Of course not, this is/. - we don't read the content. We just try and make an "all your XXX are belong to us", "in soviet russia..." or "1.2.3.Profit!!" jokes from whatever post there is, or just invent a stupid position and arbitrarily quote wiki to justify it. Shit, I've got a doctorate in maths and didn't notice until reading your post
All your trig are belong to us!
In Soviet Union, angles measure you!
1. Implement basic math functions using unspecified units.
2. ???
3. Profit!
Special Effects are on set. Visual Effects are post production CGI, compositing, etc.
A special effect is a car being rigged to explode on set. A visual effect is a giant 4 story CG robot kicking that car.
We're two entirely seperate industries. Thanks for your interest however!
Eh, whatever. That's a distinction that's only important to the people whose names are in the credits crawl. To the audience, though, it's all just "effects". Special, visual, foley, whatever.
We're to the point where film makers can show us literally anything they can imagine on the screen. Over-the-top effects just aren't a big spectacle anymore. I keep hoping producers will someday realize that and focus first on the story, then add on effects to support the story. Not just make a series of gosh-wow effects sequences loosely tied together with inane dialog. That kind of movie is about as exciting to me as watching someone else play a video game.
'Nintendo Wii has been a successful enterprise, and a very good business model, compared with ours . . . because it's cheaper,'
And here I thought the reason for the Wii's success relative to the PS3 is because the Wii has games that don't suck. What a fool I was.
Re:This is what I HATE most about FOSS
on
GPLv2 Vs. GPLv3
·
· Score: 1
When you GPL your code you are asserting that it will be forever "free", that nobody can lock it up.
GPL is a lot like Free Speech.
Which is more 'free' a society where you can say whatever you like, and then someone in government can exercise their freedom to lock you up for ever. [=public domain] Or a society where you can say whatever you like, and the government is forced to protect your right to do so, even though you are infringing on someones freedom to lock you up forever. [=gpl]
Your analogy-fu is weak, old man. Let's say you've written a program and placed the source code into the public domain. Someone takes it, adds to it, and releases their version in binary-only form. How have either you or your code been "locked up"? You haven't. You're free to continue writing, and your original program still exists in the public domain. Others are still free to take your version and continue to modify it. You have lost nothing. You're free, your code is free.
Now let's say that you've written another program and released it under the GPL. Someone takes it and incorporates it into their own program. Your code is just one small part of a much bigger program. According to the GPL, not only must this other person publish his modifications to your source code, he must publish all of his own original, completely unrelated code that makes up his program.
The GPL isn't just about getting back changes people have made to something you've written. If it were, then it should be sufficient for him to release his mods to your code but to keep his own code private. No, the GPL is about spreading the "code wants to be free" ideology. Which is fine if that's your intent, but please be honest about it.
To fix your analogy, which is more free? Being able to build on existing works if and only if you agree with the established dogma [=gpl]? Or being able to build on existing works in any way you wish, even to the point of heresy [=public domain]?
TiVo operates on a business model that GPL3 is **expressly** designed to eliminate.
See this essay [fsf.org] by RMS and search for "tivoization".
Nothing in the least bit surprising here...
I have very little sympathy for either side here. Yes, Stallman et al are taking their ball and going home. They are specifically trying to prevent companies like TiVo from doing what they're doing. Boo-hoo. But it's not like Linux is the only game in town here. There are other OSs, commercial and free, that TiVo can use. Yes, change will affect their business. So what?
I've said all along that the GPLv2 is a load of fetid dingos kidneys. The GPLv3 is a steaming pile of something I'd normally flush. I have no idea how something which promotes "freedom" can have pages of text restricting said freedom. It's not freedom, it's pages of ideological diatribe disguised as a software license. In the words of Inigo Montoya, "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
You want a truly free license? Look to something like BSD. That sort of license is actually free, without pushing any ideological agenda. "Here's our code. We hope you like it. Do with it what you will." That, my friends, is free (libre) software.
Frankly, I don't give a damn whether or not you sell or share the data. What I do care about is that you hijack requests for valid domains and redirect them to your own servers. OpenDNS tells me that the IP addresses for "www.google.com" are 208.67.217.230 and 208.67.217.231, which is a flat-out lie. Those addresses are actually your own machines which are proxying traffic between me and the real Google servers. At the very least this gives you data on my search habits. Your servers could easily change the data that Google returns to insert your own ads in the results.
