For those who don't know, perl gives you back a year value which is the number of years SINCE 1900. Therefore, you calculate your year with $year = $perlYear +1900;.. they probably just did "print '19$perlYear';"
Same thing is true for Javascript date/time functions in web browsers. Though IE and Netscape handle it differently. I believe IE works like Perl does above, but netscape, once it gets to "2000" just jumps from 99 to 2000. I wrote a script to fix this over a year ago for all the dates we display on websites at work, but someone yesterday just meantioned that they rolled ahead to 2000 and were getting Jan 30, 192000 as the date. It's always nice when you have a code library for people to use, but they decide to go ahead and write there own code any way, and the wrong way. Ugh. Now I have to go in and fix 100 project sites because of some moron.
If you know of any online artist groups, inform them about the eToy vs eToys issue. The artist community does not suffer this crap very easily.
I can tell you, the backing behind online artist groups is very large. We may not have a site like/. but there are a lot of sites involved, and just about everyone has subscriptions lists that spread news quite quickly. I would say the online art movement against eToys is almost as large as the Slashdot movement, even if it isn't "in your face". Here's some online art sites w/ relevent info for those in that community:
I grew up in the middle of nowhere (my friends here call it the "rural ghetto"), hundreds and hundreds of miles from anything resembling a "metropolitain area". And although most people think I'm crazy, I actually really loved living out there. No traffic, no people to bother you, it's safe, and if I want to go down to the lake, I'm the only one on it.
After graduating from college, I had to make a choice. Get a job doing what I wanted, or live in "the sticks" working some crappy job. So I moved to the closest metro area (Minneapolis) and got a kick ass job. Nothing against Mpls, it's a great city, but I must say I sure do miss the quiet comfort of the rural life.
People always ask me if I'll move back to that. And I always tell them "maybe". Mainly because I want to, but there are two things stopping me. One is lack of bandwith, which is minor compared to the other thing, no jobs. There aren't any decent "tech" jobs (especially in web development which is what I do) in a rural area. This is frustrating because I'd rather have my children live and grow up in small town America, but at the same time I'd like to be able to provide what I feel is neccesary for a good life to them, which is what a solid metro tech job supplies.
The only thing I can hope for is that as the country grows more wired, we'll be able to do more and more telecommuting. My current employer already offers this in a limited arangement. I'm hopefull that in 10 years time I can hold a job in a small town but be connected to and work for a larger company in a big city. Or, just start my own business in a small town, since the web knows no difference if your site is in New York or Nowhere USA.
the POTY is the person who made the biggest influence on the news of the year. In 1938 that was Hitler, in 1939, Stalin, in 1980, Ayatullah Khomeini.
Well, as far as American news, I'd say the people who made the biggest impact on news this year were those two kids who shot up Columbine High School. Not that I'd want them to be POTY, but if we're going by influence on the media, they'd have to come up in the conversation. Just look at past John Katz articles on the subject for proof of how big a deal this was. (hint: click on "hof" on the side nav and check the top stories of all time)
The Ultimate Marketing Move...
on
Quake 1 GPL'ed
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· Score: 2
I think John Carmack is by far one of the most talented programmers in gaming (or perhaps anywhere else) today. This code release only confirms how cool he is, and possibly, what a good marketer he is as well. Consider the following:
Geeks love games. Quake makes Id no more money. Geeks respect John Carmack. John Carmack GPL's Quake. Geeks respect John Carmack and Id 10-fold. Geeks watch Id more closely. Id releases Quake III. Geeks are more likely to buy Id products. Id's profits go up.
I haven't seen a digital movie in the theatre to comment on it, and I think that what we have now is "good enough" quality wise until digital is a cheaper and better alternative.
What I don't like about going to the theatre is the framerate (something I've never liked). I believe (correct me if I'm wrong) that today's movies run at 24fps in the theatres. While that's fine for most things, when a movie does a very fast action scene or pans over very fast, it's hard to tell what's going on. There's just not enough data there for your eyes to catch up with. To me, the real achievment would be to get this number up to 60fps, which seems to be a standard for truely fluid realistic movement (at least in video games). I can see the limitation now with film, because the reels would have to be about 3 times the size, and we'd need different projectors (probably), but with digital, as it progresses, I can see this coming a reality. It would probably make for some truely breathtaking films.
But you don't want to threaten a boycott unless you're prepared to follow through on it. And right now, Amazon offers a level and a quality of service that no one else comes close to.
Sometimes while fighting for what is right, you do have to give up a few luxuries. While there are things I do like about amazon.com, even if they weren't in a patent despute, I still wouldn't buy from them. Why? Because B&N have a bricks and mortar store. It's so nice when I can go online, look up some books, and if they're expensive and I'm unsure if I want to buy them, I can just go down the street and have the store order them for me to check out. Any B&N will do this, at no charge to you. You just tell them what you want, they order it, and if you don't like it, then they just put it on their shelves for someone else to possibly buy. This way you get to SEE the book before you buy it, and it arrives in about the same time it'd take to get it off the website. They'll even call you when they get it in. This is one thing I can't do at Amazon.com and one of the (now many) reasons I won't shop there.
Can I officially call a boycott of eToys as well? While I am totally against Amazon on their whole patent dispute, and have made my voice heard over there, I am even more outraged at eToys using their marketing muscle against etoy.com. As the owner of an independent design website, this could have been me (or anyone else). I think with ecommerce, its the first time in history that we can actually speak out against such corporate malpractice and finally DO something about it!
I think a lot of people (wrongly) think the "smartest" people are those in the sciences, like engineering or biology, etc. While it does take a lot of brain power to hash through many scientific problems, I see the real problem as being not giving credit to other areas of expertise.
