" column? And what I took away from it was how many surprisingly nuanced behaviors can be caused by such amazingly simple wiring. That's not something I see "every sci fi writer and his dog" covering in any kind of detail, bub. You're right in that the question then becomes 'but how does it scale', and I don't know how well it covers thatm but I think you're being a little too dismissive of the work as a whole.
Cornea brand / bathing in EMF
on
LCD Round-up
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· Score: 2
They didn't have my favorite "Cornea" brand monitor...ugly brandname, but a very decent monitor generally priced one size lower than what you get.
Anyway, one justification for me for getting an LCD was the idea of not bathing myself in EMF all the live long day...is there any rational reasoning behind that, or am I just being paranoid? (Or just enjoying all the extra deskspace...)
Re:Downloading only a third of the problem...
on
Downloading The Mind
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· Score: 2
I think another hard part is how the system will have to be able to build and modify itself, exactly in the same way that the human brain does. That is crucial to our "humaness", and probably are consciousness as well.
No Real Spoilers for Permutation City, I think: There was a lot that stretched credibility in that book, even if you accept the basic download idea. For instance, the "solipst nation", portrayed as so radical, seem to be a lot less radical than most everyone accepting that getting a "copy" made is effectively a transfer, and can lead to eternal life, as opposed to a new life clone...
I think the Buddhists had it right. Our sense of self is, fundamentally, an illusion.
I used to assume that my "inner voice", my internal monologue, was "me" in some fundamental way. And that when I slept, yeah, I was unconscious, but there must be some "pilot light of me" that was still burning.
After reading Dennett's "Consciousness Explained", though, now I'm inclined to think that thought experiments like these reinforce the idea that there's no there, there. All 3 of those copies are you, for what it's worth, which isn't as much as you assume. (Though your implication "if it even *does* come to life", implying they would be some kind of zombies...well, if those 3 are zombies, just imitating "real consciousness", and yet they ARE *accurate* copies, able to grown and learn just like 'you'...well pal, you're a zombie too.)
Some of this thinking informs the essay I advertise in my.sig, so you might want to go there for more info. Also, the book Permutation City by Greg Egan has some interesting ideas, but contains some unlikelihoods, even after you accept the fundamental "we can download minds" premise in it.
Blockbuster is slated to remove all VHS off their shelves by 2004
That's kind of too bad...I noticed recently at my local Blockbuster that there's a ton better selection in VHS.
There is a certain amount of early-90s films (Backbeat and Body of Evidence (wot kin I say, I like madonna)) that seem to be VHS and Laser Disc only; I'm not sure what incentive there is for movie companies to release their old back catalog, some of the succesful films but not monster hits, in the new formats.
I've found Usenet to still be worthwhile, actually. Certainly YMMV, especially depending on what groups you 'grew up with', but for the ones I started reading, the signal/noise is at *least* comparable to slashdot...(yes, I know some would argue that's setting the bar pretty low;-)
Besides the continuity of e-mail address issue, I think some oldtimers got onto AOL at a time where its content was probably comparable to the neat stuff available on free websites--and for some, that's a reason to stay. For instance, when you're part of a message board community, if the only gateway to that is AOL, you might not want to change. (My cousin's family falls in this group I think, connecting to AOL over their able modem.) I don't know how the other content rates. I still see "AOL keyword:" in a surprisingly large (i.e. not zero) number of places, but I don't know if there's much content that isn't mirrored on a 'normal' web site.
Another small feature that AOL has that (as far as I know) isn't emulated with many other ways of connecting to the Net: multiple screennames. This lets family members keep their own IDs, or lets people play with multiple personaes. I guess nowadays you could do the same kind of thing with free webmail, but still. (My own online identity is now very tied in with the domains I run...if not for those, hell, I might still be on my old academic account as my canonical email.)
So are these written in some clever macrolanguage, or are they external modules using some kind of plugin, or what? Obviously the games don't look very Diablo-y (save for the font), and it seems the programs are just using some kind of console feature as a text display.
