Since luck has no physical property or defined quantity, that phrase is largely meaningless. It would be equally accurate to say that nobody makes it big without a substantial helping of ether.
I see where you're trying to go with this, but this statement is not true. "Nobody makes it big without a substantial helping of good luck" is indeed meaningful (although perhaps incorrect... people DO make it big without luck, i.e. I don't think Steve Jobs / Bill Gates were as lucky as people on American Idol, because I think they had real talent which wasn't randomly given to them). Luck, to a scientific mind, is randomness. And yes, randomness is something.
As to your point about keeping it when making it big, I think you're viewing one particular scenario in your mind, such as a lottery winner who wins and then has no money after 5 years. Keeping your money isn't as hard as making it; it is much harder to make it than to spend it once you reach a certain threshold of sustaining your basic needs in your environment. In fact, that's why there's so many fewer people at the top of the income brackets than at the bottom. To make average income levels is very easy, to make the 80%+ percentile is difficult. As a matter of fact, only 20% of people make it past the 80% percentile:)
You are neurotic, you are making arguments of an argument that isn't there. The guy said that 51% of a vote was all that was needed to convict someone to death, regardless of what the actual vote was. I didn't say anything about a republic vs. direct democracy.
You think that everyone is stupid because the actual vote was 56%, and if we're not making the point that you are then we just can't comprehend what you can. A few list of your comments:
sigh If you cannot understand even this then the rest of the conversation is useless and I am sorry that I have wasted both your time and mine You really need to start getting your historical facts straight and stop twisting them so. well you should look well at the volume of his posts I think you might want to look at the definition of exaggerating
You are somewhat unbalanced. The world is not out to get you, Hungus, and you aren't smarter than everyone else, at least not by what you are saying in this conversation. (lol @ you enlightening us on what exaggeration is)
Oh lord, really? In the context I meant you were making a bigger deal of "twisting the truth" than he actually did, as 56% is not far from 51% and still the point remains that it only needed 51% to make such a vote win, not 56%, hence the argument against democracy. Also, I'm not reading the volume of his or her posts, I'm just commenting on the one post I read.
Finally, I'm not sure what exact point you were trying to confer with the link you provided about the trial, but apparently I got something right: some historians agree that the explanation for Socrates choosing death over exile is that Socrates was ready to die. Why you think that historical refresh was necessary to explain your statement, "You really need to start getting your historical facts straight and stop twisting them so" is unclear.
As a smarter-than-most "elitist" person who lives in the U.S., I find myself hating democracy all the time. However, I can't ever think of a better long-term solution. If the power was handed to "benevolent dictators" or a group of smart people like me (oligarchy), it would fail in the long run. As Winston Churchill famously said, "democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."
GOD, WHAT THE FUCK. This bullshit is always all over./ conversations. How can smart people be so ignorant? A democracy is NOT mutually exclusive with a republic. America is a democracy. It also happens to be a republic. It may not be a DIRECT democracy, but it is still a democracy, which is a government which is elected by its people. This should not be a difficult concept to grasp.
To be fair, you're exaggerating. 56% vs. 51% isn't really twisting the facts that much, and his point was that it only took 51%. Also, probably because of his old age, exile wasn't an acceptable outcome, so the fact that he chose death over exile is just a small nuance in the end effect of the vote which decided to end him in one way or another.
It isn't a perfect system, but it's certainly much better than a Democracy.
God dammit, WHY do so many people on the Internet believe that America is not a democracy, because it is a republic? Please stop saying "democracy" as if it means "pure democracy" or "direct democracy". A democracy is a government that is elected by people, which can happen in many different forms. A republic is not mutually exclusive with a democracy. America is a democracy, and it is also a federal republic. They aren't mutually exclusive.
Also, I would argue that being a republic does not protect us from the tyranny of the majority. For example, my right to see my boyfriend in California at a hospital when we are dying, as well as my right to pay my taxes together with my boyfriend, and over 1500 other rights that our laws have attached to marriage, was thrown out the window by a 52% - 48% vote in California a year or two ago. What actually protects us from the tyranny of the majority are rights setup in our laws, such as a law that the right of free speech cannot be taken away, even in a 95%-5% vote.
