Is anyone else tired of hearing about "girls'" tendencies to playing/not playing video games? It seems every week there's a new story about "Why girls don't play games" or "Why girls do play games" or "Girls will play more games if _____." If girls don't play games, apparently they don't want to, so who cares? The only people I can see who'd care about this is the game companies, looking to profit from a relatively untapped demographic. Men and women are different and tend to like different things. There are many reasons and explanations for this, and any of them can be applied to this specific issue. But as the French say, vive la difference.
The inhabitable planets are cloaked. Unfortunately the planetary cloaking device makes them sterile, hence their need to kidnap the children from passing ships.
In EverQuest and World of Warcraft, at least, you may want or need to speak to:
Your group
Your raid/raid group
The people near you (/say)
Your entire guild
The people in your vicinity but not "near" you (/shout)
All the people in the zone (/1 or general chat)
The channel for people who want to sell/buy and link items - you can't link items in voice chat, obviously
Arbitrary channels for friends or other groups (serverwide class channels, etc).
Most people are unable or unwilling to listen to more than one channel of voice chat at a time, to say nothing of speaking. Text chat is used in MMO games for the same reason it's used in other situations. Sometimes it's just more efficient.
These days the difference between the "OMG WOWWW" top-end gaming machine and the low-mid level one that mere mortals can acquire for $1500 or less is pretty slim. I'm at the point where I just decide how much I want to spend on the machine and build whatever I can for that price. I won't spend over $150 for a video card anymore, so I just get the best one in that range. Unless it's a generational difference or missing some key feature, the low-mid range part does everything the high end one will do (maybe video cards are the exception here). But my motherboard cost like $90 or something new, and it was among the top rated ones at the time, and had integrated sound, 1394, usb 1/2 and some other stuff. I saved like $200 by getting an Athlon 3200 instead of 3400 or whatever it was at the time... The performance difference there is negligible in daily use, even in high-end games.
As we progress it just seems like the concept of the "OMG LOOK AT THIS UBER COMPUTAR I BUILT WITHOUT REGARD TO PRICE" becomes meaningless since you can build one that's 90% as good for 50% of the price in many cases.
The Linux kernel can be compiled with stateful packet filtering. It gives complete (or near-complete) control over almost all aspects of firewalling, including limiting based on src/dst port or address, rate limiting, etc. I once built a dedicated firewall using the "bridging firewall" patch which totally owned. The box didn't have its own ip and was transparent to the machines on either side of the network. Was a pain to modify remotely though.:(
I used a $800 1U machine for this task and it was probably overkill. Though to protect company machines, I don't know if you'd want to rely on a $100 solution.
On Linux you want to look into iptables. On BSD I think the packet filtering is called netfilter.
I dunno, to me the iTunes interface looks pretty dissimilar to Contois's mockup. iTunes's columnar selectors are really more akin to NeXT and the rest of the MacOS than that mockup. And when you boil it down, there aren't that many ways to display a given set of data, and for something that plays music there are elements that would almost be required - the play/next/stop buttons, the name of the track, etc.
If they had employees leave for Apple, that muddies the waters somewhat, but to me it's a no-brainer... their interface doesn't look like iTunes.
Re: quads = text.split('.')
on
Data Crunching
·
· Score: 1
Well, sure, that'll work, but that's not what the reviewer included as an alternate example. The \d{1,3} syntax would do a lot of sanity checking right off the bat. But if there's one thing I learned from Perl, it's TMTOWTDI. If you're guaranteed that the data being passed to you is valid and clean, using a simple split on the '.' character would suffice. I usually prefer to err on the side of "never trust the data," especially when designing modular stuff, as you never really know who's going to be passing you the data. Better to check twice than not at all, to me anyway.
This may or may not work... typing code in an HTML textarea is annoying.
function parseData($stuff) { ....
if (preg_match('/^\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3\.\d{1,3}$/ ',trim($stuff)) {
log_ip_address($stuff);
} ... }
function log_ip_address($ip) {
$ip = preg_split('/\./',$ip);
foreach ($ip as $q) {
if (is_int($q) && ($q >= 0) && ($q <= 255)) {
continue;
}
else {
return FALSE;
}
}
// It is a numeric IP address... If we were cool we'd check to make sure it // wasn't in a reserved ip block and other sanity checks.
log($ip);
return TRUE; }
quads = text.split('.')
on
Data Crunching
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
quads = text.split('.')
