Saying "I'm going to hack vim (or vi)" is like saying "I'm gonna go bolt some rear spoilers onto my horse-drawn plow."
Just let vi die, already. Put a stake in its heart. Constantly Franken-retrofitting it to be slightly less annoying is a complete waste of time when there are 65 billion real text editors available out there, plenty of them FOSS.
The only time you ever see huge discounts on products are when they're several years old and residing in the bargain bin because the retailer has given up on making a profit on it.
Nonsense. Bioshock was on sale (for a short while) for FIVE DOLLARS on Steam less than a year after it came out. Current cheapest price I could find online for a new copy: $15.
Civilian nuclear power is a mistake? Yeah - right. We've had a total of one-half of one accident here in the US, what was it - 40 years ago? - which didn't cause a single death. Hell, the recent giant Coal Ash spill did a hell of a lot more harm. And one bad accident at a crappy, crumbling, Soviet-era plant run by the three stooges.
You may want to tell France what a bad idea it is - they get something like 75% of their power from nuclear.
Nuclear isn't just the best idea, it's the *only* sane idea: do as much as we can with solar and wind, sure. They can be important parts of the solution. No rules says all energy has to be produced by just one method. Bt anyone who thinks we can solve our carbon problems, or our supply/dependence problems, or our soon-it-will-all-be-gone problems without Nuclear being a huge part of it is smoking crack. Or the owner of a solar power company that's looking to use scare tactics to improve business.
I'd bet money that 1) this guy is an agent of the Chinese government in some way or another, and 2) a CRC of the microcode for the firmware in these routers would not match the CRC of the microcode in an American-made one.
Think about it. If *I* were China and I wanted built-in industrial espionage capabilities through an undetectable backdoor, this is *exactly* how I'd do it - with trajaned firmware in counterfeit network hardware. You got yer plausible deniability, untraceability, undetectability, and a client list happy to get a discount on expensive hardware and not concerned with where it came from. We know the Chinese are sucking up as much of our intellectual property and technology secrets as they can get their hands on right under our noses while protesting vehemently that they aren't because they know we can't prove it. Even when we find one of the guys involved like this, they just act shocked, claim they had nothing to do with it, cut him loose to serve a few years, and continue right on doing it with some other patsy. What better way could there be than to trojan the microcode in network hardware, then sell it at a loss to greedy western corporations who don't give a damn about security if they can save a couple bucks?
1) Get an ipod. 2) Get an iPod-capable "boom box" for each room. There are some out there with excellent sound that don't cost much. 3) Bring your ipod from room to room.
Cheap, no frills, no high tech, no wires, no headaches, no hassle.
Y'all seem to be forgetting a couple very important points. First, ZFS is here. Now. In production. Officially supported. It had years and years of development and testing, and has been in Solaris 10 for years after that. It's solid and it's here and it works great. Btrfs, on the other hand, whether you think it's technically better or technically worse, is still *YEARS* away from any kind of stable release. It doesn't even have RAID 5 yet, fer chrissakes. Even if it were 100% feature complete today, it would still be *years* before I or anyone else would even dream of using it in production.
Say what you want about Sun, their engineering is top notch. They put ZFS through hell while testing it, and it's been out for some time now. Btrfs has just barely reach infancy.
Second, one of the things I consider *most* important about ZFS is that it's EASY TO USE. I always had a hell of a time trying to understand all the million complex concepts and commands in Veritas and other volume managers. After a lonmg time as a sysadmin I still have trouble with it. You know what? I learned ZFS in about twenty minutes. The way they're organized and written the commands makes it so dead easy to use it amazing. I can do with *one* ZFS command what would have taken an hour of head-scratching and manual-referencing with Veritas.
Btrfs, on the other hand, despite the assertion in the mission statement that usability is a main goal, shows every sign of becoming yet another filesystems where doing anything involves 15 different commands to do different things, each with 22 bizarre options. The scanty "man pages" that exist are nearly impossible to find (not on the btrfs web site) and when you do finally track down something like a command syntax or parameter reference, it appears that btrfs commands are going to be just as - if not more - incredibly complex and intimidating as Veritas.
If the btrfs project people want folks to adopt that filesystem rapidly and enthusiastically, they need to *completely* rewrite the interface, take a page from ZFS, make it one or two command with a simple, english-like syntax. hell, since ZFS is sort-of open sourced, they could probably steal the entire ZFS syntax verbatim - legally. The code itself may be under some kind of license, but I doubt anyone could get sued for using the same commands. They're just words, and I don't think something released under any kind of open source license could claim copyright violation over non-code text. If btrfs really wants to grow, thrive, and be accepted, they have to pay a LOT more attention to the usability issue. One of the huge reasons so many people like ZFS so much, including myself, is it's something that's extremely powerful on one hand but I can learn to use rapidly and become an expert on in no time. The syntx is so english-like it's almost like talking to another person.
