Gates talks about minor evolutions of things that most people in the industry wouldn't find terribly surprising or imaginative.
That's what I'm always hearing about Gates' books. I assume the reason B.G. "wrote" books (I don't know the degree to which he actually wrote them) was not because he really wanted to, but because people were always saying to him "Bill, you're the richest man in the world, why aren't you writing a book to share your secrets?!?!"; at some point if you become famous enough, people expect you write a book...
B.G.'s response was probably "Er, ok, I guess (sigh)...." (starts looking up ghostwriters in his address list).
Now I am on Verizon DSL. I get 40kbps....DOWNLOAD. Sometimes as high as 100. Forget uploads, I can't serve anything.
DSL-type technologies seem to be highly dependent on the quality of the underlying phone infrastructure.
I've got a nominally 20 Mbps connection, but in reality only get around 2-3 Mpbs, apparently due to the phone line quality. The phone company actually has a website where you can look up the "real" speed for your location (type in phone number, it gives you estimated sped) before buying, though, and it's only about $25/month, so I'm perfectly happy with it...
Does anyone other than Richard Stallman really call it GNU/Linux?
Yes.
It's largely a matter of which community you hang out in; some places everybody calls it GNU/Linux (in large part out of respect for the FSF as far as I can tell), some places they flame you to a crisp for even suggesting it.
It doesn't really matter; call it what you want, people will know what you mean.
[A special case is if you are involved in a discussion with RMS: you're probably better off saying GNU/Linux (in the discussion), because if you don't he'll pester you tirelessly until you do. If you really want to get on with the real subject, it's simply not worth the effort to fight it...]
Why, oh why, don't toilets have multiple flush options? One toilet is subject to vastly differing jobs from one usage to the next; why is it expected to do all those jobs efficiently with a single function?
Many Japanese toilets have bi-directional flush levers: one direction is labelled "small" and the other "large" (with hopefully obvious meanings)...
The current administration seems to make just about everything it can closed to public scrutiny; in this case, it's even easier than usual because they can claim "it's against terrorists / fer the children!!!"
Well it's true that there are lots of posers around, and they'll say silly things to impress chicks or whatever.
But I don't think those phrases you mocked are quite as obviously stupid as you imply. There are lots of things that are difficult, and not satisfying in straight-forward ways, but which are nonetheless rewarding.
I've done quite a bit of hiking/hillwalking. It's never easy to drag myself out of bed very early, and such activities involve not just a lot of exertion, but often a fair amount of plain discomfort (e.g., spending all day slogging up a steep slope in fog and driving rain). But I continue to do it. Even if it may rain. Why? Because I get something from it, which while kind of hard to express, is very real to me. A walk in the park on a sunny day is much easier and less taxing, and I do that more often as result (and enjoy it), but that doesn't make those other activities fake.
There are many films like that as well, which I have to sort of psych myself up to see, and don't provide easy laughs or exciting action (and are maybe even plain "difficult"), but... can often reach somewhere inside me that mainstream films simply can't even approach. It's usually hard to get my butt in gear and see such films, because my lazy self is thinking "it's gonna be annoying, there isn't going to be easy laughs or exciting action!" -- but once I've actually in there watching, I'm glad.
that thinks its beneath them to not place an interntaional dialing code on their business phone number. Happily, the majority of us in the 'rest of the world' have learned that its usually only american companies that have this particular arrogant habit
Er, OK, well you have the smiley, but... that's definitely not true.
If anything, it's rather unusual to have an "international" number (with country-code) on a business-card in the non-US countries I'm familiar with (Japan, UK). It seems to basically be only large companies with significant international dealings that do it by default (I suppose small companies with significant international dealings must do it too).
In very small countries where a large proportion of business is done across borders, it may be more common of course.
[In practice it may actually be more common for a US number to be "internationally usable" (though by accident), because the initial 1- prefix used to dial a non-local US number happens to also be the proper country code for the US/Canada (and I think mexico too)...:-]
That's the weird thing about MS -- it's full of really smart people, they do great research (and funny videos if they're marketing, I guess), but... the only stuff that seems to actually reach the end-user is bland, homogenized, creaky-ass crap. It's like there's a "suck" layer in the middle that just sucks the soul and goodness out of all the innovative work the smart people at MS do.
[Ok, some of the good stuff does make it, but it's chocolate sprinkles on top of... all the other stuff.]
the PSP is a really nice device, it's pretty, elegant, and cool.
It also suffers from SCE's typical tunnel-vision and arrogant attitude -- they were so fixated on the display, and on "kewl" design, that they gave it crappy controls (the controls are clearly something they just slapped on at the last moment without much thought other than "don't ruin the look!") and made it too heavy and otherwise awkward to carry around.
