I know Slashdot has never been a place you trust unquestioningly for your news, not that trusting any source unquestionably is a good idea, but is it just me or have the editor's knees been getting a much better workout over the past couple of months?
Based on my understandings of the problem, just looking at the current YRO frontpage, two of the last four stories have blurbs that are just plain wrong ("Courts Overturn FCC - Return of the Monopoly?", "Do You Have A License For Those Facts?" (my debunking and I'm a certified IP wonk). One of the others ("MSN Search Blocking Results For XFree86?") didn't really have enough data to prove or disprove (so it's probably not worth the 868 comments it attracted).
Now this article, where I think the blurb is deceptive enough to constitute being "wrong".
Slashdot editors, you are getting sloppy and going from moderate benefit (at least it provided some reasonably centralized source of information) to positive menace. Please, either spend more time digging into these stories, or stop posting the blurbs. You can disclaim responsibility for the accuracy of the stories until you're blue in the face, but the fact is that posting does constitute some degree of approval, since there is a selection process.
This is an intervention. Please stop damaging our cause. You're marginalizing all of us who are legitimately concerned about the way things are going when you post so much obviously wrong stuff under the guise of "being on our side".
(At least do us the courtesy of starting to shill for the RIAA and MPAA if you don't want to be bothered with improving your accuracy.)
Hrm, how much real world experience do you really have?
I worked for three years in the human resources department at a Big Ten University implementing mission-critical web applications, then a year as a TA (probably not helpful, I know), then another year and some working on a large-scale Learning Content Management system in use by thousands of students. In each of those positions, I was not working as an 'intern' on disposable code, there is code central to the functioning of the system that is still in use to this day. When I transitioned into a "real job", it wasn't much of a change at all.
and I think it's a little bit condescending of you to assume that the only reason why you can't find a job is because everyone else is cheating, since you're clearly such a superior candidate
Your logic skills are faulty. I didn't say I'm the best ever. I said that my honest resume was competing with a lot of padded resumes. Unless I'm literally in the 99.9'th percentile, which I'm not currently, that's never a good thing. Babbling about job outsourcing in this context is meaningless; the job(s) I was applying for weren't being outsourced.
Oh, and your reading skills are faulty, too: I'm not looking for a job, I have a job. The guys with the padded resumes bombed their interviews. I didn't.
Are you sure nobody is complaining? Sometimes, people don't "complain", they just silently change their purchasing/consuming habits. Haven't you seen the stories on Slashdot where people are spending time on the web or with video games, taking the time out of their television viewing?
That is even better than complaining.
DiVX, the Circuit City self-destructing DVD technology, in the end wasn't killed by geek complaints. It was killed by people who didn't buy it. (Sometimes, the "sheeple" aren't. "Sheeple" is mostly a term for feeling yourself superior anyhow, but I digress....) DVDs, IMHO, have already crossed the line of what people will tolerate, as evidenced by being forced to back down from forced previews to allowing people to skip them. Don't expect them to get any worse, or if they do, expect rapid punishment exacted on the offending studio by the market.
I'd not bet on it yet but it is a perfectly plausible outcome that by 2006 or 2007, no broadcaster will use the flag, because they can't afford the viewership loss! PVRs aren't going away over the next year. The Internet isn't going away. Video games certainly aren't going away. The optimal time for TV to pull this shit was about four years ago; now too many people have tasted the "forbidden fruit" of interactive media, especially PVRs, and many of them are already choosing to decrease their TV usage, before the TV industry implements the squeezing! (If you've got the disposable funds, buy your representatives a TiVo; that donation will probably have a greater effect then anything else you could do with the money.)
Oh, there's valid reason for concern and I still would like to see a lawsuit that labels this as unconstutitional restriction on our speech, and personally I find attempts to control viewers who aren't sharing effectively unethical. The fight should be fought... but I'm pretty sure that in this arena, we've already won. The TV industry would like to think otherwise, but they are, in the end, dispensible now. Viable alternatives exist and most of them are one-way transitions for the people who try them; the television's only choice now is between declining slowly and maintaining a real but smaller existance, or throwing a hissy fit until we starve them as a society. (No laws necessary; we can't be forced to watch TV barring a sudden UK-like tax law.)
if 99% of all calls were prank calls, should the phone company be required to do something about it?
"Requiring them to do something about it" is not the same as "Holding them liable for the actions". And by "something" you'd better mean something specific, not just "Flail about as your lawyers think is appropriate, based on our vague and fuzzy laws".
I wonder if Microsoft, if this theory is true, has completely considered the downsides? Suppose after all this foo-fa-rah that a court definatively determines there is no violation in Linux? All of a sudden, it becomes a demonstration of how strong Linux is, because look at the onslaught it survived after all.