Google is merely redirecting typos to the clearly labeled pages of their affiliates. This is in no way deceitful. What you're doing, on the other hand, is. OpenDNS is silently intercepting all of their customers' traffic to Google with absolutely no indication that this is going on. That's not merely hypocritical, that borders on criminal.
I'd never heard of OpenDNS before this article. I'm glad that now I have. Now I can clearly recommend staying as far away as possible from your so-called "enhanced user experience".
It isn't hard, but it isn't elegant. If I want to open a particular program, I should be able to just type the name of the program rather than pass the program name as an argument to another program (open). In my Preview example, the better solution would be to just type open list_of_files and let open figure out for itself that Preview is the right program to use, but that only works if Preview is the application associated with with the files I want opened.
This method is, of course, designed to be more elegant than what you're used to. You don't have to know which program handles a particular type of data file, you just "open the_file" and let the system figure it out. "Open", in effect, becomes the Universal Application.
Now, I don't necessarily agree with this, but that's the rationale. And from one perspective it is more elegant. But folks like you and I who use the command line aren't completely comfortable with it, especially considering that we might want to open any given file type with a number of different apps depending on what we want to do with it. The whole file-association thing starts to hinder rather than help at that point. "No, dammit, I don't want PhotoShop! I just want to look at it, not change it!" "No, dammit, I don't want Preview! I want to edit it now, not just look at it!"
You can get bash to treat.app directories as programs, though.
alias Preview='open -a Preview'
It'd probably take about 5 minutes to write a script that iterates through/Applications and builds a similar alias for each.app. Source that from your.bashrc and you've got exactly what you asked for.
If the state he was working in has "at will" employment laws, no, he doesn't have a case. And he wasn't fired for buying a gun or intending to buy a gun, he was fired for talking in the office about guns.
I was fired once for similar reasons. I talked with two different lawyers, and both had the same answer. "Gee, that sucks, but there's no legal grounds to sue." Both said that unless you could make a case for sexual or racial discrimination, there's absolutely nothing you can do. "At will" means you can be fired at any time, for any reason or for no reason at all. (The flip side is that you can leave the job at any time, and the employer can't sue you either.)
So yeah, it sucks. Hopefully he can generate enough publicity so employers don't feel they have to "do something" about every offhand comment. But for himself, he's out of luck. Sorry, dude.
Which is, of course, the final argument of anyone emotionally tied to an indefensible position. But thanks for playing.
It's preference, people. You like it one way. He likes it another. You're both equally right, and you're wasting your time trying to convince the other. Because you're both equally wrong, too.
I am evidently in the minority but I would rather have several devices that do their job well than one that does them all half-assed.
My problem isn't so much that a multi-function device does everything half-assed, but that none of the bundled technologies are mature (== stable) yet. What if I want to change phone service? In general, I can't take my nifty smart phone to the new provider. What happens when computer power gets smaller and cheaper? Or when CCD density gets better? Or when they change removable storage formats? The big problem with a single converged device is that when one part of it becomes obsolete, you need to replace everything. I don't want to get a new phone and PDA and camera just so I can add more memory to my MP3 player.
Oh, I get it now. Surface is the verb. Geez, for a minute there I was thinking that it was a noun, and I was really curious about whether it had some revolutionary exterior coating or something... What a let-down.
I just want to add a big "Me, too!" to everything Unknown Soldier has said. I'm one of those who was programming games for <5 years before getting out of the industry. From the perspective of the work, it's great. You do need to use a huge range of skills. In a year and a half I'd done everything on his list, and more. It's incredibly challenging stuff.
But you've got to love it. And I mean you've got to want to eat, drink, and breathe game programming. Because that's what you're going to do. I got called on the carpet by my manager one day. He'd noticed that I was only working a 9-hour day, and that I wasn't going to get very far in the company if that kept up. Mind you, this wasn't "crunch time" and everything was completely on schedule. We had one guy who only went home to shower once or twice a week; he slept under his desk and lived on Chinese take-out. I have a wife and two kids, and I actually like to spend time with them. I got out of that hell-hole.