I guess my Diablo experience is pretty limited anyway, all I remember is cow-orkers playing it in '97 and the one shopkeeper who'd say "wot kin I DEWWWW fer ya?"
Ah, Mr. Von Banken at Euclid High School...he'd often make things explode. He was even prepared for when us kiddies started clammering for it.
Us: "Blow something up Von! Blow something up!" Him: [takes out balloon, inflates] "There. I blew something up" Us: "No! No! Make something explode!" Him: [Pops balloon] "There...can we get back to work now?"
Every year he got a vat of..I dunno, liquid nitrogen? Some supercold substance that would make objects shatterable. And he'd cool down some natural gas from the little lab spigots, and light small puddles of it on fire in the hallway, sending it zooming down the hall.
In terms of actual surprising results (as opposed to jus cool fire-n-explosions)...I always thought that the physics demonstration of how a sailcraft can tack against the prevailing wind was pretty damn non-intuitive.
Best years of my life? Har har har. The best years of your life are *right now* whenever right now might be.
Unless you're neurotic, and think that those years were swell compared to the mushroom cloud and plague ridden future of terrorism we have in store...then again, I had my panties in a bunch about Y2K too.
Actually, it ties in to this conversation; should I be striving for a semi-survivalist lifestyle, along with all the usual Generation __ stuff I'm up to?
Y'know, maybe I'm biased, but having such a unique "grand prize" makes me think that losing would be devastating, in a way other "survivor"-esque shows aren't. If you're optimistic you think *maybe* this isn't "once in a lifetime", if we manage to make space travel a little less unique, but still.
And how ironic is it that its the formerly communist governments that are making this stuff possible? I'm sure a scifi writer from the 1950s would still have the game show by those wacky Americans, but would probably soom that we'd do the space travel side as well......huh. I meant that to be funny, but now it just seems like a depressing commentary on the state of space exploration by the USA.
Re:Blogging == mental masturbation
on
The Weblog Handbook
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· Score: 3, Insightful
But I have to disagree with you that slashdot is a group-weblog. Slashdot is more like a new-commentary system
Well, that goes back to the distinction between "filter" blogs and "journal" blogs...I consider this and that that to be blogs as well, but more about links ala the filter type. Slashdot also is link centric...and given all the ranting and raving that takes place on the comments boards, it's even more journal-bloggy than the other sites, where commentary plays at best a secondary role.
I think there's a rather untapped potential for the blog format in the professional world. I think that kind of comments page, but where anyone can take the central soapbox, might be very useful in certain medium or large-size product teams.
I'm no big fan of the "this is where I went for lunch today" blog, but for better or worse, blog is a large-ish umbrella term, with some very promising parts.
HTML version via since the original is slashdotted and a PDF anyway.
Re:Blogging == mental masturbation
on
The Weblog Handbook
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
* = Remarkeably, the ratio out male/female webloggers is completely out of sync with the ratio of men/women, where there are FAR more women weblogging then one would expect. Curious.
It's not that strange, given (grounded in reality) stereotypes about how women tend to gravitate towards technology's communication enabling sides.
I think all the anti-blog ranting here is really kind of funny. And by funny I mean stupid. Look, I'm as fond as a good goth/poetry teen angst blog as the next guy (which is to say not at all) but foaming at the mouth about 'em, or challenging the justification for the book's existence (look; she wanted to make a buck, there might be people into the subculture or needing a friendly introduction to make it worth their while) -- especially on a group-effort-blog like Slashdot-- is silly.
Some people write blogs to chronicle their own history for themselves, but make it public to either keep their writing level up, or because a small group of friends might be interested.
Like many other good things on the 'Net, the hype will (has, actually) die down, and Blobs will find their place as part of the landscape.
Re:White hot world of web logs?
on
The Weblog Handbook
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Yeah, "white hot" was a bit much, but I think Blogs still have their place. I think the Filter vs. "blog"/notebook style is important. I keep up with 6 or 7 filters, and only 1 or 2 notebooks.
Filters are great, they do the surfing for you, finding some diamonds in all that internet coal.
My site is mostly a filter, but with an emphasis on found quotes as well. I do it a little for the attention, but mostly as a record of my own life and findings.
