As a side note and slightly offtopic, this made me realize how much Software Engineering is not really practiced as an engineering discipline (and I say this as somebody that does software development for a living).
While reading the parent article I kept mentally waving my head yes everytime I read the Engineer bits... yet it also makes me thing how infrequently I have came accross coleagues that, for example, actually look at a software design problem as a trade-off balancing multiple demands.
It probably also helps that the community of FPS online gamers in the PC is made up of older players than on the consoles.
When the speed of your reflexes cannot keep up with that of a teenager (i.e. all other conditions being equal, if you spot each other at the same time, the teenager shoots first) you have to relly on cunning (i.e. tactical and even strategical awareness) to come out on top of the boards and to help your team win.
In games like the BF series (which I used to play a lot) that also means knowing the right tools and the right counters to use at the right time (in BF this includes vehicles) and to play with your team (lone wolves have limited success).
It's thus not surprising to see that on a contest of who does more cooperative actions (team boosting actions like healing others or repairing their vehicles) PC gamers came out on top by a long-shot (it's a team-optimal option if some players take support roles like Medic and Engineer to help the team win).
Because we elected them to do this work for us. The US is a republic. We vote for representatives to run our government. These representatives, and their hired staffers, are the ones that need access. Not us.
So how do you know that your representatives are in fact doing what you elected them for?
Do you just trust their word for it, leave them to it and come relection time you just vote them back in based on their statements about their own honesty?
I bet that when you go to a fish-monger you don't just take his word on the weight of the fish he's trying to sell you and want him to actually weigh it and yet you seem to be willing to take the word of somebody when a lot more money and power is involved...
We only need to know when when there is malfeasance that is being kept secret. But that does mean we need the ability to rummage through every cabinet looking for it. That's called a fishing expedition.
Even before Wikileaks, the few stories about abuses of power that came up usually had some component or other hidden behind documents mislabeled as Secret or even Top Secret.
For years the fashion has been to bury corruption and mismanagement in government under the cover of National Security and at the moment the rot runs so deep that only the bright shinny light of daylight over everything is powerfull enough to let us purge all the rot.
Had real patriots come forward before maybe the rot wouldn't have gone so deep, but they seem to have been busy making loud statements of patriotic fervor and cheering up those in power everytime they took more powers into their hands and stole more rights away from the American People, so now the US public is reduced to relying on a foreign organisation to do the kind of job that would make the Founding Fathers proud.
No, actually, when you're poor and smart in the US, you apply to the Golden Dozen of colleges and universities, and get a full ride
I think you're seriously underestimating what it is to be poor in the US.
When you're the oldest child of a junky single mother, living in a neighbourhood where you're either in a gang or you get beaten up every day, go to the kind of inner-city school nobody goes to unless they have no other chance and in the evenings when you get home have to do some kind of work and help take care of your kid-brother(s)/sister(s), you'll be lucky if you finish high-school, much less be able to "get a full ride" to a good University.
Life fucks up the really poor from the cradle onwards: no amount of brains alone will make up for being born deep down in the shit pit.
Personally I'm fucking priviliedged for having being born in a country where education was free, for being raised by both parents and both valuing education (even if they came from a poor background), for them to have chosen to have only one kid 'cause they knew they couldn't afford to get more than one through University, and for me to be good at it and a risk-taker type.
None of my parents (both from poor families) had anywhere near the chances I had and I'm damn proud of both for having pulled themselves out of the shitty situations they were born into. I can also guarantee you that at least one of them is more intelligent (IQ-wise) than the vast majority of people out there in this world and would've gone far if the deck wasn't stacked against her.
The vast majority of games out there don't have enough plot to fill a matchbox. How exactly are they worthy of extra respect versus any random short-story?
Really, Super Mario Bros. the movie was very close to the spirit of the games (light entertainment) and had more plot that all the games put together.
Just because some games have a bunch of fanboys out there doesn't mean that they or their game are worthy of special respect.
Might as well complain that movies about popular sports like football (the American one and the Rest Of The World one) don't show enough respect for the game - at least there are more fans for any of of those sports than there are for any specific computer game.
It's all a bit of Facebook and WoW envy: - EA wants to turn their games into highly social activities because they want to benefit from the Network Effects that a social environment brings (you're there because all your friend are there, they're there because all their friends - including you - are there).
