I was under the impression that when people talking about "Hydrogen" as a renewable fuel source they normally meant Methane, a very renewable combustable gas which features hydrogen.
But - as a little side note, Hydrogen gas DOES occur naturally, just not a whole lot on our planet, or when it does it escapes the atmosphere. But there are tons of nebulae* out there featuring H2 as is. It's as renewable as the Sun is, anyways, we just haven't figured out how yet.
No, they are not proposing that neutrinos are constantly changing the decay rates, making a neat graph where the rates were higher in the past and can be extrapolated to slower in the future.
They are saying that a flare of neutrinos temporarily slowed the decay rates, and once the even was over, they came back up. Described as "a dip".
So, essentially, what they're saying is that if what they're suggesting is true, certain periods in the past would have had slower decay rates than what we've expected, thus making the Earth older.
Except that string theory, dark matter, dark energy, etc, are all theories in that they invite invitation to poke holes in them. Science is an open process that allows anyone to experiment with it and often encourages you to defy the belief in the theory. Most often the giant scientific leaps are when you discover certain properties that don't fit in the theory, or you simply suspend the belief in the theory to find another one that could also be true.
Religion on the other hand, requires your belief, faith in that belief, and shuns any notion that it could be wrong.
So yes - if you know of internet science fanboys who said that String Theory MUST be true, than its sort of the same. But there are more of internet science fanboys who say that String Theory COULD be true, and that it requires more verification to either justify or nullify it.
Or he needs to watch Jurassic Park more intently, because Dr Grant says it within the first 20 minutes of the film, when he's describing how the velociraptor skeleton has more similarities with birds than reptiles. He says, "The word Raptor even means, bird of pray".
I remember using Netscape Navigator on one machine, to associate command.com as the default application for.wav files, then clicking through to a.wav file to get to a command prompt and wreak havoc.
Aha! We did something similar in our high school, except we weren't prompted to break into the systems nor were we trying to wreak havoc. My friend and I were upset that our teacher had seperated us in the computer lab, for talking. With the thing locked down so that nothing could be installed without admin privileges, no run, and C:\Windows\ requiring a password for anyone on the domain. However, we just made a batch file to open C:\windows\system32\cmd.exe and chose to run-as and did the local computer's guest account, which surprisingly wasn't disabled.
Once we got into the command prompt, we used Telnet to talk back and forth, the teacher none-the-wiser. However, we got busted, because of some weird setup that they had - all of our telnet conversations caused a command prompt to pop up on the Librarian's computer showing what we were saying. At first we were scolded, then we were lectured, then they watched us, then they asked us if we wanted to fix the website.
why are there like 2 semi-competent modelers and no competent animators in ALL of FOSS gaming?
It's not that its difficult, its that its time consuming, and when the FOSS crowd looks at making something, they want to get the most out of their time investment, so they'll often look at 8 hours worth of animating vs 8 hours worth of model work, and decide that perfecting 2 animations to work flawlessly is not as beneficial as completing a new model, or writing a new entity into the game.
A) It teaches people how to use unfamiliar hardware/software. Chances are the thing you are going to be running at your job is not going to be the thing you studied in university for.
C) It teaches kids how computers actually work by pealing back layers of abstraction. Think about it, has the average person under 20 ever used a CLI? For anything? I think the closest people come these days to actually using a CLI is typing in something on the Windows "Run" dialog.
I can't stress this enough. I'm 22 - so close to the age range you mentioned, and I had only ever used Windows 3.1 when I was around 3 to 5 years old, and even then it was just to boot up some old Kings Quest or Math Tutor game - and beyond that I only ever used to use the MS-DOS prompt on Windows 95 for ipconfig so that we could get a good Age of Empires game going. Once I got into the Polytechnic that changed a lot because one of our professors was very Linux happy and learning to use the terminal on a Fedora machine was great experience. He then insisted that we learn to do the same (or attempt to do the same) in the command line on our windows machines.
I ask other people a few years younger than me, who would even consider themselves computer experts, because they know how to build one from scratch and the hotkeys associated with Windows - but any of the ones who haven't gone to school basically don't know how to use that kind of interface. Or if they've used it, they know how to run about 4 commands, but not how to navigate through the file structure to execute various tasks.
