I remember seeing a story on Discovery back in '92 or so about a guy in Maine running his VW Rabbit off of fry grease. Aren't they calling it biodiesel these days? A friend was looking into starting a company that collects grease from restaurants and purifies it to create biodiesel, but found that the grease collection biz is pretty cutthroat. It's not as easy to get your hands on spent fry grease as you might think!
I totally agree. There is no need for the w3c to whiz-bang its site. If you are looking for standards information, then you probably already realize that it is a good idea and don't need to be sold on it.
I enjoy using the w3c site mostly for its content, but also because it renders well on any browser that I use, doesn't require plugins and doesn't generate JavaScript error dialogs with every click (yes, i know how to disable those. as a web developer, i leave them on).
The one suggestion I would make to w3c is to improve navigability. Their use of top-level TOC for documents has fallen by the wayside of late, which forces you to dig through the pages some to find what you want.
If selling the idea of standards-based technologies as tools for whiz-bang sites is an issue, then create a gallery and link to it. Leave the w3c site alone.
I have to agree. Driving games that place too much emphasis on realism can be extremely boring and utterly frustrating. The gameplay is just too slow and the controls are too unresponsive. Obviously, this is all highly subjective.
However, I will take a different tact than you. I miss the simplicity of side scrollers, bottom shooters, etc. These were great little 5-30 minute diversions that didn't require reading a user's guide. There was also a lot of creativity that went into the design of the better entries in this lot. Q*Bert, Tron, Pac Man, Donkey Kong, Track and Field, Zaxxon, Defender, Robotron and Tetris (among others) were all groundbreaking games when they debuted. Sure, you can find all of these titles in various "museum" releases or on the emulators, but it would be cool to see what could be done with this genre using today's technology and wizardry.
On the more cerebral front, I really enjoyed the Infocom games. Pretty cool that they have them all for the z machine on Palm OS.
You're right, I didn't read the fucking article. As I'm a fairly busy person, I rely on pompous asses such as yourself to fill me in with the summary info. But you couldn't even take the time to do that for me. Certainly, this a break in/. etiquette.
My company specializes in online educational media, targeted at junior high students. A lot of our media is available without charge at http://www.ignitelearning.com/media.shtml </plug>
My only sage advice is that you and your wife sit down and decide who is going to bring home the bacon and who is going to raise the children. I wish I had been given this option when we had our first child 7 years ago, but I made a lot more than my wife so the question was moot. Two incomes will never amount to the riches you give your children by having a parent raise them fulltime. I have many friends who do the two income thing, and they often marvel at how well-adjusted, well-behaved and happy our three children are. Slimming down to one income is a daunting proposition, I know. But it is definitely one to consider.
Yeah, smart ass, I made note of that in my own reply. Apparently you have nothing interesting to offer to the discussion other than condescending ridicule of a typo.
I wasn't meaning to imply that you aren't. My comments were just submitted to the void, in response to a litany of posts claiming Java is a toy for dummies.
Puh-leaze! Apparently you don't read those lists very often, the idiots are already out there. Lots of kiddos looking for people to do their CS homework for them.
I done C, C++, assembly, LISP, BASIC, PERL, Ada and Java. My hands-down favorite platform for developing large projects is Java. Despite the jibes of your hardcore hands-on-the metal guys and your ivory tower OO bigots, Java is a powerful, high productivity language.
The problem with it is that it's marketed "ease of use" brings a lot of subpar talent to the table under the guise of being able to code. It has also become the language of choice for many intro to programming classes. Hence, the unfavorable signal to noise ratio on the user boards.
A VB-like experience was the whole motivation behind the introduction of JavaBeans back in '97. A JavaBean-compliant widget was supposed to be readily usable by GUI builders, a la the VB IDE.
Heck, the marketese even claimed that a JavaBean widget could be used in VB via a COM bridge.
Of course, none of this took off because Java never really caught on in the GUI world. Sure, you find Java GUIs now and again, but its main use has been server-side components.
I can't imagine Sun is going to dramatically change the Java language. That would be suicide. I would imagine they are going to investigate technologies that are able to hide its complexity under a pretty IDE and possibly engineer a renewed push for the JavaBeans architecture as a GUI framework.
OK, I admire the guy's ambitition but that code is horrible! In an attempt to optimize multiplication by powers of two, he defines macros that perform the necessary number of add operations.
Even a newbie knows you do this with right shift!
#define MULT_2(value) ((value) > 1)
I suppose his method has the advantage of working with floating point...
I bought a 27" Sony WEGA in Sep. 2001, and it had to have the tube replaced in Feb. 2002. Luckily I caved and bought the service plan from the retailer, otherwise I would have been stuck with the bill. I have two friends that have had problems with their WEGA TVs.
