I actually learned most of my OOP theory from Eckel, which is why I suggested it over a pure reference. I wouldn't reach for his C++ book if I just wanted to know what parameters a function took, but I would if I wanted a solid read on how classes interrelate with each other.
Was your experience with his texts, at least in terms of his OOP instruction, somehow different?
Backing this up. Thinking in Java, available online, is the single best textbook for learning Java in existence. I'd *highly* reccomend getting the bound version, but look into the online edition to see if it meets your needs if you're reluctant to drop the dough.
Yes! Get more money, buy a louder and bigger TeeVee, and stop thinking -- because if it's flashy enough, you won't notice that you haven't done anything worthwhile with your waste of a life.
Forbes has been on its knees in front of SCO since this whole thing began. Like a schoolyard bully, it continually refers to those who oppose its viewpoints in negative terms rather than say anything useful. Calling the Linux community, who have helped bring some of the best software licenses and IP ideas to light in the past decade, things like "crunchies" and making cracks about their lifestyle is just pathetic.
One wonders if Forbes would say the same thing about other large groups of people. "Black Americans howled a bit about the killing of Diallo in NYC, but then wrote of the NYPD and went back to rapping or whatever it is they do when they're not commiting crimes and harming white upper middle class America." Wouldn't surprise me a bit.
Yes. CoC-D20 exists, but the Cthulhu license and brand still belongs to Chaosium. They've an arrangement with Wizards to release some products, but it's specifically referred to as "Call of Cthulhu D20".
Not sure how long-lived that venture will be -- the Delta Green D20 book seems to have gone on hold, and not much has been released in the line aside from the core rulebook.
Sure they do. Profits. Whether a company succeeds in a market has nothing to do with their nice attitude -- it has to do with the product, and whether there is demand. If Nintendo releases shit, they deserve to be overtaken. If Nintendo releases better quality video games than Sony, then Nintendo will dominate.
Eh. I've followed Cthulhu for years; I run a game now, under D20 rules. The game is as creepy and enjoyable as it has always been -- rolling a 20 sided die instead of a percentile does not dramatically change the game's feel. Feeling and atmosphere come from roleplaying, not from the piece of plastic you throw.
I stand corrected -- and impressed. I wasn't aware that the HL2 engine handled breakables -- I had figured it was just brushes again. Do you know if the maps are still BSP trees?
Now take HL 2 and you have a building with more intricate and detailed textures, with bump mapping (so I've heard), and you can shoot out windows, go into the building and knock over furnishings, hide behind them, throw them at other people, get a coke from a vending machine then blow it up and watch all the sodas fly out from the inside of the machine. I am only scratching the suface in my desciption.
None of that is revolutionary. Larger textures are pretty, but they're just textures. Bump mapping looks nice, but it's still a 2D surface. Half Life had soda machines and furniture, and as early as Quake II you could blow out windows. Model specific body damage would be neat, but it's been done before, too -- SOF, Vice City, and so forth.
Not quite sure how you can compare Vice City's environment to sprites from Doom. The only sprites in Doom were the monsters, and they were very noticeable even then. Vice City is entirely 3D -- everything is a model. Perhaps you mean that not every building is enterable?
being able to go into any building, area and having that environment be the equivalent to the real world, materials, physics, etc. and you have a game that is going to take the FPS genre to another level.
I highly doubt that HL2 will be real-world equivalent. Modeling real-world physics is still a dream; we can fake it, but even in the most advanced games you're generally seeing pain skins and skeletal animation rather than dynamically calculated responses to player actions. We're closer than we were 10 years ago, but it's not there yet.
A low carbohydrate diet is a good way to wean off excess pound if you are seriously overweight, but it's horrendously unhealthy for the average person. The primary reason you lose weight with such a plan is because you're starving your body -- carbohydrates are a vital source of energy.
Eating large smounts of meat is probably not the best thing you can do, either -- it's more healthful to eat a moderate amount as part of a balanced diet, heavy on fruit, with a good mix of grains, proteins, and greens.
The problem with running is that it's hell on your knees. As a former runner myself, at 21, I have a Baker's cyst on my right knee that just won't go completely away, and my knees crack a bit. Granted, I can still pull out a 7-mile run, but I can -feel- it in my knees.
A possible alternative is biking. It doesn't have the same direct feeling that running does, but it's a good cardiovascular workout without the pounding strain. Granted, not everyone will have the sorts of problems if they run, but it's worth considering.
You are not "all for" freedom of speech, then. You are partially -- perhaps mostly -- for freedom of speech. Just not speech which crosses your own personal boundary, in this case, pornography involving children.