For example, the art of sale. Now I could sit down and code an RCM module for the latest e-commerce site out there, but could I sell it? No way. I don't have the talent to make people want to buy from me. People who can do that, in my mind, have a gift that I don't. One that is normally not equated with "intelligence", yet in its own merrit is pretty challenging.
Another example, football (pick a sport). I think a lot of geeks think of sporting as just a bunch of dumb jocks, but when you really look at it, all the stuff that's involved in a game like football is no different than you getting on the computer and playing Starcraft, or playing Chess. Its a lot of strategy (of course atleticism does count).
What I think these all have in common (and my point in all this) is that I think the proffesions that are truely "intellectual" proffesions are the ones that make you think on your feet. The ones that make you APPLY what you've learned. If I had to make the same HTML templates all day, every day, it would be no different than flipping burgers, even though I'm doing something with "computers", in the sense that a) I'm not doing anything new, and b) nothing changes so I'm not forced to use any other part of my brain.
I think the reasons there were more synapses in fields like engineering and teaching are because you constantly have to "relearn" what you're doing for any given situation, because every situation has its own set of rules and outcomes. Any job where you have to adapt like this in any way, I can see being one that uses a lot of "brain power".
If any of you decide to send this letter, I would suggest that you spellcheck it first. No offense meant to Brent, but nothing destroys credibility more than poor spelling, poor grammar, or the use of colloquialisms such as 'pissed'.
Doh! ThreeTee is right, if you do want to use that letter, do spell check it. I was in a bit of a rush (I wrote all that up during work and I'm not the best writer so it took me a bit), and thus forgot that important step. Profesional sounding letters do wonders. But just don't copy me, write your OWN letter and voice YOUR opinions! They do count!
I sent this to Jonathan Cutler, Public Relations Manager (jcutler@etoys.com). If you disagree with eToys stance, I suggest you do the same:
I have read recent reports of a case concerning the forced shutdown of etoy.com by etoys.com. When I first heard this I thought it was nothing more than a copy cat company trying to steal the thunder from etoys.com. If this were the case I would have backed your decision to take up legal action against etoy.com. However after reading what etoy.com was about, I became quite surprised that a company such as yours, with so much money in the bank would even care to take action against a site that is little more than people doing experimental design and having fun on the web.
I think what eToys needs to realize is that the web is a FREE place. Free in the sense of free speach. Unfair business pratice is one thing, but the web has been, and will always be about Open Information for anyone. The fact that etoy.com was running over two years before eToys.com and the fact that is has NOTHING to do with eToys nor is it a direct threat to eToys.com makes me wonder where your best interests are going after and attacking them.
I'm not void of these problems myself. I work at a company trying to make its name on the web, Imaginet.com, and we're doing VERY well on the web. Imagine my surprise when I found out that the domain imagnet.com was a porn site. But did we go after them to try to shut them down? NO. Why? Because that's not fair and that's NOT RIGHT. You cannot sue someone simply because they domain names are "similar".
I also own a personl domain, vitaflo.com. Vitaflo.com is an experimental graphic design and open source information site. Now imagine that in a year from now, someone sets up vitaflos.com, starts selling Farm equipment, and gets rich off of it. Then someone goes to my website, sees a swear word or some "unappropriate" material and then vitaflos.com tries to shut me down. Would I be pissed? You bet. Would I fight it? Till the day I died. This is exaclty what your company has done to etoy.com.
It makes me sad to see a company with so much potential throw so much of it down the drain. You can be sure I will never shop at your site ever again, and I have written to everyone I know to tell them the same (as I'm sure many others have done that have heard this news). As the PR Manager, I think it should be your job to keep the companies best interests in mind in how it deals with the public. This is NOT in your best interest. You will lose a lot more money playing the roll of "Bully" than you ever would have by just ignoring etoy.com. I am hopeful this letter, and letters like it, will help to reverse this aweful trend in online lawsuits that has been occuring so much recently. Set the precident, be the one company to actually LISTEN to its customers. We will all thank you if you do.
Thank you for your time, -Brent Gustafson
How is this any different than any other time?
on
No EToy for Christmas
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· Score: 1
First of all, I'd like to say that eToys (like Amazon) will not get any business from me by pulling legal crap like this.
With that said, I think eToys should figure out that by owning the domain etoys.com, they Do NOT own etoy.com, or itoys.com or itoy.com, and on and on, ad nauseum, and as such can't just go around forcing sites to shut down "just cuz they have a similar name".
Now, I could see if etoy.com was selling toys, and marketing themselves like eToys, and came out after eToys went public, but that not the case. So how can this even be considered fair!?!
eToys to me seems like a paranoid, big bully company. There are tons of sites that have similar domain names to big sites and have "controversial" material (not that eToy.com was really controversial). My main example of this is the company I work for imaginet.com. There's a website out there called imagnet.com, that's a porn site, but do you see us threatening them? No.
Wanting to buy the domain from them is one thing, but if someone doesn't want to sell it, you don't go off suing them, especially when they were around first, and it's just some experimental web design site. Jeez, don't these people check all domain name options BEFORE deciding on one? Guess they figured they could just "eliminate" the competition when they got big enough.
Ahh...looks like they're finally gonna make back all that money they poured into buying the altavista.com domain. That's a lot more than what can be said for whoever baught business.com today.;)
Heck, if he REALLY wanted to go all out, he could have baught a 21" Apple Color Sync Monitor and rigged that bad boy to have the guts of an iMac.
All the iCandy of the iMac with the big screen appeal.
Or, if he was REALLY good, he'd rig one of those Apple Cinema Displays to do a similar thing. How to do this without changing the laws of phyics however is beyond my comprehension.