Yeah, I'm in that boat. I actually downgraded my home PC from NT to 98 so I could use the latest version DirectX plugins needed by CoolEdit and Sound Forge. I looked into OSS recording software so I could make a good case for switching to linux, but it was all pretty crummy.
Sound support is spotty on Linux. MP3s work well, but WAVs may or may not work correctly and the sound drivers can act a little flakey.
Anybody want to do a port of the ProTools software for the MBox?:)
I use linux on the desktop at work, and have done so for about 18 months. My initial switch from Win2K was done partially due to a dare and due to my utter disgust with the performance of Win2K as a development platform.
At first, I was a bit apprehensive. Although I have been using linux for servers since '95, the incompatibility with documents produced by my windows-using brethren at work seemed like a huge obstacle. Plus, our IT department in its infinite wisdom has us using Exchange. My job entails that I am able to use various plugins such as RealPlayer, Flash, Shockwave and Quicktime, which worried me as well.
Last but not least, I was never very impressed with the visual performance of Netscape on XFree86. The fonts were always rendered poorly, which would cause pages to get horribly formatted. This is a very bad thing for a person working on a web application.
Nevertheless, I trudged forward and found that Netscape 6.x has fixed the display problems. Flash and RealPlayer plugins exist for Linux, and the others can be run via Crossover. OpenOffice, while not 100% perfect, bridges the document-format gap at least for reading documents. samba provides access to SMB shares. Evolution is a damn fine personal organizer that works well with Exchange (in the email sense).
So, I have had remarkably little trouble using linux in a shop with Win2k desktops, Win2k
servers, Exchange, and Solaris servers.
To those who claim Linux isn't stable, I say phooey. This machine has never crashed, and typically goes for months without a reboot. There are some unstable applications, but that is a different story altogether. I cannot say this about any Windows desktop I have ever had access to, I've seen all of them go down at least a few times.
Problems I have had using linux on the desktop include:
Lack of a good diagramming tool, a la Visio. dia is extremely immature
Lack, until recently, of a good UML tool. Argo has come a long way, and is nearly a viable alternative to Visio.
OpenOffice will generate documents that are somewhat compatible with Office. They're legible, but will contain some funny characters.
FlashMX has some problems in crossover, especially in the area of loading shim files and accessing a backend on a different domain.
No Flash authoring environment. Luckily, I don't have to do this very often.
No way to play Windows Media. Of course, if people would just stick to Quicktime...
I have had chronic problems getting gnome-pilot to talk to my Visor.
Anyway, just a few. Notice they're all application issues, not OS problems. Of course, I guess that's really what keeps people tied to a given OS.
Compared to the quality of applications on the Windows platform, I'd put the major desktop applications for Linux averaging out at the quality of Windows apps ca. 1996. Four years ago I would have put them at 1984, the desktop is maturing and gaining ground on Windows at a very rapid rate. In fact, the quality of the desktop and the applications have improved drastically in the past 18 months, thus the momentum seems to be building. I wouldn't be surprised to see Linux become at least as viable an alternative to Windows as Mac OS X is for the average user within the next several years.
Any reputable book on project or software team management will point this practice out as one of the worst classic mistakes. Other list toppers include adding new team members, feature creep and silver bullet tools. The best thing to do right now is examine the requirements document to reschedule functionality to come out in a later or maintenancec release and develop solid estimates for a likely release date. Proper communication of this information across the company is essential. Death marches that devolve into "code and fix" methodology do nothing but produce low quality code and malcontent developers.
I have worked at six companies, ranging from 3 - 250 employees. We have all used first initial, last name without many problems. Obviously, you have to get a little creative to resolve collisions. Also, the first ten or so people at a startup typically horn into getting their first names as logins.
The caveat is that NIS has a maximum username length of 8 characters, which sucks. If you are using NIS, keep this in mind.
Yeah sure, embed it in the OS. More proof that any notion of what constitutes an "Operating System" has been completely destroyed by Microsoft's marketing department.
Dude, it's real simple. Install ghostview, set up as helper app in the browser of your choice for application/postscript.
Slashdot Mirror
I think the general gripe is that /. is posting old news. Must be a slow day.
I remember seeing a story on Discovery back in '92 or so about a guy in Maine running his VW Rabbit off of fry grease. Aren't they calling it biodiesel these days? A friend was looking into starting a company that collects grease from restaurants and purifies it to create biodiesel, but found that the grease collection biz is pretty cutthroat. It's not as easy to get your hands on spent fry grease as you might think!