They're hardly the only ones: - Look at all most recent games and for most you'll see some kind of competitive (global scoreboards) or social (online chat channels) functionality bolted in. - Look at what Blizzard did with Real ID and the way they connected WoW IDs with those in their other multiplayer games so that "friends can keep track of their friends" in other Blizzard games. - Look at how pretty much every "online gaming platform" out there (like XBox Live) comes with some kind of chat functionality
The thing is, when it comes to Networking Effects, the outcome is a winner takes all result: if they sacrifice the offline component on their games, considering that EA is competing with the likes of Blizzard for being THE social gaming platform, they risk having no fallback plan for the possible outcome of them not being the winner.
You are crossing the street with a friend and he spots an out of control long-haul truck careening towards you both. He shouts: - "Watch out, I think that truck is gonna hit us"
Do you: a) Run away from the middle of the road? b) Ask him to prove to you beyond refute that the truck is going to hit you?
---
In this world there are no certainties but death and taxes, so in a situation where in the future something bad might happen, choosing inaction until irrefutable proof that said event is really going to happen (which usually you will only get when it's too late to do anything about it) is not a rational choice.
Usually you look at: - How likelly it is that it's going to happen - How bad is it gonna be - How much will it cost to do something now to make it not happen or be much less likelly to happen.
A lot of people seem to make their points based on expectation of irrefutable proof (for or against) while the real discussion should be about what's the cheapest way to insure against this risk.
Maybe it was designed by a bunch of guys who didn't want to see their friends killed and wives raped.
Weapons aren't evil when used to defend oneself.
Pretty much all wars in History are sold to the unwashed masses as us defending ourselves against them so when it comes to war claiming "I did it to protect my family" carries a lot less weight than it would seem for those who don't really know History.
That said, I do agree that on their own weapons are neither good nor evil - its their use (or not) that maters.
So you don't tell any jokes to your friends right? Unless you make them up yourself, you would be telling somebody else's jokes and they might not want you to do so - can't risk your buddies having a laugh from somebody else's hard work.
Also, I bet you don't share any cooking recipes: after all, somebody went to the trouble of making that recipe and they might not wish you to give it to others.
Sharing cool ideas you heard/read somewhere? Nope Sharing fashion tips? Nope Sharing professional advice you heard/read from others? Not unless you have their permission. Talking about the cool show you saw on TV yesterday? Nope, its copyrighted: can't risk giving away the story (which is also copyrighted) - its hard work staying within the confines of fair use: better stay on the safe side and not say anything about it.
You do understand that copyright law would theoretically affect most of those things I listed above (but in meatspace there's usually nobody watching people for sharing copyrighted jokes - but there are online). Please explain to me how exactly is immoral to do any of the above.
Some of us that play WoW do not fit into the same demographics as the kind of people that will wait outside a store at midnight to get the expansion as soon as it comes out and then rush-through to level 85 without actually enjoying the content.
Me, I'd rather wait until the crowds are past the initial quests: if this is anything like other expansions there will be, almost literally, lines of people waiting at all important targets from the main quest-line to kill them, and probably the secondary ones (actually, this being WoW, people won't actually form an ordered line and there will be plenty of bitching & moaning about kill-stealing) - everybody is starting from the same point at about the same time so lots of people will be going after the same things at once.
My recommendation is: - Wait a bit before starting on the expansion and take the time to look around and explore the new content and enjoy the story.
After all, what's the point of paying for an expansion just to get the everyday rush-hour experience but in WoW (only worse, 'cause many people are arseholes when under the cover of anonymity) and only see 10% of of the new content?
I did went throught the list in TFA and while their "programming mistakes" list is sound, it's all over the place and often doesn't dig down to why should you do or not a certain thing.
So I decided to put down a list of, low level principles and concerns to consider when doing software. Given my own level of experience and the fact that I'm getting tired of maintining code by people who have never managed to cross the threshold from junior/medior software designer to senior designer, that is the target audience.
So here goes: - When designing/coding software, assume that sooner or later it's going to be called-by/changed/extended by a junior developer. They cannot be relied on to recognize design structures or practices and will do things like passing bad parameters in, or incorrectly use it (for example, misusing a singleton). My solution to this is defensive design/coding: check for nulls at library entry points and fail-fast (avoid "junk-in junk-out" scenarios - those just make for data corruption and hard to track bugs), make sure things like singleton classes cannot be instanciated normaly, avoid obscure constructs that must be used in a "right way" (i.e. functions that should be called in a certain order) and overall try and make your design so that the natural way of using it is also the correct way.