So now the information is out, and ID will get to know what 3D card you're using. Do I care? No. Will others care? Yes. But the fact remains, that you KNOW this will be happening when you play the game. If you don't support this measure taken by ID, don't buy the game. Speak with your pocketbooks people.
With that said, this could just as easily not been found out, and we could, in the coming months, be sending info to ID without being the wiser. I say be happy you know what ID and their software are doing. That's more than I can say for whatever M$ software does.
In the end, I don't think this is a call to action to boycott all things ID (IMHO). If them knowing what 3D card I have or what system I run Q3 on helps them with thier future sofware, I say more power to them. That information isn't any hair off my back. In fact, I can see it helping out certain platforms and speeding up the game dev process, which in my opinion is a Good Thing (tm).
However, I realize I'm not like everyone, and it would be nice to have the option NOT to send out information if we don't want to. I think this is a simple and fair solution that would make both sides feel better. Choice is a good thing.
Did anyone else think the CGI in A Bugs Life was better than in Toy Story 2? To me it seemed that TS2 was made out to look a lot like the first one. While there were some spectacular parts of the movie (some of the Al shots were fab), other parts seemed lacking. For example, the cars in the street and some of the buildings just looked "fake". I mean those things are the easiest to render to look realistic. Was this intentional? After seeing The Phantom Menace and knowing the talent over at Pixar, I assumed they'd up the ante a bit. The other thing I noticed was the poor animation of the humans. It looked like they weren't even motion captured in parts. Perhaps this had something to do with the movie being a straingt-to-home release originally? Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the movie, it was great, I was just hoping Pixar would give me more. Perhaps I'll just have to wait until Square releases Final Fantasy The Movie....
This sort of stuff scares me. How far off is Homer Simpson's work environment from reality? How do people in charge of these places sleep at night?
I grew up about 20 minutes from 3 nuclear reactors in Wisconsin, and also did a research paper about nuclear power in college where I got to have a tour of two reactors. Lets just say this, if all of what I saw and learned is true for all reactors, then I'm all for nuclear power.
First of all, if you've never been inside a nuclear plant, it's truly mind boggling. The amount of engineering that goes into a plant would make any geek scream with delight. I've never seen anything more sophisticated.
With that said, there are TONS of saftey precautions these places take. They have a main control room that is operated 24/7 by many people montitoring everything. If you think that the people in there are like Homer Simpson, you're dead wrong. They don't hire bums off the street. These people go through rigorous training. In fact, training happens as long as their there. They have a second "mock" control room, identical to the real one where they go through simulations of events, and the employees are graded on thier performance. There's obviously a first test before you even get to step foot in a control room, but even after that, I beleive it's every 3 months, they have to go through training again, and must pass.
Even with that there are many fail safes built into the reactor, and you have to really be an idiot to cause a meltdown. Much of what I was told there and read about what happened at Chyrnobyl and Three Mile Island, was just that, human error, and people not reacting to simple warning signs. Those tragedies could have been avoided.
I also live an hour away from a coal burning plant, and let me tell you, that is one of the dirtiest and nastiest things I have seen. I'm not saying that Nuclear Power doesn't have it's side effects (radioactive waste), but coal plants use so much fuel for so little energy and produce so much crap. Whereas, if you filled up a nuclear reacter, you basically could just feed off that fuel for a decade before you'd have used it all up. Nobody that lives around the reactors where I live thinks twice about it. They're quiet, and clean. The only biproduct is hot water, the waste, and electricity.
And the way I see it there are many solutions for the waste. One that has been talked about extensively is the Yucca Mountains, which is in the southwest US. I believe the Trinity test was done in this area (correct me if I'm wrong). This is the main proposed site for long term disposal of all nuclear waste in the US, but it is under much debate (mainly by people who don't know about nuclear energy). If there was a good place to store the waste, Yucca Moutain is it, IMHO. Other ideas are off shore containment facilities at the bottom of the ocean, which could be a good idea, since radioactive particles don't penetrate through water very well (if at all). However, the notion of "polluting our oceans with radioactivity" wouldn't get past the public (even if it is a false claim). There are other alternatives, like space, which are less feasable, but the reality is that there are safe places for this stuff. The waste now is held in caskets. I got to see one of them with waste in it. Perfectly safe. I believe they are tested to take a 100 ft drop and not crack. Basically, to make a long story short, in the right hands Nuclear Energy is VERY safe and reliable. Don't let popular culture tell you otherwise.
Who could forget the Star Wars R2D2 "hack" of the Great Dome at MIT right before the Phantom Menace came out? I think this counts as a hack, even if it isn't computer related (it certainly is geek related). Here's some links for those who forgot this one:
So if AM interferes with ADSL, and high voltage power lines interfere with AM, does that mean Slashdot will load faster if I live under high voltage power lines? Or does that just mean I'd get brain damage while reading Slashdot?
Damn, sometimes it's hard to pick the lesser of two evils...
This little tidbit of info has been going around for years. Basically ever since the launch of the Saturn (if not before). Sega's greatest strength has always been it's video games (mostly its arcade adaptations to the home), and selling hardware is a money losing proposition (until royalties from software start rolling in).
There was talk back in the Saturn days that the Dreamcast (then code name Black Belt/Katana) would be dropped in favor or Sega just making games for any system available. The reasoning was that since their games are so popluar, selling them on multiple systems would bring Sega a lot of cash. Of course they took the gamble with Dreamcast and it seems (in the US anyway) to have paid off.
The talk recently has turned to how much has it actually paid off. Many people have speculated that this will be Sega's last hardware attempt in the console industry unless DC takes off phenominally. Sega is very much in the red right now, and has a lot of debt to pay off. Financially, down the road, ditching the money losing hardware section of the company in favor of software only may be the way for them to go to get back in the black.