As Will Shakespeare once wrote, "first, kill all the lawyers."
You keep using that phrase...I don not think it means what you think it means...
It was said by someone who was talking about an overthrow of the government; kill all the lawyers so the people doing the illegal acts of overthrowing won't get busted.
Funny thing, way back when there on the Usenet group rec.games.video.classic there was a big furor over another Novak, Michael J...some odd similarities in the two situations.
But then it's not "3 tier" and therefore must not be scalable. Or something.
Yeah...stuff like medium-heavy use of EJBs, esp. Entity Beans, lets you scale...and makes sure you need to.
Seriously, I think so many EJB projects are way over-engineered anyway. I've been on a project that went down this path. Then they gave the bulk of it to a buch of Indian consultants who took a much more conservative J2EE approach. Jury's still out, but I'm putting my money on the simpler approach.
Slashdot Mirror
I've heard some word (admittedly not many datapoints) that some companies are still embracing Java/J2EE, but are going for "JSPs" (hopefully a euphamism for good use of regular java objects, maybe some wrapped JDBC) instead of the fullbore EJB. In my experience, this is a very smart thing. I've had successes with using a lot of the same patterns recommended for EJB with the lighter-weight stuff, and have heard of at least 3 really collosal EJB failures.
EJB makes it easier to have physically seperate tiers, and adds enough systems-needed overhead that you'll probably need 'em...
I've started to get porn spam pretty damn regularly. Always the formula some girl name + a 5 or 6 digit number, and always a one sentence come on with a usually munged link (URL goes one place, but looks like it's a link to a diff URL). And it seems to always arrive right after I login...suspicously so.
Sometimes I wonder if AIM should change its protocol so that you can't send links to people whose buddy list you're not on...or at least not until they've responded at least once...
It's not so much a need to be more of a loser, just to feel more like one...or at least, have a realistic appraisal of your own abilities, and the fact that in a world of over 6 billion people, it's unlikely that you're the very best at any thing.
Well, keep in mind that Americans who strive to be on tv are kind of a self-selected group to begin with, off the bat more likely to be chest-thumping and with high-self-esteem-issues. I certainly have a big does of self-deprecating humor durintg competitions (and come watch me play darts in my dart league and you'll see that that humbleness is richly justified...) but maybe that's more spread out for the UK population.
Tablet technology seems like it would be great for doodlers and maybe other artists, depending on the sensitivity of the input device. It'll be great when my big ol' LCD monitor can be taken off of its stand and used on my lap for a bit of drawing.
On the other hand, right now, when I see the pictures all I can think is that it looks like a comically over-seized PDA.
Tetris Attack, while THE best head to head "action puzzle" game out there (along with its clone Pokemon Puzzle League) is definately not Tetris...in fact, the Tetris theme is just a marketing gimmick. (It's a lot better than most head to head games, like Kirby's Avalenche et al, because when you send pieces to make your opponent's life more difficult, you might also be giving them the keys to massive chain reactions, so the game has a nice see-saw feel.)
Anyway, I would guess that Tetris Attack is easier to optimise than Tetris anyway. Maybe not, since there is a variety of combos that can be used. And as someone pointed out, despite the formal "difficulty" of the game, relative to the processor power we have, playing a "good enough" game isn't that much of a feat.
But by the eighties every science fiction writer and his dog had written about these subjects with far more detail.
In 1987 they had a Scientific American article on this...was that the old "Computer Recreations" column? And what I took away from it was how many surprisingly nuanced behaviors can be caused by such amazingly simple wiring. That's not something I see "every sci fi writer and his dog" covering in any kind of detail, bub. You're right in that the question then becomes 'but how does it scale', and I don't know how well it covers thatm but I think you're being a little too dismissive of the work as a whole.
They didn't have my favorite "Cornea" brand monitor...ugly brandname, but a very decent monitor generally priced one size lower than what you get.
Anyway, one justification for me for getting an LCD was the idea of not bathing myself in EMF all the live long day...is there any rational reasoning behind that, or am I just being paranoid? (Or just enjoying all the extra deskspace...)