It basically seems optimized for sitting on a pedestal in a store displaying a demo movie... where indeed, it does look very pretty.
No, it means you have to put up with a lot of assholes making pretentious remarks (as if ignorance is supposed to make them seem smarter) about DJs not being musicians
Granted this is true (and the poster you're replying to was a troll)... but I think attitudes like that are based in large part on "DJing" having become more of a fashion statement for many people than anything else.
I think dr.badass said it best, earlier in the thread: "These days you can throw a rock and hit a DJ (please do!)"
Maybe I'm just lucky, but the previews I read (mostly from non-magazine-related websites) generally seem do a great job of both pointing out all the negative things they see ("bland textures, loose control...") while maintaining a fairly upbeat tone. It's not hard to do this, really, as one need merely point out that the game still has 6 months of development left, for instance putting in a conclusion like "the game had these good points and these bad points; we hope the bad points can be addressed by the final release."
Language like that clearly seems to keep the publisher happy as they're still getting official preview software. I don't think it's simply being diplomatic either -- what gamer doesn't hope the flaws will be fixed, and a great game released? In this sense, this sort of review actually helps the developer in many cases, by giving them an outside viewpoint on what needs to be focused on in the final development stages. It's not uncommon to read in the final review of the released games something like "the bad control we noted in our preview has thankfully been tightened up quite a bit, and is now pretty good."
I think the real answer to all this is for gamers to simply stop reading the crappy magazines/websites for their preview fix and start reading better ones -- they do exist.
"They didn't give us money, therefore they are evil!1!"
Uhhh-huh. I suspect their policy has more to do with easily avoiding fake charities than anything else. You may think your cause is obvious, but there are many con-men out there who are skillful at putting up an attractive front.
No, in my experience (watching people learn program) it does not -- rather in many cases it helps remove distractions. It is certainly useful to learn programming at a "lower level", as seeing the mechanism behind the abstractions can simply one's mental model in some cases, but often the dirty details are just that, and serve simply to distract from whatever is being taught (algorithm X).
Good CS programs generally use a healthy mixture of languages, both to give students breadth of understanding and to allow the emphasis to be on the concepts which are appropriate to each course.
Well, I'm no fan of java for my own use (I like C++ for "C type" stuff, and I'm far more fond of e.g., lisp family languages, for "GC'd no worries" stuff), but having helped people use it for college programming courses, it does seem to have appreciably fewer sharp edges in many ways than C++, without most of the bogosities of something like VB.
Some reasons:
Garbage collection
Good, reasonably comprehensive, standard library
Strongly focused on defining classes and interfaces (which can be annoying, but the emphasis might be good for those who are still learning)
Not platform specific, many implementations (which is a huge win -- it's Very Annoying when a class uses tools that will only run on a specific system)
I suppose having a link to one of those Free Mac Mini sites that I've had in my sig for the past 6 months makes me incapable of speaking about the subject.
It isn't a superficial examination -- I've lived in Japan for many years, and it's patently obvious everywhere you look.
That isn't to say that people aren't individuals (I wasn't suggesting the hive-mind thing was literally true!), or that people don't want to be individuals (there are many indicators, as you mention, which show that they do), but it's pretty clear that there's still a pervasive fundamental fear of taking individual action that might not be approved of by whatever group people identify with. People still seek to differentiate themselves, but almost always do so in a very safe manner, and usually via an "approved mechanism."
The above is a very broad generalization, and obviously it's a matter of degree -- this sort of thing also exists everywhere else too (people in general do want to fit in, and anyway how else do you explain Britney Spears?) -- but ultimately an American is probably far more likely to say "fuck you all" and really mean it.
[It's a common self-delusion among Japanese to say "Look at all the variation around (tick off a list of Noticeably Different subcultures) -- we are an individualistic society now!" It isn't true. Maybe it's more true now than many years ago (dunno about that), but the whole "group think" thing is not exactly dead...]
This potrayal of herd-mind (or hive-mind?) Asians on Slashdot has got to be the next big Slashdot meme. While it is true that Asians have historically more community minded that the West, community minded != groupthink.
Perhaps not, but it's absolutely true that there's a huge group-think thing going on, at least in Japan and Korea (the two countries I'm familiar with). ["Community minded", hahaha, now there's a euphemism for you! As far as I can see, the main factor is an unusually high degree of risk-aversion.]
This isn't to say that everybody is like that in those two countries, or that group-think isn't a factor in other countries -- obviously neither is true -- but stereotypes often have a basis in reality, I think this is one fo those cases.