From the article: In a report commissioned by the European Parliament he produced evidence that the NSA snooped on phone calls from a French firm bidding for a contract in Brazil. They passed the information on to an American competitor, which won the contract.
If this is true (somehow I smell yellow journalism), why is the NSA spending the time and money to help out private corporations make money? Better yet, why are they spending MY tax money to do this? And is this the best Echelon can do?
For all the tales of what this thing can do, how it can sort through emails and has voice recognition, etc, what exactly HAS it done for the good of those of us that have paid taxes for something that isn't supposed to exist?
Something tells me that with more and more stories like this coming out, sooner or later something has to come out weighing the cost/benefit of this technological "marvel".
Or have they just not said anything officially because it hasn't done squat for the good of the people, only for the good of the governments? Just something to ponder.
We usually go with a theme for various computers. Employee computers are named after certain things, servers after another theme, etc. Here's some of the one's we've used that last a long time with naming...
Saturday Night Live Names: Garth, Wayne, Carsenio, Churchlady, Landshark, Hans, Frans, etc.
Simpsons: Homer, Marge, Smithers, Bart, Lisa, Maggie, MrBurns, etc.
Star Wars: Luke, Leia, Han, Jabba, Anakin, C3PO, R2D2, Biggs, ObiWan, etc.
Really anything that has a lot of neverending names work well. These three we feel here work best and will always have some new name, even when you think they ran out.
But before we continue attacking the teachers, it's important to remember one thing: they're doing it for the good of the kids.
Or better yet, they're doing it because it's their job to. A majority of my friends are teachers and I hear stories from the classroom all the time.
The outlook I had on teaching when I was a kid and the outlook I have now are totally different. Most teachers look at teaching as an underappreciated job. When I make more in two years in computing than most teachers who have put in 20+ years in teaching, it's easy to understand why. Teachers aren't the moral do-gooders who don't understand the kids. They're in touch with them every day.
However, when your school board tells you to do something in your class, it's thier way or the highway. Obviously they comply, since there aren't many quality teaching positions and too many teachers, and getting canned or bad reccomendations means the end of a career for good. So don't blame the teachers like it's thier fault that this is happening. They probably feel the same way about it as we do on/.
Think about, in the age of IPO frenzy, and everyone working 80 hours a week to "get ahead" in the world, people just don't have time to have kids. It's also a known fact that the average age of marriage is going up. Combine that with both parents working full time, and good ol redily avaiable birth control, and people just aren't crankin the kids out like they used to.
I work at a young company (age of employee-wise) and can see this every day. Average age here is probably 26, and 90% of the married people are over 30. 10-20% don't want kids at all, and a vast majority of the rest only have one, because there just isn't time. I don't see my company as being all that unique either. I think the days of seven kid families (such as my parents families) are slowly dwindling...at least in the US.
I love this topic, since I've had so many conversations about it in the past with friends. I've had many relationships in my day of all kinds, long, short, good, bad, serious, superficial, etc. And the one I can tell you that is important in relationships is learning. Learning about yourself, and another person. So many people miss that because they're searching for lust and dependance (even if they don't know it).
Most of my friends cosider me "lucky", because I've had many relationships, and most of them (already in their mid 20's) haven't had one at all, and always "strike out". The fact is, like I always tell them, they are no different than me, except for the way they approach things.
You wanna get a girl? First, you have to not want to get a girl. I know, sounds dumb, but it's true. You're not going to have a decent relationship with someone, until you are happy with yourself and don't feel the "need" to be with someone. Why is that? Because otherwise, like it or not, you will try to hard, and ultimately set yourself up for failure. And even if you do succeed, you're going to want a lot more than the girl, and lopsided relationships go nowhere fast.
Once you have that down, you just want to be yourself. And that's easy if you're not really looking for things. It's funny how the best things always happen when you least expect them to, and if you're just being yourself and something manages to work itself out, you have someone who likes you for who YOU are and not what you want them to see you as being.
So what types of girls make the best girlfriends? They say opposites attract, but what they don't tell you is that a month into the thing they repel like mad. However, you do not want to date a computer nerd like yourself. In fact, you do not want to date someone who is as passionate as your are about most anything, rather, you want to date someone who thinks the things you are passionate about are interresting, yet isn't a bonafied geek about them. Why? Because otherwise it's very easy to get into a holier-than-thou attitude about who's right in any situation. Very bad for a relationship. The things you need to have in common are the things you both like to do that don't take up half your day. You also need someone who can open your eyes an who you can learn from. Find someone who can teach you things you've never realized (so probably not comptuers) to make you a better all around person. Find that and you have a match made in heaven. Don't think it's the women that are hard to figure out. People in general are hard to figure out if you look too far into things. Take your time, have fun, and it's easier than BASIC.
Looks aren't everything, in fact, they're usually most minor of things to look for. Personality, chemistry, friendship, trust, and the like are the things that really matter in relationships, and what make them last and make a person happy. Looks will only last until you get used to the person (a month) and see someone else who's hotter while in the mall. Obviously there should be some attraction, but it shouldn't be the driving force. If it is, or is a major part, you're doing it for the wrong reasons, and will be disappointed later. While a good sex life is important, a good friendship lasts forever.
I could go on forever, but this at least gives a good start. In essence, the more you are yourself, are comfortable with yourself and are willing to learn more about yourself and others, the better and more happy you'll be when you finally get someone. And for those of you who have been waiting for what seems like forever, just remember, the best things come to those who wait.