1. The amount of software engineers making over a million dollars per year is so small it is inconsequential to any statistical report of software engineers.
2. How exactly does one who makes a million dollars per year report that they make $20K a year? By being paid cash? That has nothing to do with software engineers, that has to do with working for the mob.
I have never been in politics, nor know anyone at all who is involved in politics. That being said, IMHO I believe that being a corrupt politician is not an easy job. It may score high on Salary vs. Education/Smarts, but I bet it doesn't score high on comfortable workplace environment.
Red state? I get why you used that comparison, but I don't think it's correct; i.e. a fair way to compare job markets, IMHO. I think you should have just said "big city" vs. "small city". This is coming from a "Software Engineer" or what have you, who lives in a big city in a red state, and I believe that my job, including salary and quality of work, compares to an equivalent job in California.
Well, you didn't have to insult/.ers based on a few comments. I can also say that the statement "there SHOULD NOT be any relation between competence and compensation" must come from a person who doesn't depend on competence. There actually SHOULD be a relation, although still the statement is still so vague that I won't bother expounding on it any further.
That being said, "If there is higher demand for incompetent fools than the supply of them, incompetent fools would be highly paid" is totally correct in most circumstances.
Unfortunately I just broke my rule of never responding to Anonymous Cowards, because ACs always know that they are wrong and just want to rant. On the other hand, it's 5:30 AM and I'm a little drunk.
I think too many people here are overblowing the situation. It is not the western world going to shit, corporations taking over the little guy, etc. It's just a bad law, and I highly doubt it is any form of favoritism. The more complicated any rule or plan is, the worse it is (if they have problems with storage, they should just tax all storage media across the board, and not try to specify it based on such details as OS.
Muslims do not read the old testament (the torah). They only read the Koran, which is the pure word of God delivered through Muhammad. Everything else, including even translations of the Koran into different languages, are no longer the word of God. The People of the Book are specifically mentioned, though, which means Jews and Christians, because they have also received revelations, but they are using a faulty revelation that had become corrupted over time.
Atheists know more about religion that religious people do:)
Shit, you caught me... actually I was copying and pasting part of the claims, but then found the summary which was a much quicker and easier way to say my point.
Well maybe... the Sweedish police issued an arrest warrant, then applied to Interpol. The arrest warrant was upheld by a Swedish court. The Interpol notice is exactly what happens when a participating member country applies to Interpol for an arrest warrant. It also says that Interpol has no authority to compel a subject's arrest.
There may be character assassination somewhere down the line, but it would not be Interpol's fault, it would be Sweden's fault (or further down the line... prosecutors, etc.) for asking Interpol to do so.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
It is an object of the present invention to provide an improved method of encoding a document
It is a further object of the present invention to provide an improved system of encoding a document.
Thus, in sharp contrast to the prior art the present invention is based on the practice of separating encoding conventions from the content of a document. The invention does not use embedded metacoding to differentiate the content of the document, but rather, the metacodes of the document are separated from the content and held in distinct storage in a structure called a metacode map. whereas document content
is held in a mapped content area. Raw content is an extreme example of mapped content wherein the latter is totally unstructured and has no embedded metacodes in the data stream.
What they have done is taken the prior existing technology XML, and patented using it in a document to describe how some text is bold, or what the document title is. Fuck that, that is the most obvious use of XML, it's a textbook example of XML. These guys would never make $290 million off of their "invention" which they didn't invent.
Also, I don't believe the fact that the courts didn't invalidate the software patent indicates, by any stretch of the means, that the patent should be a valid patent. That's why everyone here generally doesn't hate patents, they just hate software patents. People patent obvious things and our courts buy it. Regardless of where you stand on the matter of if it hurts the big guy or the little guy, it is an incredible injustice to be able to patent obvious things, which many software patents actually are.
