Well, somebody seemed to care. Even though I was just being a smart-ass, going for "Funny" (and maybe not quite reaching that lofty goal), I ended up getting modded twice: +1 Insightful and -1 Flamebait. You never know how people are going to react, I guess.
I happen to have a copy of Zen Flesh, Zen Bones on the shelf......for the record, this book is not, as you say, another watered down screed on half-understood principals of Eastern philosophy.
Did I say that about your book, or are you making a knee-jerk assumption, based on my critism of ESR's new book? Meditate upon that question, and perhaps you will become enlightened.
Why else *DO* you think that we have twenty million editors, cdplayers and other assorted minor apps instead of a wide amount of code-reusal? It's because unimaginative, ego-centric tossers insist on doing the sourceforge version of the aol 'me too' bit.
Or perhaps because Yet Another Editor, or some other small app, is the next logical step after "hello, world" for somebody learning to be a programmer?
From the text of the intro: Finally (and with admitted intent to provoke) we recommend Zen Flesh, Zen Bones [Reps-Senzaki], an important collection of Zen Buddhist primary sources. References to Zen are scattered throughout this book. They are included because Zen provides a vocabulary for addressing some ideas that turn out to be very important for software design but are otherwise very difficult to hold in the mind. Readers with religious attachments are invited to consider Zen not as a religion but as a therapeutic form of mental discipline -- which, in its purest non-theistic forms, is exactly what Zen is.
Look, I've already read "Zen and the Art of Motorcylce Maintenance" and "The Inner Game of Tennis." Do I really need another watered down screed on half-understood principals of Eastern philosophy crammed down my throat to become a better UNIX programmer? Most of the concepts that books like this borrow from Zen are so painfully obvious that it really serves as little more than padding for a poorly thought-out thesis which would only populate about 50 pages (at best) if not for the endless ramblings about holistic thinking.
Okay, UNIX, like everything else, is all part of the Buddha. Very profound. We all marvel at your wisdom. Now stop wasting our time.
I'd really like to be able to play AAC files on an MP3 CD player in my car...
The MP3 player in my car is an iPod. Not only does it play AAC's, but it comes off the dash and into my pocket when I park in bad neighborhoods. It's a solution I would recommend to just about anybody.
Lets forget about DNS, and just go back to using IP addresses.
That's not a half-bad idea. Just about every computer sold today could be set up to store it's own names for the sites you visit (every client would be their own only DNS they need). If you wanted to, you could then type "\." into your browser instead of slashdot.org, and it would work fine. The only time you would need the IP would be the fisrt time you want to go someplace, and even then, you would probably just be following a link.
There's a reason why telephones abandoned name-based addressing in almost every country in the world.
P.J. O'Rourke observed that, going back to Warren G. Harding (the first post-sufferage era president) the majority of women almost always vote for the candidate they would prefer to sleep with. Hence, cowboy Reagan over frumpy Mondale, swinger Clinton over fossil Dole, etc.
There was a day when the difference between generic or house-brand "off the shelf" amplifiers and quality stuff from Marantz or Carver was vast. Those days are gone. The computer revolution has made high-quality transistors so cheap and abundant that the ultra-cheap no-name amp I just picked up at Best Buy this week compares very favorably with the insanely expensive audiophile amp from the late 70's that I was using before. In fact, the spacial imaging is quite an improvement.
The only place where an audiophile should be ever consider spending more than two paychecks is on their speakers. Go to those snobby hi-fi boutiques and test everything in their listening room, then take the ones you like home for a month and test them in the room where you will be using them. The rule of thumb used to be that your speakers should cost as much as the rest of your system combined... but now that nobody is buying pricy direct-drive turntables with diamond cartriges anymore, the ideal ratio is probably more like 65/35 in favor of the speakers.
As for the iPod? If you are playing AIFF files through the line-outs on the docking connector (rather than plugging the headphone-out into your preamp) it should sound at least as good as most CD players. The D/A logic on the iPod is extremely good, considering the size and cost of the system.
I don't know if I'd call it "sniffity." The comment was just an opportunity to explain where the hell it came from.