- When designing software, before employing a certain construct (for example a design pattern) ask yourself "What do I want to achieve with it?". Complex software structures are used instead of simple (and easier to understand) ones because they achieve certain objectives which outweight the increase in complexity - don't use it because it's fancy/fashionable/elegant/everybody-does-it: those are not proper reasons. The cost to maintain, support and extend code grows with code size and complexity and using fancy structures just because is a way to dig a deep hole for your colleagues and your future self. Consider that it's allways cheaper to "add it later if and when we need it" than "maintain code that is twice the size for 6 months". For example, what is achieved by defining an interface for which now (and in the foreseeable future) only one implementation exists?
- Design and code your software so that Responsabilities and Domain-knowledge are contained together in their own modules/classes. Avoid leakage of concerns (i.e. "we do it this way here because we know that the code we call in another module works in such and such way"). This makes it easier to find ALL the code responsible for doing a certain kind of thing and avoids the dreaded "I changed it in one place but forgot to change it in another place" problem. For example, don't mix your database access code (that knows all about SQL and tables and such) with your web-page generation code (which is experting in user interaction via HTML) since they are independent domains (you can have one without the other).
Most "Ideas" are just some vague clowd castle in the air kind of thing, not really thought through, lacking details and a proper look at feasability or applicability - somebody woke up in the morning with "a really cool idea" but then didn't went through the trouble of properly fleshing it out with details, researching if it can be done and if is worth the trouble of doing it.
Anybody that has ever done software development in direct contact with the end users know what I'm talking about here: somebody has an idea for something the system should be doing, but you have to sit with them and walk them through the nitty gritty details of coming up with the requirements, which is when the idea actually starts to take shape, often enough turning out to be quite different from the original idea. This is in a specialized area, with domain specialists (in a business), and just extending an existing something - brand-new ideas from non-specialists in a specific domain are way much vaguer.
And more importantly, it would mean end of religions, unless we want to fool ourselves now on new, grandiose scale.
Your faith (see what I did there) in the capability of your fellow human beings to leave the cozy confines of having a pre-made explanation for everything and venture into the wide open spaces of cold logic is touching if misplaced.
Me, I suspect that the vast majority of them doesn't have the necessary scientific knowledge to even understand the difference between this bacteria and all others and the few that do and are religious will still explain its existence as "God made it".
Considering the number of people out there that don't believe in Evolution even though we observe it every day in bacteria, I highly doubt that "a bacteria that uses arsenic instead of phosphorus" is going cause a religious revolution.
I'm not neutral. I enjoy the U.S. strategic superiority over North Korea and other nations who would like to have ultimate strategic superiority over us. Wikileaks did not do an overall public good by releasing today's documents.
You sir, make me sick.
If you trully believe your words you would fight the hardest for the US to have a vibrant and fair society and be a true democracy where those which are the most capable rise to where they can best serve their nation, not just the sons and daughters of those already in power.
The US has been turning into a place of serfs and lords, a society where those on top remain on top and those on the bottom remain on the bottom regardless of skill and ability. US citizens are poorly educated, brainwashed and inward-looking, easilly swayed by arguments of emotions and followers of those who shout the loudest, not sound the wisest.
US democracy is a joke with all sorts of technical tricks like gerrymandering, registered voters and electoral circles - designed to enforce a duopoly of power not mater what, keeping the same people in power and their scions.
Face it, the US is showing all the symptoms of an empire in decadence: if things keep going this way, it's days of "strategic superiority" are counted.
By showing to American voters the true face of those with the reins of power, Wikileaks is doing more to delay and maybe even revert the colapse of America than any number of weak-minded, brainwashed, narrow-minded self-proclaimed patriots parroting the lies of their pupetters: - I only wish the American people would show itself worthy of this instead of continuing to behave like sheeple.
... being in my late thirties and having been gaming since I was 15.
As far as I can tell, it's a mix of:
The "I've seen it all" syndrome: lots of modern games are just rehashes of old formulas and some are even clones of old games (for example the highly hyped "Supreme Commander" was pretty much a clone of "Total Annihilation" from 10 years before). There's no fun or challenge in beating that which you beat already.
Exceptionally well trained gaming skills: my reaction times are slower than an 18 year old gamer but still superior to those of a non-gamer, I can quickly figure out any game - in fact sometimes I figure out a game by thinking "how would I set it up if I was designing this game" and games are designed to appeal to gamers of average experience and intelligence so most games are just too easy for me. Most games have a pattern to them and there is usually a "method" to beat those: once I figure out the "method", the game stops being fun.