There were lots of other things wrong with the company contributing to its being a hell-hole. The whole "work harder, not smarter" mentality was only one of them. But from what I could tell, the whole experience wasn't an atypical for that industry.
Game programming (and art, sound, design, and all the rest of it) is only for those who really love it.
Unfortunately, if you buy at Costco you have to buy a volume license for no less than 12 computers. And it comes in a REALLY BIG BOX that doesn't fit on your shelves.
Surprisingly driver and hardware compatibility issues for Vista are actually not that bad, I've installed it on 3 PCs so far, two older systems (1 1/2 and 2 years old) and one newer system (1 month old)
I installed Vista this weekend on my 2-3 year old computer. It recognized the SATA drive without needing external drivers, and handled both audio (onboard AC97) and video (Radeon 9600 AGP card) without a hitch. The only driver I had to load myself was for the onboard ethernet, and surprisingly the 2k/XP driver on the CD that shipped with the motherboard worked like a charm.
The only hardware incompatibilities I've had involve sleep mode. The standby mode just hangs the computer. (Under Win2k it worked, but wasn't a significant power savings.) Hibernate starts to work, but as soon as the RAM image is written to the hard drive the thing reboots and starts up again. (Worked fine under Win2k.)
But the whole "Cancel or allow?" thing is really, really tiresome when you're in the process of setting up the machine, re-installing all your old programs, etc. I suspect it will be less so when I get past the installation stage and finally start using it again. Assuming I last that long...
Several swimming pools near my home will give out locker keys but require your car keys as security. Whenever I go along I have this huge argument about it.
No, they require a car key. They have no idea if it belongs to you, fits your car door, or if it indeed unlocks anything. If it's a hassle, go get a duplicate key made, file it down so it no longer works, and give them the dummy key.
In any case, it's not worth your time to argue with the person behind the desk. If you're really annoyed by it, find the person or persons who make the rules, and explain to them why you think it's a bad idea. But unless there's some way to match your car with the key, there's probably very little risk here. In order to do anything nefarious they'd have to find the car which the key fits, which means walking around the lot trying every door (or at least every door of a certain make). Possible, but not too likely.
Though you do have to wonder what they do for people who've walked or taken public transit to the pool, or those who have ridden with a friend. Maybe next time tell them you got dropped off by someone and see what they'll do for you.
I like HTAs. An HTA is a great way to slap a quick-n-dirty GUI on a script. It's an easy way to prototype something, or to make a GUI wrapper around something to make it a little more user-friendly. And given that you can use Perl or Python with the Windows Script Host, it was really pretty powerful. I'm not a Windows guy, but I was able to hack together some quick front ends for customer demos. (On the down side, I had a helluva time trying convince the CEO that no, this *wasn't* a final product, and it *wasn't* appropriate to leave with the customer!)
Too bad it's not cross-platform. I'd really like to find something as simple for the Mac or for X-Windows.
Slashdot Mirror
All your trig are belong to us!
In Soviet Union, angles measure you!
1. Implement basic math functions using unspecified units.
2. ???
3. Profit!
How can you trust any article on usability that has a style sheet which starts out with...
Tiny, grey text! Now, that's what I call a new interface paradigm!
Eh, whatever. That's a distinction that's only important to the people whose names are in the credits crawl. To the audience, though, it's all just "effects". Special, visual, foley, whatever.
We're to the point where film makers can show us literally anything they can imagine on the screen. Over-the-top effects just aren't a big spectacle anymore. I keep hoping producers will someday realize that and focus first on the story, then add on effects to support the story. Not just make a series of gosh-wow effects sequences loosely tied together with inane dialog. That kind of movie is about as exciting to me as watching someone else play a video game.
Wait! Where else am I going to buy my used babies and dead whores? Curse you, Google!
And here I thought the reason for the Wii's success relative to the PS3 is because the Wii has games that don't suck. What a fool I was.
Your analogy-fu is weak, old man. Let's say you've written a program and placed the source code into the public domain. Someone takes it, adds to it, and releases their version in binary-only form. How have either you or your code been "locked up"? You haven't. You're free to continue writing, and your original program still exists in the public domain. Others are still free to take your version and continue to modify it. You have lost nothing. You're free, your code is free.
Now let's say that you've written another program and released it under the GPL. Someone takes it and incorporates it into their own program. Your code is just one small part of a much bigger program. According to the GPL, not only must this other person publish his modifications to your source code, he must publish all of his own original, completely unrelated code that makes up his program.