You have just proven my point. Your above code is NOT dead simple; canvas.drawCircle(100, 100, 30) is dead simple. canvas.drawText(100, 100, "Hello, world!") is dead simple. Nor is your above code compatible across all platforms like AWT. For example, glPointSize, or the font stuff used for text, is NOT available on all platforms. Memory management is not dead simple (font release, string release).
OpenGL is a horrible choice for the OP, per the OP's question.
Not only do I know that 2D is a plane in 3D space, I've actually had to use it before. On Android, I made a game with 3D graphics with a 2D HUD.
2D operations are not retardedly easy in OpenGL. Look at the code below. There are no canvas.drawCircle, canvas.drawLine, etc. functions like there are in other frameworks such as AWT. Nor is the OpenGL compatible with every platform, as my experience has shown me with Android. Hell, it wasn't even compatible with every Android phone.
OpenGL is not what the OP (original poster) asked for.
I've used AWT, OpenGL, and.NET, and others I suppose. If I were doing it myself, personally I would do Java, because I'm very familiar with it. It has loads of examples out there, but it does have its little caveats that you will get hung up on while you are starting out. OpenGL has a steep learning curve and it's hard to get simple things done. Honestly, of those three I mention,.NET has the quickest learning curve, and is slightly faster at getting things done quicker than AWT.
First of all, OpenGL is a 3D framework. He is looking for a canvas to paint custom objects, and OpenGL is very hard to do 2D operations. He doesn't seem to need 3D operations at all. When you say "lightweight", what you mean is it does not have very much functionality. It barely has any canvas functions such as draw line, oval, etc. Finally, OpenGL is not nearly as easy/quick to learn as the other frameworks he mentions.
In short, OpenGL is a horrible choice for the original poster.
Aww, does your small dick make you need to insult everyone that replies to your comments on Slashdot? Awwww!
I didn't say it wasn't wrong, I said it doesn't remove the target's freedom of speech. Freedom of speech can't be taken away. Just because you are protesting on the corner, and someone comes along with a loud megaphone and blares it as to drown out what you are saying, your freedom of speech hasn't been taken away. Just because someone burns a newspaper you wrote, your freedom of speech hasn't been taken away. None of the examples are necessarily "right", but they don't have anything to do with the fact that our government cannot pass laws inhibiting our freedom of speech. Freedom of speech in the U.S. is the inability of our government to pass laws which unduly inhibit a citizen's right to free expression. It is only tested when a law is passed which may inhibit such right. It is not tested when someone is being a dick (although it may be tested if the laws against someone being a dick may conflict with the right of free speech).
Now that I have laid the Lego blocks w/ the design out in front of you; defend it?
What I certainly can tell you is that this is not a properly formed English sentence.
This is one of those cases which happen often in Slashdot conversations where one should read the article instead of speculating (the original post on the nlpc.org website). You are absolutely correct that, by merit of being right leaning, does not make an article discountable. However, the guy who wrote the article talks about how Google collected URLs, e-mails, and passwords, and its credibility is "shredded". This is a clear misrepresentation of what Google Street View actually did. It claims the "scandal" is one of the most serious issues of privacy, wiretapping, and campaign financing. The author is actually claiming that Google has been capturing and storing your personal information illegally, which is absolutely not true. I don't have the references on me now, but basically the Street View program just used hotspot points to triangulate location data. So, the source does not have known, undisputed facts, in fact it is wrong.
The organization is DEFINATELY biased. A quick look at nlpc.org will give a clear indication of this. It talks about rejection of Big Government and Obamacare.
I totally get what you're saying. In theory, how our tax money is spent IS accountable, by our elected officials. In practice, there are thousands of things that are paid for by your tax bill and it's hard to see what exactly you are paying for. It's much easier to have a single service accounted for by a single bill, as opposed to many services paid for by taxes (that some of your neighbors may not want).
On a counter note to the pay-as-you-go scheme, the problem is that it wouldn't work... I wouldn't have to pay for the roads or schools I already have used, I would only pay for what I need, when I needed it, and expect my neighbor to take care of the incidentals while I just boguarded shit from society to get along in life.
