It shouldn't make a huge difference, actually. Things like trees and faces are already rendered to a complexity beyond where it's reasonable to create them by hand. That's why there are 3rd-party utilities to render these things easily, with some simple inputs, like plugging a formula into a fractal generator. You don't have to hand-design an NPC's face any more than their parents had to piece their fetus together. You plug in the DNA and the code does the rest.
Go fix your management so that your employees do not have to work under pressure, instead of missing some really talented people than can't work in a frenzy environment.
If you've never had anything unexpectedly go wrong at a critical moment, then you've either not being doing this very long, or you don't work with computers.
FizzBuzz is great; we use it on every single interview for a programming position, regardless of experience. I've seen people come in with 10+ years of programming experience, and completely screw it up.
More importantly than just showing whether or not somebody can code, it shows whether or not they can handle simple tasks under pressure. I'm sure most of those applicants could have completed it at home when they're not being watched, but if they can't do it in an interview, then how are they going to perform on-site at a client, when a major bug just popped during a production push?
Some actually get it right. I just got disc 1 of The West Wing last night, and it had eight episodes on it. Being an hour long show with commercials, that's about 6 hours of content, not including commentary tracks. This tells me that any series putting less than 6 hours on a disc is ripping me off and creating unnecessary waste.
The current "big thing" with TV programs is to package them in seasons for sale on DVDs (sometimes along with Extras).
If this idea makes the jump to HD media (which is a reasonable assumption), then the extra space means less discs in the set, or the same number of discs with more space for extras.
This would sound like a really good point unless you've ever actually purchased or rented one of these DVD sets, and wondered why there's only two episodes on a disc. The reason for this is that you can charge more for a 5-disc set than you can for a 2-disc set. Even though the content is the same, the customer feels like they're getting more if they have a big box full of DVDs. Just take a look at the back of any TV series disc, and observe how much of the burned area is used. Usually it's only about 30% of the total disc area.
If they can already fit more content on these discs, there's no reason to believe they'll add additional content in the space Blu-Ray provides. If anything, they'll just throw more crap extras on there that nobody wants (like trivia games, previews, and links to their website, since the interesting stuff like interviews and behind the scenes footage costs money to create).
What's interesting about this drug, is that it seems to do something very similar to what people have been doing with polyphasic sleeping for years now. Basically, you only "need" 2 hours of sleep, but it has to be almost 100% REM. If you can trick your body into denying itself all the rest of the "unnecessary" sleep cycles, you can get by with just those two.
Polyphasic sleeping accomplishes this by limiting yourself to brief 15-20 minute naps, which are far more efficient than sleeping in large blocks because the brain can be trained to go directly into REM. Unfortunately, this training can take weeks or months (depending on how fastidious you are with your schedule), and the adjustment period can be extremely unpleasant.
"An entire third of your life will be spent not doing or experiencing anything."
that is not true, unlkess you are brain dead. Sleep provides what the brain needs.
There are two meaningful things accomplished in sleep: REM and tissue regeneration. You only need less than 2 hours of REM per night, and while it normally only occurs in certain cycles, your brain will go directly into those cycles if it needs to. This means you're capable of getting by on just 2 hours of sleep if it's mostly REM.
Tissue regeneration is a bit more tricky, because it only happens in the deep sleep cycles that precede REM. If you're a body builder, you should probably sleep significantly more than 2 hours per night, or you'll never regenerate the damaged tissue properly that allows you to grow stronger muscles.
If you're a flabby computer geek, chances are you receive very little muscle damage in a day. You could probably get by with 1 or 2 deep sleep cycles a week, like catching up with a full 8 hours every Sunday.
I thought the rule of thumb for any user-created content was to never allow freeform html? You either let them control their formatting with a separate markup (like BBCode), or you limit them to specific tags (like they do here). In neither of these situations is this exploit possible.
Allowing full html coding, including embedding java or javascript, is an invitation for the unscrupulous. That's one of the 500 reasons I can think of to never visit a website like myspace.
That said, much like language, the web is defined by its users. While I don't feel like it's Firefox's responsibility to fix issues like this, they'd do best to be aware of it. It wouldn't be a bad idea at all to tie password remembering to the exact url (at least everything up to the "?") by default.
They also misspelled "specifically" in the same paragraph, and since "specificall" isn't a word, this leads me to believe the proofreading of this article did not even include a simple spell checker.
Yes, you're absolutely correct. There are certain UI conventions that are completely unique to a particular OS, way beyond widgets. With java, it is the responsibility of the OS author and the VM author to cooperate and make sure developers are given the tools to make their apps aware of this.