A tip: referring to them as "bimbos" decreases your chances of actually getting near a woman who didn't just empty your wallet for 30 minutes rather unlikely.
I haven't seen Reloaded. I assume you're referring to the word "ergo" -- I'm a philosophy graduate student. I use and see the word on a daily basis. It's not lofty or esoteric -- and besides, 4 letters is much easier to type than 9.
Why settle for a platform that's backwards compatible just for
remakes?
Becuase the Playstation 2 is backwards compatible with the Playstation, not a series of specific games. Ergo, you can own *every* game in the series -- up to X-2 -- and play it on one console.
I'd say, "Nice troll!", but it isn't. No matter -- regardless of whether or not you meant to be trolling, there do seem to be a good number of people who agree with what you've posted. It deserves a response.
"[...]spinning it as if it makes gaming healthy is irresponsible[...]"
What's so unhealthy about gaming? You mention poor school performance, violent behavior, etc. -- can you back any of those up with studies?
So long as we're going on shaky claims, here's mine: I've been gaming since I was 5 or 6 years old, and I'm 21 now. Most of my friends have similar backgrounds. Hell, we were born in the early 80s -- nearly everyone in my generation can say the same thing! By and large, we're good students, in college, and not a one of us has ever been in a fight.
Video games, like anything else, are a hobby. Their existance, and our enjoyment of them, does not make us violent or lazy. Furthermore, I'd *much* rather see someone I knew to have an addictive personality playing Tetris than spending the weekend with a bottle of Jack.
I'd say that it is neither "obvious" nor "scientifically verified" that video gamers are somehow more prone to social degeneracy that anyone else.
"[...] that doesn't mean we should give people cart blanch to get drunk."
Actually, that's exactly what it means. It's also exactly what we do. If you want to get drunk, once you're 21 or over, you are entirely welcome to. Nobody arrests you for it. We do have laws saying, "you cannot commit a crime while drunk, or operate a motor vehicle". Even so, there is no reason why I can't go home and have a dozen bottles of beer if I so choose.
You asserted that life is "inherently meaningless", a proposition with which I agree; it's all just molecules bumping around. But that doesn't mean anything about how we should act. By suggesting otherwise, you are making a classic philosophical mistake.
You are misunderstanding the situation, I think. Were I to say, "In the natural world, we find some phenomena P; ergo we should live our lives with the assumption that P is good, because P occurs in the natural world", I would be following the line of logic referred to as the Naturalistic Fallacy. In short, the NF is deriving what ought to be from what is, as you point out.
However, I am making no claims about the natural world and deriving moral value from it. My claim is that life is a zero sum game: you are born, you die. The universe expands, it contracts. That's it -- there is no moral value being assigned whatsoever. I think your interpretation is that an absence of moral valuation is tantamount to assigning moral value. I disagree. It's a line of reasoning on par with saying, "atheism is a belief!"
What I am claiming is that there is no value on life whatsoever -- a position rooted (if anywhere) in existential thought, not the work of an early 20th century moral philosopher. Moreover, I am saying that given that life is fundamentally without meaning, there is no justification for claiming that a given act should be responded to in any given way. All we have to work with is subjective response to what are essentially absurd situations. That's fine -- but within that framework, I'm voicing my own subjective opinion: sending spam is not sufficient reason to deprive someone of life and liberty, or even outright kill them, as some posters would have it.
If "marginal internet users" feel drowned out by spam, that is not anyone's problem but theirs. The "projections" of doom and gloom from a company (Brightmail) who are claiming to have the salvation we need from that plight are suspect at best; I am not at all convinced that spam is going to "overwhelm email". Filters exist that deal with most of the problem, even on "marginal" services like HotMail. Admittedly, there is a bit of effort involved now, but it's not much worse than watching television -- if you want to use the medium, you have to expect that there is some noise to the signal.
Condescending comments about Google aside, the responsibility of backing one's facts up is left to the person making use of them. Looking at the ones that you provided, my argument is not swayed: bandwidth is a questionable cost, generally set at what the market can bear rather than the actual cost of delivery. "Wasted time" is a convinient shock value technique, but it's also questionable. *You* decided to use email; your time was not stolen from you. I seriously doubt that every second of your life is so precious to you that hitting the delete key costs you anything.
What it all comes down to for me, though, and what is getting lost amidst this pedantry, is that spam, although annoying, is not something worth getting so angry about. Every time a spammer's name is brought up, people run their mouths about hunting them down, locking them up for life, and so forth. It's insanity -- these people sent you an email you did not want. Get over yourself. Invoking draconian anti-hacking laws will merely set precedent for those laws' use; killing another human being because they did something you dislike strikes me as a severe response. Fines, I believe, are reasonable -- but not jail time, and not murder.
