A better plan might be to take the used fry oil, mix it with old wheat flour (thrown away at mills) and corn or rice cuttings (also thrown away) and flavorings, some water and salt, apply gentle heat to bake, and crumble up for dogfood. Sell the premium dogfood (don't think so? check how commercial dogfood is made...) for cash, say seventy-five cents a pound in hundred pound lots. Use cash to buy regular fuel, or anything else.
Sounds like a business plan. Three years ago you could have gotten $30 million if you promised to sell it over the internet...
Myth was a real-time tactical game, not strategic. There's a big difference in both design and gameplay. For that game, the 3-D perspective lent a degree of realism and immersion to the game. I find that 3-D in strategy games only gets in the way.
I agree with many of the other posters: get a job now.
If you really want to stay in school, and you are reasonably intelligent, and you want a good (i.e. satisfying) job later, get an advanced degree in something else.
Good candidates are: communications, english, business management. If those ick you out, find something not CS related that you're really interested in.
People who can bridge two or more disciplines by far have the most interesting jobs.
These announcements are solely an attempt to boost the stock price of IBM and Toshiba. They are targeted at the e-traders who have a direct neural connection between their "broadband internet" perception neuron and their "buy" neuron.
Seems that this year, sticking the phrase "broadband internet" on your product hype is supposed to make potential investors cream their pants.
Learning and using markup will force users to concentrate on structure and content. Using a WYSIWYG or semi-WYSIWYG system will allow them to waste time on formatting matters. They will not consider structural elements if they cannot see them.
Before there were WYSIWYG editors, people had no problem learning to use markup.
If your content creators are really so stubborn as to refuse to learn to use a few tags, have them create the content first, and make their reviewer/editor put in the appropriate tags.
Many people confuse the common meaning for Extrovert with the Meyers-Brigg term Extravert (note the spelling difference).
An Extrovert is typcially someone who is outgoing, not afraid to speak to, confront, or deal with people. An Extravert is simply someone who gets energy from being around people. There are shy Extraverts and outgoing Introverts.
Ask yourself this: do you need time alone each day? That's usually a hallmark of an Introvert.
I'd guess you're Introverted, but have outgoing qualities (whether learned or natural) that aren't covered by this test.
It is perfectly reasonable for Stephen King to demand additional payments for each format of his book. For each additional download you are paying his publisher for the service of converting the content to your desired format(s).
You could do this yourself, but consider the time you spend doing it. Would it be more worthwhile just to pony up the extra buck or two and spend time reading it, or maybe spend time in the real world?
This is essentially what Stephen King is saying. If your time is worth $0, then you can buy the hardback, read it aloud onto a tape, photocopy it, and then you have an audio version and a paperback!
Some services are worth the money for the time you save. Ask yourself: Is this?
... and who became a member specifically for the hardware discounts, I can understand completely why they changed their ADC levels.
Unless you're doing some pretty bleeding edge stuff, you don't need access to the latest and greatest hardware (my current mac is 3+ years old, still works great). And if you do need it, you're likely to be pretty serious and willing to shell out the cash for either the machines or the membership (if you're really serious, start a company and get a loan for crissakes!).
Now all the stuff I used to pay $150/year for is free! For almost everyone, the new pricing schemes are an improvement.
Some bugs, like ants, are actually quite tasty (they're kind of like little sourballs). Larger bugs, like locusts, are too gelatinous for my taste when eaten raw, but not so bad if fried.
Which bugs he eats, and whether they are raw or cooked, alive or dead (live ones can bite back), will make all the difference between penance and fun snack-time.
The problem with translation systems is grammatical ambiguity.
An even worse problem is ambiguity due to cultural issues. The phrase "cold slice" in the US almost always means leftover pizza. How to translate something like that into another language for a culture that may not eat pizza, may not eat convenience foods, may not eat leftovers, etc.
Buying companies is cheaper than either contracting with them or developing your own team in-house.
Successful companies have both experts in the field and really smart, motivated people. They also have a proven ability to work together.
It's insanely expensive for a single company to try and develop the same division on their own. Remember that for every success there are probably 1000 failures.
All large corporations buy smaller successful companies that have developed interesting technologies. Microsoft just seems to get all the (bad) publicity.
If you are just running a single Java applet, this is a huge overhead. However, once you have a couple of Java processes running at once, it's fairly trivial. 8Mb of overhead for 10 processes? That's about 800Kb per process - not a huge amount.
If you have several applets running, that's true. However, the use of full-blown Java applications is becoming more common, especially since applets become unwieldy after a certain complexity level.
In this case, several Java applications mean several Java VMs running. While the operating system can share the native code running the VM, all the Java bytecode and metadata resides in the data portion of the process, which typically cannot be shared (although a lot of work is being done on this front).
