OK, I've got no special love for Sun, but please God please, do not let them get swallowed up by the IBM bureaucracy.
"New in Java 8! XML-binding database security extension protocol modules for WebSphere integrated at every level of the language, providing automatic clustering, fail-over and performance profiling! To support this feature, a critical part of many customer solutions, writing a Java class will now require an additional 37 configuration files, and if you make a mistake in any one of them, a cryptic error will be thrown at run-time. For security reasons, we can't tell you what the error codes mean. Also, half of java.* and javax.* no longer work according to the specification and javadoc, and XML will now be stored in binary. IBM consultants are available to help you with the transition."
Do you expect him to sit next to his daughter and look over her shoulder constantly whenever she uses the Internet? That's not really a practical solution for most people.
To make a crude analogy (a Slashdot tradition!) your suggestion sounds like, "It's not a problem that the local Children's Library shares floor space with Big Rick's SexXx-o-rama Newsstand. It's your responsibility as a parent to stay close to your kids and educate them about what is right and what is wrong."
(SPOILERS AHEAD -- but honestly, you knew that when you clicked on this article.)
I know it's controversial, but I liked the new ending better. It made more sense and related better to the earlier themes of the story (Dr. Manhattan as God) and didn't require the introduction of several new sci-fi elements right at the last minute (telepathy and genetic engineering). It was true to the idea of the original, but implemented in a more coherent way. I feel this was a pretty good change -- if Alan Moore had done it that way in the original, it probably would have been a slightly better story.
Heresy! I know, right? I can understand how some people have fond childhood memories of Watchmen and are justified in feeling that the ending was too great of a change. But I only read the book for the first time a few months ago, so I'm viewing Watchmen as just another story. In that sense, the movie stayed true to the original.
Lots of so called experts come on wikipedia and demand that people listen to them on the basis of their alleged expertise. When people (rightly) refuse to listen to them, those people storm off to/., their blog, or their cat and declare that Wikipedia is only interested in groupthink.
If they were really such experts, they should capable of citing adequate evidence to back up their claims.
If the "average" user is running "just over two" applications at a time, what is the 2-std-dev number of applications? I'm guessing it's not 1. It seems like an application limit of 3 will frustrate people "just under half" of the time, but if they went with the mean + 2 standard deviations, they would only frustrate users about 5% of the time.
That might actually be worth the price-break for the end users, and provide a really simple way to distinguish the needs of the home-desktop user from the enterprise server user (it makes more sense than per-processor licensing, anyway).
If a box's purpose changed, we didn't have to worry about renaming it and people would eventually learn its new purpose.
But if you go through the minimal trouble of renaming it, everybody knows the new purpose instantly, and you don't have to worry about constantly answering questions like "What was the print server again? It was some sort of monster," and "What is this machine named gelatinous-cube used for? Who owns this thing?"
(Of course, you may be able to get the best-of-both worlds by giving your machines whimsical names internally and then using network aliases to give them sensible names.)
The explanation I've heard is this: the micro-black holes created by cosmic ray collisions and the like carry the momentum of the cosmic ray and consequently are traveling incredibly fast. They punch through the earth in an instant, not enough time to start absorbing enough matter to reach whatever critical mass they need to not evaporate. They then continue hurtling through space at near the speed of light, zipping out of the solar system and winding up who-knows-where, maybe fizzing out due to Hawking radiation or something.
Is that a bunch of BS? Probably. I don't know enough about physics to say. But it sure sounds cool, doesn't it?
In a case like this, how does one distinguish between a bad idea, and a bad implementation of a good idea?
On the surface, an animated helper seems like a reasonable idea (at least, to anyone who hasn't been exposed to Clippy). But when Microsoft implemented it, it went horribly awry. Since we've only got that one data point, how do we know that it was the idea itself that was flawed, rather than Microsoft's lousy implementation?
Maybe the animated assistant is too far ahead of its time, or is a solution in search of a problem. Maybe Microsoft shouldn't have given Clippy such a damn smarmy attitude, or made it easier to get him out of your face, especially for the expert users.
20 years from now, will this conversation sound like a quaint "It is impossible to build a flying machine that is heavier than air?"