Slashdot Mirror
For those who don't know, perl gives you back a year value which is the number of years SINCE 1900. Therefore, you calculate your year with $year = $perlYear +1900; .. they probably just did "print '19$perlYear';"
Same thing is true for Javascript date/time functions in web browsers. Though IE and Netscape handle it differently. I believe IE works like Perl does above, but netscape, once it gets to "2000" just jumps from 99 to 2000. I wrote a script to fix this over a year ago for all the dates we display on websites at work, but someone yesterday just meantioned that they rolled ahead to 2000 and were getting Jan 30, 192000 as the date. It's always nice when you have a code library for people to use, but they decide to go ahead and write there own code any way, and the wrong way. Ugh. Now I have to go in and fix 100 project sites because of some moron.
If you know of any online artist groups, inform them about the eToy vs eToys issue. The artist community does not suffer this crap very easily.
/. but there are a lot of sites involved, and just about everyone has subscriptions lists that spread news quite quickly. I would say the online art movement against eToys is almost as large as the Slashdot movement, even if it isn't "in your face". Here's some online art sites w/ relevent info for those in that community:
I can tell you, the backing behind online artist groups is very large. We may not have a site like
praystation.com
kaliber1000.net
kiiroi.nu
vitaflo.com
I grew up in the middle of nowhere (my friends here call it the "rural ghetto"), hundreds and hundreds of miles from anything resembling a "metropolitain area". And although most people think I'm crazy, I actually really loved living out there. No traffic, no people to bother you, it's safe, and if I want to go down to the lake, I'm the only one on it.
After graduating from college, I had to make a choice. Get a job doing what I wanted, or live in "the sticks" working some crappy job. So I moved to the closest metro area (Minneapolis) and got a kick ass job. Nothing against Mpls, it's a great city, but I must say I sure do miss the quiet comfort of the rural life.
People always ask me if I'll move back to that. And I always tell them "maybe". Mainly because I want to, but there are two things stopping me. One is lack of bandwith, which is minor compared to the other thing, no jobs. There aren't any decent "tech" jobs (especially in web development which is what I do) in a rural area. This is frustrating because I'd rather have my children live and grow up in small town America, but at the same time I'd like to be able to provide what I feel is neccesary for a good life to them, which is what a solid metro tech job supplies.
The only thing I can hope for is that as the country grows more wired, we'll be able to do more and more telecommuting. My current employer already offers this in a limited arangement. I'm hopefull that in 10 years time I can hold a job in a small town but be connected to and work for a larger company in a big city. Or, just start my own business in a small town, since the web knows no difference if your site is in New York or Nowhere USA.
Here's to wishful thinking.
the POTY is the person who made the biggest influence on the news of the year. In 1938 that was Hitler, in 1939, Stalin, in 1980, Ayatullah Khomeini.
Well, as far as American news, I'd say the people who made the biggest impact on news this year were those two kids who shot up Columbine High School. Not that I'd want them to be POTY, but if we're going by influence on the media, they'd have to come up in the conversation. Just look at past John Katz articles on the subject for proof of how big a deal this was. (hint: click on "hof" on the side nav and check the top stories of all time)
I think John Carmack is by far one of the most talented programmers in gaming (or perhaps anywhere else) today. This code release only confirms how cool he is, and possibly, what a good marketer he is as well. Consider the following:
Geeks love games.
Quake makes Id no more money.
Geeks respect John Carmack.
John Carmack GPL's Quake.
Geeks respect John Carmack and Id 10-fold.
Geeks watch Id more closely.
Id releases Quake III.
Geeks are more likely to buy Id products.
Id's profits go up.
Smart move, smart move...
I haven't seen a digital movie in the theatre to comment on it, and I think that what we have now is "good enough" quality wise until digital is a cheaper and better alternative.
What I don't like about going to the theatre is the framerate (something I've never liked). I believe (correct me if I'm wrong) that today's movies run at 24fps in the theatres. While that's fine for most things, when a movie does a very fast action scene or pans over very fast, it's hard to tell what's going on. There's just not enough data there for your eyes to catch up with. To me, the real achievment would be to get this number up to 60fps, which seems to be a standard for truely fluid realistic movement (at least in video games). I can see the limitation now with film, because the reels would have to be about 3 times the size, and we'd need different projectors (probably), but with digital, as it progresses, I can see this coming a reality. It would probably make for some truely breathtaking films.
But you don't want to threaten a boycott unless you're prepared to follow through on it. And right now, Amazon offers a level and a quality of service that no one else comes close to.
Sometimes while fighting for what is right, you do have to give up a few luxuries. While there are things I do like about amazon.com, even if they weren't in a patent despute, I still wouldn't buy from them. Why? Because B&N have a bricks and mortar store. It's so nice when I can go online, look up some books, and if they're expensive and I'm unsure if I want to buy them, I can just go down the street and have the store order them for me to check out. Any B&N will do this, at no charge to you. You just tell them what you want, they order it, and if you don't like it, then they just put it on their shelves for someone else to possibly buy. This way you get to SEE the book before you buy it, and it arrives in about the same time it'd take to get it off the website. They'll even call you when they get it in. This is one thing I can't do at Amazon.com and one of the (now many) reasons I won't shop there.
Can I officially call a boycott of eToys as well? While I am totally against Amazon on their whole patent dispute, and have made my voice heard over there, I am even more outraged at eToys using their marketing muscle against etoy.com. As the owner of an independent design website, this could have been me (or anyone else). I think with ecommerce, its the first time in history that we can actually speak out against such corporate malpractice and finally DO something about it!
I think a lot of people (wrongly) think the "smartest" people are those in the sciences, like engineering or biology, etc. While it does take a lot of brain power to hash through many scientific problems, I see the real problem as being not giving credit to other areas of expertise.