The naturalistic fallacy is the application of moral value to any given property. Inherently, there is nothing of worth -- value is assigned fallaciously, according to the theory, which was proposed by Moore. "I pick bigger [values for human life]" is an example of the application of the fallacy.
If you want to criticize my understanding of philosophy, get yours right first.
Spam is not a "major societal problem." Hunger, AIDS, and the abuse of our civil liberties are examples of major societal problems. Undocumented claims of cost are not impressive; I don't disagree that spam is often distasteful, but it's not on par with the crimes that carry sentences similar to the ones other posters have said they want applied to spammers. Your interpretation is obviously different. *shrug*
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Was your experience with his texts, at least in terms of his OOP instruction, somehow different?
Backing this up. Thinking in Java, available online, is the single best textbook for learning Java in existence. I'd *highly* reccomend getting the bound version, but look into the online edition to see if it meets your needs if you're reluctant to drop the dough.
Or, don't condescend them, and watch as they kick your ass.
Games are what sell systems, not paper specs, not features.
Inoshiro: sanity on /..
Pre-teen girls between the 6th and 8th grades count among your favorite things?
Juniors at your high school didn't realize, after being there for 2 full years, that there was no elevator? Man.
Yes! Get more money, buy a louder and bigger TeeVee, and stop thinking -- because if it's flashy enough, you won't notice that you haven't done anything worthwhile with your waste of a life.
One wonders if Forbes would say the same thing about other large groups of people. "Black Americans howled a bit about the killing of Diallo in NYC, but then wrote of the NYPD and went back to rapping or whatever it is they do when they're not commiting crimes and harming white upper middle class America." Wouldn't surprise me a bit.
Yeah, who needs principles, anyways? Everything should be determined by its dollar value!
Yes. CoC-D20 exists, but the Cthulhu license and brand still belongs to Chaosium. They've an arrangement with Wizards to release some products, but it's specifically referred to as "Call of Cthulhu D20". Not sure how long-lived that venture will be -- the Delta Green D20 book seems to have gone on hold, and not much has been released in the line aside from the core rulebook.
Sure they do. Profits. Whether a company succeeds in a market has nothing to do with their nice attitude -- it has to do with the product, and whether there is demand. If Nintendo releases shit, they deserve to be overtaken. If Nintendo releases better quality video games than Sony, then Nintendo will dominate.
Eh. I've followed Cthulhu for years; I run a game now, under D20 rules. The game is as creepy and enjoyable as it has always been -- rolling a 20 sided die instead of a percentile does not dramatically change the game's feel. Feeling and atmosphere come from roleplaying, not from the piece of plastic you throw.
I stand corrected -- and impressed. I wasn't aware that the HL2 engine handled breakables -- I had figured it was just brushes again. Do you know if the maps are still BSP trees?
None of that is revolutionary. Larger textures are pretty, but they're just textures. Bump mapping looks nice, but it's still a 2D surface. Half Life had soda machines and furniture, and as early as Quake II you could blow out windows. Model specific body damage would be neat, but it's been done before, too -- SOF, Vice City, and so forth.
Not quite sure how you can compare Vice City's environment to sprites from Doom. The only sprites in Doom were the monsters, and they were very noticeable even then. Vice City is entirely 3D -- everything is a model. Perhaps you mean that not every building is enterable?
being able to go into any building, area and having that environment be the equivalent to the real world, materials, physics, etc. and you have a game that is going to take the FPS genre to another level.
I highly doubt that HL2 will be real-world equivalent. Modeling real-world physics is still a dream; we can fake it, but even in the most advanced games you're generally seeing pain skins and skeletal animation rather than dynamically calculated responses to player actions. We're closer than we were 10 years ago, but it's not there yet.
Eating large smounts of meat is probably not the best thing you can do, either -- it's more healthful to eat a moderate amount as part of a balanced diet, heavy on fruit, with a good mix of grains, proteins, and greens.
A possible alternative is biking. It doesn't have the same direct feeling that running does, but it's a good cardiovascular workout without the pounding strain. Granted, not everyone will have the sorts of problems if they run, but it's worth considering.
The casterated ones? I wasn't aware that a prison term involved having your genitals removed.
Let him who hath understanding reckon the number of the beast -- for it is a human number: its number is six hundred and sixty Severn.
You are not "all for" freedom of speech, then. You are partially -- perhaps mostly -- for freedom of speech. Just not speech which crosses your own personal boundary, in this case, pornography involving children.
A tip: referring to them as "bimbos" decreases your chances of actually getting near a woman who didn't just empty your wallet for 30 minutes rather unlikely.
