There are reliable ways to _delay_ success. The fact that many people manage to follow some or all of the delayed paths does not make the direct route a shortcut. Reading all of Azimov's books instead of going to college is not going to make you a robotics engineer any faster, no matter how well you know the three laws. Dropping out of college to start your own business with an idea that will take over the software industry probably _isn't_ going to work, and you'll end up 30, in debt, with no base skills. Sure, you might be the next Bill Gates, but my money is on "broke and living in Mom's basement."
Oddly enough, the best "short cut" is to find something that is _both_ enjoyable (or at least tolerable) and relatively lucrative, live frugally, and learn to invest your savings wisely. None of which will get you your dream job making 7 figures for as long as you chose to work, but will get you to financial independence sooner. Then you can pursue your first love with no fear of putting food on the table.
In this case, if you really want to code games, go to the best "in the trenches" CS program you can find, be accepted into, and afford. Take art classes on the side. Program for "fun" as your personal hobby. Get a summer internship wherever you can be close to the game production environment - work for free if you have to. Don't do your job - do your job _right the first time_ and use the resources available at your job to learn every damned little thing you can. Make sure you know the technical stuff cold, and pick up marketing, personnel, management on the side. If you have two hours free at you job, don't surf - learn something new, or go back and do you last assignment better. Double check your work - every time - no spelling errors, no bugs. Learn a faster/better way than you did it the first time. Network - go to the bar, play golf, do the company stuff. All this will shave a couple of years off of the "normal" path, but only because you'll be doing all the work in a shorter time frame. Focus is a hard thing, but it's the only way to get to the end better.
Once you learn that it takes a certain amount of work to get to a point, you can decide how long it will take to get there given 24 hours in a day. Just don't leave any steps out - that usually leads to failure. Then again, you could just go buy that lottery ticket. It's a lot easier, and somebody's going to win it, right?
You've mixed up the correlation. I didn't say that most gamers want to code games, I said most people drawn to code games are gamers. When you're young and don't have to pay bills you want to do what yo udo for fun. I'm saying that many gamers don't realize that the reality is more than being good at games.
You are likely old enough to remember usenet in its prime. We could lose every forum in the world and still have a good time if we could strike the advertisers from usenet. Now I just troll it for unmentionables in the binaries groups. Sad, really.
Look, most people who want to code games are gamers. They're young, have little motivation to learn hard topics (by hard I mean solid, such as advanced math and sciences, not necessarily difficult). Heck, many have little motiviation to do anything but play games. They're good at them, and think they can do a better job. They are also enticed by shortcuts. I have bad news for those people:
There are no reliable shortcuts in life.
Okay, just to clairfy - dropping out of college and starting a multi-billion dollar company is possible, but not probably. You'd be better off playing the lotto - that doesn't require as much work, and gets you similar odds*. Being successful means knowing _all_ the things than nobody else takes the time to learn. Anybody can learn the fun stuff, the really successful people know the un-fun stuff and that's what gives them an edge against the fun-stuff-only people. Just in case is isn't clear yet, in this industry there are no points awarded for being able to play your video game well.
*playing the 146M:1 powerball lotto twice a week for 5 years gets you to 280k:1 chance to win a comfy retirement (typically $10M-100M lump sum payout). There are 300M people in the US, so there would need to be over 1000 college-drop-out 8-figure CEOs that invested less than $1000 and 15 minutes a week in their business to make the lotto a worse option.
When that equation changes and the ads take zero bandwidth and zero time to load (=opportunity cost*), we'll talk. Until then, you're advertising on my nickel.
*yes, I TiVo everything I watch and - unless it has entertainment value - I skip the ads. Which brings up a good point - if the advertising is valuable to me, either via direct applicability or entertainment, it gets reveiwed. For the record, trying to punch the money is neither applicable nor entertainment. At least not where I surf.
Does it really matter that much? If free entertainment content disappeared from the internet, would it really be that bad? To me, the internet is both a tool and an entertainment device. The part that's really useful is the tool part, and much of the information I need is either pay-to-play or funded directly by the site creator (product data and such - call it self advertisement). I hate to bring it up, but the internet wasn't meant for the entertainment business or advertisers, and I don't see a whole lot of the "value" they're providing.
Would I miss a free/.? Maybe. Or maybe I'd just get more work done.
It depends - the c/p paragraph looks like a pretty good synopsis of the issue; let's call it the abstract for arguments sake. Now, if the article is complete and detailed, then the c/p is reasonable. If the c/p paragraph is most of the article, then the OP was out of line, but it wouldn't matter because the article itself is utterly useless.