I think another hard part is how the system will have to be able to build and modify itself, exactly in the same way that the human brain does. That is crucial to our "humaness", and probably are consciousness as well.
No Real Spoilers for Permutation City, I think:
There was a lot that stretched credibility in that book, even if you accept the basic download idea. For instance, the "solipst nation", portrayed as so radical, seem to be a lot less radical than most everyone accepting that getting a "copy" made is effectively a transfer, and can lead to eternal life, as opposed to a new life clone...
I think the Buddhists had it right. Our sense of self is, fundamentally, an illusion.
.sig, so you might want to go there for more info. Also, the book Permutation City by Greg Egan has some interesting ideas, but contains some unlikelihoods, even after you accept the fundamental "we can download minds" premise in it.
I used to assume that my "inner voice", my internal monologue, was "me" in some fundamental way. And that when I slept, yeah, I was unconscious, but there must be some "pilot light of me" that was still burning.
After reading Dennett's "Consciousness Explained", though, now I'm inclined to think that thought experiments like these reinforce the idea that there's no there, there. All 3 of those copies are you, for what it's worth, which isn't as much as you assume. (Though your implication "if it even *does* come to life", implying they would be some kind of zombies...well, if those 3 are zombies, just imitating "real consciousness", and yet they ARE *accurate* copies, able to grown and learn just like 'you'...well pal, you're a zombie too.)
Some of this thinking informs the essay I advertise in my
Blockbuster is slated to remove all VHS off their shelves by 2004
That's kind of too bad...I noticed recently at my local Blockbuster that there's a ton better selection in VHS.
There is a certain amount of early-90s films (Backbeat and Body of Evidence (wot kin I say, I like madonna)) that seem to be VHS and Laser Disc only; I'm not sure what incentive there is for movie companies to release their old back catalog, some of the succesful films but not monster hits, in the new formats.
I've found Usenet to still be worthwhile, actually. Certainly YMMV, especially depending on what groups you 'grew up with', but for the ones I started reading, the signal/noise is at *least* comparable to slashdot...(yes, I know some would argue that's setting the bar pretty low ;-)
Besides the continuity of e-mail address issue, I think some oldtimers got onto AOL at a time where its content was probably comparable to the neat stuff available on free websites--and for some, that's a reason to stay. For instance, when you're part of a message board community, if the only gateway to that is AOL, you might not want to change. (My cousin's family falls in this group I think, connecting to AOL over their able modem.) I don't know how the other content rates. I still see "AOL keyword:" in a surprisingly large (i.e. not zero) number of places, but I don't know if there's much content that isn't mirrored on a 'normal' web site.
Another small feature that AOL has that (as far as I know) isn't emulated with many other ways of connecting to the Net: multiple screennames. This lets family members keep their own IDs, or lets people play with multiple personaes. I guess nowadays you could do the same kind of thing with free webmail, but still. (My own online identity is now very tied in with the domains I run...if not for those, hell, I might still be on my old academic account as my canonical email.)
So are these written in some clever macrolanguage, or are they external modules using some kind of plugin, or what? Obviously the games don't look very Diablo-y (save for the font), and it seems the programs are just using some kind of console feature as a text display.
I guess my Diablo experience is pretty limited anyway, all I remember is cow-orkers playing it in '97 and the one shopkeeper who'd say "wot kin I DEWWWW fer ya?"
Ah, Mr. Von Banken at Euclid High School...he'd often make things explode. He was even prepared for when us kiddies started clammering for it.
Us: "Blow something up Von! Blow something up!"
Him: [takes out balloon, inflates] "There. I blew something up"
Us: "No! No! Make something explode!"
Him: [Pops balloon] "There...can we get back to work now?"
Every year he got a vat of..I dunno, liquid nitrogen? Some supercold substance that would make objects shatterable. And he'd cool down some natural gas from the little lab spigots, and light small puddles of it on fire in the hallway, sending it zooming down the hall.
In terms of actual surprising results (as opposed to jus cool fire-n-explosions)...I always thought that the physics demonstration of how a sailcraft can tack against the prevailing wind was pretty damn non-intuitive.