Short-term it's all gain for Microsoft. Long term, it could be a loss, leaving Linux even stronger with people even more convinced of its validity.
Eric's lost enough credibility lately that it might actually fly.
Do not mistake "Getting flamed by Open Source fanboys" after he posts something that isn't 100% approving of Open Source or "Nasty comments from jealous geeks on Slashdot" for "losing credibility".
I for one still respect him a lot and consider him credible. Don't worship him, but I never did and I don't worship anybody around here.
In what way has Eric actually said something that is obviously false (and his opinions don't count when clearly labelled as opinions or personal experience!), or done something that has actually defrauded people? Short of those things, his credibility with thinking people won't be going anywhere. (I can't speak for him but I doubt he's too worried about his credibility with non-thinking people.)
And I don't want to work for you. You jump to conclusions based on fragments and obvious hyperbole. You assume "sexism", even for statements that empirically most likely true. You don't understand that programmers need to have quiet time to get to "the flow" and work effectively.
Recommendation: Please, don't hire me.
To be fair, I think you're trying to score a few quick "+1, Funny" moderations, and I understand this. Turnabout's fair play.
(Meta-point: People are human. I defy you to find one person over the age of 20 who has not said at some point "I want to shoot" somebody. As Google research becomes more widespread, it's important for researchers to remember that they aren't necessarily researching how somebody will be in business, they're seeing them in a wide variety of situations, from professional (mailing lists for commercial professional software), through social and maybe semi-professional (Slashdot), through at home and with it "all hanging out" (game mailing lists, personal websites). Again, anybody who expects me to be "professional" for some unsuitably strict definition of "professional" 24/7 had better expect to pay me for that; I'd lay money it's not a standard that they hold themselves to, after all!
By the way, did I mention that I prefer honesty when dealing with people?)
It's a nifty idea, but I think the developers didn't think this one out completely.
you'll realize the fights boil down you yelling a set of commands, "Shoot, shoot, shoot!" "left" "dodge" and "reload" a whole lot.
This is stupid. Voice is a much more symbolic control scheme then a control pad. If this is the majority of the voice commands, then leave the controls on the pad.
Voice and words are a much more symbolic medium then clicks and button presses; we call it "point and grunt" for a reason. Converting the "grunt" into a word is not progress. What you really need is something more like the old Infocom games, which was a "native" word game. You never/rarely said "Walk forward six inches"; instead it was "Put the lamp on the oven".
The best use of this technology is to bring back the adventure game on the console with the rich verb set of the old Infocom games, without requiring any typing which puts off anybody who can speak more quickly then they type. The worst use of this technology is to convert button presses into voice commands. Sounds like this title did a little of both, but the latter can rapidly overwhelm the former.
I want employers to research me. Please! This will be especially true after I've got my next project off the ground, which barring catastrophe should be before I'm job hunting again.
So many of you are padding your resumes (yes, you... knock it off!) that it makes it hard for me to get into the "interview" stack. I don't believe in padding the resume (and besides, if I padded it it would become downright unbelievable... yes, I actually do know those ten languages fairly well, even if I am just a recent college grad, am I supposed to claim 20? As it is there are already some skills I'm deliberately not adding because they're not really good enough to justify it), and I need some way to let you know that I really have the skills I mention.
For instance, I claim the ability to write coherently. Anybody can write coherently for the length of one resume, all that takes is the help of a friend. Get to my website and you'll see that I really can write even large, book-length essays reasonably well. You can find my code and download it.
If anyone's not going to hire me because of my opinions, which are mostly "ethics are good" and a general technolibertarian slant, then I don't want to work for them. (In my case, this is unlikely to be an issue, since my strongest opinions are "YRO"-type issues and all that really eliminates from consideration are surveillance technologies I couldn't work on anyhow. YMMV due to differing opinions.)
How else am I going to rise above all your padded resumes?
(I've heard that in my current job I was the third of three candidates after the final screening. Our resumes were virtually identical, but I was fresh out of college with a Masters degree (actually I had significant work experience, easily three year's worth of a full-time job, but it's hard to get over the "fresh out of college" stigma), while the other two had many years of industry experience. Fortunately, when they were interviewed, they bombed, because the resumes were padded, and mine wasn't. Padded resumes may get you interviews, but you should almost hope they don't get you a job; you'll be in over your head in no time if you're hired on the basis of one.)
(And a note: I can write, but that doesn't mean I give my best stuff to Slashdot or spend forever proof-reading my posts; why bother? I'm sure you can find errors in here. Save your sarcastic jokes; I'm claiming I can write, not write perfect rough drafts into a Mozilla text box.)
Commercial programmer. OK at first, but eventually I was just doing the same old stuff again and again.
I mean no direct offense, but this may be part of the problem. In general, a programmer should never feel like they are doing the same old stuff over and over again, unless they are being absolutely micromanaged and forced, nearly at gunpoint.