Here are the main reasons I quit; I have anecdotal evidence to suggest they apply to others as well:
1. Lousy controls made the game inaccessible. (You allude to this in your self-reply about "No sensible grouping.") The controls were the sort of clunky memorize-15-different-keys system used by most MMOs, but the gameplay was the fast-paced and action-oriented fare we find on consoles. It was a poor match. I played to level 37, and spent the entire time wishing they had gamepad support. (You could hack it, but it was clunky.) I've talked to people who tried the game and barely got out of the tutorial zone because of the weird controls.
2. Hard to find decent people to group with! This is a lament of every MMO player, but some games make it easier to find good PUGs and guilds than others. TR's community support was shockingly bad. They're trying build up their player base to hit "critical mass" while competing with the WoW juggernaut, and all they have is an LFG channel? They didn't even have a message board system! Where is the Web 2.0? The only real difference between an MMO and a single-player game is the community. How many people played Oblivion for more than a few months? Not enough to support an MMO. The reason people play MMOs for years on end is to hang out with the other players. Tabula Rasa made it really easy to solo and really hard to find other players worth grouping with and once you were in a group the experience really wasn't much better than soloing.
It's a shame because TR was in many ways one of the best and most innovative games to come out lately. I feel like they dropped the ball at the last minute -- someone gave them a hard deadline and they cut too many corners towards the end.
Our economy is a giant pyramid scheme. Wealth is created through lending by investing in business ventures. It's good for the borrower, who gets the capital to grow their business; it's good for the lender, who gets interest on their loan; it's good for the banks, who take a cut; and it's good for everyone, because savings that would otherwise be sitting in a vault gathering dust is instead flowing through the economy being exchanged for goods and services, etc.
But eventually, when things are going well, we run out of things to invest in. Times are good so people have a lot of cash and they would like to loan it to someone, but all the sensible ventures are already funded. So banks and other financial institutions invent riskier and riskier lending schemes, so that they can get a return on their capital. Eventually the banks, brokers, etc. start making bum loans and the money goes down the tubes. There's a chain reaction as investors pull their money (a run on banks, a selling of stocks, etc.).
Every economic downturn includes risky lending as a major contributing factor. The investors who pulled out early, and the financial institutions that take a cut without accepting any risk, are the top of the pyramid. The people who wind up holding the risky loans during the collapse are the bottom of the pyramid. Those guys thought the interest would always come rolling in.
The complexity of the system is there to try to hide this interaction. The rubes at the bottom of the pyramid wouldn't by into it, except that it is so obfuscated that no one can really tell what's going on. (Honestly, selling badly insured bundles of mixed-risk mortgages cost the taxpayers a trillion dollars? How is Joe Six-Pack supposed to guard himself against that?) And like any good pyramid scheme, the con involves great returns for people who get in early. Remember when your 401(k) was trending ever upwards? "Put some of that in real estate, it's huge!"
I'm sure other posters will mention Tabula Rasa's bugs, lousy control scheme, poor class balance, etc (typical MMO grievances) but to me the thing that always stood out about TR was its abysmal support for building communities.
Everyone's abuzz about Web 2.0 and "social networking," and somehow the TR devs didn't even see fit to have a Looking For Group feature in the game. The had on-line chat and a Friends list, and that's about it. The thing about massively MULTIPLAYER games is that they are only as good as the people you play with. Sure, a small percentage of MMO players exclusively solo, but for most people, the solo experience is basically a laggy, slightly glitchy single-player game, with extra monotonous grinding. In other words, you get bored of it after a month or two, max, just like any other single player game.
"Players come for the game, but stay for the community." -- I forget who said it, but that sums up most MMOs today. Compared to single-player games, any MMO is mediocre at best. The only reason people will pay $15/month for the MMO is to play with their friends. Tabula Rasa made it very difficult for me to locate people I might want to team with, let alone befriend. There was more incentive to solo than to assemble PUGs.
Suggestion to future MMO designers: Find a way to match up players with other players of similar game-play styles and compatible personalities. No, I'm not talking about in-game romance, just helping people find a good team. Match up Leeroy Jenkins with other Leeroy Jenkins, etc. Stop thinking of the players as an audience looking for "content." They're not. They're looking to hang out with friends and kill monsters.
I thought one of the strengths of the Open Source model was that it blurred the line between "user" and "project team."
