Were there any physics in that were even kinda correct? I seem to recall the space shuttles bobing and weaving like airplanes through a meteor shower. Uh, there's no AIR in outer space, guys, thus flying with your big engines pointed back makes you go faster and faster and FasterAndFASTER until you die, and you can't use your wings as control surfaces to turn.
Ah, and when they were stressfully docking with the spinning(!) "mir", there's this shot where you see the docking hatch extend, and its like the shuttle is "orbiting" mir, even before they make contact.
I'm pretty sure most big meteors aren't shaped like they're designed by an evil asteroid designing picasso. Yep, I'm pretty sure they're usually just oblong balls.
I'm pretty sure that meteor swarms that have travelled cosmic distances aren't constantly having sub meteors bang into eachother like bumpercars. They got all that out of their system 10,000 years ago.
The people that made this movie should be hunted down and shot by their highschool physics instructor.
Hm...good point. Okay, you've changed my mind, now I think that java just needs a marketing department, at least 1/3rd as big as the Enemy's, to keep people somewhat informed about what is standard and what is embrace-extend from MS. Additionally academia should do their jobs and teach to the standard, funnelling students way from the E-E crap. I don't see the need for the marketing department to have absolute dictotorial powers, or in fact any powers whatsoever.
the Gnu dialect of the C language shows you don't need a "benevolent" dictator. Its been around much longer than Java. Its probably used by more people. Its GPL'ed. And yet it hasn't led to a GNU-C linguistic forkfest.
(the same argument applies to nearly every library under the GPL, does it not?)
My opinion of KDE and Gnome: They aim high, and hit somewhat lower. They're always in the midst of a massive re-code, and the left hand never knows what the right hand is doing. The pieces look nice, but never quite fit right. Or so it seems to me.
Lets face it, blizzard did a crap job with The Lost Vikings, and instead of taking responsibility for its el-cheapo approach, it blamed the GBA platform.
Lost Vikings with no network support? I think I'll keep my $X in my pocket, thank you.
If I had a nickel for every time my granma asked me to install a pattern scanning and text processing language (awk), or a program to concatenate and print files in reverse (tac), I'd have (lessee, nothing times nothing... carry the nothing): NOTHING!
There's just nothing on linux that Joe Sixpack wants, that isn't done elsewhere.
One of the most memorable was from Battlestar Galactica, where the humans have been getting kicked around for three episodes, and finally their fighters have managed to fall upon a few Cylon ships. They're all about payback. They deploy only to have their avionics turned off by a computer exploit, then get to watch helplessly as they're detonated in a wave of missiles. I thought that "battle" was very well done in terms of dramatic tension, and hey, often war is like that. Just ask Task Force Z.
One thing I always wonder about that's not quite addressed here is the issue of multiple networked workstations. Suppose I run a small college lan of 20 boxes. I want them to be identically configured. Now if I install gcc on all of them thats 20*install_size_of_gcc bytes of wasted HD space. So its better to install gcc once on a nfs mounted/usr/local. BUT most packages don't support installing to admin-specified locations. So... hm... build from source?
You make fine points, and I was exaggerating my position somewhat for contrast. I think I have the education you describe, but some things I missed sorely when I went out into the real world:
(1) API, library, and IDE assessment. Choosing what to depend on is a sticky wicket, with huge monetary consequences for wrong decisions early. In fact, choosing the right language or library to greatly simplify a problem was viewed as cheating. (Your langauge has good hash tables built in? No Fair, go recode in C)
(2) Experience extending old programs that are so large that there's no possible way to read the code. 3000 lines was about the biggest program I was ever asked to work on.
(3) Coding indirection and abstraction at the right granularity, instead of the smug back-patting granularity that later turns out to be useless. (I'm still learning this one today)
It is this slacker approach that is responsible for all the crap software out there. Get it through your head: software engineering is compeletely different from writing a self-recursive factorial function demo.
Academia likes to push Abstract Data Types, but when you force them to sit down and write any moderatly sized program in the language of their choice, (say, a game demo or desktop calculator), you'll find many of them totally at a loss on how to apply their ADTs or even structure their programs in a way that others can read. Usually this is accompanied by some lame-ass statement about "in a real program we'd do it this other way". Well what are people going to school FOR? To write non-real programs? I think not.
Algorithms are easy - just read a book or search the web. Good software development on large projects is much harder.