I've been in "IT" for coming up on eight years now, and I've never felt I'm doing the same thing over and over again; for me that's one of the main attractions. This despite the fact that I've now designed at least three organizations sites with dynamic this and interactive that and database the other thing. Each time it's been different.
BoredomIsaSmell. If you're repeating, it's time to automate away the repetition, which is itself generally interesting. As frustrating as my job is sometimes, I'm not sure there's much else I could do; every day is something different.
This holds for "Programmer" (which you claimed you were) and Unix-based tech support. I could never be Windows support; automation exists but is too patchy and incomplete without too much effort.
It is not a crime or necessarily a bad thing, but programming isn't for everyone.
I want to examine it for the feasibility of placing my address and phone number into such a database, possibility together with other people (to reach some "size" criterion), and claim that since the facts in this database are copyrighted, nobody may use them against my(/our) will.
As the copyright laws get more and more snarled, it may get more and more messy, but that means there will be more and more opportunities to do GPL-style judo against the "status quo", using their own restrictive regimes against them.
IANAL, but I would expect a preliminary injunction against the use of the software is very unlikely. It would destroy AutoZone, which is a strong no-no, and continued use creates no new damage, technically, and certainly nothing that can't be adequately addressed via a larger fine in the end. I wouldn't expect SCO to get any injunctions at all against AutoZone.
This seems a great time to remind you that it's like this everywhere. When reading news articles in fields you aren't intimately familiar with, make sure to take them all with the same grain of salt you're reading SCO stories with. Because they are all of roughly similar accuracy.
For the record... (the >>> indicates I'm running this in the interpreter, and allows you to seperate what I'm entering vs. the interpreter output; if you've got it installed and if you're on Linux you probably do, type 'python' and you can follow along...)
Note that Python explicitly is not written to minimize keystrokes; if you're choosing languages bear that in mind. In my experience, this is a good thing (I tend to get it right the first time much more often) but of course YMMV.
The "r" in front of the RE expression indicates a "raw" string, which tells Python that the backslashes are literal for everything except \\ and \". This makes it easier to write RE expressions. I could also have written
>>>r = re.compile("(\\d+):(\\d+)")
but that is less readable.
Personally, I slightly prefer RE's not really being treated specially, but at least in Ruby it looks like they can be passed around as first-order objects; the gyrations this takes in Perl is annoying.
but ruby has a CPAN-like institution called RAA and raa-install (the ruby version of "perl -MCPAN -e shell"). Does python have something similar?
No, but at this point the only reason for that is that they are typically not necessary. In Perl, when I need to get anything done I need to install 10 or 20 CPAN modules. Generally, in Python, they came with the interpreter and I only need to install two or three. This is why no similar thing has emerged.
(This is going on the "People are in general equally smart"... if Python needed such a thing it would exist. It doesn't, therefore it is a reasonable conclusion that it is not needed. It's not "logically rigorous" but it's a fairly good guess.)
I don't recall claiming that Ruby sigils indicate type. I seem to recall claiming they exist.
I also don't recall claiming that they "obfuscate" code. I seem to recall claiming that I don't like them, and if you also feel that way you won't want Ruby.
Please read what I said, not what you expected me to say, it's better for all of us.
Consensus gestalt that I've gotten as a Python user and reading a lot of debates on this topic is that structurally, Ruby is a little more pure OO then Python, but the practical differences seem minimal, especially after the type/class unification in Python. (Ruby advocates are proud of their block syntax but I'm yet to see something I don't immediately know how to write in Python, too; the question is which fits your mind better.)
Syntactically, Ruby is more like Perl. If you consider sigils an abomination upon the land, as I do (despite working professionally in Perl), then you'll want Python. If you consider them Larry Wall's gift to syntax, then you'll want Ruby.
The other thing is, if you're expecting to use a library of some kind, check for availability. Python has the edge right now AFAIK but that doesn't matter unless Python has something that Ruby doesn't that you need, or vice versa; for most people my impression is that the necessary modules are there in both languages.
I wasn't going to say this, but after reading a few of the comments here I've changed my mind.
The name Rubyx conveys a little too much "Ruby fanboy" vibe. It's a Linux distribution, yet the name doesn't mention it and the website gives only cursory mention of this fact, which borders on the deceptive. I want to emphasize that I mean these things exactly as I say... a little too much fanboy vibe, borders on the deceptive. It's not irredeemably bad, but I do have to say at the moment I'm having a hard time respecting the project.
In fact this could well hurt even the Ruby advocacy side of the project by scaring people off, thinking they'll need to know Ruby to install, when instead it looks like Yet Another Linux Distribution.