A lot of modern games are not-casual friendly: if I can't sit down with a game for just 1 or 2 hours and get some enjoyment out of it, then it won't fit my schedule. This means a smaller selection of games that can be fun for me given my time constraints
Games are still designed to be played by teenager males: these are people who have lots of time and a high-tolerance to "Having to work for your fun". This means that all sorts of cheap tricks are employed when designing games to make them "last longer", mostly boiling down to grind-type activities. Games are made too long for the time available to working adults, have a bad fun-stuff to filler ratio and (in RPGs) have too long intervals between "rewards"
Because I actually like RPGs and like to explore "a large world" in games, at the moment I am providing for my gaming needs with MMORPGs, since they have huge amounts of content and a reasonable price. I stick with the no-grind-required ones, explore the content until I get bored and then move to another one. They tend to be fun even in just 1 or 2 hour sessions and are in fact great value for money. At the moment it's WoW (huge world, nowhere as grindy now as 4 years ago, new expansion coming next month) and before that it was Lord of the Rings Online (now free to play, beautifull world, lots of story, adult mature players, highly recomended).
...has something else than protecting children on his or her mind.
Well, it's optional so it sounds a lot less like a covert attempt at controlling information than, for example, the Australian "filter".
In my view, this needs only 2 things to be perfectly acceptable: - Full access should be the default while filtered access should be opt-in. Nanny state deciding for all that what you should not see until "you're in the list" is wrong and dangerously like some authoritarian regimes of the past and present. Parents that decide that their kids shouldn't be viewing certain sites can opt-in. - If you have full access you get to see the list of restricted sites. This allows for people to make sure that sites are not added to the list for political reasons.
Insurance companies will use whatever information they can get their hands on to try and make sure that what they get paid for providing insurance is appropriate for the risk profile of who/what they are insuring.
It is a core part of their business model to correctly determine the risk profiles of the individual/situation for which they are providing insurance so that they charge the right premium and in aggregate make a profit.
Many of us want to make sure that our genetic information doesn't get collected at thrown into a public database because it would sooner or later end up in the hands of insurance companies and affect our personal premiums for everything from medical insurance to car insurance.
Anybody that has seen CNN (international) back in the beginning when they started, when they were broadcasting the landing of the marines when the US sent a task force to Somalia or even while the 9/11 attacks were occurring knows that nowadays CNN is pretty much shortsighted, US-centric and essentially an organ of US corporate and political propaganda.
For anybody outside the US (and thus exposed to the full range of political views), saying that CNN is left wing is like accusing an extreme capitalist of being a communist because he's not an extreme, rabid capitalist.
I suggest you start getting some of your news from sources not controlled by American corporations or politicians, like BBC or such, to get some perspective. (Assuming you only speak English, otherwise I could point you at a couple more sources in other languages and that would really open your eyes).
I have a lot of unopened game boxes at my place because the game was already installed in my machine before I bought it.
This is a real concern of mine: plenty of games out there are buggy, sucky or plainly won't work on my machine. Game review sites are no help: they overhype games for the eyeballs, are never really critical of games from big Producers (they tick the need-some-reviews-with-low-scores box with games from the small game-houses) and barelly mention bugs, so they are part of the problem, not the solution. Digital downloads are a problem for me since I can't return those if the game doesn't work on my PC while, in the UK and thanks to consumer laws, I can return the store bought games. I've been bitten way too many times by one or more of those problems so nowadays I either pirate a game first and buy later or get them from the budget games box as an impulse buy.
The only companies that suffer from my pirating of games are those who make bad and/or very buggy games.
Give me a way to trial a game before I buy it and no DRM and I'll stop pirating games altogether.
The government doesn't guarantee artists money. They guarantee them a chance by allowing the artist control over distribution of their work.
Perhaps the harm is to society as a whole, for if artists weren't given this control, a fairly large portion of our culture likely wouldn't exist.
Art existed long before copyright and continues to exist in places where copyright isn't really enforced: plenty of people have a compulsion to create, at the very least to scract their itch (look at open source).
Commercial distribution of art on the other hand is a product of copyright. When art and culture have to be recorded on a material media and physically distributed, it makes sense to provide a monetary incentive for those who would do the recording and distribution.