Oh, BTW - just bite the bullet and call it 'BFS". "btrfs" is freaking awkward and stupid. It rolls off the tongue as easily as the abomination "GNU/Linux".
We smokers warned you: they'll come for you next. But did anyone listen? Noooooooo! "Let them tax the filthy smokers all they want", everyone thought. "*I* don't smoke, and it's disgusting and unhealthy anyways, so why shouldn't I have them pay more taxes so I don't have to?" Well, now you know why: because the nanny-staters never stop. They will never stop trying to force their idea of "what's best" on everyone. "It's for your own good!" is their marching song, and anyone who stands against them get branded with the Giant Smear Bush. Even politicians are helpless. Did they get any support from their constituents when the Smoking Nazis were on the prowl? Nope, y'all just sat there and cheered them on because you don't approve of smoking and felt that nice warm sense of self-righteousness and smug superiority.
So, as a smoker who's had to sit and take it up the ass for so many years as nonsmokers happily voted for tax after tax after tax, all I can say is - Nelson-Muntz-style - a big old "Ha-HA!"
I hope they tax the fuck out of everything that you enjoy. After all, soda and Big Macs are unhealthy, just like cigarettes! And since I neither drink soda nor eat the alleged "food" at places like McDonalds, I hope they pile on $4 worth of tax to every burger and soda so you know how it feels to have *your* guilty pleasure start to cost you a fortune.
When they came for the smokers, you didn't say anything because you weren't a smoker and didn't like smoking anyways. Now they're coming for *your* sins, and those of us who might have been on yoru side are just going to laugh it up.
A very interesting, well-written, and fair-minded account. It also happens to be pretty much my view about chiropracty: a skilled chiropractor can probably help some with physical things that involve joints and muscles, but there's no magic about it that can help with anything other than basic aches and pains.
I view some of the exaggerated claims some chiropractors make as just more pseudoscience bullshit. But with actual muscle and joint manipulation, there is at least the *possibility( that *in theory* they could be doing something beneficial. After all, we're talking about physical manipulation of a physical system here with joints and muscles and bones and so on. So physically manipulating it could theoretically work. Maybe it does work and maybe it doesn't, but the theory isn't laughable right on its face in the way things like Reiki, crystals, armoatherapy, homeopathy, etc are.
As usual, merchants are selling products the way THEY want to, not the way their customers want. Take me, for example (and I think I'm a pretty typical example). I have a few small, relatively low-traffic web sites that bring in a few extra bucks a month. Most months the bandwidth I use is well within my plan and the price of the plan is quite reasonable. I certainly can't afford - or at least don't want to pay for - dedicated servers and high bandwidth caps when it wouldn't be worth the money.
But I live in fear of my own success. What if that magic day comes when I get Slasdotted or Popular on Digg? Under my current plan, I'm sure my site would quickly go over it's "unlimited" cap and get shut off - and there I am, watching a potentially extremely lucrative day for me go down the drain as millions of hits bounce off a 404.
I don't want high bandwitdth caps ALL the time. I want "slashdot insurance". I want "Digg insurance". I don't use lots of bandwidth very often, but I want it on tap when I need it most. I don't mind paying (within reason) if I go over limit as long as the capacity is there when I need it. I want *flexible* capacity.
I'd pay a big hosting company an extra $1 or $2 a month for that kind of insurance - "your web site won't go down due to traffic (but we will charge you per GB over )". Or better yet, charge me per GB over my limit, but only up to a predetermined amount - say, "If I go over my limit, keep the gates open and charge me per GB until it gets to $500, then shut it down." Like a buffer or "overdraft protection" for my bandwidth. Or even let unused bandwidth "roll over" like cell=phone minutes, so people like me who are almost always well under the limit can suck up some extra once in a while without getting killed.
There are lots of different, better ways to sell bandwidth beyond "hard limit" and "fake-unlimited". They need to put together different "calling plans" to suit different needs.
From one point of view, the person who figures out the answer by surfing the web for five minutes is more productive/efficient than the one who spends five hours figuring it out another way.
Obviously someone who had no real knowledge of a subject at all and tried to do everything from the web would be a dumb choice. There needs to be basic understanding. But expecting everyone to always research everything is also pretty dumb. Especially in the IT field, no one single person can know everything or have time to "figure out" every answer. If we all didn't crib from the web constantly we'd all be ten years behind on our to-do lists. Sometimes the smartest thing to do IS to just Google it, get a canned answer, fix the problem, and move on. Do you want your people constantly doing "problem solving research" or moving on to their next task? Finding the balance is crucial. But don't put down the Googlers. We get shit done.
As the owner of a couple cats, I can say that the easiest way to find any cat in the dark is to simply walk around until they run in front of you, and you either step on them or trip on them.
Yet another reason (as if any were needed) that the PC is by far the superior platform for anything except sidescrollers, and other twitch-based button-mashers that don't require complex input. As with just about anything else in computing, Open = Better.
Someone should hook up Zork to a text messaging system of some kind so you can play the game that way. Then maybe Kids These Days would learn something about their heritage.
