Wow. I had wondered where that 'e' was. Cheers for that. I showed my mum (ex-COBOL hax0r for Burroughs) the COBOL.NET stuff from MS. She didn't believe me. (this is also funny). I wonder how long it'll be before "technology archaeologist" becomes a major university discipline?
I'm guessing the later editions were radically revised/had extra chapters with more up-to-date experience of software engineering.
You'd be surprised how little software engineering has changed;-) - I joined this game professionally a year ago, and when (6 months ago) someone clued me into MMM, I found it spookily accurate. Sure, the projects have different scope - but they're still run the same. The first project I worked on, it was looking like running late. Management response? "You've got as much money as you like to hire new people". I regard my project manager as a god for replying "Adding new people now would make us later". No-one new joined and we shipped on time and under budget:-)
You are so right. Many many times I have had this situation: on the phone to someone, they need to show me something. So I PCAnywhere to them. Now my mouse is their mouse --- which means we have to adopt a CB radio style way of using it ("I need to drive --- look at this --- hang on, let me back in --- no no no you gotta see this --- jesus, you lost all that stuff I was doing --- right, you know how to do x and I know how to do y, but there's no multithreaded way for us to do this 'cos there's only one mouse; I'll go first"). Two (N) mice (local mice plus remote mice) is the obvious solution. How on earth didn't I see this? I could use it almost every day!
I'm writing this on my laptop, which has a nipple and a mouse plugged in. Both can move the pointer (I can have mouse fights with myself! - the nipple always wins). Both can click. I have yet to find an app that can tell the difference.
...written in an open-source Linux language known (in a very James Bond way) only by a single letter...
Re:I don't know when I would fit it in...
on
Non-Stop
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· Score: 1
ok ok ok, cool, it's a new idea and it's interesting. but please please listen to the guy --- the Lensman series are some of the best sci-fi I have ever read. Not for depth of thought, or characterisation, or any of those literary things, but because they kicked every other action hero's ass. Kimball Kinnison is seriously the greatest hero ever - and that includes all anime heroes too. Start on number 3, Galactic Patrol, ask me why afterwards. Prepare for the best ever.
Re:I don't know when I would fit it in...
on
Non-Stop
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· Score: 1
Star Wars rip-off series - *shudder*
The point of reviewing classics like Mr. Aldiss' is to tell a new generation of readers what real sci-fi is about - and to wean y'all off ripoff tripe.
Now awaiting the obligatory rationalization as to why it should still not be rated "Off Topic"
Glad to oblige: it talks about one of the articles that is linked to by the/. story. Thus it comments on the topic of the parent/. story , thus it is not offtopic. Why don't you read the linked stories before posting sometimes, moron?
In some ways she was far more acute than Winston, and far
less susceptible to Party propaganda. Once when he happened in
some connexion to mention the war against Eurasia, she startled
him by saying casually that in her opinion the war was not
happening. The rocket bombs which fell daily on London were
probably fired by the Government of Oceania itself, 'just to
keep people frightened'. This was an idea that had literally
never occurred to him.
Even the humblest Party member is expected to
be competent, industrious, and even intelligent within narrow
limits, but it is also necessary that he should be a credulous
and ignorant fanatic whose prevailing moods are fear, hatred,
adulation, and orgiastic triumph. In other words it is
necessary that he should have the mentality appropriate to a
state of war. It does not matter whether the war is actually
happening, and, since no decisive victory is possible, it does
not matter whether the war is going well or badly. All that is
needed is that a state of war should exist. The splitting of
the intelligence which the Party requires of its members, and
which is more easily achieved in an atmosphere of war, is now
almost universal, but the higher up the ranks one goes, the
more marked it becomes. It is precisely in the Inner Party that
war hysteria and hatred of the enemy are strongest. In his
capacity as an administrator, it is often necessary for a
member of the Inner Party to know that this or that item of war
news is untruthful, and he may often be aware that the entire
war is spurious and is either not happening or is being waged
for purposes quite other than the declared ones: but such
knowledge is easily neutralized by the technique of
doublethink. Meanwhile no Inner Party member wavers for
an instant in his mystical belief that the war is real,
and that it is bound to end victoriously, with Oceania the
undisputed master of the entire world.
fork() makes a process, not a thread (I may be wrong -- please be gentle). Processes are big, threads are small. If it's forking all the time, then it may be too bloaty anyway! (of course, this is an assumption, only a good profiler and a lot of hard work will tell you for sure...)
