I don't want to have to write for multiple platforms
The odds are better that users will have a Java runtime than a Perl runtime or anything else that might fit the above requirement.
> technical, not $$
Sorry. It boils down to dollars in most cases. Dollars don't matter if you're programming for fun, or maybe for your class project, but in the real world, sometimes you sacrifice technical expertise to get what you need.
You sound as if you know a lot more about this than I do, so I feel a bit weird replying, but what the heck.
My understanding is that the scoring that determines whether or not a patient is a good candidate for a transplant rates higher for those who have a better chance for long term survivability. It's not exactly how sick they are right now, but a number of factors making them
"too sick".
A patient may well be "too sick" to undergo a heart transplant based upon normal scoring methods that take into account others who may also need the organ. But no such restrictions exist when talking about life vs. death and an artificial heart.
You probably don't understand why a law abiding citizen would have problems with seizures from drug dealers, either.
The problem is, that it's not convicted drug dealers, but suspected drug dealers. And ordinary people have lost thousands of dollars because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
For a while -- maybe still -- you had to be very careful not to drive through certain counties in Florida with large amounts of cash. If you did, you were likely to lose that cash. No kidding.
The police can take -- without compensation -- any cash that they can show has drugs on it. I once heard a statistic that at least 90% of all twenty dollar bills showed enough trace cocaine that they could be confiscated.
Ordinary, law-abiding citizens have lost their money and their livelyhoods because of something
of which they were suspected, not convicted.
It's one more step towards the police state the US seems to be heading toward, and it's wrong.
I didn't get that _at_all_ from what Linux said. Given that he first said that there weren't any extranious messages, I think that what he meant was that only those items of a completely non-useful nature would be removed.
What does that mean? I think it means that stuff like:
Jun 6 13:10:04 localhost kernel: hdc: ATAPI 1X CD-ROM drive, 32kB Cache
eth0: PCnet/PCI II 79C970A at 0x1000, 00 50 56 8e 6e 4d assigned IRQ 9.
She deserved what? An internet connection that didn't work as advertised?
I thought she was fairly reasonable. She asked for a credit for the time the service was unavailable. She was told she would get a credit, but not how much. She canceled her service and refused to pay until an appropriate credit was issued.
Just how would you have her solve this problem?
I think withholding of payment is about the only things that gets a mig company's attention.
No you don't. You get an emulator with the operating system. For free. No signing documents.
Okay. How do I get the operating system for free?
Unless I'm misunderstanding this, it sounds like there's no real difference between Palm and WinCE
in this matter.
If you have a copy of the Palm operating system, then everything else you need is free and you don't have to sign anything.
If you don't have a copy of the Palm operating system, then you have to print out sign and mail an agreement to Palm. What do you have to do for WinCE? Can I download the OS? Do I need to buy it? What needs to happen?
With Palm, the emulator is immaterial. It's free. It's the OS you have to work to get. You say that I get the emulator with the WinCE OS. Fine, but how do I get the OS?
Uh, what are you talking about? The only time you
need to sign an agreement is if you want to download the actual ROM image. Okay, also if you
want source to the OS.
Everything else can be had for free. You can
download Codewarrior for Windows -- okay, it's a
"light" version. You can use gcc on either windows or linux. The emulator itself is freely
downloadable, as is all official documentation.
Sean.
Re:How does ps2 support the gay community
on
PS2 As PC
·
· Score: 1
Mod this down.
I tried to email it, but the email address failed. But I simply couldn't ignore it.
Leviticus, 18:22 : Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.
I don't care what your bible says. It makes no difference to me.
I don't believe in it and I wouldn't worship the god the commits the
attrocities that are attributed to him in the old testament.
They know the facts
"Facts"? What facts? You have no proof, no facts. You have a faith,
a belief, but you can't back that up with a single irrefutable fact.
You've got your bible, but nothing in it is provable.
Also, don't come telling me that there are lots of homosexuality among the animal kingdom, or that most people are bisexual. I have read documents convincing enough which
tell that these are no facts, but just homosexual propaganda, used slowly to turn communities' attitudes towards false tolerance towards gays.
And who wrote those documents? I suspect by your tone that they were
written by those who are against homosexuality. If so, they are suspect.
If you haven't done the research, then you don't know. Documents from
either side are suspect. Read the texts and do *real* research. Until
you do, you can have no claim on knownledge about this.