That said, physical distribution is not necessary anymore: nowadays it's all bits and bytes flowing through the intertubes and having a physical media item (like a CD) with a work of art is not the only option anymore - nowadays having the physical item is a luxury, not the rule.
While one could argue that Copyright might have given a boost to art production, one could also argue that:
Said boost might have just brought more borderline quality works into the mainstream which would not otherwise have come out
Much of our art and culture is based on that which came before. Copyright might very well have scuppered countless works of art from coming to be by disallowing "derivative works"
No study has proven that more works of art have been created thanks to Copyright: all that can be shown is that Copyright has boosted the distribution of art by creating an industry around it.
Slashdot Mirror
As a side note and slightly offtopic, this made me realize how much Software Engineering is not really practiced as an engineering discipline (and I say this as somebody that does software development for a living).
While reading the parent article I kept mentally waving my head yes everytime I read the Engineer bits ... yet it also makes me thing how infrequently I have came accross coleagues that, for example, actually look at a software design problem as a trade-off balancing multiple demands.
It probably also helps that the community of FPS online gamers in the PC is made up of older players than on the consoles.
When the speed of your reflexes cannot keep up with that of a teenager (i.e. all other conditions being equal, if you spot each other at the same time, the teenager shoots first) you have to relly on cunning (i.e. tactical and even strategical awareness) to come out on top of the boards and to help your team win.
In games like the BF series (which I used to play a lot) that also means knowing the right tools and the right counters to use at the right time (in BF this includes vehicles) and to play with your team (lone wolves have limited success).
It's thus not surprising to see that on a contest of who does more cooperative actions (team boosting actions like healing others or repairing their vehicles) PC gamers came out on top by a long-shot (it's a team-optimal option if some players take support roles like Medic and Engineer to help the team win).
So how do you know that your representatives are in fact doing what you elected them for?
Do you just trust their word for it, leave them to it and come relection time you just vote them back in based on their statements about their own honesty?
I bet that when you go to a fish-monger you don't just take his word on the weight of the fish he's trying to sell you and want him to actually weigh it and yet you seem to be willing to take the word of somebody when a lot more money and power is involved ...
Even before Wikileaks, the few stories about abuses of power that came up usually had some component or other hidden behind documents mislabeled as Secret or even Top Secret.
For years the fashion has been to bury corruption and mismanagement in government under the cover of National Security and at the moment the rot runs so deep that only the bright shinny light of daylight over everything is powerfull enough to let us purge all the rot.
Had real patriots come forward before maybe the rot wouldn't have gone so deep, but they seem to have been busy making loud statements of patriotic fervor and cheering up those in power everytime they took more powers into their hands and stole more rights away from the American People, so now the US public is reduced to relying on a foreign organisation to do the kind of job that would make the Founding Fathers proud.
I think you're seriously underestimating what it is to be poor in the US.
When you're the oldest child of a junky single mother, living in a neighbourhood where you're either in a gang or you get beaten up every day, go to the kind of inner-city school nobody goes to unless they have no other chance and in the evenings when you get home have to do some kind of work and help take care of your kid-brother(s)/sister(s), you'll be lucky if you finish high-school, much less be able to "get a full ride" to a good University.
Life fucks up the really poor from the cradle onwards: no amount of brains alone will make up for being born deep down in the shit pit.
Personally I'm fucking priviliedged for having being born in a country where education was free, for being raised by both parents and both valuing education (even if they came from a poor background), for them to have chosen to have only one kid 'cause they knew they couldn't afford to get more than one through University, and for me to be good at it and a risk-taker type.
None of my parents (both from poor families) had anywhere near the chances I had and I'm damn proud of both for having pulled themselves out of the shitty situations they were born into. I can also guarantee you that at least one of them is more intelligent (IQ-wise) than the vast majority of people out there in this world and would've gone far if the deck wasn't stacked against her.
FYI - it's a quote from Wimpy, a burger-addicted character from the Popeye the Sailorman cartoon
(damn, I'm showing my years here)
The vast majority of games out there don't have enough plot to fill a matchbox. How exactly are they worthy of extra respect versus any random short-story?
Really, Super Mario Bros. the movie was very close to the spirit of the games (light entertainment) and had more plot that all the games put together.
Just because some games have a bunch of fanboys out there doesn't mean that they or their game are worthy of special respect.
Might as well complain that movies about popular sports like football (the American one and the Rest Of The World one) don't show enough respect for the game - at least there are more fans for any of of those sports than there are for any specific computer game.