And disgratulations (conpropulations?) to Everything2, the practically forgotten early attempt to pull off what Wikipedia has actually done.
Well the nice thing about E2 was that people were much more willing to put up weird, freaked-out, author-was-on-drugs entries, which gave E2 a much more free-wheeling air, in contrast with wikipedia's vaguely stuffy feel (though wikipedia's content seems... less stuffy).
On the other hand, nobody on E2 ever seemed to write anything except weird, freaked-out, author-was-on-drugs entries...
Re:Drugs is a misused word in the english language
on
Games Are Not Drugs
·
· Score: 1
"Meds" is a more colloquial term that hasn't caught on as much in my experience.
In fact, the only place I've seen it used has been in spam! [Really, no kidding]
I have -- a few years ago I used to make a several loaves a week (using just flour, water, eggs, yeast/sourdough and salt).
It's (1) utterly simple, and (2) takes about half an hour of real work. There's additional "waiting time" but you can obviously do other things then (this makes it less suitable for lifestyles where your schedule is always highly uncertain... I'd just do it on saturday or sunday and make sure I stuck around the house for a while).
Your original point is quite valid, but I'm not sure bread-making is a very good illustration of it...:-)
It may be possible to repaint the computer but if they have the choice between your laptop and one that's unpainted they'll go for the unpainted one.
Yeah but a campus full of repulsive laptops, besides being a recruiting disaster, may well completely negate the intent behind the move to laptops in the first place -- a large part of that, I suspect, is "We'll look so l337!1!".
How about a nice Gyrotourbillon? It'll only set you back oh, maybe a quarter of a million USD. That or something with a minute repeater. Anything else is pure junk.
And judging from the pictures on that page, they're hand-made by Richard Stallman!
If Sony knows one thing, it's how to hype a product.
I think it's more accurate to say "If Kutaragi knows one thing, it's how to hype a product". Until Kutaragi came along, Sony was a very different company: very good industrial design, solid and sometimes innovative technology, understated marketing.
The PS line turned all that on its head, and given other changes which have loosened the company's traditional moorings (e.g. Sony's founder retiring), Sony itself seems to have drifted in that direction too. [It's hardly a sure thing -- apparently the "mainline" management at Sony loathes Kutaragi -- but I guess in the absence of a strong leader, they end up following the money in the end...]
Slashdot Mirror
Gates talks about minor evolutions of things that most people in the industry wouldn't find terribly surprising or imaginative.
That's what I'm always hearing about Gates' books. I assume the reason B.G. "wrote" books (I don't know the degree to which he actually wrote them) was not because he really wanted to, but because people were always saying to him "Bill, you're the richest man in the world, why aren't you writing a book to share your secrets?!?!"; at some point if you become famous enough, people expect you write a book...
B.G.'s response was probably "Er, ok, I guess (sigh)...." (starts looking up ghostwriters in his address list).
Now I am on Verizon DSL. I get 40kbps....DOWNLOAD. Sometimes as high as 100. Forget uploads, I can't serve anything.
DSL-type technologies seem to be highly dependent on the quality of the underlying phone infrastructure.
I've got a nominally 20 Mbps connection, but in reality only get around 2-3 Mpbs, apparently due to the phone line quality. The phone company actually has a website where you can look up the "real" speed for your location (type in phone number, it gives you estimated sped) before buying, though, and it's only about $25/month, so I'm perfectly happy with it...
Does anyone other than Richard Stallman really call it GNU/Linux?
Yes.
It's largely a matter of which community you hang out in; some places everybody calls it GNU/Linux (in large part out of respect for the FSF as far as I can tell), some places they flame you to a crisp for even suggesting it.
It doesn't really matter; call it what you want, people will know what you mean.
[A special case is if you are involved in a discussion with RMS: you're probably better off saying GNU/Linux (in the discussion), because if you don't he'll pester you tirelessly until you do. If you really want to get on with the real subject, it's simply not worth the effort to fight it...]
Why, oh why, don't toilets have multiple flush options? One toilet is subject to vastly differing jobs from one usage to the next; why is it expected to do all those jobs efficiently with a single function?
Many Japanese toilets have bi-directional flush levers: one direction is labelled "small" and the other "large" (with hopefully obvious meanings)...
The current administration seems to make just about everything it can closed to public scrutiny; in this case, it's even easier than usual because they can claim "it's against terrorists / fer the children!!!"
Sigh...
Well it's true that there are lots of posers around, and they'll say silly things to impress chicks or whatever.
... can often reach somewhere inside me that mainstream films simply can't even approach. It's usually hard to get my butt in gear and see such films, because my lazy self is thinking "it's gonna be annoying, there isn't going to be easy laughs or exciting action!" -- but once I've actually in there watching, I'm glad.