But I'm telling you all, and not only to homosexuals: turn away from your
sins and put your faith in Jesus Christ, and you will be saved. Contact
your local bible-believing church.
Been there, done that. Then I did some research and decided to think for
myself. Got any idea how the bible was compiled? Know anything about
the Gnostic Gospels, what they are, what they said, and why they aren't
in the bible as it appears now? Ever read your bible and thought about
it? No, not try to understand the meaning, but just thought about what
was happening in the stories? Try Numbers 31 (if I remember correctly)
and read about midianites.
No thanks. As I said, I don't believe in your bible.
tell that these are no facts,
engourage all other people to treat gays as normal people
So they aren't normal? Your whole attitude is one I dislike intensely.
They aren't normal. They're wrong. They are damned.
Sheesh. I thought your god was supposed to be merciful, kind, and forgiving.
And, as a last note, let me make it clear: I am not homosexual, I'm not
attracted to others of my own gender at all. I'm just against using
the bible -- or any other religious text -- to support discrimination
and loathing of any group of people.
I have nothing against Christians myself. They know the facts and just don't believe them. But I treat them like I treat everyone else. (sigh.)
Okay, there are a lot of us out here who want decent resolution. But the majority of the public couldn't care less. What the majority of the public wants is a single unit that does it all.
This PS2 idea is good. WebTV sells, but not all that well, I gather. This could sell much better.
Add into a PS2 the ability to do a bunch of basic PC type things like surf the web, email, simple word processing so that when the parents get that PS2 the little Johnny wants so he can play games, they can get some use out of it as well. Besides, now it's educational, not just a game box.
And all you have to do is hook it up to your TV?
It'd take off. It really could be a killer app.
Honestly, I bet MS is already planning the same thing for the XBox. I'd be extremely surprised if they don't.
But I compared features of the two, and I think ReplayTV has better features if you already know what you want to watch. It has a longer pause, a seven second skip back, and a 30 second skip ahead.
TiVo had the 30 second skip ahead function and disabled it. (For all customers.)
You pay for the service up front. (Well, that's not what they claim. They claim the service is free. You just pay more than for TiVo.) I'm extremely happy with my unit and am considering upgrading it myself (which looks easy if you've got moderate computer experience).
It isn't free is the FSF sense (or any other, really), but I don't want to support the nastiness that's been going on with TiVo toward their customers.
I would've been satisfied if they'd just replayed
the first scene with the new timeline in place.
That 15 minutes or so would make all the difference.
I would've been satisfied.
But I really would've loved to see a three or four episode arch bringing the seriese to true closure. That would have been great.
Sean.
Re:My take on the death of the Trek series...
on
Voyager Eulogy
·
· Score: 1
I just did some research on this based upon a comment someone made to me.
Roddenberry "blessed" the timeline that says that
Robert April was the original Enterprise captain.
April would've had the Enterprise for one five year mission, Pike for two.
However, none of that means anything in regards to the new series. The new series takes place 150 years before Kirk, and depending on when they actually choose, probably before the Federation.
Personally, I think all bets are off. The name "Enterprise" and the limitations put upon it by the various series mean little when we're talking that far before the beginning of TOS. (Yes there is a scene somewhere that shows all the various ships named "Enterprise". And I doubt this one will be there. Maybe they missed it:-)
Sources: Star Trek Chonology, news release about "Enterprise".
Yeah, I made a mistake. What I should have said was that Sun using Star Office hinders their productivity by not providing an easy way to exchange formats with their customers. I didn't mean to imply that using Star Office in itself caused poor productivity. (Though that's what I said.)
However, as much as I hate it, Word.doc is the standard document format right now, and is the only document format for most companies.
I'm all for using ascii or HTML for document sharing. I'd even accept RTF. But that's not the way things work in the US. I'm forced to provide and accept MS Word formated documents to do business with customers.
More importantly laying the blame on your customer does nothing good for you as a business. As your customer, you'ld better be willing to accept the document format I have, or I'll find someone who will. Lay the blame on the customer if you wish, but be prepared to lose business.
Just goes to show that the correct response is to use the best tool for the job, not the in-house brand.
I think the article made that clear. Sun doesn't use MS office, but it hinders their productivity and makes it more difficult for their customers.
MS wants people to use a PC even though the designer could've done the work more quickly and efficiently on a Mac.