Another big problem is Swing. My current Swing application eats 24 megs just showing a fairly simple window. It's the last time I'll use Java for anything GUI until both the language and the UI framework mature.
The main problem with the metadata and the bytecodes are that they reside in the data portion of the process running the Java VM, and hence are typically not shared among processes, the way code portions can be shared.
I'm aware that Sun and Apple are working on this, but I'd like to see a day when my Swing application doesn't eat 24 megs just to show a simple window.
This thing reads like a Reader's Digest Book Excerpt:
"By carefully examining the email headers and message body of previously sent spams I was able to identify a unique signature..."
"I silently came across the Internet from thousands of miles away..."
"...spread like a silent wildfire through Rodona's computer network..."
This article is clearly aimed at novices who are afraid of getting their AOL passwords and credit card numbers stolen.
The whois and nslookup transcripts appear to have the sole purpose if impressing us with his net-savvy.
At the end: "Let's Get Brutal!" Please. "After much soul searching..." he decides to post Rodona's cheesy erotic stories and a picture of half her ass. But he has no trouble publishing her home address and telephone number, which is much more damaging.
Tracking down and stopping spammers like this is good, but this level of self-congratulation is far beyond the call of duty.
Most Java VM's are quite good at executing Java code, so the results are not all that surprising.
Java's biggest problem is in memory requirements. Metadata for classes is frequently much larger in size than both bytecodes and allocated objects. This needs to improve if Java is to become a more mainstream language.
While I haven't had any problems in functionality replacing components (CDROM and HD, so far) with PC standard components, I ran into an interesting problem with the case configuration.
I have a beige G3/233. When the CDROM went out, I put in a cheap ACER one. The problem with it is that the CD tray door on the new ACER is 1/8" taller than the apple CDROM. Since most PCs have the entire face of the drive exposed, this is not a problem for them. However, most Macs have a plastic panel that covers all but the tray door. I had to remove the panel that fronts the CDROM drive, and now my Mac has a gaping hole in the front. I tried all the other drives from all my PCs and they were all too tall. Go figure.
Re:The heartbreak of sequelitis
on
New Ender Sequel
·
· Score: 1
Brin actually wrote about this, after he wrote six uplift-war novels (and maybe many more short stories). He said it was a bad sign when authors could not get out of one of the universes they'd created.
I don't recall if he's written anything more recently in that universe, but at least he seems to be aware of the potential problem.
I hope this qualifies as legitimate marketing methods, and not spam. It seems okay to me, but if there are bad aspects of it, we'd like to know.
We generally collect email adresses from trade shows. Whenever someone wants a demo program, we ask for their email address so we can send them product announcements (if they don't want to give it to us, we give them the demo anyway [a lot of government institutions don't allow their employees to give out email addresses]). If they're tired of getting announcements, they send us an email requesting such (instructions are included in the announcements).
I think this is acceptable. We don't collect addresses without permission, and we remove addresses upon request. We do it this way because we hate spam too.
Humans should not converse with humans in other cars while one party is driving. However, car-to-car and car-to-road communication (bypassing the drivers and passengers completely) is an interesting concept.
Virginia Tech has been working on a "smart road" for nearly a decade now. I hear they're supposed to have a test roadway up and running now (no URLs, sorry).
Alvin Toffler said it all 30 years ago in Future Shock.
Interestingly enough, he took 561 pages to say it. It takes quite a while to read and digest it. Gleick skims the top, puts in some snappy internet-age anecdotes, and puts it in a book you can read on the flight between Boston and SF. (Implications here should be obvious.)
For an excellent treatment of possible implications of accelerated culture, check out John Brunner's The Shockwave Rider.
A good starting point for something like this is Apple's Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines. I'm talking about the general contepts, not the niggly specifics.
One thing that Bruce Tognazzini has mentioned many times is that volunteer user feedback is not enough or accurate. People don't actually know how they want to use an application, and frequently they are wrong about which parts of the interface are effecient. Actual user testing (put user in room with application, watch & time them) still needs to be done. It would be great if an organization could be set up to support that.
Windows is not intuitive. More specifically, most applications written for Windows are not intuitive. They suffer the same problem that most Open Source applications suffer from: some programmer slapped an interface on the front according to how they wrote the program.
This problem is endemic to the software industry. No one (or very few) are willing to spend the time and effort it takes to design a proper interface.
It's hard. I suck at it. Better to have an actual interface designer specialist design the interface, have the programmers write the back end, then stitch the two together.
Slashdot Mirror
A better plan might be to take the used fry oil, mix it with old wheat flour (thrown away at mills) and corn or rice cuttings (also thrown away) and flavorings, some water and salt, apply gentle heat to bake, and crumble up for dogfood. Sell the premium dogfood (don't think so? check how commercial dogfood is made...) for cash, say seventy-five cents a pound in hundred pound lots. Use cash to buy regular fuel, or anything else.