Slashdot Mirror
Since luck has no physical property or defined quantity, that phrase is largely meaningless. It would be equally accurate to say that nobody makes it big without a substantial helping of ether.
I see where you're trying to go with this, but this statement is not true. "Nobody makes it big without a substantial helping of good luck" is indeed meaningful (although perhaps incorrect... people DO make it big without luck, i.e. I don't think Steve Jobs / Bill Gates were as lucky as people on American Idol, because I think they had real talent which wasn't randomly given to them). Luck, to a scientific mind, is randomness. And yes, randomness is something.
:)
As to your point about keeping it when making it big, I think you're viewing one particular scenario in your mind, such as a lottery winner who wins and then has no money after 5 years. Keeping your money isn't as hard as making it; it is much harder to make it than to spend it once you reach a certain threshold of sustaining your basic needs in your environment. In fact, that's why there's so many fewer people at the top of the income brackets than at the bottom. To make average income levels is very easy, to make the 80%+ percentile is difficult. As a matter of fact, only 20% of people make it past the 80% percentile
You think that everyone is stupid because the actual vote was 56%, and if we're not making the point that you are then we just can't comprehend what you can. A few list of your comments:
sigh
If you cannot understand even this then the rest of the conversation is useless and I am sorry that I have wasted both your time and mine
You really need to start getting your historical facts straight and stop twisting them so.
well you should look well at the volume of his posts
I think you might want to look at the definition of exaggerating
You are somewhat unbalanced. The world is not out to get you, Hungus, and you aren't smarter than everyone else, at least not by what you are saying in this conversation. (lol @ you enlightening us on what exaggeration is)
Oh lord, really? In the context I meant you were making a bigger deal of "twisting the truth" than he actually did, as 56% is not far from 51% and still the point remains that it only needed 51% to make such a vote win, not 56%, hence the argument against democracy. Also, I'm not reading the volume of his or her posts, I'm just commenting on the one post I read.
Finally, I'm not sure what exact point you were trying to confer with the link you provided about the trial, but apparently I got something right: some historians agree that the explanation for Socrates choosing death over exile is that Socrates was ready to die. Why you think that historical refresh was necessary to explain your statement, "You really need to start getting your historical facts straight and stop twisting them so" is unclear.
As a smarter-than-most "elitist" person who lives in the U.S., I find myself hating democracy all the time. However, I can't ever think of a better long-term solution. If the power was handed to "benevolent dictators" or a group of smart people like me (oligarchy), it would fail in the long run. As Winston Churchill famously said, "democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."
But it is by no means a 'democracy'
GOD, WHAT THE FUCK. This bullshit is always all over ./ conversations. How can smart people be so ignorant? A democracy is NOT mutually exclusive with a republic. America is a democracy. It also happens to be a republic. It may not be a DIRECT democracy, but it is still a democracy, which is a government which is elected by its people. This should not be a difficult concept to grasp.
To be fair, you're exaggerating. 56% vs. 51% isn't really twisting the facts that much, and his point was that it only took 51%. Also, probably because of his old age, exile wasn't an acceptable outcome, so the fact that he chose death over exile is just a small nuance in the end effect of the vote which decided to end him in one way or another.
It isn't a perfect system, but it's certainly much better than a Democracy.
God dammit, WHY do so many people on the Internet believe that America is not a democracy, because it is a republic? Please stop saying "democracy" as if it means "pure democracy" or "direct democracy". A democracy is a government that is elected by people, which can happen in many different forms. A republic is not mutually exclusive with a democracy. America is a democracy, and it is also a federal republic. They aren't mutually exclusive.
Also, I would argue that being a republic does not protect us from the tyranny of the majority. For example, my right to see my boyfriend in California at a hospital when we are dying, as well as my right to pay my taxes together with my boyfriend, and over 1500 other rights that our laws have attached to marriage, was thrown out the window by a 52% - 48% vote in California a year or two ago. What actually protects us from the tyranny of the majority are rights setup in our laws, such as a law that the right of free speech cannot be taken away, even in a 95%-5% vote.