If your project has a crucial dependency on some Open Source software (Ndiswrapper, or whatever), and the original developers of that software can't keep up with your needs, you should help them out, take it over, fork the source, or whatever. The project team is as obligated to you just as much as you are required to use their stuff -- not at all. Because once you take it and use it, it effectively becomes your stuff.
In this particular case, if the list of cards is community-generated, it's likely somebody has a backup (or enough of one for the community to re-generate the list without too much trouble). I would treat this as a valuable lesson about an improper (eggs : basket) relationship.
Mitochondrial DNA has been found to mutate at a much faster rate than nuclear DNA. Wouldn't seem to contradict the researcher's findings that the DNA was resistant to changes? Or, does the supposed self-correction mechanism explain how the mitochondrial DNA can mutate so much without everyone dying of mitochondrial disorders all the time?
If I visit a web site that is mostly advertisements are the ads (giant flash objects) metered?
Would this mean I am paying to be advertised to? Would this drive up the usage of AdBlock Plus and similar tools (and make them more accessible to grandma)? Would this drive down ad revenue for ad-based on-line businesses?
I didn't need to license the right to walk around and view the "product label prices" content, nor did I need to agree not to sue them for being out of Diet Coke Lime, nor did I need to consent to be monitored by security cameras and have my image stored on tapes.
Why can't visiting a web site on-line be that simple?
Many people today are confused about what beta means, due to Microsoft releasing public betas, MMOs going through open betas, etc. Here's what I was taught way back when:
Alpha testing was structured testing. It was often white-box testing of very specific features and systems done by internal testers. In usability tests, it meant that you pretty much told the users what to do and observed whether they had problems with it.
Beta testing was unstructured testing. It was often black-box testing of the entire program, done by people not very familiar with it. Basically, you get a bunch of monkeys to bang on your code. In usability tests, it meant that you got people in off the street and had them play with the program to do whatever.
I say "was" because these days most companies treat alpha and beta as just progress towards a release without a clear meaning for either.
Slashdot Mirror
OK, I've got no special love for Sun, but please God please, do not let them get swallowed up by the IBM bureaucracy.
"New in Java 8! XML-binding database security extension protocol modules for WebSphere integrated at every level of the language, providing automatic clustering, fail-over and performance profiling! To support this feature, a critical part of many customer solutions, writing a Java class will now require an additional 37 configuration files, and if you make a mistake in any one of them, a cryptic error will be thrown at run-time. For security reasons, we can't tell you what the error codes mean. Also, half of java.* and javax.* no longer work according to the specification and javadoc, and XML will now be stored in binary. IBM consultants are available to help you with the transition."
-- 77IM
Do you expect him to sit next to his daughter and look over her shoulder constantly whenever she uses the Internet? That's not really a practical solution for most people.
To make a crude analogy (a Slashdot tradition!) your suggestion sounds like, "It's not a problem that the local Children's Library shares floor space with Big Rick's SexXx-o-rama Newsstand. It's your responsibility as a parent to stay close to your kids and educate them about what is right and what is wrong."
-- 77IM
(SPOILERS AHEAD -- but honestly, you knew that when you clicked on this article.)
I know it's controversial, but I liked the new ending better. It made more sense and related better to the earlier themes of the story (Dr. Manhattan as God) and didn't require the introduction of several new sci-fi elements right at the last minute (telepathy and genetic engineering). It was true to the idea of the original, but implemented in a more coherent way. I feel this was a pretty good change -- if Alan Moore had done it that way in the original, it probably would have been a slightly better story.
Heresy! I know, right? I can understand how some people have fond childhood memories of Watchmen and are justified in feeling that the ending was too great of a change. But I only read the book for the first time a few months ago, so I'm viewing Watchmen as just another story. In that sense, the movie stayed true to the original.
-- 77IM
Lots of so called experts come on wikipedia and demand that people listen to them on the basis of their alleged expertise. When people (rightly) refuse to listen to them, those people storm off to /., their blog, or their cat and declare that Wikipedia is only interested in groupthink.
If they were really such experts, they should capable of citing adequate evidence to back up their claims.
If the "average" user is running "just over two" applications at a time, what is the 2-std-dev number of applications? I'm guessing it's not 1. It seems like an application limit of 3 will frustrate people "just under half" of the time, but if they went with the mean + 2 standard deviations, they would only frustrate users about 5% of the time.