Sounds like a business plan. Three years ago you could have gotten $30 million if you promised to sell it over the internet...
Myth was a real-time tactical game, not strategic. There's a big difference in both design and gameplay. For that game, the 3-D perspective lent a degree of realism and immersion to the game. I find that 3-D in strategy games only gets in the way.
I went the other way: got more HHKB's for other computers.
I don't see how you all can use the command line with CTRL being all the way down there on "regular" keyboards.
I agree with many of the other posters: get a job now.
If you really want to stay in school, and you are reasonably intelligent, and you want a good (i.e. satisfying) job later, get an advanced degree in something else.
Good candidates are: communications, english, business management. If those ick you out, find something not CS related that you're really interested in.
People who can bridge two or more disciplines by far have the most interesting jobs.
These announcements are solely an attempt to boost the stock price of IBM and Toshiba. They are targeted at the e-traders who have a direct neural connection between their "broadband internet" perception neuron and their "buy" neuron.
Seems that this year, sticking the phrase "broadband internet" on your product hype is supposed to make potential investors cream their pants.
Dunno if these have exactly what you're looking for, but you might try:
Always interesting articles on ASJ.
Hope this helps.
Exactly what color is peacock blue?
I've used dark blue on light yellow with great success, but improvements are always welcome.
Oh, and rolling your head around on your neck is terrible for your spine. Back and forth, and side-to-side is fine, just don't roll.
Learning and using markup will force users to concentrate on structure and content. Using a WYSIWYG or semi-WYSIWYG system will allow them to waste time on formatting matters. They will not consider structural elements if they cannot see them.
Before there were WYSIWYG editors, people had no problem learning to use markup.
If your content creators are really so stubborn as to refuse to learn to use a few tags, have them create the content first, and make their reviewer/editor put in the appropriate tags.
Just my thoughts.
Many people confuse the common meaning for Extrovert with the Meyers-Brigg term Extravert (note the spelling difference).
An Extrovert is typcially someone who is outgoing, not afraid to speak to, confront, or deal with people. An Extravert is simply someone who gets energy from being around people. There are shy Extraverts and outgoing Introverts.
Ask yourself this: do you need time alone each day? That's usually a hallmark of an Introvert.
I'd guess you're Introverted, but have outgoing qualities (whether learned or natural) that aren't covered by this test.
It is perfectly reasonable for Stephen King to demand additional payments for each format of his book. For each additional download you are paying his publisher for the service of converting the content to your desired format(s).
You could do this yourself, but consider the time you spend doing it. Would it be more worthwhile just to pony up the extra buck or two and spend time reading it, or maybe spend time in the real world?
This is essentially what Stephen King is saying. If your time is worth $0, then you can buy the hardback, read it aloud onto a tape, photocopy it, and then you have an audio version and a paperback!
Some services are worth the money for the time you save. Ask yourself: Is this?
... and who became a member specifically for the hardware discounts, I can understand completely why they changed their ADC levels.
Unless you're doing some pretty bleeding edge stuff, you don't need access to the latest and greatest hardware (my current mac is 3+ years old, still works great). And if you do need it, you're likely to be pretty serious and willing to shell out the cash for either the machines or the membership (if you're really serious, start a company and get a loan for crissakes!).
Now all the stuff I used to pay $150/year for is free! For almost everyone, the new pricing schemes are an improvement.
Some bugs, like ants, are actually quite tasty (they're kind of like little sourballs). Larger bugs, like locusts, are too gelatinous for my taste when eaten raw, but not so bad if fried.
Which bugs he eats, and whether they are raw or cooked, alive or dead (live ones can bite back), will make all the difference between penance and fun snack-time.
The problem with translation systems is grammatical ambiguity.
An even worse problem is ambiguity due to cultural issues. The phrase "cold slice" in the US almost always means leftover pizza. How to translate something like that into another language for a culture that may not eat pizza, may not eat convenience foods, may not eat leftovers, etc.
Buying companies is cheaper than either contracting with them or developing your own team in-house.
Successful companies have both experts in the field and really smart, motivated people. They also have a proven ability to work together.
It's insanely expensive for a single company to try and develop the same division on their own. Remember that for every success there are probably 1000 failures.
All large corporations buy smaller successful companies that have developed interesting technologies. Microsoft just seems to get all the (bad) publicity.
If you are just running a single Java applet, this is a huge overhead. However, once you have a couple of Java processes running at once, it's fairly trivial. 8Mb of overhead for 10 processes? That's about 800Kb per process - not a huge amount.