To speak specifically of OSX, have a look at this document. A java application author who reads it carefully and follows the guidelines apple has set forth will find that their app fits perfectly in an OSX environment.
I agree with you that the majority of java apps are awful on any platform but the one the author used for development, but that is either due to laziness on the part of the developer, the os developer, and/or the vm developer.
It should be noted that this is not unique to java. A program can be written in just about any language that either ignores or overrides the OS's UI conventions. Heck, even Apple and Microsoft do it all the time.
Care to elucidate? Why does Write Once Run Anywhere mean a GUI doesn't make sense? Are you referring to the major UI differences between MacOS and most others, like having the menus in the bar at the top of the screen? If you write your java apps properly, they completely conform with the MacOS UI conventions when run on a mac. If you don't write them properly or don't care, then they'll be awful on a mac even if they have jellybean buttons.
Have a look at a large and well supported app like jEdit for an example of something that does it mostly right.
I discovered, through having kids, that you need 4 hours of uninterrupted sleep in order to be able to function.
While this is true for most people, the polyphasic technique works around it. Basically, the only part of that sleep that's neccesary for survival is the REM cycles. When your brain has adjusted to the polyphasic sleep method, you go directly into REM, skipping those other uneccesary deep sleep phases. This has the drawback of losing things like the ability to build new muscle mass, but for a guy like me or Bucky Fuller that's not really an issue.
But I still manage to wake up numerous times every night because the damn kid won't sleep. (maybe he's a polyphasic sleeper, he was up for 2 hours last night, at around 3 am, wanting to play).
Actually, this is pretty close to the truth. Most of the research done on polyphasic sleeping has built on studying infants and cats. The 8-hour nocturnal sleep phase is basically a learned behavior we developed to keep ourselves safe in a cave when we can't see a damn thing so we don't trip over that sabre toothed tiger. Infants don't bother because they haven't learned it yet. Cats don't bother because they're descended from that sabre toothed tiger.
Have you looked into polyphasic sleeping? Buckminster Fuller did it, so it's possible. In my own experiments I didn't have much luck with it, but I think it requires a bit more discipline than I've got as well as absinence from things like caffeine and alcohol.
I used to switch machines a lot, and I got in the habit of carrying a cd onto which I had burned a copy of my text editor, along with some other useful programs. With java apps on something like this, you can sit down on any computer running any common operating system and be able to get work done.
I don't move around so much anymore, but if I did I would probably put it on my mp3 player now, which I always have with me and functions as a usb drive. The new iPod shuffle and its clones we'll be seeing is even more suited to this sort of thing.
I forgot to mention that in my proposed perfect world everyone uses electric lawnmowers. Don't you know how bad 2-stroke engines are for the environment?
The publishers and investors demand it. After pumping millions of dollars into the incredibly long development process, they want a big chunk of change right away.
The basic model of MMOG income is that the box sales should pay for the development of the game, and the monthly fee pays for operating costs and future development, and what's left is profit.
Yeah, if I were smarter that's what I would do. But nonetheless, my example still stands of situations when someone can use a keygen for a legitimate non-copyright violating purpose.
You can use a gas can to huff gas, and in a perfect world you should never need one since you can fill your car directly at the station, so they should be illegal. But in reality, people screw up and run out of gas all the time, so they need gas cans despite their possibilies of being used to break the law.
When I bought the original HalfLife game years ago, it was shipped with a key that didn't work. I called support and they told me to fax a copy of the cd and case, which I had to go pay to do as I didn't have a fax machine, and they never followed up. I ended up just giving up and buying a second copy of the game because the store where I purchased it wouldn't accept a return. A cracked CD key would have saved me from having to buy the game again that I already legitimately owned.
I've also used keygens a couple times when going to replay a game I had uninstalled, or after a system upgrade. The key is usually printed on the jewel case or manual, which are easily misplaced, so to play the game I legitimately bought and even have the CD for, I need to get a new key.
The best part is that your powerbook won't even be able to run it!
I literally just got a brand new iBook from FedEx 20 minutes ago (haven't even cracked the box), and I see these system requirements telling me it's already obselete;)
A windows box that hasn't been patched since 1995, you say? Wow, I'm impressed! Hey, could you give me the IP so I can, you know, check it out and... um... admire it?
Slashdot Mirror
It shouldn't make a huge difference, actually. Things like trees and faces are already rendered to a complexity beyond where it's reasonable to create them by hand. That's why there are 3rd-party utilities to render these things easily, with some simple inputs, like plugging a formula into a fractal generator. You don't have to hand-design an NPC's face any more than their parents had to piece their fetus together. You plug in the DNA and the code does the rest.