This assumes valid data and not something mangled like "1.2.3" or "U.S.A.". Using the numeric regex match that the book's author suggested would be more reliable in matching IP addresses only.
War is terrible, I agree, but you seem to be leaving out the fact that the Empire of Japan attacked the United States, essentially unprovoked. There are wars that are fought for flippant reasons, the second World War was not one of them. The Allies in World War II literally saved the world. While any war is a horror, you seem to be implying, by stating that we "condoned" what our troops had done, that what the US did during WWII was wrong. It was not. While the atomic bombs dropped on Japan may have been unnecessary, defending the world from madmen in the process of world domination was not only necessary, but probably the greatest achievement of the past 500-1000 years.
I'm not saying the US was a perfectly noble opponent in the war, and I'm sure some soldiers on both sides did things that fell outside the Geneva convention, but frankly your attitude toward WW2 vets seems insulting. Maybe I'm biased due to having lived in the US my entire life, but you certainly seem just as biased against the US. You seem to be placing the "blame" for the war squarely on the US. As I said above, Japan is the one who attacked us, and WW2 vets' actions don't need to be "condoned" but rather commended.
I once worked for a company whose mail started bouncing (including stuff like order confirmation emails) due to having a well-known spammer in the same/24 block! We complained to the blacklist (I forget which one(s)) and were told basically that we had to lean on our ISP to can the spammer. Since the spammer was paying them like $5k a month or something, and we were paying like $700, it was a no-brainer for them. There was nothing we could do. These guys are like the gestapo in that sense. On the one hand, yes it's all voluntary, but on the other hand they could at least pretend to care about the collateral damage they cause.
Lots of stories pointing to "CoolTechZone" lately. Do they have some kind of deal with Slashdot/OSDN? This post seems to be a Slashvertisement both for the mouse and the site.
To me this issue is analogous to the question, "If god is omnipotent, can he make a rock so heavy he can't lift it?" Either way, you're admitting that god can't do something. The issue of GPL giving more rights by adding a restriction is similar. The BSD license has fewer restrictions but is also viewed by the FSF as "less free." Both arguments have merit.
Re:Congratulations are in order!
on
A Decade of PHP
·
· Score: 1
Speaking from first-hand experience, there comes a point where you reach the limits of Postgres. My company is fast-approaching that limit, and throwing more hardware at the problem is not the ultimate solution. Postgres is not a perfect piece of software - the fact that the VACUUM command exists is proof of that. Ever try vacuuming a 1+ terabyte database with 2000+ tables? In the end you save more time by dumping the entire db and restoring it.
Coding for one database rather than creating an abstraction layer is a horrible, horrible idea, unless you agree from the outset that you will never change the database backend. And even then, if you rely on the php built-in commands for database interaction, there's no guarantee that those commands won't change in the future - they have in the past: PHP has renamed a few functions to keep a more uniform naming structure. While the old names still currently work, in the future they may not. Even if they stay the same, maybe they'll introduce new functions that handle the data better, in which case an abstraction layer saves you tons of time.
If you agree never to update or change your system's backend then coding for a specific language and database backend may be appropriate. But if you care about designing extensible, upgradeable software that is platform-agnostic, a layer of abstraction is necessary. If I was interviewing someone and they presented me with sample code riddled with "pg_connect()" calls rather than abstracting that into its own library, my first question would be "tell me why it is bad to do this."
I have a file of passwords that I keep on my PC, but it's PGP/GPG encrypted so only my master passphrase can open it. So I can get my passwords when I need them and not worry so much about someone finding the file.
In the computer/Internet industry, there are very few companies that actually innovate (strange for an industry based on innovation). Among those who make the short list are Apple and Google. Look at the sheer number of look-alike products their competitors make - the latest Dell catalog sent to my house has a Dell MP3 player that looks like an iPod without the wheel control. Microsoft and Yahoo have both tried their hardest to copy Google -- Microsoft has also tried to copy several concepts from Apple. I don't quite see why Google is so highly valued on top of such low income, but maybe it's the growth potential. They keep coming out with valuable products and services that do cool, interesting, and useful things. Very few other companies in the industry can make that claim.
Checking your email isn't an addiction unless you have develop physical or mental dependence on it. I've heard people refer to themselves as being addicted to email, but as a joke. For anyone to claim that people who check their email regularly are "addicted" is silly. Unless your desire to read your email causes you to do (or not do) something that causes you or others harm, it's certainly not an addiction, anymore than reading the newspaper is.