We had to remote into this old Unix System V box and do a few exercises for our course education. No, its not as far back as these students were going but it was helpful to become familiar with that kind of architecture, because you never know whats still going to be kicking around when you get on the job.
Stick to what you know best, the database. Let us do what we do.
While he may not be versed enough in programming to provide sufficient descriptions on why developers shouldn't be touching production items, he didn't exactly step over his boundaries and tell you how to do your job. In fact, he accurately described how he should be doing his job to make your job easier.
"Letting you do what you do" - you should never be touching production anyways, so you really need your DBA to be setting up a good test environment, ideally one that replicates the current production data, like he stated.
Show your DBA's some love, they may not get why you want bad data in your database, but without them its a lot harder to do your job. Everyone in IT should work as a cohesive unit.
I know people say "Gameplay is more important than graphics" and I agree with them - lets get that straightened out, but lets clarify exactly why it seems to be that so much money gets dumped into graphics.
Before you can even start much of anything else for your game, you need an engine to run it in. You can either dump a ton of money into licensing one, or you can dump a ton of money into building one from scratch. The latter is of course going to take more time - and the former is taking from people who basically program JUST the physics and graphics, in fact, its in their best interest to have the most aesthetically pleasing engine out there.
Next, you've got 2 big core parts: mechanics and design. The mechanics is usually the hard, tricky to understand bit because not everyone likes looking at code, and debugging something running in an engine is not exactly like event driven command prompt. You have to apply some serious logical thinking in order to transpose how you want a certain gameplay element into something the player executes, and in cases where you want to be innovative: There is no prior existing code (just ask how many devs on here copy and paste code. No wheel to reinvent with games).
Now I'm not trying to belittle the design stage. It takes a special kind of person to pull off the high quality concept art that you see for a lot of games. I value these people more than I value the actual modellers, and in case you're wondering why, I'm going to tell you. Modelling itself is not something difficult to learn. I had about 1 modules worth of Maya way back when I was in High school, and I've just recently taken online Youtube tutorials in Blender. Essentially everything required to make a game work; I've learned in a few hours. But seeing how a new game will require all new models: This is a bulk of the workload. This is also what most game dev programs at colleges will focus a good part of the program on. So when you get 100 graduates, and EA is pumping out a new game, they want to get all this modelling and texturing done, so they hire these people and put them in the monkey position of creating all the new models that will be required. (First years to trees and blades of grass! How fun!)
In summary, there are far more people willing to get into character design and modelling for a game, because what they do is far more tangible when their component is completed. So when the big shops are working on something, their team of a dozen coders will spend a year working out the code to make the game run exactly how they want it. Then it'll take the design team of 99 modellers and texturers the same amount of time to get their part done, but because there are so many of them, they can get a lot of work done.
PS - The other part I forgot to include is Animation for the models, which is another time consuming but not particularily difficult thing to learn, its actually very similar to using Flash.
The fundamental difference between IT and most of the other Staff positions is that often IT is also the ones who deal with security. We set up the cameras, we check the logs, the punch-in punch-out are sometimes our responsibility. We have to deal with nearly everyone on an almost personal level, whereas the janitor might only deal with 1 building, work after hours, and not have access to the computers. The cook couldn't possibly get away with murder.
On top of that, IT is not something everyone is versed in, so in order to catch an IT criminal it requires an IT expert. Meanwhile, Janitorial duties can be shovelled off to just about anyone (I've seen it happen to receptionists), and catching other vulnerabilities are usually as easy as looking at the camera records.
With a higher up IT member, he can set off Logic Timebombs, Dead man switches, sniff email traffic, root critical systems, tunnel the firewall, create admin accounts, reset passwords, etc etc etc - There's a whole smorgasborg of options open to an IT member that simply can't be reversed by anyone other than another person in IT, who has to not only fix the problem but also determine its causes in order for any kind of evidence to point towards the originally terminated member. This is if you even determine that something went wrong, Like I mentioned with an email sniffer, or if they get access to the database, they can be selling secrets and data for pennies to any of your competitors, while you operate under the impression that everything is running smoothly.
Yeah, IT is usually treated like Staff - and then you get cases like Terry Childs popping up.