I was mostly just kidding about the CmdrTaco comment as well. The discussion was about bad game names, and a lot of n00bs like to enter "CmdrTaco" as their handle in networked games. I'm not sure if it's because they are fans or because they are hoping people will think it's the real deal... but it's kind of silly either way. Slightly off topic since it's supposed to be a discussion of names of characters created by game designers, but it was the first thing that came to mind when the question was raised, and it kind of amused me to say it. (Perhaps because of all those slash polls where "CmdrTaco" is one of the options.)
Okay, so it's a user name, rather than a game NPC, but I mean, come on. It sounds like something you would call a lesbian when trying to pick a fight with her.
No, malls, theaters, and parking lots may have private owners, but they are public places. It's an important distinction in this sort of situation. Get drunk in a mall food court and you can be arrested for "drunk and disorderly conduct in public."
The mall isn't your private property, though. A person can't walk up to your garage to go through your trash (in most states), but they can grab an old armchair you left on the curb. However, you have no such protection when you throw something away in a public place.
Huh. Well, then a charge of fraud can be made for submitting the card request on her behalf against her will, I guess. As for the exposure to SPAM and telemarketing... It would be almost impossible to show damages in a court that you could put a hard dollar figure on. Somebody that careless with their personal data was bound to end up on all those lists anyway.
It seems a more likely explanation is that your SPAM and telemarketing calls spiked because everybody has been getting a crapload more spam and sales calls lately.
Or it could be that some other factor, like you buying a DNS registration, happened about the same time.
The only other alternative is to believe that some minimum wage-slave who spends all day pestering people with clipboards nefariously dug her info out of the trash, forged her signature, and submitted it against her will. I seriously doubt one of those flunkies is industrious enough to go through all that effort. After all, if they wanted to be dishonest to pad their completion stats, they could just make up fake people all day and submit forms on their behalf.
Do a credit check, and see if somebody submitted a request for a VISA card against her will. If not, don't jump to conclusions. That way lies paranoid delusions of grandeur.
If you have ever listened to that famous Alanis Morissette song Ironic [caltech.edu], not a single thing she points out is actually ironic, they are just coincidental.
Of course, a song that is titled "Ironic" which does not contain a single example of irony is... wait for it... ironic!
The classic example of irony that every literature prof liked to cite is an editorial that recommended eating babies from poor families as a solution to overpopulation and poverty which was published under the title "A Modest Proposal."
It could be argued that calling the post in question "Interesting" meets similar criteria.
Every Mac tower build after the Second Coming of Jobs (B&W G3 and newer) accepts CPU upgrades. Most of the older ones did, too.
PC users have been saying for years that one reason they hate Macs is that CPU replacement options are not available.
The truth of the matter is that they are available, but most Mac users don't bother because Macs hold their value a lot longer than PC's, so you can usually sell your current Mac, buy a new one, and the net cost will often be less than that of a CPU swap.
I bought an iBook over a year ago for $1200. I could sell it right now and get a faster one, with the same combo drive, a bigger HD, faster wireless, bluetooth, and a better video card for less than the after-market cost of the hard drive alone.
Mac users spend more than PC users on their first mac, but spend less over the years on upgrades because of this quirk of the used Mac market being so strong.
I'm not really inclined to panic too much about all the projects that are moving to Bangalore. The companies who are doing that are the same ones who were passing over US Citizens for less-qualified H1B workers during the 90's.
So, the skinflint corporations have always been giving programming jobs to foreigners... it's just that bandwidth is now sufficient to leave them in their home countries while doing so.
Don't worry too much about macro-economics. Choose a career that you want. I could have given up at any time over the last two years and just became a full-time public school math teacher, but I rode out the recession working whatever jobs I could find while networking and hunting for that next programming gig, because that's the career that I really want. It's not in the airline industry like my last tech job was, but our skills transfer really well across industries. If you want to be a techie, keep plugging away at it. If you would rather be a pharmacist, do that.
Be glad that you are at the start of your career for this recession. They are much harder to deal with when you have a few years of experience and a mortgage payment to deal with, believe me!