It's all a bit of Facebook and WoW envy:
- EA wants to turn their games into highly social activities because they want to benefit from the Network Effects that a social environment brings (you're there because all your friend are there, they're there because all their friends - including you - are there).
They're hardly the only ones:
- Look at all most recent games and for most you'll see some kind of competitive (global scoreboards) or social (online chat channels) functionality bolted in.
- Look at what Blizzard did with Real ID and the way they connected WoW IDs with those in their other multiplayer games so that "friends can keep track of their friends" in other Blizzard games.
- Look at how pretty much every "online gaming platform" out there (like XBox Live) comes with some kind of chat functionality
The thing is, when it comes to Networking Effects, the outcome is a winner takes all result: if they sacrifice the offline component on their games, considering that EA is competing with the likes of Blizzard for being THE social gaming platform, they risk having no fallback plan for the possible outcome of them not being the winner.
You are crossing the street with a friend and he spots an out of control long-haul truck careening towards you both. He shouts:
- "Watch out, I think that truck is gonna hit us"
Do you:
a) Run away from the middle of the road?
b) Ask him to prove to you beyond refute that the truck is going to hit you?
---
In this world there are no certainties but death and taxes, so in a situation where in the future something bad might happen, choosing inaction until irrefutable proof that said event is really going to happen (which usually you will only get when it's too late to do anything about it) is not a rational choice.
Usually you look at:
- How likelly it is that it's going to happen
- How bad is it gonna be
- How much will it cost to do something now to make it not happen or be much less likelly to happen.
A lot of people seem to make their points based on expectation of irrefutable proof (for or against) while the real discussion should be about what's the cheapest way to insure against this risk.
Pretty much all wars in History are sold to the unwashed masses as us defending ourselves against them so when it comes to war claiming "I did it to protect my family" carries a lot less weight than it would seem for those who don't really know History.
That said, I do agree that on their own weapons are neither good nor evil - its their use (or not) that maters.
Some of us are motivated by booty, you insensitive clod!
So you don't tell any jokes to your friends right?
Unless you make them up yourself, you would be telling somebody else's jokes and they might not want you to do so - can't risk your buddies having a laugh from somebody else's hard work.
Also, I bet you don't share any cooking recipes: after all, somebody went to the trouble of making that recipe and they might not wish you to give it to others.
Sharing cool ideas you heard/read somewhere? Nope
Sharing fashion tips? Nope
Sharing professional advice you heard/read from others? Not unless you have their permission.
Talking about the cool show you saw on TV yesterday? Nope, its copyrighted: can't risk giving away the story (which is also copyrighted) - its hard work staying within the confines of fair use: better stay on the safe side and not say anything about it.
You do understand that copyright law would theoretically affect most of those things I listed above (but in meatspace there's usually nobody watching people for sharing copyrighted jokes - but there are online). Please explain to me how exactly is immoral to do any of the above.
Some of us that play WoW do not fit into the same demographics as the kind of people that will wait outside a store at midnight to get the expansion as soon as it comes out and then rush-through to level 85 without actually enjoying the content.
Me, I'd rather wait until the crowds are past the initial quests: if this is anything like other expansions there will be, almost literally, lines of people waiting at all important targets from the main quest-line to kill them, and probably the secondary ones (actually, this being WoW, people won't actually form an ordered line and there will be plenty of bitching & moaning about kill-stealing) - everybody is starting from the same point at about the same time so lots of people will be going after the same things at once.
My recommendation is:
- Wait a bit before starting on the expansion and take the time to look around and explore the new content and enjoy the story.
After all, what's the point of paying for an expansion just to get the everyday rush-hour experience but in WoW (only worse, 'cause many people are arseholes when under the cover of anonymity) and only see 10% of of the new content?
I did went throught the list in TFA and while their "programming mistakes" list is sound, it's all over the place and often doesn't dig down to why should you do or not a certain thing.
So I decided to put down a list of, low level principles and concerns to consider when doing software. Given my own level of experience and the fact that I'm getting tired of maintining code by people who have never managed to cross the threshold from junior/medior software designer to senior designer, that is the target audience.