For example, the art of sale. Now I could sit down and code an RCM module for the latest e-commerce site out there, but could I sell it? No way. I don't have the talent to make people want to buy from me. People who can do that, in my mind, have a gift that I don't. One that is normally not equated with "intelligence", yet in its own merrit is pretty challenging.
Another example, football (pick a sport). I think a lot of geeks think of sporting as just a bunch of dumb jocks, but when you really look at it, all the stuff that's involved in a game like football is no different than you getting on the computer and playing Starcraft, or playing Chess. Its a lot of strategy (of course atleticism does count).
What I think these all have in common (and my point in all this) is that I think the proffesions that are truely "intellectual" proffesions are the ones that make you think on your feet. The ones that make you APPLY what you've learned. If I had to make the same HTML templates all day, every day, it would be no different than flipping burgers, even though I'm doing something with "computers", in the sense that a) I'm not doing anything new, and b) nothing changes so I'm not forced to use any other part of my brain.
I think the reasons there were more synapses in fields like engineering and teaching are because you constantly have to "relearn" what you're doing for any given situation, because every situation has its own set of rules and outcomes. Any job where you have to adapt like this in any way, I can see being one that uses a lot of "brain power".
If any of you decide to send this letter, I would suggest that you spellcheck it first. No offense meant to Brent, but nothing destroys credibility more than poor spelling, poor grammar, or the use of colloquialisms such as 'pissed'.
Doh! ThreeTee is right, if you do want to use that letter, do spell check it. I was in a bit of a rush (I wrote all that up during work and I'm not the best writer so it took me a bit), and thus forgot that important step. Profesional sounding letters do wonders. But just don't copy me, write your OWN letter and voice YOUR opinions! They do count!
I sent this to Jonathan Cutler, Public Relations Manager (jcutler@etoys.com). If you disagree with eToys stance, I suggest you do the same:
I have read recent reports of a case concerning the forced shutdown of etoy.com by etoys.com. When I first heard this I thought it was nothing more than a copy cat company trying to steal the thunder from etoys.com. If this were the case I would have backed your decision to take up legal action against etoy.com. However after reading what etoy.com was about, I became quite surprised that a company such as yours, with so much money in the bank would even care to take action against a site that is little more than people doing experimental design and having fun on the web.
I think what eToys needs to realize is that the web is a FREE place. Free in the sense of free speach. Unfair business pratice is one thing, but the web has been, and will always be about Open Information for anyone. The fact that etoy.com was running over two years before eToys.com and the fact that is has NOTHING to do with eToys nor is it a direct threat to eToys.com makes me wonder where your best interests are going after and attacking them.
I'm not void of these problems myself. I work at a company trying to make its name on the web, Imaginet.com, and we're doing VERY well on the web. Imagine my surprise when I found out that the domain imagnet.com was a porn site. But did we go after them to try to shut them down? NO. Why? Because that's not fair and that's NOT RIGHT. You cannot sue someone simply because they domain names are "similar".
I also own a personl domain, vitaflo.com. Vitaflo.com is an experimental graphic design and open source information site. Now imagine that in a year from now, someone sets up vitaflos.com, starts selling Farm equipment, and gets rich off of it. Then someone goes to my website, sees a swear word or some "unappropriate" material and then vitaflos.com tries to shut me down. Would I be pissed? You bet. Would I fight it? Till the day I died. This is exaclty what your company has done to etoy.com.
It makes me sad to see a company with so much potential throw so much of it down the drain. You can be sure I will never shop at your site ever again, and I have written to everyone I know to tell them the same (as I'm sure many others have done that have heard this news). As the PR Manager, I think it should be your job to keep the companies best interests in mind in how it deals with the public. This is NOT in your best interest. You will lose a lot more money playing the roll of "Bully" than you ever would have by just ignoring etoy.com. I am hopeful this letter, and letters like it, will help to reverse this aweful trend in online lawsuits that has been occuring so much recently. Set the precident, be the one company to actually LISTEN to its customers. We will all thank you if you do.
Thank you for your time,
-Brent Gustafson
First of all, I'd like to say that eToys (like Amazon) will not get any business from me by pulling legal crap like this.
With that said, I think eToys should figure out that by owning the domain etoys.com, they Do NOT own etoy.com, or itoys.com or itoy.com, and on and on, ad nauseum, and as such can't just go around forcing sites to shut down "just cuz they have a similar name".
Now, I could see if etoy.com was selling toys, and marketing themselves like eToys, and came out after eToys went public, but that not the case. So how can this even be considered fair!?!
eToys to me seems like a paranoid, big bully company. There are tons of sites that have similar domain names to big sites and have "controversial" material (not that eToy.com was really controversial). My main example of this is the company I work for imaginet.com. There's a website out there called imagnet.com, that's a porn site, but do you see us threatening them? No.
Wanting to buy the domain from them is one thing, but if someone doesn't want to sell it, you don't go off suing them, especially when they were around first, and it's just some experimental web design site. Jeez, don't these people check all domain name options BEFORE deciding on one? Guess they figured they could just "eliminate" the competition when they got big enough.
Makes me sick.
Ahh...looks like they're finally gonna make back all that money they poured into buying the altavista.com domain. That's a lot more than what can be said for whoever baught business.com today. ;)
-B
Heck, if he REALLY wanted to go all out, he could have baught a 21" Apple Color Sync Monitor and rigged that bad boy to have the guts of an iMac.
All the iCandy of the iMac with the big screen appeal.
Or, if he was REALLY good, he'd rig one of those Apple Cinema Displays to do a similar thing. How to do this without changing the laws of phyics however is beyond my comprehension.