I mean this as constructive criticism. To the project leaders, I strongly recommend that you more carefully evaluate the goals of the project, more clearly partition the "Ruby" concept from the "Linux Distribution" concept, and determine whether your goals justify the seemingly over-strong focus on Ruby. Yes, I know Ruby lovers have a bit of a persecution complex, I recognize this in myself as I like Python and see the same in the Python community, but in the long run you're going to get more real respect by building a real project on Ruby and discreetly pointing out that it runs on Ruby then by shouting out in the streets that THIS RUBY DISTRIBUTION OF RUBYX IS MADE POSSIBLE BY RUBY, THAT WONDERFUL (RUBY) LANGUAGE! (Yes, this time I'm exaggerating for dramatic effect; again I emphasize I'm not claiming the site actually sounds like this but the tone is definately there.)
I don't want to be accused of irrational advocacy of any particular distribution, but for the record, everything you mention in your posts already exists in at least one very popular distribution, and probably more.
Perhaps you should poke around the existing world a bit more. If you've only tried one distro odds are good you haven't found your match. Red Hat(/Fedora), Gentoo, and Debian are probably good ways to sample the major ways of doing distros; each has a fairly different philosophy and is large enough to have good implementations of the philosophy in running code. OK, I'm a Gentoo myself, and that's the distro I was referring to above, but they are all good distros and I've had the opportunity to use them all lately from start to finish, and they are all fine choices.
(I think Debian meets all your requirements too, but I'm not too sure about the multi-gcc one. I'd expect it is but there might not be a built-in switcher. Gentoo has 'gcc-config', which works as you describe, and also has a pretty clear "configuration files based on system-wide settings", the USE flags. Fedora I'd have to check on; I don't how clean you could make source integration but good package management in it is definately possible if you use yum in addition to rpm; rpm alone kinda sucks but with yum it's OK. I don't think multiple gcc's works well in Fedora, but I could be wrong. If you have a source RPM I believe it's rpmbuild --rebuild [source RPM] but I don't have Fedora handy to look at the man pages; corrections welcome on anything in this paragraph. I've used them all but I wasn't looking for these specific things.)
Why is "landing on Mars" playing God when "exploring another continent" isn't?
Or do you live where all your ancestors have lived since the beginning of life itself?
And what is "Playing God", anyhow? I've never heard a coherent definition that doesn't boil down to "living life normally".
(There are legitimate ethical concerns here. I'm saying "playing God" isn't a useful way to think about them. We are. We exist. By existing, we affect the Universe around us. By not existing, we affect the Universe around us. This is just sloppy thinking.)
So if we assess the life on Mars to some adequate degree, collecting the information we can't after we step foot on the planet, you'd be OK with then settling it? (After all it's not like we settle the entire planet at once and there's still room for significant untainted work even after that point.)
FWIW, that's my call on the issue too, so this isn't intended as antagonistic. I just find that too many people hold this position due to a knee-jerk environmentalism, which if examined, rests on axioms that don't apply to Mars. Thus, the knee-jerk reactions often differ from what the person would really think if they sat down for a bit and thought about the issue, starting from whatever axioms they hold dear.
Speaking as a thoughtful Christian who still holds some of the beliefs that many of my Slashdot bretheren would take great pleasure in savaging... I've asked myself a few times what it would take to firmly disprove my religion, short of dying. For instance, a device that can "look back" in time and disprove the Ressurection once and for all. (Without that, we have nothing; that's said directly by Paul in the Bible.)
Encountering an intelligent, human-or-above race with absolutely no conception of God as I know him, and absolutely no conception of such anywhere in their history (perhaps they've strayed, after all), is another one. The logic is hard to verbalize but at least for myself it would be a deathblow. It is possible that something in the encounter would cause some other belief to be viable (perhaps they had some other conception that clearly showed ours to be a misinterpretation), and I can see middle grounds where it would a toss-up, but if they were clearly 100% atheistic and always had been, that would leave my faith in tatters.
On a somewhat weaker note, I don't expect to actually meet any extraterrestrials in this life; Original Sin is clearly highly contagious and we should be kept isolated. There's been some science fiction in similar veins. On the "100% confirmation" note, it would be interesting if we encountered a race that had no original sin. Regardless, while I can't speculate what would happen well until it actually happens, meeting extraterrestrial intelligent life would have some effect on me.
Non-intelligent life doesn't faze me in the slightest; besides, it may still be of Earthly origin even if it's on Mars. If life is found and it has identical DNA (same acids, et. al.), that will be the most likely conclusion, that both planets have the same basic source of life, carried via cosmic events like asteroid impacts. (Which planet it started on would probably be absolutely impossible to determine, if it turns out both were capable of supporting life at roughly the same time.)
We don't need to contaminate Mars with the Earth Bacteria that a manned mission would introduce until we are sure there is a very low probility of finding living independantly evolved life.
Why?
(Don't dismiss this. It's a hard question. Give it some thought.)