See, either the lifting is okay, or the article is not worth the time to click the link. Problem solved.
Seriously - H A Rey wrote one a good time ago. It's a nice intro, and is somewhat memory-friendly, if geared towards the younger set. I believe his treatment is a bit unorthodox, but its still is nice book.
How did parent and parent-sibling (uncle post?) manage to pull the same percentage out of thier butts in unrelated posts? Anyway...
The point is that this source of fuel would be non-sustaining in that it takes more acreage of planted material to support the same acreage of fuel consumption. You would have to have this _plus_ something to come out even. Of course, the fallacy with this logic is that there are currently thousands upon thousands of unused square miles in the US. Then again, planting an agressive, invasive, non-native plant in a large area is bound to cause some problems.
As for the all-or-nothing approach, the need to refuel so frequently is a serious problem for internal combustion powered vehicles. They only run at leak efficiency when tuned to a specific hyddrocarbon and drop off in efficiency (or are essentially unusable) using other fuels. The need for a "new" standard "gasoline" is necessary, but it has to be one which can be optimized. Otherwise, we'll just be throwing fuel away in our quest to free ourselves from fossil fules. Universal availability is still a complaint (in the US) by many auto drivers who shun diesel engines, even though the availability is nearly universal. We actually need to find another high-density production avenue. While several which result in the same end-product is a great goal, I'm skeptical that such a solution will yield more than 2-3 comeptitors which can compete economically without subsidies.
(my apologies to the international/. community and those under 30 for the SCOTUS references)
To me, it's speech which promotes or incites others to commit violent acts. And there are too many gray areas to provide good legislation for (well, against) it.
You must be exceptionally disorganized. I've not received 2 out of about 100 or so rebates in the last ten years. It usually takes me about 5 minutes to compile and photocopy the rebate submission, date it, and put it in a file folder in my desk. I wrote off a $5 rebate from (forgot the vendor) and a $5 rebate from Disney, as there was no cotact info on the form to call. Oh, actaully, I didn't get a third one for about $100 last winter...I contacted the seller, who refunded my credit card for the non-hornored rebate. Oh, did I mention that I print a copy of the web page or ad from the seller, so if there's a problem, they know they are facing a false-advertising claim? Most disputes take about 5-10 minutes of time, and most of that can be spent on hold while I do something useful (like post on/.)
The CEO is the company. The CEO is the only one who can unilaterally define how and why the company does something. Every CEO has the power to require and enforce quality assurance at every level. He or she also generally gets paid commensurate with the size of the company. A person is not worth a couple thousand dollars an hour to sit on his or her butt and say "it's somebidy else's fault." (That's the job of the US president, and he only gets $250/hr for that).
It's worth noting that copyright and patent are also not God-given rights, but human constructs intenteded to encourage progess in the useful arts and sciences.
No, you've missed the transition. It now takes such a small portion of human output to feed, clothe, and house said humans that entire industries have been created from scatch to "enhance" our lives. Don't think of it as so many useless things we consume, but that it takes so little effort to provide the basic necessities.
Over the course of human history, it has been the same tale of minimum wages - those at the top of the money ladder consume and provide jobs for those at the bottom. Many view this situation as unfair. Without passing that kind of judgement - for or against - I say the the overall process is similar, but that a smaller and smaller portion of the consumed goods are truly necessities.
If you want my opinion, and most people don't, I'd say there are close to 5.5B too many people in the world. And no, I don't have a discrete reason for said overpopulation valuse, nor a workable plan to get to that number...but thanks for asking anyway.
The missing step involves charging fees for the extra DNA checks done now that the national database doesn't exist. Just think of the profits! There must be a DNA lab lobby in the UK...here in the states there'd be people all over this. OF course, they'd play both sides - get the national database done, then push to have it overturned so they could do it all over again.
Overheard telephone conversation in Dec '00
on
Why Myths Persist
·
· Score: 2, Funny
Slashdot Mirror
If it's a laser, you don't need to focus it.
I absolutely refuse to use it - make it FlexLM and I'm finding a new package, even if it costs me twice the package cost in training.
There are no reliable shortcuts.
There are reliable ways to _delay_ success. The fact that many people manage to follow some or all of the delayed paths does not make the direct route a shortcut. Reading all of Azimov's books instead of going to college is not going to make you a robotics engineer any faster, no matter how well you know the three laws. Dropping out of college to start your own business with an idea that will take over the software industry probably _isn't_ going to work, and you'll end up 30, in debt, with no base skills. Sure, you might be the next Bill Gates, but my money is on "broke and living in Mom's basement."