I haven't seen Reloaded. I assume you're referring to the word "ergo" -- I'm a philosophy graduate student. I use and see the word on a daily basis. It's not lofty or esoteric -- and besides, 4 letters is much easier to type than 9.
Becuase the Playstation 2 is backwards compatible with the Playstation, not a series of specific games. Ergo, you can own *every* game in the series -- up to X-2 -- and play it on one console.
"[...]spinning it as if it makes gaming healthy is irresponsible[...]"
What's so unhealthy about gaming? You mention poor school performance, violent behavior, etc. -- can you back any of those up with studies?
So long as we're going on shaky claims, here's mine: I've been gaming since I was 5 or 6 years old, and I'm 21 now. Most of my friends have similar backgrounds. Hell, we were born in the early 80s -- nearly everyone in my generation can say the same thing! By and large, we're good students, in college, and not a one of us has ever been in a fight.
Video games, like anything else, are a hobby. Their existance, and our enjoyment of them, does not make us violent or lazy. Furthermore, I'd *much* rather see someone I knew to have an addictive personality playing Tetris than spending the weekend with a bottle of Jack.
I'd say that it is neither "obvious" nor "scientifically verified" that video gamers are somehow more prone to social degeneracy that anyone else.
"[...] that doesn't mean we should give people cart blanch to get drunk."
Actually, that's exactly what it means. It's also exactly what we do. If you want to get drunk, once you're 21 or over, you are entirely welcome to. Nobody arrests you for it. We do have laws saying, "you cannot commit a crime while drunk, or operate a motor vehicle". Even so, there is no reason why I can't go home and have a dozen bottles of beer if I so choose.
You are misunderstanding the situation, I think. Were I to say, "In the natural world, we find some phenomena P; ergo we should live our lives with the assumption that P is good, because P occurs in the natural world", I would be following the line of logic referred to as the Naturalistic Fallacy. In short, the NF is deriving what ought to be from what is, as you point out.
However, I am making no claims about the natural world and deriving moral value from it. My claim is that life is a zero sum game: you are born, you die. The universe expands, it contracts. That's it -- there is no moral value being assigned whatsoever. I think your interpretation is that an absence of moral valuation is tantamount to assigning moral value. I disagree. It's a line of reasoning on par with saying, "atheism is a belief!"
What I am claiming is that there is no value on life whatsoever -- a position rooted (if anywhere) in existential thought, not the work of an early 20th century moral philosopher. Moreover, I am saying that given that life is fundamentally without meaning, there is no justification for claiming that a given act should be responded to in any given way. All we have to work with is subjective response to what are essentially absurd situations. That's fine -- but within that framework, I'm voicing my own subjective opinion: sending spam is not sufficient reason to deprive someone of life and liberty, or even outright kill them, as some posters would have it.
If "marginal internet users" feel drowned out by spam, that is not anyone's problem but theirs. The "projections" of doom and gloom from a company (Brightmail) who are claiming to have the salvation we need from that plight are suspect at best; I am not at all convinced that spam is going to "overwhelm email". Filters exist that deal with most of the problem, even on "marginal" services like HotMail. Admittedly, there is a bit of effort involved now, but it's not much worse than watching television -- if you want to use the medium, you have to expect that there is some noise to the signal.
Condescending comments about Google aside, the responsibility of backing one's facts up is left to the person making use of them. Looking at the ones that you provided, my argument is not swayed: bandwidth is a questionable cost, generally set at what the market can bear rather than the actual cost of delivery. "Wasted time" is a convinient shock value technique, but it's also questionable. *You* decided to use email; your time was not stolen from you. I seriously doubt that every second of your life is so precious to you that hitting the delete key costs you anything.
What it all comes down to for me, though, and what is getting lost amidst this pedantry, is that spam, although annoying, is not something worth getting so angry about. Every time a spammer's name is brought up, people run their mouths about hunting them down, locking them up for life, and so forth. It's insanity -- these people sent you an email you did not want. Get over yourself. Invoking draconian anti-hacking laws will merely set precedent for those laws' use; killing another human being because they did something you dislike strikes me as a severe response. Fines, I believe, are reasonable -- but not jail time, and not murder.
If you want to criticize my understanding of philosophy, get yours right first.
Spam is not a "major societal problem." Hunger, AIDS, and the abuse of our civil liberties are examples of major societal problems. Undocumented claims of cost are not impressive; I don't disagree that spam is often distasteful, but it's not on par with the crimes that carry sentences similar to the ones other posters have said they want applied to spammers. Your interpretation is obviously different. *shrug*