Slashdot Mirror
My apologies. I meant to say it didn't have enough information in it to prove any kind of intent. Insert dasmegabyte's sibling post here.
I know Slashdot has never been a place you trust unquestioningly for your news, not that trusting any source unquestionably is a good idea, but is it just me or have the editor's knees been getting a much better workout over the past couple of months?
Based on my understandings of the problem, just looking at the current YRO frontpage, two of the last four stories have blurbs that are just plain wrong ("Courts Overturn FCC - Return of the Monopoly?", "Do You Have A License For Those Facts?" (my debunking and I'm a certified IP wonk). One of the others ("MSN Search Blocking Results For XFree86?") didn't really have enough data to prove or disprove (so it's probably not worth the 868 comments it attracted).
Now this article, where I think the blurb is deceptive enough to constitute being "wrong".
Slashdot editors, you are getting sloppy and going from moderate benefit (at least it provided some reasonably centralized source of information) to positive menace. Please, either spend more time digging into these stories, or stop posting the blurbs. You can disclaim responsibility for the accuracy of the stories until you're blue in the face, but the fact is that posting does constitute some degree of approval, since there is a selection process.
This is an intervention. Please stop damaging our cause. You're marginalizing all of us who are legitimately concerned about the way things are going when you post so much obviously wrong stuff under the guise of "being on our side".
(At least do us the courtesy of starting to shill for the RIAA and MPAA if you don't want to be bothered with improving your accuracy.)
Hrm, how much real world experience do you really have?
I worked for three years in the human resources department at a Big Ten University implementing mission-critical web applications, then a year as a TA (probably not helpful, I know), then another year and some working on a large-scale Learning Content Management system in use by thousands of students. In each of those positions, I was not working as an 'intern' on disposable code, there is code central to the functioning of the system that is still in use to this day. When I transitioned into a "real job", it wasn't much of a change at all.
and I think it's a little bit condescending of you to assume that the only reason why you can't find a job is because everyone else is cheating, since you're clearly such a superior candidate
Your logic skills are faulty. I didn't say I'm the best ever. I said that my honest resume was competing with a lot of padded resumes. Unless I'm literally in the 99.9'th percentile, which I'm not currently, that's never a good thing. Babbling about job outsourcing in this context is meaningless; the job(s) I was applying for weren't being outsourced.
Oh, and your reading skills are faulty, too: I'm not looking for a job, I have a job. The guys with the padded resumes bombed their interviews. I didn't.
Reading Is Fundamental, you know.
And so far, no one is complaining. So sad.
Are you sure nobody is complaining? Sometimes, people don't "complain", they just silently change their purchasing/consuming habits. Haven't you seen the stories on Slashdot where people are spending time on the web or with video games, taking the time out of their television viewing?
That is even better than complaining.
DiVX, the Circuit City self-destructing DVD technology, in the end wasn't killed by geek complaints. It was killed by people who didn't buy it. (Sometimes, the "sheeple" aren't. "Sheeple" is mostly a term for feeling yourself superior anyhow, but I digress....) DVDs, IMHO, have already crossed the line of what people will tolerate, as evidenced by being forced to back down from forced previews to allowing people to skip them. Don't expect them to get any worse, or if they do, expect rapid punishment exacted on the offending studio by the market.
I'd not bet on it yet but it is a perfectly plausible outcome that by 2006 or 2007, no broadcaster will use the flag, because they can't afford the viewership loss! PVRs aren't going away over the next year. The Internet isn't going away. Video games certainly aren't going away. The optimal time for TV to pull this shit was about four years ago; now too many people have tasted the "forbidden fruit" of interactive media, especially PVRs, and many of them are already choosing to decrease their TV usage, before the TV industry implements the squeezing! (If you've got the disposable funds, buy your representatives a TiVo; that donation will probably have a greater effect then anything else you could do with the money.)
Oh, there's valid reason for concern and I still would like to see a lawsuit that labels this as unconstutitional restriction on our speech, and personally I find attempts to control viewers who aren't sharing effectively unethical. The fight should be fought... but I'm pretty sure that in this arena, we've already won. The TV industry would like to think otherwise, but they are, in the end, dispensible now. Viable alternatives exist and most of them are one-way transitions for the people who try them; the television's only choice now is between declining slowly and maintaining a real but smaller existance, or throwing a hissy fit until we starve them as a society. (No laws necessary; we can't be forced to watch TV barring a sudden UK-like tax law.)
if 99% of all calls were prank calls, should the phone company be required to do something about it?
"Requiring them to do something about it" is not the same as "Holding them liable for the actions". And by "something" you'd better mean something specific, not just "Flail about as your lawyers think is appropriate, based on our vague and fuzzy laws".
Does it atleast allow me to stream video out to a bigger monitor/TV?