The GPL isn't just about getting back changes people have made to something you've written. If it were, then it should be sufficient for him to release his mods to your code but to keep his own code private. No, the GPL is about spreading the "code wants to be free" ideology. Which is fine if that's your intent, but please be honest about it.
To fix your analogy, which is more free? Being able to build on existing works if and only if you agree with the established dogma [=gpl]? Or being able to build on existing works in any way you wish, even to the point of heresy [=public domain]?
I have very little sympathy for either side here. Yes, Stallman et al are taking their ball and going home. They are specifically trying to prevent companies like TiVo from doing what they're doing. Boo-hoo. But it's not like Linux is the only game in town here. There are other OSs, commercial and free, that TiVo can use. Yes, change will affect their business. So what?
I've said all along that the GPLv2 is a load of fetid dingos kidneys. The GPLv3 is a steaming pile of something I'd normally flush. I have no idea how something which promotes "freedom" can have pages of text restricting said freedom. It's not freedom, it's pages of ideological diatribe disguised as a software license. In the words of Inigo Montoya, "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." You want a truly free license? Look to something like BSD. That sort of license is actually free, without pushing any ideological agenda. "Here's our code. We hope you like it. Do with it what you will." That, my friends, is free (libre) software.
Frankly, I don't give a damn whether or not you sell or share the data. What I do care about is that you hijack requests for valid domains and redirect them to your own servers. OpenDNS tells me that the IP addresses for "www.google.com" are 208.67.217.230 and 208.67.217.231, which is a flat-out lie. Those addresses are actually your own machines which are proxying traffic between me and the real Google servers. At the very least this gives you data on my search habits. Your servers could easily change the data that Google returns to insert your own ads in the results.
Google is merely redirecting typos to the clearly labeled pages of their affiliates. This is in no way deceitful. What you're doing, on the other hand, is. OpenDNS is silently intercepting all of their customers' traffic to Google with absolutely no indication that this is going on. That's not merely hypocritical, that borders on criminal.
I'd never heard of OpenDNS before this article. I'm glad that now I have. Now I can clearly recommend staying as far away as possible from your so-called "enhanced user experience".
This method is, of course, designed to be more elegant than what you're used to. You don't have to know which program handles a particular type of data file, you just "open the_file" and let the system figure it out. "Open", in effect, becomes the Universal Application.
Now, I don't necessarily agree with this, but that's the rationale. And from one perspective it is more elegant. But folks like you and I who use the command line aren't completely comfortable with it, especially considering that we might want to open any given file type with a number of different apps depending on what we want to do with it. The whole file-association thing starts to hinder rather than help at that point. "No, dammit, I don't want PhotoShop! I just want to look at it, not change it!" "No, dammit, I don't want Preview! I want to edit it now, not just look at it!"
You can get bash to treat .app directories as programs, though.
It'd probably take about 5 minutes to write a script that iterates through /Applications and builds a similar alias for each .app. Source that from your .bashrc and you've got exactly what you asked for.
I was fired once for similar reasons. I talked with two different lawyers, and both had the same answer. "Gee, that sucks, but there's no legal grounds to sue." Both said that unless you could make a case for sexual or racial discrimination, there's absolutely nothing you can do. "At will" means you can be fired at any time, for any reason or for no reason at all. (The flip side is that you can leave the job at any time, and the employer can't sue you either.)
So yeah, it sucks. Hopefully he can generate enough publicity so employers don't feel they have to "do something" about every offhand comment. But for himself, he's out of luck. Sorry, dude.
SDoS! Self-inflicted Denial of Service! Brilliant!
Next question?
Which is, of course, the final argument of anyone emotionally tied to an indefensible position. But thanks for playing.
It's preference, people. You like it one way. He likes it another. You're both equally right, and you're wasting your time trying to convince the other. Because you're both equally wrong, too.
Sure, we want the browser wars to end. And they will, too, as soon as those unreasonable Other Guys see the light and do things our way.
--Signed, Pretty much any of the organizations involved
Neither are long, pointless cinematics. I wonder how big those titles would be without cinematics, or with cinematics rendered by the game engine?