Plone, a user friendly and powerful Content Management System:
Plone is ideal as an intranet and extranet server, as a document publishing system, a portal server and as a groupware tool for collaboration between separately located entities. A versatile software product like Plone can be used in a myriad of ways. Look through the sites that use Plone section to see a variety of ways people have implemented Plone and Zope solutions.
There's a difference between being a well-selling game, and being a good game. Of course is subjective, however, munchkin's idea of strategy is "roll as high as you can". That to me is not a very interesting game. For the scale of the game (number of players, game components, etc), I prefer a more thinking game like pre-bastardization Jyhad / Vampire(the Eternal Struggle).
Obviously many people like GURPS, however, I wish it did not take up so much of their attention. This only started happening to annoying levels after the Car Wars bubble burst and the SS raid went down.
Say what? I think that's a myth. If you buy a $1000 dell or gateway you're paying for a $700 machine with $300 markup. At least that's the way it played out with my Athlon 32 about 9 months ago. What kind of monkey business can't make money installing software for $300? And if you can get the component parts wholesale...whoa. Profit.
Steve Jackson Games changed direction in 1991 (I think) when they were raided by the US Secret Service. Before that they'd basically made small wargames and strategy games. I think their cash cow was "Car Wars", but they also had success with Ogre, Raid on Iran, and Illuminati.
After the SS raid, they seemed to derive their primary income from GURPS. And starting in about 2000, they began supplementing that with gag card games like "chez geek", "munchkin", and "ninja burger".
That, my young apprentice, is why they created the concept of a "remake". Take the example of Battlestar Galactica - Old: boring, fights almost never happen, silly robots. New: Fights happen every 3 seconds. Robots now look like foxy women -- and they're incredibly horny. Changing tastes for changing demographics....:)
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Were there any physics in that were even kinda correct? I seem to recall the space shuttles bobing and weaving like airplanes through a meteor shower. Uh, there's no AIR in outer space, guys, thus flying with your big engines pointed back makes you go faster and faster and FasterAndFASTER until you die, and you can't use your wings as control surfaces to turn.
Ah, and when they were stressfully docking with the spinning(!) "mir", there's this shot where you see the docking hatch extend, and its like the shuttle is "orbiting" mir, even before they make contact.
I'm pretty sure most big meteors aren't shaped like they're designed by an evil asteroid designing picasso. Yep, I'm pretty sure they're usually just oblong balls.
I'm pretty sure that meteor swarms that have travelled cosmic distances aren't constantly having sub meteors bang into eachother like bumpercars. They got all that out of their system 10,000 years ago.
The people that made this movie should be hunted down and shot by their highschool physics instructor.
Is rice white?
Good point. Would you agree that Java finally has that following?
Hm...good point. Okay, you've changed my mind, now I think that java just needs a marketing department, at least 1/3rd as big as the Enemy's, to keep people somewhat informed about what is standard and what is embrace-extend from MS. Additionally academia should do their jobs and teach to the standard, funnelling students way from the E-E crap. I don't see the need for the marketing department to have absolute dictotorial powers, or in fact any powers whatsoever.
The linux version or just the WinDOHs version?
the Gnu dialect of the C language shows you don't need a "benevolent" dictator. Its been around much longer than Java. Its probably used by more people. Its GPL'ed. And yet it hasn't led to a GNU-C linguistic forkfest.
(the same argument applies to nearly every library under the GPL, does it not?)
My opinion of KDE and Gnome: They aim high, and hit somewhat lower. They're always in the midst of a massive re-code, and the left hand never knows what the right hand is doing. The pieces look nice, but never quite fit right. Or so it seems to me.
Lets face it, blizzard did a crap job with The Lost Vikings, and instead of taking responsibility for its el-cheapo approach, it blamed the GBA platform.
Lost Vikings with no network support? I think I'll keep my $X in my pocket, thank you.
If I had a nickel for every time my granma asked me to install a pattern scanning and text processing language (awk), or a program to concatenate and print files in reverse (tac), I'd have (lessee, nothing times nothing ... carry the nothing): NOTHING!
There's just nothing on linux that Joe Sixpack wants, that isn't done elsewhere.
One of the most memorable was from Battlestar Galactica, where the humans have been getting kicked around for three episodes, and finally their fighters have managed to fall upon a few Cylon ships. They're all about payback. They deploy only to have their avionics turned off by a computer exploit, then get to watch helplessly as they're detonated in a wave of missiles. I thought that "battle" was very well done in terms of dramatic tension, and hey, often war is like that. Just ask Task Force Z.