So here goes:
- When designing/coding software, assume that sooner or later it's going to be called-by/changed/extended by a junior developer. They cannot be relied on to recognize design structures or practices and will do things like passing bad parameters in, or incorrectly use it (for example, misusing a singleton). My solution to this is defensive design/coding: check for nulls at library entry points and fail-fast (avoid "junk-in junk-out" scenarios - those just make for data corruption and hard to track bugs), make sure things like singleton classes cannot be instanciated normaly, avoid obscure constructs that must be used in a "right way" (i.e. functions that should be called in a certain order) and overall try and make your design so that the natural way of using it is also the correct way.
- When designing software, before employing a certain construct (for example a design pattern) ask yourself "What do I want to achieve with it?". Complex software structures are used instead of simple (and easier to understand) ones because they achieve certain objectives which outweight the increase in complexity - don't use it because it's fancy/fashionable/elegant/everybody-does-it: those are not proper reasons. The cost to maintain, support and extend code grows with code size and complexity and using fancy structures just because is a way to dig a deep hole for your colleagues and your future self. Consider that it's allways cheaper to "add it later if and when we need it" than "maintain code that is twice the size for 6 months". For example, what is achieved by defining an interface for which now (and in the foreseeable future) only one implementation exists?
- Design and code your software so that Responsabilities and Domain-knowledge are contained together in their own modules/classes. Avoid leakage of concerns (i.e. "we do it this way here because we know that the code we call in another module works in such and such way"). This makes it easier to find ALL the code responsible for doing a certain kind of thing and avoids the dreaded "I changed it in one place but forgot to change it in another place" problem. For example, don't mix your database access code (that knows all about SQL and tables and such) with your web-page generation code (which is experting in user interaction via HTML) since they are independent domains (you can have one without the other).
I set wiredmikey as Foe - can't stand this kind of s*it.
My first /. Foe ever: gotta go celebrate now.
Does this mean I won't see any more articles submitted by him in the main page?
Ideas are like assholes: everybody has one.
Most "Ideas" are just some vague clowd castle in the air kind of thing, not really thought through, lacking details and a proper look at feasability or applicability - somebody woke up in the morning with "a really cool idea" but then didn't went through the trouble of properly fleshing it out with details, researching if it can be done and if is worth the trouble of doing it.
Anybody that has ever done software development in direct contact with the end users know what I'm talking about here: somebody has an idea for something the system should be doing, but you have to sit with them and walk them through the nitty gritty details of coming up with the requirements, which is when the idea actually starts to take shape, often enough turning out to be quite different from the original idea. This is in a specialized area, with domain specialists (in a business), and just extending an existing something - brand-new ideas from non-specialists in a specific domain are way much vaguer.
And more importantly, it would mean end of religions, unless we want to fool ourselves now on new, grandiose scale.
Your faith (see what I did there) in the capability of your fellow human beings to leave the cozy confines of having a pre-made explanation for everything and venture into the wide open spaces of cold logic is touching if misplaced.
Me, I suspect that the vast majority of them doesn't have the necessary scientific knowledge to even understand the difference between this bacteria and all others and the few that do and are religious will still explain its existence as "God made it".
Considering the number of people out there that don't believe in Evolution even though we observe it every day in bacteria, I highly doubt that "a bacteria that uses arsenic instead of phosphorus" is going cause a religious revolution.
I'm not neutral. I enjoy the U.S. strategic superiority over North Korea and other nations who would like to have ultimate strategic superiority over us. Wikileaks did not do an overall public good by releasing today's documents.
You sir, make me sick.
If you trully believe your words you would fight the hardest for the US to have a vibrant and fair society and be a true democracy where those which are the most capable rise to where they can best serve their nation, not just the sons and daughters of those already in power.
The US has been turning into a place of serfs and lords, a society where those on top remain on top and those on the bottom remain on the bottom regardless of skill and ability. US citizens are poorly educated, brainwashed and inward-looking, easilly swayed by arguments of emotions and followers of those who shout the loudest, not sound the wisest.
US democracy is a joke with all sorts of technical tricks like gerrymandering, registered voters and electoral circles - designed to enforce a duopoly of power not mater what, keeping the same people in power and their scions.
Face it, the US is showing all the symptoms of an empire in decadence: if things keep going this way, it's days of "strategic superiority" are counted.
By showing to American voters the true face of those with the reins of power, Wikileaks is doing more to delay and maybe even revert the colapse of America than any number of weak-minded, brainwashed, narrow-minded self-proclaimed patriots parroting the lies of their pupetters:
- I only wish the American people would show itself worthy of this instead of continuing to behave like sheeple.