Here's your answer: It costs $99.
I wonder if Microsoft, if this theory is true, has completely considered the downsides? Suppose after all this foo-fa-rah that a court definatively determines there is no violation in Linux? All of a sudden, it becomes a demonstration of how strong Linux is, because look at the onslaught it survived after all.
Short-term it's all gain for Microsoft. Long term, it could be a loss, leaving Linux even stronger with people even more convinced of its validity.
Eric's lost enough credibility lately that it might actually fly.
Do not mistake "Getting flamed by Open Source fanboys" after he posts something that isn't 100% approving of Open Source or "Nasty comments from jealous geeks on Slashdot" for "losing credibility".
I for one still respect him a lot and consider him credible. Don't worship him, but I never did and I don't worship anybody around here.
In what way has Eric actually said something that is obviously false (and his opinions don't count when clearly labelled as opinions or personal experience!), or done something that has actually defrauded people? Short of those things, his credibility with thinking people won't be going anywhere. (I can't speak for him but I doubt he's too worried about his credibility with non-thinking people.)
And I don't want to work for you. You jump to conclusions based on fragments and obvious hyperbole. You assume "sexism", even for statements that empirically most likely true. You don't understand that programmers need to have quiet time to get to "the flow" and work effectively.
Recommendation: Please, don't hire me.
To be fair, I think you're trying to score a few quick "+1, Funny" moderations, and I understand this. Turnabout's fair play.
(Meta-point: People are human. I defy you to find one person over the age of 20 who has not said at some point "I want to shoot" somebody. As Google research becomes more widespread, it's important for researchers to remember that they aren't necessarily researching how somebody will be in business, they're seeing them in a wide variety of situations, from professional (mailing lists for commercial professional software), through social and maybe semi-professional (Slashdot), through at home and with it "all hanging out" (game mailing lists, personal websites). Again, anybody who expects me to be "professional" for some unsuitably strict definition of "professional" 24/7 had better expect to pay me for that; I'd lay money it's not a standard that they hold themselves to, after all!
By the way, did I mention that I prefer honesty when dealing with people?)
It's a nifty idea, but I think the developers didn't think this one out completely.
you'll realize the fights boil down you yelling a set of commands, "Shoot, shoot, shoot!" "left" "dodge" and "reload" a whole lot.
This is stupid. Voice is a much more symbolic control scheme then a control pad. If this is the majority of the voice commands, then leave the controls on the pad.
Voice and words are a much more symbolic medium then clicks and button presses; we call it "point and grunt" for a reason. Converting the "grunt" into a word is not progress. What you really need is something more like the old Infocom games, which was a "native" word game. You never/rarely said "Walk forward six inches"; instead it was "Put the lamp on the oven".
The best use of this technology is to bring back the adventure game on the console with the rich verb set of the old Infocom games, without requiring any typing which puts off anybody who can speak more quickly then they type. The worst use of this technology is to convert button presses into voice commands. Sounds like this title did a little of both, but the latter can rapidly overwhelm the former.
I want employers to research me. Please! This will be especially true after I've got my next project off the ground, which barring catastrophe should be before I'm job hunting again.
So many of you are padding your resumes (yes, you... knock it off!) that it makes it hard for me to get into the "interview" stack. I don't believe in padding the resume (and besides, if I padded it it would become downright unbelievable... yes, I actually do know those ten languages fairly well, even if I am just a recent college grad, am I supposed to claim 20? As it is there are already some skills I'm deliberately not adding because they're not really good enough to justify it), and I need some way to let you know that I really have the skills I mention.
For instance, I claim the ability to write coherently. Anybody can write coherently for the length of one resume, all that takes is the help of a friend. Get to my website and you'll see that I really can write even large, book-length essays reasonably well. You can find my code and download it.
If anyone's not going to hire me because of my opinions, which are mostly "ethics are good" and a general technolibertarian slant, then I don't want to work for them. (In my case, this is unlikely to be an issue, since my strongest opinions are "YRO"-type issues and all that really eliminates from consideration are surveillance technologies I couldn't work on anyhow. YMMV due to differing opinions.)
How else am I going to rise above all your padded resumes?
(I've heard that in my current job I was the third of three candidates after the final screening. Our resumes were virtually identical, but I was fresh out of college with a Masters degree (actually I had significant work experience, easily three year's worth of a full-time job, but it's hard to get over the "fresh out of college" stigma), while the other two had many years of industry experience. Fortunately, when they were interviewed, they bombed, because the resumes were padded, and mine wasn't. Padded resumes may get you interviews, but you should almost hope they don't get you a job; you'll be in over your head in no time if you're hired on the basis of one.)
(And a note: I can write, but that doesn't mean I give my best stuff to Slashdot or spend forever proof-reading my posts; why bother? I'm sure you can find errors in here. Save your sarcastic jokes; I'm claiming I can write, not write perfect rough drafts into a Mozilla text box.)