So now the information is out, and ID will get to know what 3D card you're using. Do I care? No. Will others care? Yes. But the fact remains, that you KNOW this will be happening when you play the game. If you don't support this measure taken by ID, don't buy the game. Speak with your pocketbooks people.
With that said, this could just as easily not been found out, and we could, in the coming months, be sending info to ID without being the wiser. I say be happy you know what ID and their software are doing. That's more than I can say for whatever M$ software does.
In the end, I don't think this is a call to action to boycott all things ID (IMHO). If them knowing what 3D card I have or what system I run Q3 on helps them with thier future sofware, I say more power to them. That information isn't any hair off my back. In fact, I can see it helping out certain platforms and speeding up the game dev process, which in my opinion is a Good Thing (tm).
However, I realize I'm not like everyone, and it would be nice to have the option NOT to send out information if we don't want to. I think this is a simple and fair solution that would make both sides feel better. Choice is a good thing.
Did anyone else think the CGI in A Bugs Life was better than in Toy Story 2? To me it seemed that TS2 was made out to look a lot like the first one. While there were some spectacular parts of the movie (some of the Al shots were fab), other parts seemed lacking. For example, the cars in the street and some of the buildings just looked "fake". I mean those things are the easiest to render to look realistic. Was this intentional? After seeing The Phantom Menace and knowing the talent over at Pixar, I assumed they'd up the ante a bit. The other thing I noticed was the poor animation of the humans. It looked like they weren't even motion captured in parts. Perhaps this had something to do with the movie being a straingt-to-home release originally? Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the movie, it was great, I was just hoping Pixar would give me more. Perhaps I'll just have to wait until Square releases Final Fantasy The Movie....
This sort of stuff scares me. How far off is Homer Simpson's work environment from reality? How do people in charge of these places sleep at night?
I grew up about 20 minutes from 3 nuclear reactors in Wisconsin, and also did a research paper about nuclear power in college where I got to have a tour of two reactors. Lets just say this, if all of what I saw and learned is true for all reactors, then I'm all for nuclear power.
First of all, if you've never been inside a nuclear plant, it's truly mind boggling. The amount of engineering that goes into a plant would make any geek scream with delight. I've never seen anything more sophisticated.
With that said, there are TONS of saftey precautions these places take. They have a main control room that is operated 24/7 by many people montitoring everything. If you think that the people in there are like Homer Simpson, you're dead wrong. They don't hire bums off the street. These people go through rigorous training. In fact, training happens as long as their there. They have a second "mock" control room, identical to the real one where they go through simulations of events, and the employees are graded on thier performance. There's obviously a first test before you even get to step foot in a control room, but even after that, I beleive it's every 3 months, they have to go through training again, and must pass.
Even with that there are many fail safes built into the reactor, and you have to really be an idiot to cause a meltdown. Much of what I was told there and read about what happened at Chyrnobyl and Three Mile Island, was just that, human error, and people not reacting to simple warning signs. Those tragedies could have been avoided.
I also live an hour away from a coal burning plant, and let me tell you, that is one of the dirtiest and nastiest things I have seen. I'm not saying that Nuclear Power doesn't have it's side effects (radioactive waste), but coal plants use so much fuel for so little energy and produce so much crap. Whereas, if you filled up a nuclear reacter, you basically could just feed off that fuel for a decade before you'd have used it all up. Nobody that lives around the reactors where I live thinks twice about it. They're quiet, and clean. The only biproduct is hot water, the waste, and electricity.
And the way I see it there are many solutions for the waste. One that has been talked about extensively is the Yucca Mountains, which is in the southwest US. I believe the Trinity test was done in this area (correct me if I'm wrong). This is the main proposed site for long term disposal of all nuclear waste in the US, but it is under much debate (mainly by people who don't know about nuclear energy). If there was a good place to store the waste, Yucca Moutain is it, IMHO. Other ideas are off shore containment facilities at the bottom of the ocean, which could be a good idea, since radioactive particles don't penetrate through water very well (if at all). However, the notion of "polluting our oceans with radioactivity" wouldn't get past the public (even if it is a false claim). There are other alternatives, like space, which are less feasable, but the reality is that there are safe places for this stuff. The waste now is held in caskets. I got to see one of them with waste in it. Perfectly safe. I believe they are tested to take a 100 ft drop and not crack. Basically, to make a long story short, in the right hands Nuclear Energy is VERY safe and reliable. Don't let popular culture tell you otherwise.
Who could forget the Star Wars R2D2 "hack" of the Great Dome at MIT right before the Phantom Menace came out? I think this counts as a hack, even if it isn't computer related (it certainly is geek related). Here's some links for those who forgot this one:
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/nr/19 99/r2d2.html
http://slashdot.org/ar ticle.pl?sid=99/05/18/193234&mode=flat
So if AM interferes with ADSL, and high voltage power lines interfere with AM, does that mean Slashdot will load faster if I live under high voltage power lines? Or does that just mean I'd get brain damage while reading Slashdot?
Damn, sometimes it's hard to pick the lesser of two evils...
This little tidbit of info has been going around for years. Basically ever since the launch of the Saturn (if not before). Sega's greatest strength has always been it's video games (mostly its arcade adaptations to the home), and selling hardware is a money losing proposition (until royalties from software start rolling in).
There was talk back in the Saturn days that the Dreamcast (then code name Black Belt/Katana) would be dropped in favor or Sega just making games for any system available. The reasoning was that since their games are so popluar, selling them on multiple systems would bring Sega a lot of cash. Of course they took the gamble with Dreamcast and it seems (in the US anyway) to have paid off.