Best years of my life? Har har har. The best years of your life are *right now* whenever right now might be.
Unless you're neurotic, and think that those years were swell compared to the mushroom cloud and plague ridden future of terrorism we have in store...then again, I had my panties in a bunch about Y2K too.
Actually, it ties in to this conversation; should I be striving for a semi-survivalist lifestyle, along with all the usual Generation __ stuff I'm up to?
Y'know, maybe I'm biased, but having such a unique "grand prize" makes me think that losing would be devastating, in a way other "survivor"-esque shows aren't. If you're optimistic you think *maybe* this isn't "once in a lifetime", if we manage to make space travel a little less unique, but still.
...huh. I meant that to be funny, but now it just seems like a depressing commentary on the state of space exploration by the USA.
And how ironic is it that its the formerly communist governments that are making this stuff possible? I'm sure a scifi writer from the 1950s would still have the game show by those wacky Americans, but would probably soom that we'd do the space travel side as well...
But I have to disagree with you that slashdot is a group-weblog. Slashdot is more like a new-commentary system
Well, that goes back to the distinction between "filter" blogs and "journal" blogs...I consider this and that that to be blogs as well, but more about links ala the filter type. Slashdot also is link centric...and given all the ranting and raving that takes place on the comments boards, it's even more journal-bloggy than the other sites, where commentary plays at best a secondary role.
I think there's a rather untapped potential for the blog format in the professional world. I think that kind of comments page, but where anyone can take the central soapbox, might be very useful in certain medium or large-size product teams.
I'm no big fan of the "this is where I went for lunch today" blog, but for better or worse, blog is a large-ish umbrella term, with some very promising parts.
HTML version via since the original is slashdotted and a PDF anyway.
* = Remarkeably, the ratio out male/female webloggers is completely out of sync with the ratio of men/women, where there are FAR more women weblogging then one would expect. Curious.
It's not that strange, given (grounded in reality) stereotypes about how women tend to gravitate towards technology's communication enabling sides.
I think all the anti-blog ranting here is really kind of funny. And by funny I mean stupid. Look, I'm as fond as a good goth/poetry teen angst blog as the next guy (which is to say not at all) but foaming at the mouth about 'em, or challenging the justification for the book's existence (look; she wanted to make a buck, there might be people into the subculture or needing a friendly introduction to make it worth their while) -- especially on a group-effort-blog like Slashdot-- is silly.
Some people write blogs to chronicle their own history for themselves, but make it public to either keep their writing level up, or because a small group of friends might be interested.
Like many other good things on the 'Net, the hype will (has, actually) die down, and Blobs will find their place as part of the landscape.
Yeah, "white hot" was a bit much, but I think Blogs still have their place. I think the Filter vs. "blog"/notebook style is important. I keep up with 6 or 7 filters, and only 1 or 2 notebooks.
Filters are great, they do the surfing for you, finding some diamonds in all that internet coal.
My site is mostly a filter, but with an emphasis on found quotes as well. I do it a little for the attention, but mostly as a record of my own life and findings.
J2EE vs .Net in a room, with some knives: who wins? (Maybe with Perl, Ruby, Python in there for good measure)
As Will Shakespeare once wrote, "first, kill all the lawyers."
You keep using that phrase...I don not think it means what you think it means...
It was said by someone who was talking about an overthrow of the government; kill all the lawyers so the people doing the illegal acts of overthrowing won't get busted.
Funny thing, way back when there on the Usenet group rec.games.video.classic there was a big furor over another Novak, Michael J...some odd similarities in the two situations.
But then it's not "3 tier" and therefore must not be scalable. Or something.
Yeah...stuff like medium-heavy use of EJBs, esp. Entity Beans, lets you scale...and makes sure you need to.
Seriously, I think so many EJB projects are way over-engineered anyway. I've been on a project that went down this path. Then they gave the bulk of it to a buch of Indian consultants who took a much more conservative J2EE approach. Jury's still out, but I'm putting my money on the simpler approach.