...ooh, possibly. I'll dig out his short stories and reread them. I have just remembered that I quite liked "The Puppet Masters" though --- even though the "Old Man" character is a bit too much one of Heinlein's "rampant individualist" characters for my taste.
hmmm...I'd say to this that fascism as a philosopy is different to its practical application, just as Marxism is different to what happened to Russia. Please please don't become offended by my posts: I am definitely learning from what people tell me, and I would certainly not claim to have been 100% right all the time.
as a friend put it: it was a movie based on the back cover of a Heinlein novel
I think it was a movie based on parodying Heinlein's novel. I have read (sadly in a dead-tree version, so no linkage) an interview with Paul Verhoeven where he seemed to have my view of ST: that the society in it is presented as utopian. No tongue-in-cheek, no secretly taking the piss: a straight presentation of a lot of ideas Heinlein thought were right and a society based on them, with the idea of convincing the reader of them. Based on this view, he decided to make a micky-take movie, and succeeded wildly: the sequence where Doogie Howser MD marches in in full Gestapo regalia is one of my favourites.
I agree with you on The Republic: did you know that they actually tried it, with predictably tragicomic results?
OK, you got me: I was wrong to say the society in ST was a dictatorship. Would you say though, that to someone looking down the wrong end of one, there's much difference between a dictatorship (absolute authority for one person) and an oligarchy (absolute authority for a small group)? Isn't it a bit hair-splitting to say (of the ST society) "well, it's not a fascist state, 'cos there's a small group in power, not a single dictator"? Can't we take a break from the (pretty weird) way that words in computer languages have utterly precise meanings, and use some of the features of natural language to have this argument in?
BTW: I hope you're enjoying this as much as I am:-)
How is this dictatorial: anyone can get the vote if they pay enough? How is this dictatorial: anyone can get the vote if they join the Communist Party? How is this dictatorial: anyone can get the vote if they vote for the right person? How is this dictatorial: anyone can get the vote if they agree to let the government look at who they voted for?
The problem with all these forms of restricting who gets to vote is that the whole thing becomes self-selecting: the group who have the vote get to choose who else to give the vote to, so they choose people like themselves.
IMHO, the major failing of a democracy is that it can be "the tyranny of the majority". ST's society won't address this at all.
Hmm, how do you know that the veterans are a minority? Does it say so in the book?
Yes.
Please tell me what details in the book beyond the "world government" and the fact that the vote only goes to veterans?
And that isn't enough:-) ? Seriously tho', the major part of this book is the History and Moral Philosophy lessons (Heinlein's own admission). Read them again: they're all about how people should prove themselves (to who? to the current ruling elite) before they get a say in how their lives are run. Sounds quite dictatorial to me. Oh, sure, things are good at the time the book is set and the government aren't currently running any witch hunts (except against non-humans) or persecuting anyone (except non-humans), but they certainly have the power to and no-one is enfranchised to take that power away without passing an exam that they set and most people die trying to take.
Well, words in the dictionary have a little catching up to do with the whole meeting-aliens thing, dont'cha think? This is partly what Orson Scott Card is on about when he sets down the ideas of ramen, varelse, utlanning and framling. I don't see that discriminating against someone 'cos they're a "dirty offworlder" is any different to discriminating against them 'cos they're Catholic (or whatever race/religion/poorly defined group your autocracy has it in for).