Any time Sun or Sol (or Solar) is used to reference anything other than the star that Earth orbits is kind of like a misuse of the name, like saying ALL Lindseys are Lohans.
Solar does not mean star. I don't know who taught you that, but they are wrong. Solar means The Sun (and is extrapolated to incorporate everything directly influenced by The Sun). The Sun (Also known as Sol) is the only one known as THE Sun and thus we call it THE Solar system.
Only rarely does someone innacurately call another star A sun, because its actually a star, and not THE sun. You'll notice they even said in the summary
The star is HD 10180, located 127 light-years away...
They didn't say "The sun is HD 10180..."
So, to review, there is only one The Sun, AKA Sol, and the system of planets around it is known as The Solar System. Everything else is a star, and thus should be a star system. You could say they have discovered a star system, known as the HD 10180 system, which includes 7 planets.
Jeffrey, regardless of how much he smells, is quite correct in the astrological terminology.
But what, praytell, is a genre popular amongst consoles that isn't amongst the PC? Anything for the 360 or PS3 has just as strong a PC counterpart for it. The only exception to this is the Wii with it's motion sensing controller.
And should you wish to develop for consoles, all you need to pay for is the licensing fee (which is usually pretty steep, this is really the only real barricade). But after that - you are basically free to operate as you want. If you want to make it on the Xbox live arcade, you have to code in their proprietary language, and if you want to make a game, then you have to go through a series of checks with Microsoft to get it to work with Xbox Live, but there really isn't anything stopping you from distributing it yourself after you've completed development.
I mean, even as there are gatekeepers to the consoles, none of them have invested interest in keeping publishers around. No publishers means more individual developers, which means more licensing. Their business model is designed to work with or without the big boys.
Creating quality content takes money. The more people pirate, the less there are quality products, because there is no money to make them.
The next time you think about bringing this up, do some research on the topic.
To give you a quick quote: "The average musician on a major record deal 'gets' about $23 per $1,000 made... and that $23 still never gets paid because it has to go to 'recouping' the loan [that the label gave them]"
So if you think buying a CD is helping your artist, you're really only helping them get out of debt with the record label that signed them, and that actually a majority of that $ you spent went to the label anyways. If you want to put dollars in the pockets of your favourite musicians, donate online or ask them whats best. More money goes to them through concert ticket sales (though ticketmaster and the venue do absorb a bit of that cost) and merchandise (also, cost of production).
There's been a recent movement where a bunch of bands have gone and ditched the record labels, where instead they've taken the money they got from a year of touring and have started their own record labels. (I believe David Grohl of the Foo Fighters is one of them?) - and some Indie bands have gone as far as to ignore a label altogether, instead producing only online digital copies for downloads to increase awareness of the band to make more money during concerts.
In terms of Game companies: No developer is forced to work with EA or Activision or Ubisoft or any of the large Publishers out there, there are actually MANY ways to make money. If you've payed attention lately, you'll see that indie games are actually on the rise, with new bundles such as the humble indie bundle being offered through different mediums, such as Steam or even the Xbox Arcade. While there are publishers behind these new mediums, they've basically reduced the cost of manufacturing CD's down to the cost of bandwidth (pennies) and that means both cheaper prices for you and more money can go to developers. Everything from EA, down to Gamestop, are not actually necessary to develop and produce a quality game; Online mediums have essentially ruined the need for physical mediums, even some BIG shops such as Blizzard have started to offer online methods of payment for their games.
Essentially, what it is coming to is this: Copyright law is only benefitting publishers now, not the musicians/developers/artists/authors it was originally intended for. Everyone is starting to realize that they don't need a publisher, that their are new methods of distribution, and stopping the harmful piracy is as easy as implementing their own DRM, and that sometimes piracy is good for a product to get it into as many hands/eyes/ears as possible.
Slashdot Mirror
I was under the impression that when people talking about "Hydrogen" as a renewable fuel source they normally meant Methane, a very renewable combustable gas which features hydrogen.
But - as a little side note, Hydrogen gas DOES occur naturally, just not a whole lot on our planet, or when it does it escapes the atmosphere. But there are tons of nebulae* out there featuring H2 as is. It's as renewable as the Sun is, anyways, we just haven't figured out how yet.