I'm sure that if necessary, Congress can pass a law to mandate a faster speed of light.
My problem isn't so much that a multi-function device does everything half-assed, but that none of the bundled technologies are mature (== stable) yet. What if I want to change phone service? In general, I can't take my nifty smart phone to the new provider. What happens when computer power gets smaller and cheaper? Or when CCD density gets better? Or when they change removable storage formats? The big problem with a single converged device is that when one part of it becomes obsolete, you need to replace everything. I don't want to get a new phone and PDA and camera just so I can add more memory to my MP3 player.
Details of Next Gen Zune Surface
Oh, I get it now. Surface is the verb. Geez, for a minute there I was thinking that it was a noun, and I was really curious about whether it had some revolutionary exterior coating or something... What a let-down.
I just want to add a big "Me, too!" to everything Unknown Soldier has said. I'm one of those who was programming games for <5 years before getting out of the industry. From the perspective of the work, it's great. You do need to use a huge range of skills. In a year and a half I'd done everything on his list, and more. It's incredibly challenging stuff.
But you've got to love it. And I mean you've got to want to eat, drink, and breathe game programming. Because that's what you're going to do. I got called on the carpet by my manager one day. He'd noticed that I was only working a 9-hour day, and that I wasn't going to get very far in the company if that kept up. Mind you, this wasn't "crunch time" and everything was completely on schedule. We had one guy who only went home to shower once or twice a week; he slept under his desk and lived on Chinese take-out. I have a wife and two kids, and I actually like to spend time with them. I got out of that hell-hole.
There were lots of other things wrong with the company contributing to its being a hell-hole. The whole "work harder, not smarter" mentality was only one of them. But from what I could tell, the whole experience wasn't an atypical for that industry.
Game programming (and art, sound, design, and all the rest of it) is only for those who really love it.
Unfortunately, if you buy at Costco you have to buy a volume license for no less than 12 computers. And it comes in a REALLY BIG BOX that doesn't fit on your shelves.
I installed Vista this weekend on my 2-3 year old computer. It recognized the SATA drive without needing external drivers, and handled both audio (onboard AC97) and video (Radeon 9600 AGP card) without a hitch. The only driver I had to load myself was for the onboard ethernet, and surprisingly the 2k/XP driver on the CD that shipped with the motherboard worked like a charm.
The only hardware incompatibilities I've had involve sleep mode. The standby mode just hangs the computer. (Under Win2k it worked, but wasn't a significant power savings.) Hibernate starts to work, but as soon as the RAM image is written to the hard drive the thing reboots and starts up again. (Worked fine under Win2k.)
But the whole "Cancel or allow?" thing is really, really tiresome when you're in the process of setting up the machine, re-installing all your old programs, etc. I suspect it will be less so when I get past the installation stage and finally start using it again. Assuming I last that long...
Isn't this what they said about, oh, 10 years ago?
Flying cars are about 20 years away. Have been since the mid-1950's, and still are...
No, they require a car key. They have no idea if it belongs to you, fits your car door, or if it indeed unlocks anything. If it's a hassle, go get a duplicate key made, file it down so it no longer works, and give them the dummy key.
In any case, it's not worth your time to argue with the person behind the desk. If you're really annoyed by it, find the person or persons who make the rules, and explain to them why you think it's a bad idea. But unless there's some way to match your car with the key, there's probably very little risk here. In order to do anything nefarious they'd have to find the car which the key fits, which means walking around the lot trying every door (or at least every door of a certain make). Possible, but not too likely.
Though you do have to wonder what they do for people who've walked or taken public transit to the pool, or those who have ridden with a friend. Maybe next time tell them you got dropped off by someone and see what they'll do for you.
Nothing like setting out with two mutually exclusive goals.
I like HTAs. An HTA is a great way to slap a quick-n-dirty GUI on a script. It's an easy way to prototype something, or to make a GUI wrapper around something to make it a little more user-friendly. And given that you can use Perl or Python with the Windows Script Host, it was really pretty powerful. I'm not a Windows guy, but I was able to hack together some quick front ends for customer demos. (On the down side, I had a helluva time trying convince the CEO that no, this *wasn't* a final product, and it *wasn't* appropriate to leave with the customer!)
Too bad it's not cross-platform. I'd really like to find something as simple for the Mac or for X-Windows.