If you have several applets running, that's true. However, the use of full-blown Java applications is becoming more common, especially since applets become unwieldy after a certain complexity level.
In this case, several Java applications mean several Java VMs running. While the operating system can share the native code running the VM, all the Java bytecode and metadata resides in the data portion of the process, which typically cannot be shared (although a lot of work is being done on this front).
Another big problem is Swing. My current Swing application eats 24 megs just showing a fairly simple window. It's the last time I'll use Java for anything GUI until both the language and the UI framework mature.
The main problem with the metadata and the bytecodes are that they reside in the data portion of the process running the Java VM, and hence are typically not shared among processes, the way code portions can be shared.
I'm aware that Sun and Apple are working on this, but I'd like to see a day when my Swing application doesn't eat 24 megs just to show a simple window.
This thing reads like a Reader's Digest Book Excerpt:
"By carefully examining the email headers and message body of previously sent spams I was able to identify a unique signature..."
"I silently came across the Internet from thousands of miles away..."
"...spread like a silent wildfire through Rodona's computer network..."
This article is clearly aimed at novices who are afraid of getting their AOL passwords and credit card numbers stolen.
The whois and nslookup transcripts appear to have the sole purpose if impressing us with his net-savvy.
At the end: "Let's Get Brutal!" Please. "After much soul searching..." he decides to post Rodona's cheesy erotic stories and a picture of half her ass. But he has no trouble publishing her home address and telephone number, which is much more damaging.
Tracking down and stopping spammers like this is good, but this level of self-congratulation is far beyond the call of duty.
Most Java VM's are quite good at executing Java code, so the results are not all that surprising.
Java's biggest problem is in memory requirements. Metadata for classes is frequently much larger in size than both bytecodes and allocated objects. This needs to improve if Java is to become a more mainstream language.
While I haven't had any problems in functionality replacing components (CDROM and HD, so far) with PC standard components, I ran into an interesting problem with the case configuration.
I have a beige G3/233. When the CDROM went out, I put in a cheap ACER one. The problem with it is that the CD tray door on the new ACER is 1/8" taller than the apple CDROM. Since most PCs have the entire face of the drive exposed, this is not a problem for them. However, most Macs have a plastic panel that covers all but the tray door. I had to remove the panel that fronts the CDROM drive, and now my Mac has a gaping hole in the front. I tried all the other drives from all my PCs and they were all too tall. Go figure.
Brin actually wrote about this, after he wrote six uplift-war novels (and maybe many more short stories). He said it was a bad sign when authors could not get out of one of the universes they'd created.
I don't recall if he's written anything more recently in that universe, but at least he seems to be aware of the potential problem.
I hope this qualifies as legitimate marketing methods, and not spam. It seems okay to me, but if there are bad aspects of it, we'd like to know.
We generally collect email adresses from trade shows. Whenever someone wants a demo program, we ask for their email address so we can send them product announcements (if they don't want to give it to us, we give them the demo anyway [a lot of government institutions don't allow their employees to give out email addresses]). If they're tired of getting announcements, they send us an email requesting such (instructions are included in the announcements).
I think this is acceptable. We don't collect addresses without permission, and we remove addresses upon request. We do it this way because we hate spam too.
Any thoughts on improving our methods?
Humans should not converse with humans in other cars while one party is driving. However, car-to-car and car-to-road communication (bypassing the drivers and passengers completely) is an interesting concept.
Virginia Tech has been working on a "smart road" for nearly a decade now. I hear they're supposed to have a test roadway up and running now (no URLs, sorry).
Alvin Toffler said it all 30 years ago in Future Shock.
Interestingly enough, he took 561 pages to say it. It takes quite a while to read and digest it. Gleick skims the top, puts in some snappy internet-age anecdotes, and puts it in a book you can read on the flight between Boston and SF. (Implications here should be obvious.)
For an excellent treatment of possible implications of accelerated culture, check out John Brunner's The Shockwave Rider.
A good starting point for something like this is Apple's Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines. I'm talking about the general contepts, not the niggly specifics.
One thing that Bruce Tognazzini has mentioned many times is that volunteer user feedback is not enough or accurate. People don't actually know how they want to use an application, and frequently they are wrong about which parts of the interface are effecient. Actual user testing (put user in room with application, watch & time them) still needs to be done. It would be great if an organization could be set up to support that.
Windows is not intuitive. More specifically, most applications written for Windows are not intuitive. They suffer the same problem that most Open Source applications suffer from: some programmer slapped an interface on the front according to how they wrote the program.
This problem is endemic to the software industry. No one (or very few) are willing to spend the time and effort it takes to design a proper interface.
It's hard. I suck at it. Better to have an actual interface designer specialist design the interface, have the programmers write the back end, then stitch the two together.