You're hired. Seriously, send me an email if you're interested.
Go fix your management so that your employees do not have to work under pressure, instead of missing some really talented people than can't work in a frenzy environment.
If you've never had anything unexpectedly go wrong at a critical moment, then you've either not being doing this very long, or you don't work with computers.
FizzBuzz is great; we use it on every single interview for a programming position, regardless of experience. I've seen people come in with 10+ years of programming experience, and completely screw it up.
More importantly than just showing whether or not somebody can code, it shows whether or not they can handle simple tasks under pressure. I'm sure most of those applicants could have completed it at home when they're not being watched, but if they can't do it in an interview, then how are they going to perform on-site at a client, when a major bug just popped during a production push?
Some actually get it right. I just got disc 1 of The West Wing last night, and it had eight episodes on it. Being an hour long show with commercials, that's about 6 hours of content, not including commentary tracks. This tells me that any series putting less than 6 hours on a disc is ripping me off and creating unnecessary waste.
This would sound like a really good point unless you've ever actually purchased or rented one of these DVD sets, and wondered why there's only two episodes on a disc. The reason for this is that you can charge more for a 5-disc set than you can for a 2-disc set. Even though the content is the same, the customer feels like they're getting more if they have a big box full of DVDs. Just take a look at the back of any TV series disc, and observe how much of the burned area is used. Usually it's only about 30% of the total disc area.
If they can already fit more content on these discs, there's no reason to believe they'll add additional content in the space Blu-Ray provides. If anything, they'll just throw more crap extras on there that nobody wants (like trivia games, previews, and links to their website, since the interesting stuff like interviews and behind the scenes footage costs money to create).
What's interesting about this drug, is that it seems to do something very similar to what people have been doing with polyphasic sleeping for years now. Basically, you only "need" 2 hours of sleep, but it has to be almost 100% REM. If you can trick your body into denying itself all the rest of the "unnecessary" sleep cycles, you can get by with just those two.
Polyphasic sleeping accomplishes this by limiting yourself to brief 15-20 minute naps, which are far more efficient than sleeping in large blocks because the brain can be trained to go directly into REM. Unfortunately, this training can take weeks or months (depending on how fastidious you are with your schedule), and the adjustment period can be extremely unpleasant.
A drug like this could be very useful for those of us who do don't experience much physical exertion and sleep very little as it is anyways, but couldn't get past the adjustment hump of the polyphasic cycle.
"An entire third of your life will be spent not doing or experiencing anything."
that is not true, unlkess you are brain dead. Sleep provides what the brain needs.
There are two meaningful things accomplished in sleep: REM and tissue regeneration. You only need less than 2 hours of REM per night, and while it normally only occurs in certain cycles, your brain will go directly into those cycles if it needs to. This means you're capable of getting by on just 2 hours of sleep if it's mostly REM.
Tissue regeneration is a bit more tricky, because it only happens in the deep sleep cycles that precede REM. If you're a body builder, you should probably sleep significantly more than 2 hours per night, or you'll never regenerate the damaged tissue properly that allows you to grow stronger muscles.
If you're a flabby computer geek, chances are you receive very little muscle damage in a day. You could probably get by with 1 or 2 deep sleep cycles a week, like catching up with a full 8 hours every Sunday.
I thought the rule of thumb for any user-created content was to never allow freeform html? You either let them control their formatting with a separate markup (like BBCode), or you limit them to specific tags (like they do here). In neither of these situations is this exploit possible.
Allowing full html coding, including embedding java or javascript, is an invitation for the unscrupulous. That's one of the 500 reasons I can think of to never visit a website like myspace.
That said, much like language, the web is defined by its users. While I don't feel like it's Firefox's responsibility to fix issues like this, they'd do best to be aware of it. It wouldn't be a bad idea at all to tie password remembering to the exact url (at least everything up to the "?") by default.
They also misspelled "specifically" in the same paragraph, and since "specificall" isn't a word, this leads me to believe the proofreading of this article did not even include a simple spell checker.
I'd say it's pretty much on par with the content.
If they meow when you click on them, I'm sold!
I'm still holding out for Quantum Checkboxes. Let me know when somebody comes up with one that fully supports "maybe" and we'll talk.
Yes, you're absolutely correct. There are certain UI conventions that are completely unique to a particular OS, way beyond widgets. With java, it is the responsibility of the OS author and the VM author to cooperate and make sure developers are given the tools to make their apps aware of this.