I find his expertise with a keyboard a bit unlikely, though perhaps plausible.
What I find *totally* laughable is not that he type like a daemon, but that he not only knows a 20th-century (hundreds of years old, to him) CAD program, he knows it so well that he even has all the keyboard shortcuts memorized and can create a highly complex engineering document without even touching the mouse. In about 30 seconds.
When you say that it's "obvious to ANYONE ELSE WHO KNOWS THEM [pot smokers]: pot has long-term personality effects.", you're quite simply wrong.
In SOME people (addicts), long-term heavy use can change personality somewhat. Everyone knows a few complete stoners who are high so much of the time that their capacity to deal with things is reduced. But the mistake you're making is assuming that EVERYONE WHO SMOKES POT IS AN ADDICT. And that's a big mistake.
We all know how alcohol can change people's lives - but MOST people who drink alcohol are not alcoholics. In the exact same way, just because SOME people get addicted to pot, smoke too much, and get side effects does not mean that everyone who smokes occasionally will have the same effects.
It's a perception-bias issue: you think that pot changes personalities because you only NOTICE the people who are addicts. For the vast majority of people who smoke pot, you can't tell that they do, because they don't abuse it. Believe me, If everyone you know who smoked wore a big neon sign that said "I smoke pot sometimes", you'd realize that for most people, which smoke occasionally and responsibly, those kinds of "personality effects" don't happen. It's easy to tell when someone is drunk, or if they clearly have a drinking problem, but for people who only drink moderately or occasionally, you can't tell them from anyone else because they're not abusing it.
You're taking extreme cases and generalizing them to a huge group of people. That's a serious mistake. It's like saying that everyone who plays poker is a gambling addict.
I literally can't remember the last time I saw any useful responses to an "Ask Slashdot" question. People post interesting and thoughtful questions looking for help - often questions I've wondered about, too. And I click on the link, hoping to get some useful information. But all I ever see are retards who go off on some random tangent that has nothing whatsoever to do with the question. And I keep my browsing level set at 2, so it's not just AC's and trolls.
Moderators need to use the "Irrelevant" tag a LOT more. A WHOLE HELL OF A LOT more. So people can read the comments and actually find (gasp!) something "relevant" to the post.
And yes, technically this post isn't directly relevant to the question either, but it's meta-relevant.
All we need is to fund a lot more WISPS (Wireless ISPs). Get broadband out to many more people much faster and cheaper than burying cable. The government and communication industries seem to think that "broadband" can ONLY mean "cable or DSL".
The thing is, Microsoft would only have to be forced to unbundle IE for a while, maybe a year or two, and that would be it for them. In my opinion,the #1 reason *by far* that most people use IE is that they barely even realize that the browser is a separate application. It comes with Windows, they're used to it, they think of it as part of Windows, inseparable *the same kind of thing is true with MS Office, but that's another post).
Once people *realize* that they have a choice, once the meme gets out that you can use Browser AS or Browser B and take you pick, that choosing a browser is like choosing any other software... then IE is dead meat.
BTW, Bill Gates must secretly be a woman. A real man would have named the company "Megahard". "Microsoft" is not a name a man would choose.
You have an excellent point that many geeks are slobs.
Unfortunately, there are many slobs who AREN'T geeks.
Yes, it could be that the guy who shows up to an interview in a T-shirt is a genius UNIX hacker who will have all the wonderful attributes you mention, and he dresses that way because he's so damn smart he doesn't have tim for trivialities like doing laundry because he's too busy thinking up an amazing piece of code.
It could also be that he's a freaking no-talent loser slob, and he dresses and acts that way because he doesn't know any better. Because he's a loser.
Lesson #1: The set of "loser slobs" and the set of "genius geeks" may intersect, but but they are not the same set.
Lesson #2: There are also plenty of geeks who are technically superb but also dress and act like normal people. They can have normal lives and kids and social skills and so on. We actually do exist, you know. You're right about the danger of geeks being forced into roles and work environments they're not good at. But in contrast there is also a large group of talented geeks who want a good work/life balance, don't WANT their jobs to become their lives, and feel pretty good about turning their phone off on the weekend after 40 hours of top-quality work.
Lesson #3: People come in all shapes, sizes, skill levels, and goals. Stereotyping is not useful when it comes to hiring.
While I agree with much of what you said, I have to admit that your attitude is all too common in the IT industry: that all the "good" people are the ones who sacrifice their lives for their jobs, sleep under their desks, work 12-hour days all the time, work all weekend, and so on. That's just expecting slavery. If I had an employee like that, I'd tell him to cut it out and live his life. I have much more respect for peopel who make sure they do a kick-ass job on the clock, are willing to work extra hours in *emergencies*, but other than that know how to balancetheir work and tehir life.
Work to live, don't live to work. Life's too short.
"Half-Life, Deus Ex, Unreal Tournament, Red Faction, all PS2 games with mouse and keyboard support"
Umm... they are also all games that originally came out on the PC and were ported to PS2.