The reader is deliberately not told how the war in ST started --- Heinlein said in many interviews that this was deliberate, as he wanted to present the war as much as possible as a "just war". However, if you're like me and find the whole concept of "just war" a little suspect (hell, our parents/grandparents didn't even fight WWII because it was a "just war", that's all justification after the fact), then you kinda notice the way that fascist states define themselves by saying "these are the enemy, we must fight to keep ourselves pure" just like the society in ST does.
Dictatorships are certainly not by one person: from http://dictionary.msn.co.uk/find/entry.asp?search= dictatorship we find meaning 4, "absolute authority or power". The veterans certainly have this in ST.
Further, if you don't like RAH's writtings, why did you bother to read three of his books?
People told me they were good. So I read on (TMIAHM) and it was shit. I thought "musta been a bad choice" and read another (ST). It was shit. I thought "coincidence" and read another (SIASL). It was shit. So I gave up.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow. I had wondered where that 'e' was. Cheers for that. I showed my mum (ex-COBOL hax0r for Burroughs) the COBOL.NET stuff from MS. She didn't believe me. (this is also funny). I wonder how long it'll be before "technology archaeologist" becomes a major university discipline?
You'd be surprised how little software engineering has changed ;-) - I joined this game professionally a year ago, and when (6 months ago) someone clued me into MMM, I found it spookily accurate. Sure, the projects have different scope - but they're still run the same. The first project I worked on, it was looking like running late. Management response? "You've got as much money as you like to hire new people". I regard my project manager as a god for replying "Adding new people now would make us later". No-one new joined and we shipped on time and under budget :-)
You are so right. Many many times I have had this situation: on the phone to someone, they need to show me something. So I PCAnywhere to them. Now my mouse is their mouse --- which means we have to adopt a CB radio style way of using it ("I need to drive --- look at this --- hang on, let me back in --- no no no you gotta see this --- jesus, you lost all that stuff I was doing --- right, you know how to do x and I know how to do y, but there's no multithreaded way for us to do this 'cos there's only one mouse; I'll go first"). Two (N) mice (local mice plus remote mice) is the obvious solution. How on earth didn't I see this? I could use it almost every day!
I'm writing this on my laptop, which has a nipple and a mouse plugged in. Both can move the pointer (I can have mouse fights with myself! - the nipple always wins). Both can click. I have yet to find an app that can tell the difference.
...written in an open-source Linux language known (in a very James Bond way) only by a single letter...
ok ok ok, cool, it's a new idea and it's interesting. but please please listen to the guy --- the Lensman series are some of the best sci-fi I have ever read. Not for depth of thought, or characterisation, or any of those literary things, but because they kicked every other action hero's ass. Kimball Kinnison is seriously the greatest hero ever - and that includes all anime heroes too. Start on number 3, Galactic Patrol, ask me why afterwards. Prepare for the best ever.
Star Wars rip-off series - *shudder*
The point of reviewing classics like Mr. Aldiss' is to tell a new generation of readers what real sci-fi is about - and to wean y'all off ripoff tripe.
So what's the Perl feature that comes from ADA?
Have a look at this puppy. Those have to be the most crowded 10 minutes of your life...
...and Turkmenistani trademarks would go where?
Glad to oblige: it talks about one of the articles that is linked to by the /. story. Thus it comments on the topic of the parent /. story , thus it is not offtopic. Why don't you read the linked stories before posting sometimes, moron?
isn't .net about abandoning the browser (too damn thin) and moving back to fat(tish) clients? of course, this was what java said it could do too...
fork() makes a process, not a thread (I may be wrong -- please be gentle). Processes are big, threads are small. If it's forking all the time, then it may be too bloaty anyway! (of course, this is an assumption, only a good profiler and a lot of hard work will tell you for sure...)
How right you are. There is no OS that is better than Windows for 98% of the population. It's certainly the only OS I can see my Dad ever using.