1. The amount of software engineers making over a million dollars per year is so small it is inconsequential to any statistical report of software engineers. 2. How exactly does one who makes a million dollars per year report that they make $20K a year? By being paid cash? That has nothing to do with software engineers, that has to do with working for the mob.
I have never been in politics, nor know anyone at all who is involved in politics. That being said, IMHO I believe that being a corrupt politician is not an easy job. It may score high on Salary vs. Education/Smarts, but I bet it doesn't score high on comfortable workplace environment.
Red state? I get why you used that comparison, but I don't think it's correct; i.e. a fair way to compare job markets, IMHO. I think you should have just said "big city" vs. "small city". This is coming from a "Software Engineer" or what have you, who lives in a big city in a red state, and I believe that my job, including salary and quality of work, compares to an equivalent job in California.
Well, you didn't have to insult /.ers based on a few comments. I can also say that the statement "there SHOULD NOT be any relation between competence and compensation" must come from a person who doesn't depend on competence. There actually SHOULD be a relation, although still the statement is still so vague that I won't bother expounding on it any further.
That being said, "If there is higher demand for incompetent fools than the supply of them, incompetent fools would be highly paid" is totally correct in most circumstances.
Unfortunately I just broke my rule of never responding to Anonymous Cowards, because ACs always know that they are wrong and just want to rant. On the other hand, it's 5:30 AM and I'm a little drunk.
I think too many people here are overblowing the situation. It is not the western world going to shit, corporations taking over the little guy, etc. It's just a bad law, and I highly doubt it is any form of favoritism. The more complicated any rule or plan is, the worse it is (if they have problems with storage, they should just tax all storage media across the board, and not try to specify it based on such details as OS.
Muslims do not read the old testament (the torah). They only read the Koran, which is the pure word of God delivered through Muhammad. Everything else, including even translations of the Koran into different languages, are no longer the word of God. The People of the Book are specifically mentioned, though, which means Jews and Christians, because they have also received revelations, but they are using a faulty revelation that had become corrupted over time.
:)
Atheists know more about religion that religious people do
Shit, you caught me... actually I was copying and pasting part of the claims, but then found the summary which was a much quicker and easier way to say my point.
Well maybe... the Sweedish police issued an arrest warrant, then applied to Interpol. The arrest warrant was upheld by a Swedish court. The Interpol notice is exactly what happens when a participating member country applies to Interpol for an arrest warrant. It also says that Interpol has no authority to compel a subject's arrest.
There may be character assassination somewhere down the line, but it would not be Interpol's fault, it would be Sweden's fault (or further down the line... prosecutors, etc.) for asking Interpol to do so.
http://www.google.com/patents?id=y8UkAAAAEBAJ&printsec=description&zoom=4#v=onepage&q&f=false
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION It is an object of the present invention to provide an improved method of encoding a document It is a further object of the present invention to provide an improved system of encoding a document. Thus, in sharp contrast to the prior art the present invention is based on the practice of separating encoding conventions from the content of a document. The invention does not use embedded metacoding to differentiate the content of the document, but rather, the metacodes of the document are separated from the content and held in distinct storage in a structure called a metacode map. whereas document content is held in a mapped content area. Raw content is an extreme example of mapped content wherein the latter is totally unstructured and has no embedded metacodes in the data stream.
What they have done is taken the prior existing technology XML, and patented using it in a document to describe how some text is bold, or what the document title is. Fuck that, that is the most obvious use of XML, it's a textbook example of XML. These guys would never make $290 million off of their "invention" which they didn't invent.
Also, I don't believe the fact that the courts didn't invalidate the software patent indicates, by any stretch of the means, that the patent should be a valid patent. That's why everyone here generally doesn't hate patents, they just hate software patents. People patent obvious things and our courts buy it. Regardless of where you stand on the matter of if it hurts the big guy or the little guy, it is an incredible injustice to be able to patent obvious things, which many software patents actually are.