People make me laugh. If I had a dime for every time I heard that PC gaming was dead I'd be rich. They were saying it in the 80's, they were saying it in the 90's.... "Any day now! Really! PC game will be GONE! just you wait!"
I'm still waiting. And laughing. Consoles are for "twitch" games for hyperactive teens. There are no deep games for consoles. There are no real strategy games. The controllers require everything to be dumbed down. All the best professional gamers in the world use a keyboard and mouse combo - not one uses a console controller.
The reason the nutty ones aren't funny to me is because I know exactly where they come from: Schizophrenics. And I don't mean the pop-psychology conception of schizophrenia as somehow being equivalent to "multiple personalities", I mean people with the actual disorder of schizophrenia, as in "A Beautiful Mind", not "Sybil". Paranoia and conspiracy theories are very common in schizophrenics, as are long rambling writings that are grammatically correct but nearly incomprehensible. If you want to see all kinds of the stuff, try working in a congressional office. They get deluged with the stuff.
It's funny the first few times, but gets old very fast when you start to see how sick these poor people really are. They literally can't help themselves, their brains send them bad information.
Don't get me wrong, I am loving TF2. I think it's a hell of a lot of fun. I could suggest a few tweaks, but I'm sure everyone playing it could. I trust Valve to pay attention to beta feedback and gradually tweak things over time.
But Team Fortress 2 this is not. It's Team Fortress 1.3. Lets' face it, what has really changed? The main thing is that the graphics are a lot better, and that's a very good thing. But as far as I can tell, all the changes are incremental. Unless I'm forgetting something, there aren't any new classes. All the classes pretty much do the same things. There are some minor changes, like no grenades. And the Medic ubercharge is pretty cool. But really, beyond the new skins and better physics, it doesn't really *play* all that much different from team Fortress Classic. And that's a bit of a disappointment.
Maybe I just expect too much from Valve in the inspiration department. And having been a game designer myself, I *know* how tough it can be to balance gameplay. *Real* tough. But take a look at Starcraft 2, for example. now there's a whole new version of a game, with entire new levels of tactics. It's 3-D now, with elevations. They kept many of the tried-but-true units but have introduced some cool new ones.
And that's the only remotely negative thing I have to say about TF2: it never really made me go "Ooooh! Cool!! THAT is new!" Even listening to the developer commentary, it's mostly about the art direction. Things they mention as big changes are the removal of grenades and stuff. I guess I just expected a bit more innovation from the people that brought us the Best New FPS Weapon In History, the Gravity Gun. I mean, come on, guys, you're using the same basic engine as HL2, right? Why couldn't we have a Gravity Master class that could catch or deflect rockets in midair, or grab that oil barrel and hurl it at a turret to knock it over? Or even a guy with a Portal Gun? Heck, I at least expected the environment to be a bit more destructible, at least, with objects flying everywhere like they did in HL2.
I love TF2 the 2way it is, and I'll play it a lot. I've already racked up an embarrassing amount of hours with the beta. And the game is great, even if the sentry guns could use a few more hit points and range at level 3, and withstand a sap for a few more seconds. But while it's great at being a really souped-up version of the original, I don't give it 2.0 status. That implies a whole new version. That implies something really new and really cool. New classes and weapons that we haven't seen before. New strategies. You know - not just a much nicer version of the same thing.
Anyways, kudos to Valve for a great job. I guess I can't expect groundbreaking innovation every time, and there's a lot to be said for sticking with the tried and true. But I just hold you guys to a higher standard, I guess.
If anyone at valve reads this, consider some expansions
It seems that these days we attach an "e-" or a "cyber-" on to a pre-existing social problem and suddenly everyone treats the issue as urgent . The problem with such initiatives is there fail to realise that this is a human problem first and a technological problem a distant second.
I completely agree. "Cyberbullying" sounds hip and modern, so everyone is jumping on the bandwagon while ignoring the problem of real, physical bullying. So someone posted a picture of you on a Myspace web page? Big Fucking Deal. Why don't we see ads on TV about real bullying? Because it's not as sexy and trendy. Jocks beating up nerds, artists, and theatre geeks, well - that's old news. Ho Hum. No one cares, and it's tacitly supported by the system. But add a "cyber-" or "e-" to the beginning of something, and you've got a "phenomenon."
I'd like to see parents, teachers, and school administrators pay half the attention to actual bullying as they're paying to this "cyberbullying" nonsense. If one kid beats up another and takes his lunch money, the bully should be suspended for a week, and expelled on a second offense whether he's captain of the football team or not. If he's lucky the victim won't also press assault charges.
I also agree with the person who said that our culture is coming to a point where kids behave any way they want because they know no one can touch them in any way they care about. Everyone's more concerned with their "self esteem."
Slashdot Mirror
Saying "I'm going to hack vim (or vi)" is like saying "I'm gonna go bolt some rear spoilers onto my horse-drawn plow."