Oddly enough, the best "short cut" is to find something that is _both_ enjoyable (or at least tolerable) and relatively lucrative, live frugally, and learn to invest your savings wisely. None of which will get you your dream job making 7 figures for as long as you chose to work, but will get you to financial independence sooner. Then you can pursue your first love with no fear of putting food on the table.
In this case, if you really want to code games, go to the best "in the trenches" CS program you can find, be accepted into, and afford. Take art classes on the side. Program for "fun" as your personal hobby. Get a summer internship wherever you can be close to the game production environment - work for free if you have to. Don't do your job - do your job _right the first time_ and use the resources available at your job to learn every damned little thing you can. Make sure you know the technical stuff cold, and pick up marketing, personnel, management on the side. If you have two hours free at you job, don't surf - learn something new, or go back and do you last assignment better. Double check your work - every time - no spelling errors, no bugs. Learn a faster/better way than you did it the first time. Network - go to the bar, play golf, do the company stuff. All this will shave a couple of years off of the "normal" path, but only because you'll be doing all the work in a shorter time frame. Focus is a hard thing, but it's the only way to get to the end better.
Once you learn that it takes a certain amount of work to get to a point, you can decide how long it will take to get there given 24 hours in a day. Just don't leave any steps out - that usually leads to failure. Then again, you could just go buy that lottery ticket. It's a lot easier, and somebody's going to win it, right?
You've mixed up the correlation. I didn't say that most gamers want to code games, I said most people drawn to code games are gamers. When you're young and don't have to pay bills you want to do what yo udo for fun. I'm saying that many gamers don't realize that the reality is more than being good at games.
You are likely old enough to remember usenet in its prime. We could lose every forum in the world and still have a good time if we could strike the advertisers from usenet. Now I just troll it for unmentionables in the binaries groups. Sad, really.
Look, most people who want to code games are gamers. They're young, have little motivation to learn hard topics (by hard I mean solid, such as advanced math and sciences, not necessarily difficult). Heck, many have little motiviation to do anything but play games. They're good at them, and think they can do a better job. They are also enticed by shortcuts. I have bad news for those people:
There are no reliable shortcuts in life.
Okay, just to clairfy - dropping out of college and starting a multi-billion dollar company is possible, but not probably. You'd be better off playing the lotto - that doesn't require as much work, and gets you similar odds*. Being successful means knowing _all_ the things than nobody else takes the time to learn. Anybody can learn the fun stuff, the really successful people know the un-fun stuff and that's what gives them an edge against the fun-stuff-only people. Just in case is isn't clear yet, in this industry there are no points awarded for being able to play your video game well.
*playing the 146M:1 powerball lotto twice a week for 5 years gets you to 280k:1 chance to win a comfy retirement (typically $10M-100M lump sum payout). There are 300M people in the US, so there would need to be over 1000 college-drop-out 8-figure CEOs that invested less than $1000 and 15 minutes a week in their business to make the lotto a worse option.
When that equation changes and the ads take zero bandwidth and zero time to load (=opportunity cost*), we'll talk. Until then, you're advertising on my nickel.
*yes, I TiVo everything I watch and - unless it has entertainment value - I skip the ads. Which brings up a good point - if the advertising is valuable to me, either via direct applicability or entertainment, it gets reveiwed. For the record, trying to punch the money is neither applicable nor entertainment. At least not where I surf.
Does it really matter that much? If free entertainment content disappeared from the internet, would it really be that bad? To me, the internet is both a tool and an entertainment device. The part that's really useful is the tool part, and much of the information I need is either pay-to-play or funded directly by the site creator (product data and such - call it self advertisement). I hate to bring it up, but the internet wasn't meant for the entertainment business or advertisers, and I don't see a whole lot of the "value" they're providing.
/.? Maybe. Or maybe I'd just get more work done.
Would I miss a free
It depends - the c/p paragraph looks like a pretty good synopsis of the issue; let's call it the abstract for arguments sake. Now, if the article is complete and detailed, then the c/p is reasonable. If the c/p paragraph is most of the article, then the OP was out of line, but it wouldn't matter because the article itself is utterly useless.
See, either the lifting is okay, or the article is not worth the time to click the link. Problem solved.
Seriously - H A Rey wrote one a good time ago. It's a nice intro, and is somewhat memory-friendly, if geared towards the younger set. I believe his treatment is a bit unorthodox, but its still is nice book.
google link to the book
(1) please tell me that you're joking, I don't have time to look up patent numbers right now.