You have just proven my point. Your above code is NOT dead simple; canvas.drawCircle(100, 100, 30) is dead simple. canvas.drawText(100, 100, "Hello, world!") is dead simple. Nor is your above code compatible across all platforms like AWT. For example, glPointSize, or the font stuff used for text, is NOT available on all platforms. Memory management is not dead simple (font release, string release).
OpenGL is a horrible choice for the OP, per the OP's question.
Not only do I know that 2D is a plane in 3D space, I've actually had to use it before. On Android, I made a game with 3D graphics with a 2D HUD.
2D operations are not retardedly easy in OpenGL. Look at the code below. There are no canvas.drawCircle, canvas.drawLine, etc. functions like there are in other frameworks such as AWT. Nor is the OpenGL compatible with every platform, as my experience has shown me with Android. Hell, it wasn't even compatible with every Android phone.
OpenGL is not what the OP (original poster) asked for.
I've used AWT, OpenGL, and .NET, and others I suppose. If I were doing it myself, personally I would do Java, because I'm very familiar with it. It has loads of examples out there, but it does have its little caveats that you will get hung up on while you are starting out. OpenGL has a steep learning curve and it's hard to get simple things done. Honestly, of those three I mention, .NET has the quickest learning curve, and is slightly faster at getting things done quicker than AWT.
You have a great point, you really do. But the original poster mentioned that it was for personal use, so the programmer IS the customer.
No, it is not the obvious choice.
First of all, OpenGL is a 3D framework. He is looking for a canvas to paint custom objects, and OpenGL is very hard to do 2D operations. He doesn't seem to need 3D operations at all. When you say "lightweight", what you mean is it does not have very much functionality. It barely has any canvas functions such as draw line, oval, etc. Finally, OpenGL is not nearly as easy/quick to learn as the other frameworks he mentions.
In short, OpenGL is a horrible choice for the original poster.
I didn't say it wasn't wrong, I said it doesn't remove the target's freedom of speech. Freedom of speech can't be taken away. Just because you are protesting on the corner, and someone comes along with a loud megaphone and blares it as to drown out what you are saying, your freedom of speech hasn't been taken away. Just because someone burns a newspaper you wrote, your freedom of speech hasn't been taken away. None of the examples are necessarily "right", but they don't have anything to do with the fact that our government cannot pass laws inhibiting our freedom of speech. Freedom of speech in the U.S. is the inability of our government to pass laws which unduly inhibit a citizen's right to free expression. It is only tested when a law is passed which may inhibit such right. It is not tested when someone is being a dick (although it may be tested if the laws against someone being a dick may conflict with the right of free speech).
Now that I have laid the Lego blocks w/ the design out in front of you; defend it?
What I certainly can tell you is that this is not a properly formed English sentence.
This is one of those cases which happen often in Slashdot conversations where one should read the article instead of speculating (the original post on the nlpc.org website). You are absolutely correct that, by merit of being right leaning, does not make an article discountable. However, the guy who wrote the article talks about how Google collected URLs, e-mails, and passwords, and its credibility is "shredded". This is a clear misrepresentation of what Google Street View actually did. It claims the "scandal" is one of the most serious issues of privacy, wiretapping, and campaign financing. The author is actually claiming that Google has been capturing and storing your personal information illegally, which is absolutely not true. I don't have the references on me now, but basically the Street View program just used hotspot points to triangulate location data. So, the source does not have known, undisputed facts, in fact it is wrong.
The organization is DEFINATELY biased. A quick look at nlpc.org will give a clear indication of this. It talks about rejection of Big Government and Obamacare.
I totally get what you're saying. In theory, how our tax money is spent IS accountable, by our elected officials. In practice, there are thousands of things that are paid for by your tax bill and it's hard to see what exactly you are paying for. It's much easier to have a single service accounted for by a single bill, as opposed to many services paid for by taxes (that some of your neighbors may not want).
On a counter note to the pay-as-you-go scheme, the problem is that it wouldn't work... I wouldn't have to pay for the roads or schools I already have used, I would only pay for what I need, when I needed it, and expect my neighbor to take care of the incidentals while I just boguarded shit from society to get along in life.