But I don't think those phrases you mocked are quite as obviously stupid as you imply. There are lots of things that are difficult, and not satisfying in straight-forward ways, but which are nonetheless rewarding.
I've done quite a bit of hiking/hillwalking. It's never easy to drag myself out of bed very early, and such activities involve not just a lot of exertion, but often a fair amount of plain discomfort (e.g., spending all day slogging up a steep slope in fog and driving rain). But I continue to do it. Even if it may rain. Why? Because I get something from it, which while kind of hard to express, is very real to me. A walk in the park on a sunny day is much easier and less taxing, and I do that more often as result (and enjoy it), but that doesn't make those other activities fake.
There are many films like that as well, which I have to sort of psych myself up to see, and don't provide easy laughs or exciting action (and are maybe even plain "difficult"), but
that thinks its beneath them to not place an interntaional dialing code on their business phone number. Happily, the majority of us in the 'rest of the world' have learned that its usually only american companies that have this particular arrogant habit
... that's definitely not true.
:-]
Er, OK, well you have the smiley, but
If anything, it's rather unusual to have an "international" number (with country-code) on a business-card in the non-US countries I'm familiar with (Japan, UK). It seems to basically be only large companies with significant international dealings that do it by default (I suppose small companies with significant international dealings must do it too).
In very small countries where a large proportion of business is done across borders, it may be more common of course.
[In practice it may actually be more common for a US number to be "internationally usable" (though by accident), because the initial 1- prefix used to dial a non-local US number happens to also be the proper country code for the US/Canada (and I think mexico too)...
That's the weird thing about MS -- it's full of really smart people, they do great research (and funny videos if they're marketing, I guess), but ... the only stuff that seems to actually reach the end-user is bland, homogenized, creaky-ass crap. It's like there's a "suck" layer in the middle that just sucks the soul and goodness out of all the innovative work the smart people at MS do.
... all the other stuff.]
[Ok, some of the good stuff does make it, but it's chocolate sprinkles on top of
the PSP is a really nice device, it's pretty, elegant, and cool.
It also suffers from SCE's typical tunnel-vision and arrogant attitude -- they were so fixated on the display, and on "kewl" design, that they gave it crappy controls (the controls are clearly something they just slapped on at the last moment without much thought other than "don't ruin the look!") and made it too heavy and otherwise awkward to carry around.
It basically seems optimized for sitting on a pedestal in a store displaying a demo movie... where indeed, it does look very pretty.
The national debt seems comparable to the total value of all SUVs/4x4 trucks in the US...
...... if we ... destroy all SUVs ... the national debt will be erased!!
Are you thinking what I'm thinking?
Therefore
Yeah!!! Everybody grab your rocket launcher and head for the highways! Yeeee-ha!
No, it means you have to put up with a lot of assholes making pretentious remarks (as if ignorance is supposed to make them seem smarter) about DJs not being musicians
... but I think attitudes like that are based in large part on "DJing" having become more of a fashion statement for many people than anything else.
Granted this is true (and the poster you're replying to was a troll)
I think dr.badass said it best, earlier in the thread: "These days you can throw a rock and hit a DJ (please do!)"
Maybe I'm just lucky, but the previews I read (mostly from non-magazine-related websites) generally seem do a great job of both pointing out all the negative things they see ("bland textures, loose control...") while maintaining a fairly upbeat tone. It's not hard to do this, really, as one need merely point out that the game still has 6 months of development left, for instance putting in a conclusion like "the game had these good points and these bad points; we hope the bad points can be addressed by the final release."
Language like that clearly seems to keep the publisher happy as they're still getting official preview software. I don't think it's simply being diplomatic either -- what gamer doesn't hope the flaws will be fixed, and a great game released? In this sense, this sort of review actually helps the developer in many cases, by giving them an outside viewpoint on what needs to be focused on in the final development stages. It's not uncommon to read in the final review of the released games something like "the bad control we noted in our preview has thankfully been tightened up quite a bit, and is now pretty good."
I think the real answer to all this is for gamers to simply stop reading the crappy magazines/websites for their preview fix and start reading better ones -- they do exist.
"They didn't give us money, therefore they are evil!1!"
Uhhh-huh. I suspect their policy has more to do with easily avoiding fake charities than anything else. You may think your cause is obvious, but there are many con-men out there who are skillful at putting up an attractive front.
All of which serve to confuse a new programmer.
No, in my experience (watching people learn program) it does not -- rather in many cases it helps remove distractions. It is certainly useful to learn programming at a "lower level", as seeing the mechanism behind the abstractions can simply one's mental model in some cases, but often the dirty details are just that, and serve simply to distract from whatever is being taught (algorithm X).