Just let vi die, already. Put a stake in its heart. Constantly Franken-retrofitting it to be slightly less annoying is a complete waste of time when there are 65 billion real text editors available out there, plenty of them FOSS.
The only time you ever see huge discounts on products are when they're several years old and residing in the bargain bin because the retailer has given up on making a profit on it.
Nonsense. Bioshock was on sale (for a short while) for FIVE DOLLARS on Steam less than a year after it came out. Current cheapest price I could find online for a new copy: $15.
Civilian nuclear power is a mistake? Yeah - right. We've had a total of one-half of one accident here in the US, what was it - 40 years ago? - which didn't cause a single death. Hell, the recent giant Coal Ash spill did a hell of a lot more harm. And one bad accident at a crappy, crumbling, Soviet-era plant run by the three stooges.
You may want to tell France what a bad idea it is - they get something like 75% of their power from nuclear.
Nuclear isn't just the best idea, it's the *only* sane idea: do as much as we can with solar and wind, sure. They can be important parts of the solution. No rules says all energy has to be produced by just one method. Bt anyone who thinks we can solve our carbon problems, or our supply/dependence problems, or our soon-it-will-all-be-gone problems without Nuclear being a huge part of it is smoking crack. Or the owner of a solar power company that's looking to use scare tactics to improve business.
I'd bet money that 1) this guy is an agent of the Chinese government in some way or another, and 2) a CRC of the microcode for the firmware in these routers would not match the CRC of the microcode in an American-made one.
Think about it. If *I* were China and I wanted built-in industrial espionage capabilities through an undetectable backdoor, this is *exactly* how I'd do it - with trajaned firmware in counterfeit network hardware. You got yer plausible deniability, untraceability, undetectability, and a client list happy to get a discount on expensive hardware and not concerned with where it came from. We know the Chinese are sucking up as much of our intellectual property and technology secrets as they can get their hands on right under our noses while protesting vehemently that they aren't because they know we can't prove it. Even when we find one of the guys involved like this, they just act shocked, claim they had nothing to do with it, cut him loose to serve a few years, and continue right on doing it with some other patsy. What better way could there be than to trojan the microcode in network hardware, then sell it at a loss to greedy western corporations who don't give a damn about security if they can save a couple bucks?
My Method:
1) Get an ipod.
2) Get an iPod-capable "boom box" for each room. There are some out there with excellent sound that don't cost much.
3) Bring your ipod from room to room.
Cheap, no frills, no high tech, no wires, no headaches, no hassle.
Amazon also touts the use of 'alternative misspellings for selected words' as a way to provide 'evidence of copyright infringement in a legal action.'
They're claiming to have invented the Canary Trap? The prior art on that is 30+ years old...
Y'all seem to be forgetting a couple very important points. First, ZFS is here. Now. In production. Officially supported. It had years and years of development and testing, and has been in Solaris 10 for years after that. It's solid and it's here and it works great. Btrfs, on the other hand, whether you think it's technically better or technically worse, is still *YEARS* away from any kind of stable release. It doesn't even have RAID 5 yet, fer chrissakes. Even if it were 100% feature complete today, it would still be *years* before I or anyone else would even dream of using it in production.
Say what you want about Sun, their engineering is top notch. They put ZFS through hell while testing it, and it's been out for some time now. Btrfs has just barely reach infancy.
Second, one of the things I consider *most* important about ZFS is that it's EASY TO USE. I always had a hell of a time trying to understand all the million complex concepts and commands in Veritas and other volume managers. After a lonmg time as a sysadmin I still have trouble with it. You know what? I learned ZFS in about twenty minutes. The way they're organized and written the commands makes it so dead easy to use it amazing. I can do with *one* ZFS command what would have taken an hour of head-scratching and manual-referencing with Veritas.
Btrfs, on the other hand, despite the assertion in the mission statement that usability is a main goal, shows every sign of becoming yet another filesystems where doing anything involves 15 different commands to do different things, each with 22 bizarre options. The scanty "man pages" that exist are nearly impossible to find (not on the btrfs web site) and when you do finally track down something like a command syntax or parameter reference, it appears that btrfs commands are going to be just as - if not more - incredibly complex and intimidating as Veritas.
If the btrfs project people want folks to adopt that filesystem rapidly and enthusiastically, they need to *completely* rewrite the interface, take a page from ZFS, make it one or two command with a simple, english-like syntax. hell, since ZFS is sort-of open sourced, they could probably steal the entire ZFS syntax verbatim - legally. The code itself may be under some kind of license, but I doubt anyone could get sued for using the same commands. They're just words, and I don't think something released under any kind of open source license could claim copyright violation over non-code text. If btrfs really wants to grow, thrive, and be accepted, they have to pay a LOT more attention to the usability issue. One of the huge reasons so many people like ZFS so much, including myself, is it's something that's extremely powerful on one hand but I can learn to use rapidly and become an expert on in no time. The syntx is so english-like it's almost like talking to another person.