I've been working shit jobs for two whole years now. Temping, laboring, substitute teaching. If you have any kind of education and experience at all, I assure you that you still feel unemployed when you are that badly underemployed.
Were it not for my sporadic tech consulting jobs, I would probably be forced to throw the last 15 years of my life out the window, and start pursuing a new career.
Thankfully, the job market is gradually improving. I've had more interviews for programming jobs in the last 2 months than I did in the previous 22, and I'm expecting an offer sheet in the mail from at least one of them this week. I suspect that, a year from now, people will be talking about the "Bush recovery," and whoever emerges from the Democratic primary is going to be scrambling for issues to run on.
I'm just glad the word "whither" has gone out of fashion again. Casual, improper use of Shakespearean English makes fools of us all.
Personally, I like using the Shakespearean "die" when I'm in mixed company. (As in "I would live in your heart, die in your lap, and be buried in your eyes.")
Since nobody gets it, I'm far less likely to be slapped in the face than if I say what I mean in modern English.:)
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Well, somebody seemed to care. Even though I was just being a smart-ass, going for "Funny" (and maybe not quite reaching that lofty goal), I ended up getting modded twice: +1 Insightful and -1 Flamebait. You never know how people are going to react, I guess.
Did I say that about your book, or are you making a knee-jerk assumption, based on my critism of ESR's new book? Meditate upon that question, and perhaps you will become enlightened.
Or perhaps because Yet Another Editor, or some other small app, is the next logical step after "hello, world" for somebody learning to be a programmer?
Everybody starts somewhere.
It's rare that you see a bon mot as good as that post on /. these days, ultrabot. Hats off.
Look, I've already read "Zen and the Art of Motorcylce Maintenance" and "The Inner Game of Tennis." Do I really need another watered down screed on half-understood principals of Eastern philosophy crammed down my throat to become a better UNIX programmer? Most of the concepts that books like this borrow from Zen are so painfully obvious that it really serves as little more than padding for a poorly thought-out thesis which would only populate about 50 pages (at best) if not for the endless ramblings about holistic thinking.
Okay, UNIX, like everything else, is all part of the Buddha. Very profound. We all marvel at your wisdom. Now stop wasting our time.
The MP3 player in my car is an iPod. Not only does it play AAC's, but it comes off the dash and into my pocket when I park in bad neighborhoods. It's a solution I would recommend to just about anybody.
That's not a half-bad idea. Just about every computer sold today could be set up to store it's own names for the sites you visit (every client would be their own only DNS they need). If you wanted to, you could then type "\." into your browser instead of slashdot.org, and it would work fine. The only time you would need the IP would be the fisrt time you want to go someplace, and even then, you would probably just be following a link.
There's a reason why telephones abandoned name-based addressing in almost every country in the world.
What, no "Cowboy Neal" option?
P.J. O'Rourke observed that, going back to Warren G. Harding (the first post-sufferage era president) the majority of women almost always vote for the candidate they would prefer to sleep with. Hence, cowboy Reagan over frumpy Mondale, swinger Clinton over fossil Dole, etc.
The only place where an audiophile should be ever consider spending more than two paychecks is on their speakers. Go to those snobby hi-fi boutiques and test everything in their listening room, then take the ones you like home for a month and test them in the room where you will be using them. The rule of thumb used to be that your speakers should cost as much as the rest of your system combined... but now that nobody is buying pricy direct-drive turntables with diamond cartriges anymore, the ideal ratio is probably more like 65/35 in favor of the speakers.
As for the iPod? If you are playing AIFF files through the line-outs on the docking connector (rather than plugging the headphone-out into your preamp) it should sound at least as good as most CD players. The D/A logic on the iPod is extremely good, considering the size and cost of the system.
I was mostly just kidding about the CmdrTaco comment as well. The discussion was about bad game names, and a lot of n00bs like to enter "CmdrTaco" as their handle in networked games. I'm not sure if it's because they are fans or because they are hoping people will think it's the real deal... but it's kind of silly either way. Slightly off topic since it's supposed to be a discussion of names of characters created by game designers, but it was the first thing that came to mind when the question was raised, and it kind of amused me to say it. (Perhaps because of all those slash polls where "CmdrTaco" is one of the options.)