(2) if you're not joking, were you some key figure at NE2 encryption, noted by an AC a few posts up?
If you knew how much it cost to buy one, you'd realize why a low cost solution is so necessary.
Then again, if you paid enough for your politician, he'd be less random on your particular issue. Hmm.....
'cause losing my pc when the DSL goes down isn't really an option.
How did parent and parent-sibling (uncle post?) manage to pull the same percentage out of thier butts in unrelated posts? Anyway...
The point is that this source of fuel would be non-sustaining in that it takes more acreage of planted material to support the same acreage of fuel consumption. You would have to have this _plus_ something to come out even. Of course, the fallacy with this logic is that there are currently thousands upon thousands of unused square miles in the US. Then again, planting an agressive, invasive, non-native plant in a large area is bound to cause some problems.
As for the all-or-nothing approach, the need to refuel so frequently is a serious problem for internal combustion powered vehicles. They only run at leak efficiency when tuned to a specific hyddrocarbon and drop off in efficiency (or are essentially unusable) using other fuels. The need for a "new" standard "gasoline" is necessary, but it has to be one which can be optimized. Otherwise, we'll just be throwing fuel away in our quest to free ourselves from fossil fules. Universal availability is still a complaint (in the US) by many auto drivers who shun diesel engines, even though the availability is nearly universal. We actually need to find another high-density production avenue. While several which result in the same end-product is a great goal, I'm skeptical that such a solution will yield more than 2-3 comeptitors which can compete economically without subsidies.
Based on how well the average human being deals with both of those, I think we're in big trouble.
That, and tomatoes are vegetables.
/. community and those under 30 for the SCOTUS references)
(my apologies to the international
To me, it's speech which promotes or incites others to commit violent acts. And there are too many gray areas to provide good legislation for (well, against) it.
You must be exceptionally disorganized. I've not received 2 out of about 100 or so rebates in the last ten years. It usually takes me about 5 minutes to compile and photocopy the rebate submission, date it, and put it in a file folder in my desk. I wrote off a $5 rebate from (forgot the vendor) and a $5 rebate from Disney, as there was no cotact info on the form to call. Oh, actaully, I didn't get a third one for about $100 last winter...I contacted the seller, who refunded my credit card for the non-hornored rebate. Oh, did I mention that I print a copy of the web page or ad from the seller, so if there's a problem, they know they are facing a false-advertising claim? Most disputes take about 5-10 minutes of time, and most of that can be spent on hold while I do something useful (like post on /.)
The CEO is the company. The CEO is the only one who can unilaterally define how and why the company does something. Every CEO has the power to require and enforce quality assurance at every level. He or she also generally gets paid commensurate with the size of the company. A person is not worth a couple thousand dollars an hour to sit on his or her butt and say "it's somebidy else's fault." (That's the job of the US president, and he only gets $250/hr for that).
It's worth noting that copyright and patent are also not God-given rights, but human constructs intenteded to encourage progess in the useful arts and sciences.
Some of us are still sore over Ubuntu not having an "ecstatic eel" release. See, it all ties together.
/. because, well, it's /.
Oh, and for the record, the Alien tie-in is reason enough on
No, the reaction was more likely, "hey, these are...oh, shit, somebody on the other end is in big fucking trouble."
No, you've missed the transition. It now takes such a small portion of human output to feed, clothe, and house said humans that entire industries have been created from scatch to "enhance" our lives. Don't think of it as so many useless things we consume, but that it takes so little effort to provide the basic necessities.
Over the course of human history, it has been the same tale of minimum wages - those at the top of the money ladder consume and provide jobs for those at the bottom. Many view this situation as unfair. Without passing that kind of judgement - for or against - I say the the overall process is similar, but that a smaller and smaller portion of the consumed goods are truly necessities.
If you want my opinion, and most people don't, I'd say there are close to 5.5B too many people in the world. And no, I don't have a discrete reason for said overpopulation valuse, nor a workable plan to get to that number...but thanks for asking anyway.
The missing step involves charging fees for the extra DNA checks done now that the national database doesn't exist. Just think of the profits! There must be a DNA lab lobby in the UK...here in the states there'd be people all over this. OF course, they'd play both sides - get the national database done, then push to have it overturned so they could do it all over again.
"...don't worry dad, I'll get him."
I think he meant "the stringed instrument which burns slightly longer than a violin". But I can't be certain.