The talk recently has turned to how much has it actually paid off. Many people have speculated that this will be Sega's last hardware attempt in the console industry unless DC takes off phenominally. Sega is very much in the red right now, and has a lot of debt to pay off. Financially, down the road, ditching the money losing hardware section of the company in favor of software only may be the way for them to go to get back in the black.
From the article:
In a report commissioned by the European Parliament he produced evidence that the NSA snooped on phone calls from a French firm bidding for a contract in Brazil. They passed the information on to an American competitor, which won the contract.
If this is true (somehow I smell yellow journalism), why is the NSA spending the time and money to help out private corporations make money? Better yet, why are they spending MY tax money to do this? And is this the best Echelon can do?
For all the tales of what this thing can do, how it can sort through emails and has voice recognition, etc, what exactly HAS it done for the good of those of us that have paid taxes for something that isn't supposed to exist?
Something tells me that with more and more stories like this coming out, sooner or later something has to come out weighing the cost/benefit of this technological "marvel".
Or have they just not said anything officially because it hasn't done squat for the good of the people, only for the good of the governments? Just something to ponder.
We usually go with a theme for various computers. Employee computers are named after certain things, servers after another theme, etc. Here's some of the one's we've used that last a long time with naming...
Saturday Night Live Names:
Garth, Wayne, Carsenio, Churchlady, Landshark, Hans, Frans, etc.
Simpsons:
Homer, Marge, Smithers, Bart, Lisa, Maggie, MrBurns, etc.
Star Wars:
Luke, Leia, Han, Jabba, Anakin, C3PO, R2D2, Biggs, ObiWan, etc.
Really anything that has a lot of neverending names work well. These three we feel here work best and will always have some new name, even when you think they ran out.
But before we continue attacking the teachers, it's important to remember one thing: they're doing it for the good of the kids.
/.
Or better yet, they're doing it because it's their job to. A majority of my friends are teachers and I hear stories from the classroom all the time.
The outlook I had on teaching when I was a kid and the outlook I have now are totally different. Most teachers look at teaching as an underappreciated job. When I make more in two years in computing than most teachers who have put in 20+ years in teaching, it's easy to understand why. Teachers aren't the moral do-gooders who don't understand the kids. They're in touch with them every day.
However, when your school board tells you to do something in your class, it's thier way or the highway. Obviously they comply, since there aren't many quality teaching positions and too many teachers, and getting canned or bad reccomendations means the end of a career for good. So don't blame the teachers like it's thier fault that this is happening. They probably feel the same way about it as we do on
Think about, in the age of IPO frenzy, and everyone working 80 hours a week to "get ahead" in the world, people just don't have time to have kids. It's also a known fact that the average age of marriage is going up. Combine that with both parents working full time, and good ol redily avaiable birth control, and people just aren't crankin the kids out like they used to.
I work at a young company (age of employee-wise) and can see this every day. Average age here is probably 26, and 90% of the married people are over 30. 10-20% don't want kids at all, and a vast majority of the rest only have one, because there just isn't time. I don't see my company as being all that unique either. I think the days of seven kid families (such as my parents families) are slowly dwindling...at least in the US.
I love this topic, since I've had so many conversations about it in the past with friends. I've had many relationships in my day of all kinds, long, short, good, bad, serious, superficial, etc. And the one I can tell you that is important in relationships is learning. Learning about yourself, and another person. So many people miss that because they're searching for lust and dependance (even if they don't know it).
Most of my friends cosider me "lucky", because I've had many relationships, and most of them (already in their mid 20's) haven't had one at all, and always "strike out". The fact is, like I always tell them, they are no different than me, except for the way they approach things.
You wanna get a girl? First, you have to not want to get a girl. I know, sounds dumb, but it's true. You're not going to have a decent relationship with someone, until you are happy with yourself and don't feel the "need" to be with someone. Why is that? Because otherwise, like it or not, you will try to hard, and ultimately set yourself up for failure. And even if you do succeed, you're going to want a lot more than the girl, and lopsided relationships go nowhere fast.
Once you have that down, you just want to be yourself. And that's easy if you're not really looking for things. It's funny how the best things always happen when you least expect them to, and if you're just being yourself and something manages to work itself out, you have someone who likes you for who YOU are and not what you want them to see you as being.
So what types of girls make the best girlfriends? They say opposites attract, but what they don't tell you is that a month into the thing they repel like mad. However, you do not want to date a computer nerd like yourself. In fact, you do not want to date someone who is as passionate as your are about most anything, rather, you want to date someone who thinks the things you are passionate about are interresting, yet isn't a bonafied geek about them. Why? Because otherwise it's very easy to get into a holier-than-thou attitude about who's right in any situation. Very bad for a relationship. The things you need to have in common are the things you both like to do that don't take up half your day. You also need someone who can open your eyes an who you can learn from. Find someone who can teach you things you've never realized (so probably not comptuers) to make you a better all around person. Find that and you have a match made in heaven. Don't think it's the women that are hard to figure out. People in general are hard to figure out if you look too far into things. Take your time, have fun, and it's easier than BASIC.
Looks aren't everything, in fact, they're usually most minor of things to look for. Personality, chemistry, friendship, trust, and the like are the things that really matter in relationships, and what make them last and make a person happy. Looks will only last until you get used to the person (a month) and see someone else who's hotter while in the mall. Obviously there should be some attraction, but it shouldn't be the driving force. If it is, or is a major part, you're doing it for the wrong reasons, and will be disappointed later. While a good sex life is important, a good friendship lasts forever.
I could go on forever, but this at least gives a good start. In essence, the more you are yourself, are comfortable with yourself and are willing to learn more about yourself and others, the better and more happy you'll be when you finally get someone. And for those of you who have been waiting for what seems like forever, just remember, the best things come to those who wait.