That might actually be worth the price-break for the end users, and provide a really simple way to distinguish the needs of the home-desktop user from the enterprise server user (it makes more sense than per-processor licensing, anyway).
-- 77IM
If a box's purpose changed, we didn't have to worry about renaming it and people would eventually learn its new purpose.
But if you go through the minimal trouble of renaming it, everybody knows the new purpose instantly, and you don't have to worry about constantly answering questions like "What was the print server again? It was some sort of monster," and "What is this machine named gelatinous-cube used for? Who owns this thing?"
(Of course, you may be able to get the best-of-both worlds by giving your machines whimsical names internally and then using network aliases to give them sensible names.)
-- 77IM
The explanation I've heard is this: the micro-black holes created by cosmic ray collisions and the like carry the momentum of the cosmic ray and consequently are traveling incredibly fast. They punch through the earth in an instant, not enough time to start absorbing enough matter to reach whatever critical mass they need to not evaporate. They then continue hurtling through space at near the speed of light, zipping out of the solar system and winding up who-knows-where, maybe fizzing out due to Hawking radiation or something.
Is that a bunch of BS? Probably. I don't know enough about physics to say. But it sure sounds cool, doesn't it?
In a case like this, how does one distinguish between a bad idea, and a bad implementation of a good idea?
On the surface, an animated helper seems like a reasonable idea (at least, to anyone who hasn't been exposed to Clippy). But when Microsoft implemented it, it went horribly awry. Since we've only got that one data point, how do we know that it was the idea itself that was flawed, rather than Microsoft's lousy implementation?
Maybe the animated assistant is too far ahead of its time, or is a solution in search of a problem. Maybe Microsoft shouldn't have given Clippy such a damn smarmy attitude, or made it easier to get him out of your face, especially for the expert users.
20 years from now, will this conversation sound like a quaint "It is impossible to build a flying machine that is heavier than air?"
Here are the main reasons I quit; I have anecdotal evidence to suggest they apply to others as well:
1. Lousy controls made the game inaccessible. (You allude to this in your self-reply about "No sensible grouping.") The controls were the sort of clunky memorize-15-different-keys system used by most MMOs, but the gameplay was the fast-paced and action-oriented fare we find on consoles. It was a poor match. I played to level 37, and spent the entire time wishing they had gamepad support. (You could hack it, but it was clunky.) I've talked to people who tried the game and barely got out of the tutorial zone because of the weird controls.
2. Hard to find decent people to group with! This is a lament of every MMO player, but some games make it easier to find good PUGs and guilds than others. TR's community support was shockingly bad. They're trying build up their player base to hit "critical mass" while competing with the WoW juggernaut, and all they have is an LFG channel? They didn't even have a message board system! Where is the Web 2.0? The only real difference between an MMO and a single-player game is the community. How many people played Oblivion for more than a few months? Not enough to support an MMO. The reason people play MMOs for years on end is to hang out with the other players. Tabula Rasa made it really easy to solo and really hard to find other players worth grouping with and once you were in a group the experience really wasn't much better than soloing.
It's a shame because TR was in many ways one of the best and most innovative games to come out lately. I feel like they dropped the ball at the last minute -- someone gave them a hard deadline and they cut too many corners towards the end.
Our economy is a giant pyramid scheme. Wealth is created through lending by investing in business ventures. It's good for the borrower, who gets the capital to grow their business; it's good for the lender, who gets interest on their loan; it's good for the banks, who take a cut; and it's good for everyone, because savings that would otherwise be sitting in a vault gathering dust is instead flowing through the economy being exchanged for goods and services, etc.
But eventually, when things are going well, we run out of things to invest in. Times are good so people have a lot of cash and they would like to loan it to someone, but all the sensible ventures are already funded. So banks and other financial institutions invent riskier and riskier lending schemes, so that they can get a return on their capital. Eventually the banks, brokers, etc. start making bum loans and the money goes down the tubes. There's a chain reaction as investors pull their money (a run on banks, a selling of stocks, etc.).
Every economic downturn includes risky lending as a major contributing factor. The investors who pulled out early, and the financial institutions that take a cut without accepting any risk, are the top of the pyramid. The people who wind up holding the risky loans during the collapse are the bottom of the pyramid. Those guys thought the interest would always come rolling in.