... being in my late thirties and having been gaming since I was 15.
As far as I can tell, it's a mix of:
Because I actually like RPGs and like to explore "a large world" in games, at the moment I am providing for my gaming needs with MMORPGs, since they have huge amounts of content and a reasonable price. I stick with the no-grind-required ones, explore the content until I get bored and then move to another one. They tend to be fun even in just 1 or 2 hour sessions and are in fact great value for money.
At the moment it's WoW (huge world, nowhere as grindy now as 4 years ago, new expansion coming next month) and before that it was Lord of the Rings Online (now free to play, beautifull world, lots of story, adult mature players, highly recomended).
...has something else than protecting children on his or her mind.
Well, it's optional so it sounds a lot less like a covert attempt at controlling information than, for example, the Australian "filter".
In my view, this needs only 2 things to be perfectly acceptable:
- Full access should be the default while filtered access should be opt-in. Nanny state deciding for all that what you should not see until "you're in the list" is wrong and dangerously like some authoritarian regimes of the past and present. Parents that decide that their kids shouldn't be viewing certain sites can opt-in.
- If you have full access you get to see the list of restricted sites. This allows for people to make sure that sites are not added to the list for political reasons.
On the upside killing enough people in one of those lines would probably push the average human IQ up for at least a tenth of a point.
Insurance companies will use whatever information they can get their hands on to try and make sure that what they get paid for providing insurance is appropriate for the risk profile of who/what they are insuring.
It is a core part of their business model to correctly determine the risk profiles of the individual/situation for which they are providing insurance so that they charge the right premium and in aggregate make a profit.
Many of us want to make sure that our genetic information doesn't get collected at thrown into a public database because it would sooner or later end up in the hands of insurance companies and affect our personal premiums for everything from medical insurance to car insurance.
Anybody that has seen CNN (international) back in the beginning when they started, when they were broadcasting the landing of the marines when the US sent a task force to Somalia or even while the 9/11 attacks were occurring knows that nowadays CNN is pretty much shortsighted, US-centric and essentially an organ of US corporate and political propaganda.
For anybody outside the US (and thus exposed to the full range of political views), saying that CNN is left wing is like accusing an extreme capitalist of being a communist because he's not an extreme, rabid capitalist.
I suggest you start getting some of your news from sources not controlled by American corporations or politicians, like BBC or such, to get some perspective. (Assuming you only speak English, otherwise I could point you at a couple more sources in other languages and that would really open your eyes).
I download PC games for trying them first.
If I like it I'll buy it, full price.
I have a lot of unopened game boxes at my place because the game was already installed in my machine before I bought it.
This is a real concern of mine: plenty of games out there are buggy, sucky or plainly won't work on my machine. Game review sites are no help: they overhype games for the eyeballs, are never really critical of games from big Producers (they tick the need-some-reviews-with-low-scores box with games from the small game-houses) and barelly mention bugs, so they are part of the problem, not the solution.
Digital downloads are a problem for me since I can't return those if the game doesn't work on my PC while, in the UK and thanks to consumer laws, I can return the store bought games.
I've been bitten way too many times by one or more of those problems so nowadays I either pirate a game first and buy later or get them from the budget games box as an impulse buy.
The only companies that suffer from my pirating of games are those who make bad and/or very buggy games.
Give me a way to trial a game before I buy it and no DRM and I'll stop pirating games altogether.
The government doesn't guarantee artists money. They guarantee them a chance by allowing the artist control over distribution of their work.
Perhaps the harm is to society as a whole, for if artists weren't given this control, a fairly large portion of our culture likely wouldn't exist.
Art existed long before copyright and continues to exist in places where copyright isn't really enforced: plenty of people have a compulsion to create, at the very least to scract their itch (look at open source).
Commercial distribution of art on the other hand is a product of copyright. When art and culture have to be recorded on a material media and physically distributed, it makes sense to provide a monetary incentive for those who would do the recording and distribution.
That said, physical distribution is not necessary anymore: nowadays it's all bits and bytes flowing through the intertubes and having a physical media item (like a CD) with a work of art is not the only option anymore - nowadays having the physical item is a luxury, not the rule.
While one could argue that Copyright might have given a boost to art production, one could also argue that:
No study has proven that more works of art have been created thanks to Copyright: all that can be shown is that Copyright has boosted the distribution of art by creating an industry around it.
Somebody should've told him that with 1000-cores per die you need fewer blades, not more.