After re-reading my initial comment it sounds like I am in some way criticizing Apple or the Mini, which was not my intention. My intention was to criticize Intel and the media outlets that will run with this as a "Mac Mini Look-alike." The point being, this isn't anything special, and the only way Intel would be able to ride Apple's coattails on this would be by having it run OSX. As I said, the Mac Mini is not a great computer due to its size, but due to its price and the fact that it runs OSX.
Slashdot Mirror
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/01/061825 0&tid=103
Is anyone else tired of hearing about "girls'" tendencies to playing/not playing video games? It seems every week there's a new story about "Why girls don't play games" or "Why girls do play games" or "Girls will play more games if _____." If girls don't play games, apparently they don't want to, so who cares? The only people I can see who'd care about this is the game companies, looking to profit from a relatively untapped demographic. Men and women are different and tend to like different things. There are many reasons and explanations for this, and any of them can be applied to this specific issue. But as the French say, vive la difference.
The inhabitable planets are cloaked. Unfortunately the planetary cloaking device makes them sterile, hence their need to kidnap the children from passing ships.
ICANN is largely inept. Regardless of its national origins, they should not be in control of the Internet.
Most people are unable or unwilling to listen to more than one channel of voice chat at a time, to say nothing of speaking. Text chat is used in MMO games for the same reason it's used in other situations. Sometimes it's just more efficient.
There's also a strlen check to make sure the length of "video.google.com" matches the strlen of the host.
These days the difference between the "OMG WOWWW" top-end gaming machine and the low-mid level one that mere mortals can acquire for $1500 or less is pretty slim. I'm at the point where I just decide how much I want to spend on the machine and build whatever I can for that price. I won't spend over $150 for a video card anymore, so I just get the best one in that range. Unless it's a generational difference or missing some key feature, the low-mid range part does everything the high end one will do (maybe video cards are the exception here). But my motherboard cost like $90 or something new, and it was among the top rated ones at the time, and had integrated sound, 1394, usb 1/2 and some other stuff. I saved like $200 by getting an Athlon 3200 instead of 3400 or whatever it was at the time... The performance difference there is negligible in daily use, even in high-end games.
As we progress it just seems like the concept of the "OMG LOOK AT THIS UBER COMPUTAR I BUILT WITHOUT REGARD TO PRICE" becomes meaningless since you can build one that's 90% as good for 50% of the price in many cases.
The Linux kernel can be compiled with stateful packet filtering. It gives complete (or near-complete) control over almost all aspects of firewalling, including limiting based on src/dst port or address, rate limiting, etc. I once built a dedicated firewall using the "bridging firewall" patch which totally owned. The box didn't have its own ip and was transparent to the machines on either side of the network. Was a pain to modify remotely though. :(
I used a $800 1U machine for this task and it was probably overkill. Though to protect company machines, I don't know if you'd want to rely on a $100 solution.
On Linux you want to look into iptables. On BSD I think the packet filtering is called netfilter.
What, no Mr. Fusion?
How to get to Repo St?
http://apple.slashdot.org/search.pl?query=nokia
I dunno, to me the iTunes interface looks pretty dissimilar to Contois's mockup. iTunes's columnar selectors are really more akin to NeXT and the rest of the MacOS than that mockup. And when you boil it down, there aren't that many ways to display a given set of data, and for something that plays music there are elements that would almost be required - the play/next/stop buttons, the name of the track, etc.
If they had employees leave for Apple, that muddies the waters somewhat, but to me it's a no-brainer... their interface doesn't look like iTunes.
This may or may not work... typing code in an HTML textarea is annoying.
War is terrible, I agree, but you seem to be leaving out the fact that the Empire of Japan attacked the United States, essentially unprovoked. There are wars that are fought for flippant reasons, the second World War was not one of them. The Allies in World War II literally saved the world. While any war is a horror, you seem to be implying, by stating that we "condoned" what our troops had done, that what the US did during WWII was wrong. It was not. While the atomic bombs dropped on Japan may have been unnecessary, defending the world from madmen in the process of world domination was not only necessary, but probably the greatest achievement of the past 500-1000 years.