Oh, BTW - just bite the bullet and call it 'BFS". "btrfs" is freaking awkward and stupid. It rolls off the tongue as easily as the abomination "GNU/Linux".
We smokers warned you: they'll come for you next. But did anyone listen? Noooooooo! "Let them tax the filthy smokers all they want", everyone thought. "*I* don't smoke, and it's disgusting and unhealthy anyways, so why shouldn't I have them pay more taxes so I don't have to?" Well, now you know why: because the nanny-staters never stop. They will never stop trying to force their idea of "what's best" on everyone. "It's for your own good!" is their marching song, and anyone who stands against them get branded with the Giant Smear Bush. Even politicians are helpless. Did they get any support from their constituents when the Smoking Nazis were on the prowl? Nope, y'all just sat there and cheered them on because you don't approve of smoking and felt that nice warm sense of self-righteousness and smug superiority.
So, as a smoker who's had to sit and take it up the ass for so many years as nonsmokers happily voted for tax after tax after tax, all I can say is - Nelson-Muntz-style - a big old "Ha-HA!"
I hope they tax the fuck out of everything that you enjoy. After all, soda and Big Macs are unhealthy, just like cigarettes! And since I neither drink soda nor eat the alleged "food" at places like McDonalds, I hope they pile on $4 worth of tax to every burger and soda so you know how it feels to have *your* guilty pleasure start to cost you a fortune.
When they came for the smokers, you didn't say anything because you weren't a smoker and didn't like smoking anyways.
Now they're coming for *your* sins, and those of us who might have been on yoru side are just going to laugh it up.
Not that I'm bitter.
A very interesting, well-written, and fair-minded account. It also happens to be pretty much my view about chiropracty: a skilled chiropractor can probably help some with physical things that involve joints and muscles, but there's no magic about it that can help with anything other than basic aches and pains.
I view some of the exaggerated claims some chiropractors make as just more pseudoscience bullshit. But with actual muscle and joint manipulation, there is at least the *possibility( that *in theory* they could be doing something beneficial. After all, we're talking about physical manipulation of a physical system here with joints and muscles and bones and so on. So physically manipulating it could theoretically work. Maybe it does work and maybe it doesn't, but the theory isn't laughable right on its face in the way things like Reiki, crystals, armoatherapy, homeopathy, etc are.
As usual, merchants are selling products the way THEY want to, not the way their customers want. Take me, for example (and I think I'm a pretty typical example). I have a few small, relatively low-traffic web sites that bring in a few extra bucks a month. Most months the bandwidth I use is well within my plan and the price of the plan is quite reasonable. I certainly can't afford - or at least don't want to pay for - dedicated servers and high bandwidth caps when it wouldn't be worth the money.
But I live in fear of my own success. What if that magic day comes when I get Slasdotted or Popular on Digg? Under my current plan, I'm sure my site would quickly go over it's "unlimited" cap and get shut off - and there I am, watching a potentially extremely lucrative day for me go down the drain as millions of hits bounce off a 404.
I don't want high bandwitdth caps ALL the time. I want "slashdot insurance". I want "Digg insurance". I don't use lots of bandwidth very often, but I want it on tap when I need it most. I don't mind paying (within reason) if I go over limit as long as the capacity is there when I need it. I want *flexible* capacity.
I'd pay a big hosting company an extra $1 or $2 a month for that kind of insurance - "your web site won't go down due to traffic (but we will charge you per GB over )". Or better yet, charge me per GB over my limit, but only up to a predetermined amount - say, "If I go over my limit, keep the gates open and charge me per GB until it gets to $500, then shut it down." Like a buffer or "overdraft protection" for my bandwidth. Or even let unused bandwidth "roll over" like cell=phone minutes, so people like me who are almost always well under the limit can suck up some extra once in a while without getting killed.
There are lots of different, better ways to sell bandwidth beyond "hard limit" and "fake-unlimited". They need to put together different "calling plans" to suit different needs.
From one point of view, the person who figures out the answer by surfing the web for five minutes is more productive/efficient than the one who spends five hours figuring it out another way.
Obviously someone who had no real knowledge of a subject at all and tried to do everything from the web would be a dumb choice. There needs to be basic understanding. But expecting everyone to always research everything is also pretty dumb. Especially in the IT field, no one single person can know everything or have time to "figure out" every answer. If we all didn't crib from the web constantly we'd all be ten years behind on our to-do lists. Sometimes the smartest thing to do IS to just Google it, get a canned answer, fix the problem, and move on. Do you want your people constantly doing "problem solving research" or moving on to their next task? Finding the balance is crucial. But don't put down the Googlers. We get shit done.
As the owner of a couple cats, I can say that the easiest way to find any cat in the dark is to simply walk around until they run in front of you, and you either step on them or trip on them.
Yet another reason (as if any were needed) that the PC is by far the superior platform for anything except sidescrollers, and other twitch-based button-mashers that don't require complex input. As with just about anything else in computing, Open = Better.