The complexity of the system is there to try to hide this interaction. The rubes at the bottom of the pyramid wouldn't by into it, except that it is so obfuscated that no one can really tell what's going on. (Honestly, selling badly insured bundles of mixed-risk mortgages cost the taxpayers a trillion dollars? How is Joe Six-Pack supposed to guard himself against that?) And like any good pyramid scheme, the con involves great returns for people who get in early. Remember when your 401(k) was trending ever upwards? "Put some of that in real estate, it's huge!"
-- 77IM
The browser is using an older version of the Safe Browsing protocol that Google will discontinue.
Wouldn't it be better to update FireFox 2.0.0.19 to use a newer, supported version of the Safe Browsing protocol???
I'm sure other posters will mention Tabula Rasa's bugs, lousy control scheme, poor class balance, etc (typical MMO grievances) but to me the thing that always stood out about TR was its abysmal support for building communities.
Everyone's abuzz about Web 2.0 and "social networking," and somehow the TR devs didn't even see fit to have a Looking For Group feature in the game. The had on-line chat and a Friends list, and that's about it. The thing about massively MULTIPLAYER games is that they are only as good as the people you play with. Sure, a small percentage of MMO players exclusively solo, but for most people, the solo experience is basically a laggy, slightly glitchy single-player game, with extra monotonous grinding. In other words, you get bored of it after a month or two, max, just like any other single player game.
"Players come for the game, but stay for the community." -- I forget who said it, but that sums up most MMOs today. Compared to single-player games, any MMO is mediocre at best. The only reason people will pay $15/month for the MMO is to play with their friends. Tabula Rasa made it very difficult for me to locate people I might want to team with, let alone befriend. There was more incentive to solo than to assemble PUGs.
Suggestion to future MMO designers: Find a way to match up players with other players of similar game-play styles and compatible personalities. No, I'm not talking about in-game romance, just helping people find a good team. Match up Leeroy Jenkins with other Leeroy Jenkins, etc. Stop thinking of the players as an audience looking for "content." They're not. They're looking to hang out with friends and kill monsters.
I thought one of the strengths of the Open Source model was that it blurred the line between "user" and "project team."
If your project has a crucial dependency on some Open Source software (Ndiswrapper, or whatever), and the original developers of that software can't keep up with your needs, you should help them out, take it over, fork the source, or whatever. The project team is as obligated to you just as much as you are required to use their stuff -- not at all. Because once you take it and use it, it effectively becomes your stuff.
In this particular case, if the list of cards is community-generated, it's likely somebody has a backup (or enough of one for the community to re-generate the list without too much trouble). I would treat this as a valuable lesson about an improper (eggs : basket) relationship.
Mitochondrial DNA has been found to mutate at a much faster rate than nuclear DNA. Wouldn't seem to contradict the researcher's findings that the DNA was resistant to changes? Or, does the supposed self-correction mechanism explain how the mitochondrial DNA can mutate so much without everyone dying of mitochondrial disorders all the time?
If I visit a web site that is mostly advertisements are the ads (giant flash objects) metered?
Would this mean I am paying to be advertised to? Would this drive up the usage of AdBlock Plus and similar tools (and make them more accessible to grandma)? Would this drive down ad revenue for ad-based on-line businesses?
A cat is no trade for integrity.
I can provide plenty of examples where protocols are irreducibly complex. Your "evolution" theory is flawed.
Are you suggesting that the Internet came about due to Intelligent Design?
Except in VB, where Ethics <> Obeying the Law.
I went to a supermarket this morning.
I didn't need to license the right to walk around and view the "product label prices" content, nor did I need to agree not to sue them for being out of Diet Coke Lime, nor did I need to consent to be monitored by security cameras and have my image stored on tapes.
Why can't visiting a web site on-line be that simple?
A cat is no trade for integrity.
Many people today are confused about what beta means, due to Microsoft releasing public betas, MMOs going through open betas, etc. Here's what I was taught way back when:
Alpha testing was structured testing. It was often white-box testing of very specific features and systems done by internal testers. In usability tests, it meant that you pretty much told the users what to do and observed whether they had problems with it.
Beta testing was unstructured testing. It was often black-box testing of the entire program, done by people not very familiar with it. Basically, you get a bunch of monkeys to bang on your code. In usability tests, it meant that you got people in off the street and had them play with the program to do whatever.
I say "was" because these days most companies treat alpha and beta as just progress towards a release without a clear meaning for either.