To speak specifically of OSX, have a look at this document. A java application author who reads it carefully and follows the guidelines apple has set forth will find that their app fits perfectly in an OSX environment.
I agree with you that the majority of java apps are awful on any platform but the one the author used for development, but that is either due to laziness on the part of the developer, the os developer, and/or the vm developer.
It should be noted that this is not unique to java. A program can be written in just about any language that either ignores or overrides the OS's UI conventions. Heck, even Apple and Microsoft do it all the time.
you cannot WORA and have GUI make sense
Care to elucidate? Why does Write Once Run Anywhere mean a GUI doesn't make sense? Are you referring to the major UI differences between MacOS and most others, like having the menus in the bar at the top of the screen? If you write your java apps properly, they completely conform with the MacOS UI conventions when run on a mac. If you don't write them properly or don't care, then they'll be awful on a mac even if they have jellybean buttons.
Have a look at a large and well supported app like jEdit for an example of something that does it mostly right.
Um, it looks like you didn't RTFA either. They claim they will actually be using the native API to render the components in Microsoft and GTK.
And if you'd rather it look completely different so that it doesn't bug you, that's what the "Metal" L&F is for.
I discovered, through having kids, that you need 4 hours of uninterrupted sleep in order to be able to function.
While this is true for most people, the polyphasic technique works around it. Basically, the only part of that sleep that's neccesary for survival is the REM cycles. When your brain has adjusted to the polyphasic sleep method, you go directly into REM, skipping those other uneccesary deep sleep phases. This has the drawback of losing things like the ability to build new muscle mass, but for a guy like me or Bucky Fuller that's not really an issue.
But I still manage to wake up numerous times every night because the damn kid won't sleep. (maybe he's a polyphasic sleeper, he was up for 2 hours last night, at around 3 am, wanting to play).
Actually, this is pretty close to the truth. Most of the research done on polyphasic sleeping has built on studying infants and cats. The 8-hour nocturnal sleep phase is basically a learned behavior we developed to keep ourselves safe in a cave when we can't see a damn thing so we don't trip over that sabre toothed tiger. Infants don't bother because they haven't learned it yet. Cats don't bother because they're descended from that sabre toothed tiger.
Have you looked into polyphasic sleeping? Buckminster Fuller did it, so it's possible. In my own experiments I didn't have much luck with it, but I think it requires a bit more discipline than I've got as well as absinence from things like caffeine and alcohol.
I used to switch machines a lot, and I got in the habit of carrying a cd onto which I had burned a copy of my text editor, along with some other useful programs. With java apps on something like this, you can sit down on any computer running any common operating system and be able to get work done.
I don't move around so much anymore, but if I did I would probably put it on my mp3 player now, which I always have with me and functions as a usb drive. The new iPod shuffle and its clones we'll be seeing is even more suited to this sort of thing.
Mod parent up! BAHAHAHAHA!
I forgot to mention that in my proposed perfect world everyone uses electric lawnmowers. Don't you know how bad 2-stroke engines are for the environment?
The publishers and investors demand it. After pumping millions of dollars into the incredibly long development process, they want a big chunk of change right away.
The basic model of MMOG income is that the box sales should pay for the development of the game, and the monthly fee pays for operating costs and future development, and what's left is profit.
Yeah, if I were smarter that's what I would do. But nonetheless, my example still stands of situations when someone can use a keygen for a legitimate non-copyright violating purpose.
You can use a gas can to huff gas, and in a perfect world you should never need one since you can fill your car directly at the station, so they should be illegal. But in reality, people screw up and run out of gas all the time, so they need gas cans despite their possibilies of being used to break the law.
When I bought the original HalfLife game years ago, it was shipped with a key that didn't work. I called support and they told me to fax a copy of the cd and case, which I had to go pay to do as I didn't have a fax machine, and they never followed up. I ended up just giving up and buying a second copy of the game because the store where I purchased it wouldn't accept a return. A cracked CD key would have saved me from having to buy the game again that I already legitimately owned.
I've also used keygens a couple times when going to replay a game I had uninstalled, or after a system upgrade. The key is usually printed on the jewel case or manual, which are easily misplaced, so to play the game I legitimately bought and even have the CD for, I need to get a new key.
The best part is that your powerbook won't even be able to run it!
;)
I literally just got a brand new iBook from FedEx 20 minutes ago (haven't even cracked the box), and I see these system requirements telling me it's already obselete
A windows box that hasn't been patched since 1995, you say? Wow, I'm impressed! Hey, could you give me the IP so I can, you know, check it out and ... um ... admire it?