Commercial programmer. OK at first, but eventually I was just doing the same old stuff again and again.
I mean no direct offense, but this may be part of the problem. In general, a programmer should never feel like they are doing the same old stuff over and over again, unless they are being absolutely micromanaged and forced, nearly at gunpoint.
I've been in "IT" for coming up on eight years now, and I've never felt I'm doing the same thing over and over again; for me that's one of the main attractions. This despite the fact that I've now designed at least three organizations sites with dynamic this and interactive that and database the other thing. Each time it's been different.
BoredomIsaSmell. If you're repeating, it's time to automate away the repetition, which is itself generally interesting. As frustrating as my job is sometimes, I'm not sure there's much else I could do; every day is something different.
This holds for "Programmer" (which you claimed you were) and Unix-based tech support. I could never be Windows support; automation exists but is too patchy and incomplete without too much effort.
It is not a crime or necessarily a bad thing, but programming isn't for everyone.
Does anyone have a link to the real bill?
I want to examine it for the feasibility of placing my address and phone number into such a database, possibility together with other people (to reach some "size" criterion), and claim that since the facts in this database are copyrighted, nobody may use them against my(/our) will.
As the copyright laws get more and more snarled, it may get more and more messy, but that means there will be more and more opportunities to do GPL-style judo against the "status quo", using their own restrictive regimes against them.
IANAL, but I would expect a preliminary injunction against the use of the software is very unlikely. It would destroy AutoZone, which is a strong no-no, and continued use creates no new damage, technically, and certainly nothing that can't be adequately addressed via a larger fine in the end. I wouldn't expect SCO to get any injunctions at all against AutoZone.
This seems a great time to remind you that it's like this everywhere. When reading news articles in fields you aren't intimately familiar with, make sure to take them all with the same grain of salt you're reading SCO stories with. Because they are all of roughly similar accuracy.
The "r" in front of the RE expression indicates a "raw" string, which tells Python that the backslashes are literal for everything except \\ and \". This makes it easier to write RE expressions. I could also have writtenbut that is less readable.
Personally, I slightly prefer RE's not really being treated specially, but at least in Ruby it looks like they can be passed around as first-order objects; the gyrations this takes in Perl is annoying.
but ruby has a CPAN-like institution called RAA and raa-install (the ruby version of "perl -MCPAN -e shell"). Does python have something similar?
No, but at this point the only reason for that is that they are typically not necessary. In Perl, when I need to get anything done I need to install 10 or 20 CPAN modules. Generally, in Python, they came with the interpreter and I only need to install two or three. This is why no similar thing has emerged.
(This is going on the "People are in general equally smart"... if Python needed such a thing it would exist. It doesn't, therefore it is a reasonable conclusion that it is not needed. It's not "logically rigorous" but it's a fairly good guess.)
I don't recall claiming that Ruby sigils indicate type. I seem to recall claiming they exist.
I also don't recall claiming that they "obfuscate" code. I seem to recall claiming that I don't like them, and if you also feel that way you won't want Ruby.
Please read what I said, not what you expected me to say, it's better for all of us.
Consensus gestalt that I've gotten as a Python user and reading a lot of debates on this topic is that structurally, Ruby is a little more pure OO then Python, but the practical differences seem minimal, especially after the type/class unification in Python. (Ruby advocates are proud of their block syntax but I'm yet to see something I don't immediately know how to write in Python, too; the question is which fits your mind better.)
Syntactically, Ruby is more like Perl. If you consider sigils an abomination upon the land, as I do (despite working professionally in Perl), then you'll want Python. If you consider them Larry Wall's gift to syntax, then you'll want Ruby.
The other thing is, if you're expecting to use a library of some kind, check for availability. Python has the edge right now AFAIK but that doesn't matter unless Python has something that Ruby doesn't that you need, or vice versa; for most people my impression is that the necessary modules are there in both languages.
I wasn't going to say this, but after reading a few of the comments here I've changed my mind.
The name Ruby x conveys a little too much "Ruby fanboy" vibe. It's a Linux distribution, yet the name doesn't mention it and the website gives only cursory mention of this fact, which borders on the deceptive. I want to emphasize that I mean these things exactly as I say... a little too much fanboy vibe, borders on the deceptive. It's not irredeemably bad, but I do have to say at the moment I'm having a hard time respecting the project.
In fact this could well hurt even the Ruby advocacy side of the project by scaring people off, thinking they'll need to know Ruby to install, when instead it looks like Yet Another Linux Distribution.