It seems to me the best shop would be one that had different computers for different jobs. End users will probably get Windows, because that's what they're used to and that's what will make them most productive. Servers might be Unix or Windows, based upon need. Designers might get Macs. Admins or competent users might choose Solaris 86 or Linux (Or Windows with VMWare running Linux, as I do) based upon corporate need and individual desire.
Use it because it makes sense, not because of some misplaced loyalty.
The pictures also point something else out -- just how less reflective to outside sources the screen of the Sony is vs. the screen of the Prism. That's something I noticed right away when I bought the Prism. No glare.
Okay, it's hard to see in sunlight. But that just points out that the Sony will be more difficult to read in darkness. Someone said it uses the same type screen as the Gameboy Color. My son has one of those and I *much* prefer my Prism's screen to the Gameboy screen. In 95% of the places I've seen both, the Prism's screen is *much* easier to read than the Gameboy's.
Maybe Sony has corrected that -- I haven't actually seen the unit yet. But unless they did, I'll stick to the Prism, or maybe buy the Palm 505 when I get a chance to look at it.
The question is really whether these lights would add to the experience or detract from it. I tend to think they would detract, rather than add.
Part of the reason for having a dark theater is
to allow you to disassociate yourself with the world around you. With the general tendency of talking and other distractions in the typical theater now-a-days, that's hard to do.
I suspect that lighting as described would tend to remind you that you're in a theater rather than draw you further into the film. And I think that would be especially true in the smaller screen theaters.
Now, I also suspect that in special venues such a technique could be experience enhancing. I feel like I saw a similar thing at some amusment park several years ago. But it enhanced the affect because the "theater" was built with that in mind.
I have serious doubts that it would work in the typical theater.
It's much easier to get good at something if it interests you, further -- and more importantly -- it's easier to care about the quality of your work if it interests you.
I've been in IT in one form or another for 20 years. Thinking back over those years, the people who stand out in my mind as being very good programmers or very good sys admins are the people who also had fun with it, who had multiple systems at home or who wrote complex 2000+ line programs simply because it was fun.
That's not to say there weren't others who were competent. But the *really* good ones had fun with it.
And the flip side is just as important. While there are (and were) people I know who programmed or sys admined just as a job and did it competently or even moderately well, it's a lot more likely those people would be the ones who shouldn't be in programming. They could write the code. And it would do what was asked of it. But it took them longer, the code was much less efficient, and was often practically unreadable.
It's not required to think of programming or sys admining as fun to be good at it. But it helps a lot.
At which point in which movie did Vader ever come into contact with C3PO? (Well, in episodes 4, 5, and 6.)
I admit the possibility of being wrong, but I just went through each film in my head and I can't figure out any time when they came together.
As far as I can remember, the closest they ever came was in the sky city -- but 3po was disassembled early in that sequence, and they never met face to face.
It may be a great language. It may be better than perl. I don't know. I've never used Ruby. But then I've never used Python, either.
Most of my scripting is still in (Bourne) sh, simply because most of the time I can't afford to worry about whether or not a particular language has been downloaded onto and compiled for the system I'm using. I need cross-machine compatibility, and I can't afford the time or worry of pushing out copies of some language onto dozens -- or more -- machines.
I use Perl for things that I need, and it is becoming more prevalent, but when that script is going out to production machines, I stick with the basics.
Great or not, it's worth nothing if it isn't there.
Are you talking about the code or the end result of the code?
I would argue that the end result of either is what is truly significant, and that applications will reach the elegance of Beethoven.
I don't think we're there yet. After all, programming and application design is only, what, 50 or so years old? Beethoven had many centuries of music development -- composition and instrument development -- by others to build upon.
Who knows how elegant application may be in a couple more centuries.
I don't completely agree. I have no problem with people working for their own benefit, but not when it's detrimental to their client.
As a consultant, you are there to suggest/implement the best hardware/software combination for your client, not for yourself. The whole point of your being there is that the client probably can't make the right decision because the client doesn't have the knowledge that you, as the computer specialist, are supposed to have. If you choose to profit yourself at the expense of your client then you are not only harming the client, you are harming your future relations with the client. Further, you are harming the client's view of other consultants.
This attitude is exactly what people make fun of in things like car repair. How often have you heard stories about someone being charged $1000 for a $100 repair? How often do we wonder whether or not the repair shop is reputable?