Someone should hook up Zork to a text messaging system of some kind so you can play the game that way. Then maybe Kids These Days would learn something about their heritage.
I find his expertise with a keyboard a bit unlikely, though perhaps plausible.
What I find *totally* laughable is not that he type like a daemon, but that he not only knows a 20th-century (hundreds of years old, to him) CAD program, he knows it so well that he even has all the keyboard shortcuts memorized and can create a highly complex engineering document without even touching the mouse. In about 30 seconds.
"While involved, I doubt Canada, Ireland, and Norway helped a ton."
You'd be wrong, at least about Canada. For example, they landed over 20,000 troops on the beaches on D-Day.
When you say that it's "obvious to ANYONE ELSE WHO KNOWS THEM [pot smokers]: pot has long-term personality effects.", you're quite simply wrong.
In SOME people (addicts), long-term heavy use can change personality somewhat. Everyone knows a few complete stoners who are high so much of the time that their capacity to deal with things is reduced. But the mistake you're making is assuming that EVERYONE WHO SMOKES POT IS AN ADDICT. And that's a big mistake.
We all know how alcohol can change people's lives - but MOST people who drink alcohol are not alcoholics. In the exact same way, just because SOME people get addicted to pot, smoke too much, and get side effects does not mean that everyone who smokes occasionally will have the same effects.
It's a perception-bias issue: you think that pot changes personalities because you only NOTICE the people who are addicts. For the vast majority of people who smoke pot, you can't tell that they do, because they don't abuse it. Believe me, If everyone you know who smoked wore a big neon sign that said "I smoke pot sometimes", you'd realize that for most people, which smoke occasionally and responsibly, those kinds of "personality effects" don't happen. It's easy to tell when someone is drunk, or if they clearly have a drinking problem, but for people who only drink moderately or occasionally, you can't tell them from anyone else because they're not abusing it.
You're taking extreme cases and generalizing them to a huge group of people. That's a serious mistake. It's like saying that everyone who plays poker is a gambling addict.
I literally can't remember the last time I saw any useful responses to an "Ask Slashdot" question. People post interesting and thoughtful questions looking for help - often questions I've wondered about, too. And I click on the link, hoping to get some useful information. But all I ever see are retards who go off on some random tangent that has nothing whatsoever to do with the question. And I keep my browsing level set at 2, so it's not just AC's and trolls.
Moderators need to use the "Irrelevant" tag a LOT more. A WHOLE HELL OF A LOT more. So people can read the comments and actually find (gasp!) something "relevant" to the post.
And yes, technically this post isn't directly relevant to the question either, but it's meta-relevant.
All we need is to fund a lot more WISPS (Wireless ISPs). Get broadband out to many more people much faster and cheaper than burying cable. The government and communication industries seem to think that "broadband" can ONLY mean "cable or DSL".
The thing is, Microsoft would only have to be forced to unbundle IE for a while, maybe a year or two, and that would be it for them. In my opinion,the #1 reason *by far* that most people use IE is that they barely even realize that the browser is a separate application. It comes with Windows, they're used to it, they think of it as part of Windows, inseparable *the same kind of thing is true with MS Office, but that's another post).
Once people *realize* that they have a choice, once the meme gets out that you can use Browser AS or Browser B and take you pick, that choosing a browser is like choosing any other software... then IE is dead meat.
BTW, Bill Gates must secretly be a woman. A real man would have named the company "Megahard". "Microsoft" is not a name a man would choose.
You have an excellent point that many geeks are slobs.
Unfortunately, there are many slobs who AREN'T geeks.
Yes, it could be that the guy who shows up to an interview in a T-shirt is a genius UNIX hacker who will have all the wonderful attributes you mention, and he dresses that way because he's so damn smart he doesn't have tim for trivialities like doing laundry because he's too busy thinking up an amazing piece of code.
It could also be that he's a freaking no-talent loser slob, and he dresses and acts that way because he doesn't know any better. Because he's a loser.
Lesson #1: The set of "loser slobs" and the set of "genius geeks" may intersect, but but they are not the same set.
Lesson #2: There are also plenty of geeks who are technically superb but also dress and act like normal people. They can have normal lives and kids and social skills and so on. We actually do exist, you know. You're right about the danger of geeks being forced into roles and work environments they're not good at. But in contrast there is also a large group of talented geeks who want a good work/life balance, don't WANT their jobs to become their lives, and feel pretty good about turning their phone off on the weekend after 40 hours of top-quality work.
Lesson #3: People come in all shapes, sizes, skill levels, and goals. Stereotyping is not useful when it comes to hiring.
While I agree with much of what you said, I have to admit that your attitude is all too common in the IT industry: that all the "good" people are the ones who sacrifice their lives for their jobs, sleep under their desks, work 12-hour days all the time, work all weekend, and so on. That's just expecting slavery. If I had an employee like that, I'd tell him to cut it out and live his life. I have much more respect for peopel who make sure they do a kick-ass job on the clock, are willing to work extra hours in *emergencies*, but other than that know how to balancetheir work and tehir life.