No, they are not proposing that neutrinos are constantly changing the decay rates, making a neat graph where the rates were higher in the past and can be extrapolated to slower in the future.
They are saying that a flare of neutrinos temporarily slowed the decay rates, and once the even was over, they came back up. Described as "a dip".
So, essentially, what they're saying is that if what they're suggesting is true, certain periods in the past would have had slower decay rates than what we've expected, thus making the Earth older.
Except that string theory, dark matter, dark energy, etc, are all theories in that they invite invitation to poke holes in them. Science is an open process that allows anyone to experiment with it and often encourages you to defy the belief in the theory. Most often the giant scientific leaps are when you discover certain properties that don't fit in the theory, or you simply suspend the belief in the theory to find another one that could also be true.
Religion on the other hand, requires your belief, faith in that belief, and shuns any notion that it could be wrong.
So yes - if you know of internet science fanboys who said that String Theory MUST be true, than its sort of the same. But there are more of internet science fanboys who say that String Theory COULD be true, and that it requires more verification to either justify or nullify it.
I know Bobby - they're synonymous, but Han gets called a Scoundrel in the movies, thats where I was going with that.
I think the word you were actually looking for is scoundrel, not rogue.
I can't get the video to play. It works on Ilsa's computer.
Come on, IE! You played it for her, you can play it for me!
Or he needs to watch Jurassic Park more intently, because Dr Grant says it within the first 20 minutes of the film, when he's describing how the velociraptor skeleton has more similarities with birds than reptiles. He says, "The word Raptor even means, bird of pray".
Just sayin'
I remember using Netscape Navigator on one machine, to associate command.com as the default application for .wav files, then clicking through to a .wav file to get to a command prompt and wreak havoc.
Aha! We did something similar in our high school, except we weren't prompted to break into the systems nor were we trying to wreak havoc. My friend and I were upset that our teacher had seperated us in the computer lab, for talking. With the thing locked down so that nothing could be installed without admin privileges, no run, and C:\Windows\ requiring a password for anyone on the domain. However, we just made a batch file to open C:\windows\system32\cmd.exe and chose to run-as and did the local computer's guest account, which surprisingly wasn't disabled.
Once we got into the command prompt, we used Telnet to talk back and forth, the teacher none-the-wiser. However, we got busted, because of some weird setup that they had - all of our telnet conversations caused a command prompt to pop up on the Librarian's computer showing what we were saying. At first we were scolded, then we were lectured, then they watched us, then they asked us if we wanted to fix the website.
Ah, good times. To relive those days.
why are there like 2 semi-competent modelers and no competent animators in ALL of FOSS gaming?
It's not that its difficult, its that its time consuming, and when the FOSS crowd looks at making something, they want to get the most out of their time investment, so they'll often look at 8 hours worth of animating vs 8 hours worth of model work, and decide that perfecting 2 animations to work flawlessly is not as beneficial as completing a new model, or writing a new entity into the game.
A) It teaches people how to use unfamiliar hardware/software. Chances are the thing you are going to be running at your job is not going to be the thing you studied in university for.
C) It teaches kids how computers actually work by pealing back layers of abstraction. Think about it, has the average person under 20 ever used a CLI? For anything? I think the closest people come these days to actually using a CLI is typing in something on the Windows "Run" dialog.
I can't stress this enough. I'm 22 - so close to the age range you mentioned, and I had only ever used Windows 3.1 when I was around 3 to 5 years old, and even then it was just to boot up some old Kings Quest or Math Tutor game - and beyond that I only ever used to use the MS-DOS prompt on Windows 95 for ipconfig so that we could get a good Age of Empires game going. Once I got into the Polytechnic that changed a lot because one of our professors was very Linux happy and learning to use the terminal on a Fedora machine was great experience. He then insisted that we learn to do the same (or attempt to do the same) in the command line on our windows machines.
I ask other people a few years younger than me, who would even consider themselves computer experts, because they know how to build one from scratch and the hotkeys associated with Windows - but any of the ones who haven't gone to school basically don't know how to use that kind of interface. Or if they've used it, they know how to run about 4 commands, but not how to navigate through the file structure to execute various tasks.
We had to remote into this old Unix System V box and do a few exercises for our course education. No, its not as far back as these students were going but it was helpful to become familiar with that kind of architecture, because you never know whats still going to be kicking around when you get on the job.