Good CS programs generally use a healthy mixture of languages, both to give students breadth of understanding and to allow the emphasis to be on the concepts which are appropriate to each course.
Well, I'm no fan of java for my own use (I like C++ for "C type" stuff, and I'm far more fond of e.g., lisp family languages, for "GC'd no worries" stuff), but having helped people use it for college programming courses, it does seem to have appreciably fewer sharp edges in many ways than C++, without most of the bogosities of something like VB.
Some reasons:
I suppose having a link to one of those Free Mac Mini sites that I've had in my sig for the past 6 months makes me incapable of speaking about the subject.
It certainly puts your judgement in doubt...
It isn't a superficial examination -- I've lived in Japan for many years, and it's patently obvious everywhere you look.
That isn't to say that people aren't individuals (I wasn't suggesting the hive-mind thing was literally true!), or that people don't want to be individuals (there are many indicators, as you mention, which show that they do), but it's pretty clear that there's still a pervasive fundamental fear of taking individual action that might not be approved of by whatever group people identify with. People still seek to differentiate themselves, but almost always do so in a very safe manner, and usually via an "approved mechanism."
The above is a very broad generalization, and obviously it's a matter of degree -- this sort of thing also exists everywhere else too (people in general do want to fit in, and anyway how else do you explain Britney Spears?) -- but ultimately an American is probably far more likely to say "fuck you all" and really mean it.
[It's a common self-delusion among Japanese to say "Look at all the variation around (tick off a list of Noticeably Different subcultures) -- we are an individualistic society now!" It isn't true. Maybe it's more true now than many years ago (dunno about that), but the whole "group think" thing is not exactly dead...]
This potrayal of herd-mind (or hive-mind?) Asians on Slashdot has got to be the next big Slashdot meme. While it is true that Asians have historically more community minded that the West, community minded != groupthink.
Perhaps not, but it's absolutely true that there's a huge group-think thing going on, at least in Japan and Korea (the two countries I'm familiar with). ["Community minded", hahaha, now there's a euphemism for you! As far as I can see, the main factor is an unusually high degree of risk-aversion.]
This isn't to say that everybody is like that in those two countries, or that group-think isn't a factor in other countries -- obviously neither is true -- but stereotypes often have a basis in reality, I think this is one fo those cases.
And disgratulations (conpropulations?) to Everything2, the practically forgotten early attempt to pull off what Wikipedia has actually done.
... less stuffy).
Well the nice thing about E2 was that people were much more willing to put up weird, freaked-out, author-was-on-drugs entries, which gave E2 a much more free-wheeling air, in contrast with wikipedia's vaguely stuffy feel (though wikipedia's content seems
On the other hand, nobody on E2 ever seemed to write anything except weird, freaked-out, author-was-on-drugs entries...
"Meds" is a more colloquial term that hasn't caught on as much in my experience.
In fact, the only place I've seen it used has been in spam! [Really, no kidding]
You've obviously never made bread.
... I'd just do it on saturday or sunday and make sure I stuck around the house for a while).
:-)
I have -- a few years ago I used to make a several loaves a week (using just flour, water, eggs, yeast/sourdough and salt).
It's (1) utterly simple, and (2) takes about half an hour of real work. There's additional "waiting time" but you can obviously do other things then (this makes it less suitable for lifestyles where your schedule is always highly uncertain
Your original point is quite valid, but I'm not sure bread-making is a very good illustration of it...
It may be possible to repaint the computer but if they have the choice between your laptop and one that's unpainted they'll go for the unpainted one.
Yeah but a campus full of repulsive laptops, besides being a recruiting disaster, may well completely negate the intent behind the move to laptops in the first place -- a large part of that, I suspect, is "We'll look so l337!1!".
How about a nice Gyrotourbillon? It'll only set you back oh, maybe a quarter of a million USD. That or something with a minute repeater. Anything else is pure junk.
And judging from the pictures on that page, they're hand-made by Richard Stallman!
If Sony knows one thing, it's how to hype a product.
I think it's more accurate to say "If Kutaragi knows one thing, it's how to hype a product". Until Kutaragi came along, Sony was a very different company: very good industrial design, solid and sometimes innovative technology, understated marketing.
The PS line turned all that on its head, and given other changes which have loosened the company's traditional moorings (e.g. Sony's founder retiring), Sony itself seems to have drifted in that direction too. [It's hardly a sure thing -- apparently the "mainline" management at Sony loathes Kutaragi -- but I guess in the absence of a strong leader, they end up following the money in the end...]