I mean this as constructive criticism. To the project leaders, I strongly recommend that you more carefully evaluate the goals of the project, more clearly partition the "Ruby" concept from the "Linux Distribution" concept, and determine whether your goals justify the seemingly over-strong focus on Ruby. Yes, I know Ruby lovers have a bit of a persecution complex, I recognize this in myself as I like Python and see the same in the Python community, but in the long run you're going to get more real respect by building a real project on Ruby and discreetly pointing out that it runs on Ruby then by shouting out in the streets that THIS RUBY DISTRIBUTION OF RUBYX IS MADE POSSIBLE BY RUBY, THAT WONDERFUL (RUBY) LANGUAGE! (Yes, this time I'm exaggerating for dramatic effect; again I emphasize I'm not claiming the site actually sounds like this but the tone is definately there.)
I don't want to be accused of irrational advocacy of any particular distribution, but for the record, everything you mention in your posts already exists in at least one very popular distribution, and probably more.
Perhaps you should poke around the existing world a bit more. If you've only tried one distro odds are good you haven't found your match. Red Hat(/Fedora), Gentoo, and Debian are probably good ways to sample the major ways of doing distros; each has a fairly different philosophy and is large enough to have good implementations of the philosophy in running code. OK, I'm a Gentoo myself, and that's the distro I was referring to above, but they are all good distros and I've had the opportunity to use them all lately from start to finish, and they are all fine choices.
(I think Debian meets all your requirements too, but I'm not too sure about the multi-gcc one. I'd expect it is but there might not be a built-in switcher. Gentoo has 'gcc-config', which works as you describe, and also has a pretty clear "configuration files based on system-wide settings", the USE flags. Fedora I'd have to check on; I don't how clean you could make source integration but good package management in it is definately possible if you use yum in addition to rpm; rpm alone kinda sucks but with yum it's OK. I don't think multiple gcc's works well in Fedora, but I could be wrong. If you have a source RPM I believe it's rpmbuild --rebuild [source RPM] but I don't have Fedora handy to look at the man pages; corrections welcome on anything in this paragraph. I've used them all but I wasn't looking for these specific things.)
"What's your distro?"
Why is "landing on Mars" playing God when "exploring another continent" isn't?
Or do you live where all your ancestors have lived since the beginning of life itself?
And what is "Playing God", anyhow? I've never heard a coherent definition that doesn't boil down to "living life normally".
(There are legitimate ethical concerns here. I'm saying "playing God" isn't a useful way to think about them. We are. We exist. By existing, we affect the Universe around us. By not existing, we affect the Universe around us. This is just sloppy thinking.)
So if we assess the life on Mars to some adequate degree, collecting the information we can't after we step foot on the planet, you'd be OK with then settling it? (After all it's not like we settle the entire planet at once and there's still room for significant untainted work even after that point.)
FWIW, that's my call on the issue too, so this isn't intended as antagonistic. I just find that too many people hold this position due to a knee-jerk environmentalism, which if examined, rests on axioms that don't apply to Mars. Thus, the knee-jerk reactions often differ from what the person would really think if they sat down for a bit and thought about the issue, starting from whatever axioms they hold dear.
Speaking as a thoughtful Christian who still holds some of the beliefs that many of my Slashdot bretheren would take great pleasure in savaging... I've asked myself a few times what it would take to firmly disprove my religion, short of dying. For instance, a device that can "look back" in time and disprove the Ressurection once and for all. (Without that, we have nothing; that's said directly by Paul in the Bible.)
Encountering an intelligent, human-or-above race with absolutely no conception of God as I know him, and absolutely no conception of such anywhere in their history (perhaps they've strayed, after all), is another one. The logic is hard to verbalize but at least for myself it would be a deathblow. It is possible that something in the encounter would cause some other belief to be viable (perhaps they had some other conception that clearly showed ours to be a misinterpretation), and I can see middle grounds where it would a toss-up, but if they were clearly 100% atheistic and always had been, that would leave my faith in tatters.
On a somewhat weaker note, I don't expect to actually meet any extraterrestrials in this life; Original Sin is clearly highly contagious and we should be kept isolated. There's been some science fiction in similar veins. On the "100% confirmation" note, it would be interesting if we encountered a race that had no original sin. Regardless, while I can't speculate what would happen well until it actually happens, meeting extraterrestrial intelligent life would have some effect on me.
Non-intelligent life doesn't faze me in the slightest; besides, it may still be of Earthly origin even if it's on Mars. If life is found and it has identical DNA (same acids, et. al.), that will be the most likely conclusion, that both planets have the same basic source of life, carried via cosmic events like asteroid impacts. (Which planet it started on would probably be absolutely impossible to determine, if it turns out both were capable of supporting life at roughly the same time.)
We don't need to contaminate Mars with the Earth Bacteria that a manned mission would introduce until we are sure there is a very low probility of finding living independantly evolved life.
Why?
(Don't dismiss this. It's a hard question. Give it some thought.)