...ooh, possibly. I'll dig out his short stories and reread them. I have just remembered that I quite liked "The Puppet Masters" though --- even though the "Old Man" character is a bit too much one of Heinlein's "rampant individualist" characters for my taste.
hmmm...I'd say to this that fascism as a philosopy is different to its practical application, just as Marxism is different to what happened to Russia. Please please don't become offended by my posts: I am definitely learning from what people tell me, and I would certainly not claim to have been 100% right all the time.
I think it was a movie based on parodying Heinlein's novel. I have read (sadly in a dead-tree version, so no linkage) an interview with Paul Verhoeven where he seemed to have my view of ST: that the society in it is presented as utopian. No tongue-in-cheek, no secretly taking the piss: a straight presentation of a lot of ideas Heinlein thought were right and a society based on them, with the idea of convincing the reader of them. Based on this view, he decided to make a micky-take movie, and succeeded wildly: the sequence where Doogie Howser MD marches in in full Gestapo regalia is one of my favourites.
I agree with you on The Republic: did you know that they actually tried it, with predictably tragicomic results?
OK, you got me: I was wrong to say the society in ST was a dictatorship. Would you say though, that to someone looking down the wrong end of one, there's much difference between a dictatorship (absolute authority for one person) and an oligarchy (absolute authority for a small group)? Isn't it a bit hair-splitting to say (of the ST society) "well, it's not a fascist state, 'cos there's a small group in power, not a single dictator"? Can't we take a break from the (pretty weird) way that words in computer languages have utterly precise meanings, and use some of the features of natural language to have this argument in?
BTW: I hope you're enjoying this as much as I am :-)
How is this dictatorial: anyone can get the vote if they pay enough? How is this dictatorial: anyone can get the vote if they join the Communist Party? How is this dictatorial: anyone can get the vote if they vote for the right person? How is this dictatorial: anyone can get the vote if they agree to let the government look at who they voted for?
The problem with all these forms of restricting who gets to vote is that the whole thing becomes self-selecting: the group who have the vote get to choose who else to give the vote to, so they choose people like themselves.
IMHO, the major failing of a democracy is that it can be "the tyranny of the majority". ST's society won't address this at all.
I would guess you're not British, Indian, Pakistani or Bangladeshi. Ghandhi had an enormous effect on the world.
Yes.
And that isn't enough :-) ? Seriously tho', the major part of this book is the History and Moral Philosophy lessons (Heinlein's own admission). Read them again: they're all about how people should prove themselves (to who? to the current ruling elite) before they get a say in how their lives are run. Sounds quite dictatorial to me. Oh, sure, things are good at the time the book is set and the government aren't currently running any witch hunts (except against non-humans) or persecuting anyone (except non-humans), but they certainly have the power to and no-one is enfranchised to take that power away without passing an exam that they set and most people die trying to take.
Well, words in the dictionary have a little catching up to do with the whole meeting-aliens thing, dont'cha think? This is partly what Orson Scott Card is on about when he sets down the ideas of ramen, varelse, utlanning and framling. I don't see that discriminating against someone 'cos they're a "dirty offworlder" is any different to discriminating against them 'cos they're Catholic (or whatever race/religion/poorly defined group your autocracy has it in for).
The reader is deliberately not told how the war in ST started --- Heinlein said in many interviews that this was deliberate, as he wanted to present the war as much as possible as a "just war". However, if you're like me and find the whole concept of "just war" a little suspect (hell, our parents/grandparents didn't even fight WWII because it was a "just war", that's all justification after the fact), then you kinda notice the way that fascist states define themselves by saying "these are the enemy, we must fight to keep ourselves pure" just like the society in ST does.
Dictatorships are certainly not by one person: from http://dictionary.msn.co.uk/find/entry.asp?search= dictatorship we find meaning 4, "absolute authority or power". The veterans certainly have this in ST.
In his later stuff, yes, but read the short stories and "A Scanner Darkly" and "The Man In The High Castle". Oh, brother...
People told me they were good. So I read on (TMIAHM) and it was shit. I thought "musta been a bad choice" and read another (ST). It was shit. I thought "coincidence" and read another (SIASL). It was shit. So I gave up.