Well, that's Nevada for you.
Oh, and Saint Golias is believed by some scholars to be satirically derived from "Goliath", but it is typically pronounced closer to "Gall-ee-us"
Then you are pronouncing it wrong. Golias is the mythical Patron Saint of the goliards.
Okay, so it's a user name, rather than a game NPC, but I mean, come on. It sounds like something you would call a lesbian when trying to pick a fight with her.
No, malls, theaters, and parking lots may have private owners, but they are public places. It's an important distinction in this sort of situation. Get drunk in a mall food court and you can be arrested for "drunk and disorderly conduct in public."
The mall isn't your private property, though. A person can't walk up to your garage to go through your trash (in most states), but they can grab an old armchair you left on the curb. However, you have no such protection when you throw something away in a public place.
Huh. Well, then a charge of fraud can be made for submitting the card request on her behalf against her will, I guess. As for the exposure to SPAM and telemarketing... It would be almost impossible to show damages in a court that you could put a hard dollar figure on. Somebody that careless with their personal data was bound to end up on all those lists anyway.
Your wife lied to you about throwing the form away.
Or it could be that some other factor, like you buying a DNS registration, happened about the same time.
The only other alternative is to believe that some minimum wage-slave who spends all day pestering people with clipboards nefariously dug her info out of the trash, forged her signature, and submitted it against her will. I seriously doubt one of those flunkies is industrious enough to go through all that effort. After all, if they wanted to be dishonest to pad their completion stats, they could just make up fake people all day and submit forms on their behalf.
Do a credit check, and see if somebody submitted a request for a VISA card against her will. If not, don't jump to conclusions. That way lies paranoid delusions of grandeur.
Of course, a song that is titled "Ironic" which does not contain a single example of irony is... wait for it... ironic!
The classic example of irony that every literature prof liked to cite is an editorial that recommended eating babies from poor families as a solution to overpopulation and poverty which was published under the title "A Modest Proposal."
It could be argued that calling the post in question "Interesting" meets similar criteria.
PC users have been saying for years that one reason they hate Macs is that CPU replacement options are not available.
The truth of the matter is that they are available, but most Mac users don't bother because Macs hold their value a lot longer than PC's, so you can usually sell your current Mac, buy a new one, and the net cost will often be less than that of a CPU swap.
I bought an iBook over a year ago for $1200. I could sell it right now and get a faster one, with the same combo drive, a bigger HD, faster wireless, bluetooth, and a better video card for less than the after-market cost of the hard drive alone.
Mac users spend more than PC users on their first mac, but spend less over the years on upgrades because of this quirk of the used Mac market being so strong.
So, the skinflint corporations have always been giving programming jobs to foreigners... it's just that bandwidth is now sufficient to leave them in their home countries while doing so.
Don't worry too much about macro-economics. Choose a career that you want. I could have given up at any time over the last two years and just became a full-time public school math teacher, but I rode out the recession working whatever jobs I could find while networking and hunting for that next programming gig, because that's the career that I really want. It's not in the airline industry like my last tech job was, but our skills transfer really well across industries. If you want to be a techie, keep plugging away at it. If you would rather be a pharmacist, do that.
Be glad that you are at the start of your career for this recession. They are much harder to deal with when you have a few years of experience and a mortgage payment to deal with, believe me!
Were it not for my sporadic tech consulting jobs, I would probably be forced to throw the last 15 years of my life out the window, and start pursuing a new career.
Thankfully, the job market is gradually improving. I've had more interviews for programming jobs in the last 2 months than I did in the previous 22, and I'm expecting an offer sheet in the mail from at least one of them this week. I suspect that, a year from now, people will be talking about the "Bush recovery," and whoever emerges from the Democratic primary is going to be scrambling for issues to run on.
Personally, I like using the Shakespearean "die" when I'm in mixed company. (As in "I would live in your heart, die in your lap, and be buried in your eyes.")
Since nobody gets it, I'm far less likely to be slapped in the face than if I say what I mean in modern English. :)