One thing I always wonder about that's not quite addressed here is the issue of multiple networked workstations. Suppose I run a small college lan of 20 boxes. I want them to be identically configured. Now if I install gcc on all of them thats 20*install_size_of_gcc bytes of wasted HD space. So its better to install gcc once on a nfs mounted /usr/local. BUT most packages don't support installing to admin-specified locations. So ... hm ... build from source?
You make fine points, and I was exaggerating my position somewhat for contrast. I think I have the education you describe, but some things I missed sorely when I went out into the real world:
(1) API, library, and IDE assessment. Choosing what to depend on is a sticky wicket, with huge monetary consequences for wrong decisions early. In fact, choosing the right language or library to greatly simplify a problem was viewed as cheating. (Your langauge has good hash tables built in? No Fair, go recode in C)
(2) Experience extending old programs that are so large that there's no possible way to read the code. 3000 lines was about the biggest program I was ever asked to work on.
(3) Coding indirection and abstraction at the right granularity, instead of the smug back-patting granularity that later turns out to be useless. (I'm still learning this one today)
Sorry, but you are 180 degrees wrong.
It is this slacker approach that is responsible for all the crap software out there. Get it through your head: software engineering is compeletely different from writing a self-recursive factorial function demo.
Academia likes to push Abstract Data Types, but when you force them to sit down and write any moderatly sized program in the language of their choice, (say, a game demo or desktop calculator), you'll find many of them totally at a loss on how to apply their ADTs or even structure their programs in a way that others can read. Usually this is accompanied by some lame-ass statement about "in a real program we'd do it this other way". Well what are people going to school FOR? To write non-real programs? I think not.
Algorithms are easy - just read a book or search the web. Good software development on large projects is much harder.
I do use Moz, and I don't notice any swapping. Maybe my HD is to quiet AND my gnome swap meter is broken?
Do people still swap? Seriously, I can't remember when I heard my prime dueller do the rumble, and its only got 512 megs of ram.
My start page has four text areas:
google search
alta-vista search
google groups search
debian package search
its locally cached, so load time is epsilon.
Plone, a user friendly and powerful Content Management System:
Plone is ideal as an intranet and extranet server, as a document publishing system, a portal server and as a groupware tool for collaboration between separately located entities. A versatile software product like Plone can be used in a myriad of ways. Look through the sites that use Plone section to see a variety of ways people have implemented Plone and Zope solutions.
Many C compilers do the tail-call recursion optimization.
I'm sure there are plenty of bignum libraries for C if you need them. And c++ is a language /designed/ to make bignums look & feel like ints.
C'mon now, swapping is what XP does best!
It is possible to program functionally in C, just avoid side-effects like you would in Lisp.
There's a difference between being a well-selling game, and being a good game. Of course is subjective, however, munchkin's idea of strategy is "roll as high as you can". That to me is not a very interesting game. For the scale of the game (number of players, game components, etc), I prefer a more thinking game like pre-bastardization Jyhad / Vampire(the Eternal Struggle).
Obviously many people like GURPS, however, I wish it did not take up so much of their attention. This only started happening to annoying levels after the Car Wars bubble burst and the SS raid went down.
< Given the low margins in the PC market
Say what? I think that's a myth. If you buy a $1000 dell or gateway you're paying for a $700 machine with $300 markup. At least that's the way it played out with my Athlon 32 about 9 months ago. What kind of monkey business can't make money installing software for $300? And if you can get the component parts wholesale...whoa. Profit.
Steve Jackson Games changed direction in 1991 (I think) when they were raided by the US Secret Service. Before that they'd basically made small wargames and strategy games. I think their cash cow was "Car Wars", but they also had success with Ogre, Raid on Iran, and Illuminati.
After the SS raid, they seemed to derive their primary income from GURPS. And starting in about 2000, they began supplementing that with gag card games like "chez geek", "munchkin", and "ninja burger".
Frankly, the pre-SS SJG was a lot cooler.
That, my young apprentice, is why they created the concept of a "remake". Take the example of Battlestar Galactica - Old: boring, fights almost never happen, silly robots. New: Fights happen every 3 seconds. Robots now look like foxy women -- and they're incredibly horny. Changing tastes for changing demographics.... :)