Stick to what you know best, the database. Let us do what we do.
While he may not be versed enough in programming to provide sufficient descriptions on why developers shouldn't be touching production items, he didn't exactly step over his boundaries and tell you how to do your job. In fact, he accurately described how he should be doing his job to make your job easier.
"Letting you do what you do" - you should never be touching production anyways, so you really need your DBA to be setting up a good test environment, ideally one that replicates the current production data, like he stated.
Show your DBA's some love, they may not get why you want bad data in your database, but without them its a lot harder to do your job. Everyone in IT should work as a cohesive unit.
I know people say "Gameplay is more important than graphics" and I agree with them - lets get that straightened out, but lets clarify exactly why it seems to be that so much money gets dumped into graphics.
Before you can even start much of anything else for your game, you need an engine to run it in. You can either dump a ton of money into licensing one, or you can dump a ton of money into building one from scratch. The latter is of course going to take more time - and the former is taking from people who basically program JUST the physics and graphics, in fact, its in their best interest to have the most aesthetically pleasing engine out there.
Next, you've got 2 big core parts: mechanics and design. The mechanics is usually the hard, tricky to understand bit because not everyone likes looking at code, and debugging something running in an engine is not exactly like event driven command prompt. You have to apply some serious logical thinking in order to transpose how you want a certain gameplay element into something the player executes, and in cases where you want to be innovative: There is no prior existing code (just ask how many devs on here copy and paste code. No wheel to reinvent with games).
Now I'm not trying to belittle the design stage. It takes a special kind of person to pull off the high quality concept art that you see for a lot of games. I value these people more than I value the actual modellers, and in case you're wondering why, I'm going to tell you. Modelling itself is not something difficult to learn. I had about 1 modules worth of Maya way back when I was in High school, and I've just recently taken online Youtube tutorials in Blender. Essentially everything required to make a game work; I've learned in a few hours. But seeing how a new game will require all new models: This is a bulk of the workload. This is also what most game dev programs at colleges will focus a good part of the program on. So when you get 100 graduates, and EA is pumping out a new game, they want to get all this modelling and texturing done, so they hire these people and put them in the monkey position of creating all the new models that will be required. (First years to trees and blades of grass! How fun!)
In summary, there are far more people willing to get into character design and modelling for a game, because what they do is far more tangible when their component is completed. So when the big shops are working on something, their team of a dozen coders will spend a year working out the code to make the game run exactly how they want it. Then it'll take the design team of 99 modellers and texturers the same amount of time to get their part done, but because there are so many of them, they can get a lot of work done.
PS - The other part I forgot to include is Animation for the models, which is another time consuming but not particularily difficult thing to learn, its actually very similar to using Flash.
NALBLD
Not A Lawyer but Law Degree
The fundamental difference between IT and most of the other Staff positions is that often IT is also the ones who deal with security. We set up the cameras, we check the logs, the punch-in punch-out are sometimes our responsibility. We have to deal with nearly everyone on an almost personal level, whereas the janitor might only deal with 1 building, work after hours, and not have access to the computers. The cook couldn't possibly get away with murder.
On top of that, IT is not something everyone is versed in, so in order to catch an IT criminal it requires an IT expert. Meanwhile, Janitorial duties can be shovelled off to just about anyone (I've seen it happen to receptionists), and catching other vulnerabilities are usually as easy as looking at the camera records.
With a higher up IT member, he can set off Logic Timebombs, Dead man switches, sniff email traffic, root critical systems, tunnel the firewall, create admin accounts, reset passwords, etc etc etc - There's a whole smorgasborg of options open to an IT member that simply can't be reversed by anyone other than another person in IT, who has to not only fix the problem but also determine its causes in order for any kind of evidence to point towards the originally terminated member. This is if you even determine that something went wrong, Like I mentioned with an email sniffer, or if they get access to the database, they can be selling secrets and data for pennies to any of your competitors, while you operate under the impression that everything is running smoothly.
Yeah, IT is usually treated like Staff - and then you get cases like Terry Childs popping up.
It's more like saying the only BobMcD is 601576.