-brian
I totally agree. There is no need for the w3c to whiz-bang its site. If you are looking for standards information, then you probably already realize that it is a good idea and don't need to be sold on it.
I enjoy using the w3c site mostly for its content, but also because it renders well on any browser that I use, doesn't require plugins and doesn't generate JavaScript error dialogs with every click (yes, i know how to disable those. as a web developer, i leave them on).
The one suggestion I would make to w3c is to improve navigability. Their use of top-level TOC for documents has fallen by the wayside of late, which forces you to dig through the pages some to find what you want.
If selling the idea of standards-based technologies as tools for whiz-bang sites is an issue, then create a gallery and link to it. Leave the w3c site alone.
-brian
I have to agree. Driving games that place too much emphasis on realism can be extremely boring and utterly frustrating. The gameplay is just too slow and the controls are too unresponsive. Obviously, this is all highly subjective.
Hear hear.
However, I will take a different tact than you. I miss the simplicity of side scrollers, bottom shooters, etc. These were great little 5-30 minute diversions that didn't require reading a user's guide. There was also a lot of creativity that went into the design of the better entries in this lot. Q*Bert, Tron, Pac Man, Donkey Kong, Track and Field, Zaxxon, Defender, Robotron and Tetris (among others) were all groundbreaking games when they debuted. Sure, you can find all of these titles in various "museum" releases or on the emulators, but it would be cool to see what could be done with this genre using today's technology and wizardry.
On the more cerebral front, I really enjoyed the Infocom games. Pretty cool that they have them all for the z machine on Palm OS.
-brian
You're right, I didn't read the fucking article. As I'm a fairly busy person, I rely on pompous asses such as yourself to fill me in with the summary info. But you couldn't even take the time to do that for me. Certainly, this a break in /. etiquette.
It was a joke, jerk. Turn on your sarcasm filter.
Just more proof that the Department of Homeland Security is a totally bogus operation based on nothing but hysteria and hot air.
I guess they found the person to properly run such a thing.
My company specializes in online educational media, targeted at junior high students. A lot of our media is available without charge at http://www.ignitelearning.com/media.shtml
</plug
I predict that, in 100 years, LISP bigots will still be predicting the demise of Java.
My only sage advice is that you and your wife sit down and decide who is going to bring home the bacon and who is going to raise the children. I wish I had been given this option when we had our first child 7 years ago, but I made a lot more than my wife so the question was moot. Two incomes will never amount to the riches you give your children by having a parent raise them fulltime. I have many friends who do the two income thing, and they often marvel at how well-adjusted, well-behaved and happy our three children are. Slimming down to one income is a daunting proposition, I know. But it is definitely one to consider.
Best of luck, and congratulations!
Interesting that this "research" comes from the freakin' diamond capitol of the world! (Yes, I read that they are using synthetics, but anyway...)
In other news, ansonyumo finds that bullshit cures cancer.
Yeah, smart ass, I made note of that in my own reply. Apparently you have nothing interesting to offer to the discussion other than condescending ridicule of a typo.
I wasn't meaning to imply that you aren't. My comments were just submitted to the void, in response to a litany of posts claiming Java is a toy for dummies.
"I done"
crap I sound like some yokel
Puh-leaze! Apparently you don't read those lists very often, the idiots are already out there. Lots of kiddos looking for people to do their CS homework for them.
I done C, C++, assembly, LISP, BASIC, PERL, Ada and Java. My hands-down favorite platform for developing large projects is Java. Despite the jibes of your hardcore hands-on-the metal guys and your ivory tower OO bigots, Java is a powerful, high productivity language.
The problem with it is that it's marketed "ease of use" brings a lot of subpar talent to the table under the guise of being able to code. It has also become the language of choice for many intro to programming classes. Hence, the unfavorable signal to noise ratio on the user boards.
A VB-like experience was the whole motivation behind the introduction of JavaBeans back in '97. A JavaBean-compliant widget was supposed to be readily usable by GUI builders, a la the VB IDE.
Heck, the marketese even claimed that a JavaBean widget could be used in VB via a COM bridge.
Of course, none of this took off because Java never really caught on in the GUI world. Sure, you find Java GUIs now and again, but its main use has been server-side components.
I can't imagine Sun is going to dramatically change the Java language. That would be suicide. I would imagine they are going to investigate technologies that are able to hide its complexity under a pretty IDE and possibly engineer a renewed push for the JavaBeans architecture as a GUI framework.
OK, guess I should have previewed. slashcode didn't care for my xmp tags.
#define MULT_2(value) ((value) << 1)
#define MULT_4(value) ((value) << 2)
#define MULT_8(value) ((value) << 3)
#define DIV_2(value) ((value) >> 1)
OK, I admire the guy's ambitition but that code is horrible! In an attempt to optimize multiplication by powers of two, he defines macros that perform the necessary number of add operations.