Work to live, don't live to work. Life's too short.
"Half-Life, Deus Ex, Unreal Tournament, Red Faction, all PS2 games with mouse and keyboard support"
Umm... they are also all games that originally came out on the PC and were ported to PS2.
People make me laugh. If I had a dime for every time I heard that PC gaming was dead I'd be rich. They were saying it in the 80's, they were saying it in the 90's.... "Any day now! Really! PC game will be GONE! just you wait!"
I'm still waiting. And laughing. Consoles are for "twitch" games for hyperactive teens. There are no deep games for consoles. There are no real strategy games. The controllers require everything to be dumbed down. All the best professional gamers in the world use a keyboard and mouse combo - not one uses a console controller.
The reason the nutty ones aren't funny to me is because I know exactly where they come from: Schizophrenics. And I don't mean the pop-psychology conception of schizophrenia as somehow being equivalent to "multiple personalities", I mean people with the actual disorder of schizophrenia, as in "A Beautiful Mind", not "Sybil". Paranoia and conspiracy theories are very common in schizophrenics, as are long rambling writings that are grammatically correct but nearly incomprehensible. If you want to see all kinds of the stuff, try working in a congressional office. They get deluged with the stuff.
It's funny the first few times, but gets old very fast when you start to see how sick these poor people really are. They literally can't help themselves, their brains send them bad information.
Don't get me wrong, I am loving TF2. I think it's a hell of a lot of fun. I could suggest a few tweaks, but I'm sure everyone playing it could. I trust Valve to pay attention to beta feedback and gradually tweak things over time.
But Team Fortress 2 this is not. It's Team Fortress 1.3. Lets' face it, what has really changed? The main thing is that the graphics are a lot better, and that's a very good thing. But as far as I can tell, all the changes are incremental. Unless I'm forgetting something, there aren't any new classes. All the classes pretty much do the same things. There are some minor changes, like no grenades. And the Medic ubercharge is pretty cool. But really, beyond the new skins and better physics, it doesn't really *play* all that much different from team Fortress Classic. And that's a bit of a disappointment.
Maybe I just expect too much from Valve in the inspiration department. And having been a game designer myself, I *know* how tough it can be to balance gameplay. *Real* tough. But take a look at Starcraft 2, for example. now there's a whole new version of a game, with entire new levels of tactics. It's 3-D now, with elevations. They kept many of the tried-but-true units but have introduced some cool new ones.
And that's the only remotely negative thing I have to say about TF2: it never really made me go "Ooooh! Cool!! THAT is new!" Even listening to the developer commentary, it's mostly about the art direction. Things they mention as big changes are the removal of grenades and stuff. I guess I just expected a bit more innovation from the people that brought us the Best New FPS Weapon In History, the Gravity Gun. I mean, come on, guys, you're using the same basic engine as HL2, right? Why couldn't we have a Gravity Master class that could catch or deflect rockets in midair, or grab that oil barrel and hurl it at a turret to knock it over? Or even a guy with a Portal Gun? Heck, I at least expected the environment to be a bit more destructible, at least, with objects flying everywhere like they did in HL2.
I love TF2 the 2way it is, and I'll play it a lot. I've already racked up an embarrassing amount of hours with the beta. And the game is great, even if the sentry guns could use a few more hit points and range at level 3, and withstand a sap for a few more seconds. But while it's great at being a really souped-up version of the original, I don't give it 2.0 status. That implies a whole new version. That implies something really new and really cool. New classes and weapons that we haven't seen before. New strategies. You know - not just a much nicer version of the same thing.
Anyways, kudos to Valve for a great job. I guess I can't expect groundbreaking innovation every time, and there's a lot to be said for sticking with the tried and true. But I just hold you guys to a higher standard, I guess.
If anyone at valve reads this, consider some expansions
I completely agree. "Cyberbullying" sounds hip and modern, so everyone is jumping on the bandwagon while ignoring the problem of real, physical bullying. So someone posted a picture of you on a Myspace web page? Big Fucking Deal. Why don't we see ads on TV about real bullying? Because it's not as sexy and trendy. Jocks beating up nerds, artists, and theatre geeks, well - that's old news. Ho Hum. No one cares, and it's tacitly supported by the system. But add a "cyber-" or "e-" to the beginning of something, and you've got a "phenomenon."
I'd like to see parents, teachers, and school administrators pay half the attention to actual bullying as they're paying to this "cyberbullying" nonsense. If one kid beats up another and takes his lunch money, the bully should be suspended for a week, and expelled on a second offense whether he's captain of the football team or not. If he's lucky the victim won't also press assault charges.
I also agree with the person who said that our culture is coming to a point where kids behave any way they want because they know no one can touch them in any way they care about. Everyone's more concerned with their "self esteem."