Any time Sun or Sol (or Solar) is used to reference anything other than the star that Earth orbits is kind of like a misuse of the name, like saying ALL Lindseys are Lohans.
These small labels I'm talking about aren't abusing copyright laws and saying that it isn't working and trying to get it applied to Youtube.
So you are correct, I'm not slamming copyright laws, I'm slamming those who want to change copyright laws to make them worse.
All of those problems could be handled in a variety of ways with a competant HR department.
I know what you're thinking, but not every company has a nuke stationed in orbit. Let's try to be practical here.
Solar does not mean star. I don't know who taught you that, but they are wrong. Solar means The Sun (and is extrapolated to incorporate everything directly influenced by The Sun). The Sun (Also known as Sol) is the only one known as THE Sun and thus we call it THE Solar system.
Only rarely does someone innacurately call another star A sun, because its actually a star, and not THE sun. You'll notice they even said in the summary
The star is HD 10180, located 127 light-years away...
They didn't say "The sun is HD 10180..."
So, to review, there is only one The Sun, AKA Sol, and the system of planets around it is known as The Solar System. Everything else is a star, and thus should be a star system. You could say they have discovered a star system, known as the HD 10180 system, which includes 7 planets.
Jeffrey, regardless of how much he smells, is quite correct in the astrological terminology.
But what, praytell, is a genre popular amongst consoles that isn't amongst the PC? Anything for the 360 or PS3 has just as strong a PC counterpart for it. The only exception to this is the Wii with it's motion sensing controller.
And should you wish to develop for consoles, all you need to pay for is the licensing fee (which is usually pretty steep, this is really the only real barricade). But after that - you are basically free to operate as you want. If you want to make it on the Xbox live arcade, you have to code in their proprietary language, and if you want to make a game, then you have to go through a series of checks with Microsoft to get it to work with Xbox Live, but there really isn't anything stopping you from distributing it yourself after you've completed development.
I mean, even as there are gatekeepers to the consoles, none of them have invested interest in keeping publishers around. No publishers means more individual developers, which means more licensing. Their business model is designed to work with or without the big boys.
So... You're admitting to it, right?
E-gads, my grammar is terrible in that post...
Creating quality content takes money. The more people pirate, the less there are quality products, because there is no money to make them.
The next time you think about bringing this up, do some research on the topic.
To give you a quick quote:
"The average musician on a major record deal 'gets' about $23 per $1,000 made... and that $23 still never gets paid because it has to go to 'recouping' the loan [that the label gave them]"
So if you think buying a CD is helping your artist, you're really only helping them get out of debt with the record label that signed them, and that actually a majority of that $ you spent went to the label anyways. If you want to put dollars in the pockets of your favourite musicians, donate online or ask them whats best. More money goes to them through concert ticket sales (though ticketmaster and the venue do absorb a bit of that cost) and merchandise (also, cost of production).
There's been a recent movement where a bunch of bands have gone and ditched the record labels, where instead they've taken the money they got from a year of touring and have started their own record labels. (I believe David Grohl of the Foo Fighters is one of them?) - and some Indie bands have gone as far as to ignore a label altogether, instead producing only online digital copies for downloads to increase awareness of the band to make more money during concerts.
In terms of Game companies: No developer is forced to work with EA or Activision or Ubisoft or any of the large Publishers out there, there are actually MANY ways to make money. If you've payed attention lately, you'll see that indie games are actually on the rise, with new bundles such as the humble indie bundle being offered through different mediums, such as Steam or even the Xbox Arcade. While there are publishers behind these new mediums, they've basically reduced the cost of manufacturing CD's down to the cost of bandwidth (pennies) and that means both cheaper prices for you and more money can go to developers. Everything from EA, down to Gamestop, are not actually necessary to develop and produce a quality game; Online mediums have essentially ruined the need for physical mediums, even some BIG shops such as Blizzard have started to offer online methods of payment for their games.
Essentially, what it is coming to is this:
Copyright law is only benefitting publishers now, not the musicians/developers/artists/authors it was originally intended for. Everyone is starting to realize that they don't need a publisher, that their are new methods of distribution, and stopping the harmful piracy is as easy as implementing their own DRM, and that sometimes piracy is good for a product to get it into as many hands/eyes/ears as possible.
It's a conspiracy, Maaaaaan!