Even a newbie knows you do this with right shift!
#define MULT_2(value) ((value) > 1)
I suppose his method has the advantage of working with floating point...
Actually I cited three failures out of four people I know to own a 27" WEGA, bought over the period of about one year.
/.
It's just advice, take it or leave it. Oh wait, I forgot, this is
I bought a 27" Sony WEGA in Sep. 2001, and it had to have the tube replaced in Feb. 2002. Luckily I caved and bought the service plan from the retailer, otherwise I would have been stuck with the bill. I have two friends that have had problems with their WEGA TVs.
Stay away!
Yeah, I'm in that boat. I actually downgraded my home PC from NT to 98 so I could use the latest version DirectX plugins needed by CoolEdit and Sound Forge. I looked into OSS recording software so I could make a good case for switching to linux, but it was all pretty crummy.
:)
Sound support is spotty on Linux. MP3s work well, but WAVs may or may not work correctly and the sound drivers can act a little flakey.
Anybody want to do a port of the ProTools software for the MBox?
At first, I was a bit apprehensive. Although I have been using linux for servers since '95, the incompatibility with documents produced by my windows-using brethren at work seemed like a huge obstacle. Plus, our IT department in its infinite wisdom has us using Exchange. My job entails that I am able to use various plugins such as RealPlayer, Flash, Shockwave and Quicktime, which worried me as well.
Last but not least, I was never very impressed with the visual performance of Netscape on XFree86. The fonts were always rendered poorly, which would cause pages to get horribly formatted. This is a very bad thing for a person working on a web application.
Nevertheless, I trudged forward and found that Netscape 6.x has fixed the display problems. Flash and RealPlayer plugins exist for Linux, and the others can be run via Crossover. OpenOffice, while not 100% perfect, bridges the document-format gap at least for reading documents. samba provides access to SMB shares. Evolution is a damn fine personal organizer that works well with Exchange (in the email sense).
So, I have had remarkably little trouble using linux in a shop with Win2k desktops, Win2k servers, Exchange, and Solaris servers.
To those who claim Linux isn't stable, I say phooey. This machine has never crashed, and typically goes for months without a reboot. There are some unstable applications, but that is a different story altogether. I cannot say this about any Windows desktop I have ever had access to, I've seen all of them go down at least a few times.
Problems I have had using linux on the desktop include:
- Lack of a good diagramming tool, a la Visio. dia is extremely immature
- Lack, until recently, of a good UML tool. Argo has come a long way, and is nearly a viable alternative to Visio.
- OpenOffice will generate documents that are somewhat compatible with Office. They're legible, but will contain some funny characters.
- FlashMX has some problems in crossover, especially in the area of loading shim files and accessing a backend on a different domain.
- No Flash authoring environment. Luckily, I don't have to do this very often.
- No way to play Windows Media. Of course, if people would just stick to Quicktime...
- I have had chronic problems getting gnome-pilot to talk to my Visor.
Anyway, just a few. Notice they're all application issues, not OS problems. Of course, I guess that's really what keeps people tied to a given OS.Compared to the quality of applications on the Windows platform, I'd put the major desktop applications for Linux averaging out at the quality of Windows apps ca. 1996. Four years ago I would have put them at 1984, the desktop is maturing and gaining ground on Windows at a very rapid rate. In fact, the quality of the desktop and the applications have improved drastically in the past 18 months, thus the momentum seems to be building. I wouldn't be surprised to see Linux become at least as viable an alternative to Windows as Mac OS X is for the average user within the next several years.
Any reputable book on project or software team management will point this practice out as one of the worst classic mistakes. Other list toppers include adding new team members, feature creep and silver bullet tools. The best thing to do right now is examine the requirements document to reschedule functionality to come out in a later or maintenancec release and develop solid estimates for a likely release date. Proper communication of this information across the company is essential. Death marches that devolve into "code and fix" methodology do nothing but produce low quality code and malcontent developers.
I have worked at six companies, ranging from 3 - 250 employees. We have all used first initial, last name without many problems. Obviously, you have to get a little creative to resolve collisions. Also, the first ten or so people at a startup typically horn into getting their first names as logins.
The caveat is that NIS has a maximum username length of 8 characters, which sucks. If you are using NIS, keep this in mind.
Yeah sure, embed it in the OS. More proof that any notion of what constitutes an "Operating System" has been completely destroyed by Microsoft's marketing department.
Dude, it's real simple. Install ghostview, set up as helper app in the browser of your choice for application/postscript.
Bundle with the OS. Feh!