I'm not saying the US was a perfectly noble opponent in the war, and I'm sure some soldiers on both sides did things that fell outside the Geneva convention, but frankly your attitude toward WW2 vets seems insulting. Maybe I'm biased due to having lived in the US my entire life, but you certainly seem just as biased against the US. You seem to be placing the "blame" for the war squarely on the US. As I said above, Japan is the one who attacked us, and WW2 vets' actions don't need to be "condoned" but rather commended.
I once worked for a company whose mail started bouncing (including stuff like order confirmation emails) due to having a well-known spammer in the same /24 block! We complained to the blacklist (I forget which one(s)) and were told basically that we had to lean on our ISP to can the spammer. Since the spammer was paying them like $5k a month or something, and we were paying like $700, it was a no-brainer for them. There was nothing we could do. These guys are like the gestapo in that sense. On the one hand, yes it's all voluntary, but on the other hand they could at least pretend to care about the collateral damage they cause.
Hope you meant 303... 403 is Forbidden. :-)
With so many of its customers being non-US, so what if the game's "US-based"? If it had 2 million US-based customers it would be more impressive.
Lots of stories pointing to "CoolTechZone" lately. Do they have some kind of deal with Slashdot/OSDN? This post seems to be a Slashvertisement both for the mouse and the site.
g +cooltechzone
http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aslashdot.or
I remember an episode of Transformers where Grimlok said:
"Me Grimlok think this much more gooder!"
2nd sentence reminded me of that.
To me this issue is analogous to the question, "If god is omnipotent, can he make a rock so heavy he can't lift it?" Either way, you're admitting that god can't do something. The issue of GPL giving more rights by adding a restriction is similar. The BSD license has fewer restrictions but is also viewed by the FSF as "less free." Both arguments have merit.
Speaking from first-hand experience, there comes a point where you reach the limits of Postgres. My company is fast-approaching that limit, and throwing more hardware at the problem is not the ultimate solution. Postgres is not a perfect piece of software - the fact that the VACUUM command exists is proof of that. Ever try vacuuming a 1+ terabyte database with 2000+ tables? In the end you save more time by dumping the entire db and restoring it.
Coding for one database rather than creating an abstraction layer is a horrible, horrible idea, unless you agree from the outset that you will never change the database backend. And even then, if you rely on the php built-in commands for database interaction, there's no guarantee that those commands won't change in the future - they have in the past: PHP has renamed a few functions to keep a more uniform naming structure. While the old names still currently work, in the future they may not. Even if they stay the same, maybe they'll introduce new functions that handle the data better, in which case an abstraction layer saves you tons of time.
If you agree never to update or change your system's backend then coding for a specific language and database backend may be appropriate. But if you care about designing extensible, upgradeable software that is platform-agnostic, a layer of abstraction is necessary. If I was interviewing someone and they presented me with sample code riddled with "pg_connect()" calls rather than abstracting that into its own library, my first question would be "tell me why it is bad to do this."
I have a file of passwords that I keep on my PC, but it's PGP/GPG encrypted so only my master passphrase can open it. So I can get my passwords when I need them and not worry so much about someone finding the file.
In the computer/Internet industry, there are very few companies that actually innovate (strange for an industry based on innovation). Among those who make the short list are Apple and Google. Look at the sheer number of look-alike products their competitors make - the latest Dell catalog sent to my house has a Dell MP3 player that looks like an iPod without the wheel control. Microsoft and Yahoo have both tried their hardest to copy Google -- Microsoft has also tried to copy several concepts from Apple. I don't quite see why Google is so highly valued on top of such low income, but maybe it's the growth potential. They keep coming out with valuable products and services that do cool, interesting, and useful things. Very few other companies in the industry can make that claim.
http://www.google.com/search?q=define%3Aaddiction
Checking your email isn't an addiction unless you have develop physical or mental dependence on it. I've heard people refer to themselves as being addicted to email, but as a joke. For anyone to claim that people who check their email regularly are "addicted" is silly. Unless your desire to read your email causes you to do (or not do) something that causes you or others harm, it's certainly not an addiction, anymore than reading the newspaper is.
After re-reading my initial comment it sounds like I am in some way criticizing Apple or the Mini, which was not my intention. My intention was to criticize Intel and the media outlets that will run with this as a "Mac Mini Look-alike." The point being, this isn't anything special, and the only way Intel would be able to ride Apple's coattails on this would be by having it run OSX. As I said, the Mac Mini is not a great computer due to its size, but due to its price and the fact that it runs OSX.