Do you want people to wonder whether you are reputable because of the actions of others? I don't, but attitudes like the above will ensure that people will.
I can't spell it, but from the definition given, yachtsee would fit.. you score, but no person in the game is fighting over any limited resource.
Other's I've heard mentioned I'm not so sure about, but how about Othello? Each person starts with an equal position, and while the board is a limited resource, it seems to me to fit the definition fairly well.
Chutes and Ladders fits, as well. The battle is to see who can get to the end first, and no person affects another.
How about Battleship? Everything is absolutely equal.
Trivial Persuit? Again, the battle is for completion, not resources.
Many of the crayon rail games would seem to fit
(North American Rails, European Rails, Iron Dragon, etc.). As before, you battle for completion. (Okay, I guess medium/small cities can be called a resource, but I've had relatively few times when it mattered.)
Slashdot Mirror
> technical, not $$
Sorry. It boils down to dollars in most cases. Dollars don't matter if you're programming for fun, or maybe for your class project, but in the real world, sometimes you sacrifice technical expertise to get what you need.
Sean.
My understanding is that the scoring that determines whether or not a patient is a good candidate for a transplant rates higher for those who have a better chance for long term survivability. It's not exactly how sick they are right now, but a number of factors making them "too sick".
A patient may well be "too sick" to undergo a heart transplant based upon normal scoring methods that take into account others who may also need the organ. But no such restrictions exist when talking about life vs. death and an artificial heart.
Sean.
The problem is, that it's not convicted drug dealers, but suspected drug dealers. And ordinary people have lost thousands of dollars because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
For a while -- maybe still -- you had to be very careful not to drive through certain counties in Florida with large amounts of cash. If you did, you were likely to lose that cash. No kidding.
The police can take -- without compensation -- any cash that they can show has drugs on it. I once heard a statistic that at least 90% of all twenty dollar bills showed enough trace cocaine that they could be confiscated.
Ordinary, law-abiding citizens have lost their money and their livelyhoods because of something of which they were suspected, not convicted.
It's one more step towards the police state the US seems to be heading toward, and it's wrong.
Sean.
I didn't get that _at_all_ from what Linux said. Given that he first said that there weren't any extranious messages, I think that what he meant was that only those items of a completely non-useful nature would be removed.
What does that mean? I think it means that stuff like:
Jun 6 13:10:04 localhost kernel: hdc: ATAPI 1X CD-ROM drive, 32kB Cache
eth0: PCnet/PCI II 79C970A at 0x1000, 00 50 56 8e 6e 4d assigned IRQ 9.
will stay around. But stuff like:
pcnet32.c:v1.25kf 26.9.1999 tsbogend@alpha.franken.de
which (arguably) provides little information will go away.
I really don't think there's any intent to take away boot messages.
Sean.
I thought she was fairly reasonable. She asked for a credit for the time the service was unavailable. She was told she would get a credit, but not how much. She canceled her service and refused to pay until an appropriate credit was issued.
Just how would you have her solve this problem? I think withholding of payment is about the only things that gets a mig company's attention.
Sean.
Bad news. It does work, and the spammers make money. Until it stops making money, spammers will continue annoying people.
Sean.
No you don't. You get an emulator with the operating system. For free. No signing documents.
Okay. How do I get the operating system for free?Unless I'm misunderstanding this, it sounds like there's no real difference between Palm and WinCE in this matter.
If you have a copy of the Palm operating system, then everything else you need is free and you don't have to sign anything.
If you don't have a copy of the Palm operating system, then you have to print out sign and mail an agreement to Palm. What do you have to do for WinCE? Can I download the OS? Do I need to buy it? What needs to happen?
With Palm, the emulator is immaterial. It's free. It's the OS you have to work to get. You say that I get the emulator with the WinCE OS. Fine, but how do I get the OS?
Sean.
Uh, what are you talking about? The only time you need to sign an agreement is if you want to download the actual ROM image. Okay, also if you want source to the OS.
Everything else can be had for free. You can download Codewarrior for Windows -- okay, it's a "light" version. You can use gcc on either windows or linux. The emulator itself is freely downloadable, as is all official documentation.
Sean.
Mod this down. I tried to email it, but the email address failed. But I simply couldn't ignore it.
Leviticus, 18:22 : Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.
I don't care what your bible says. It makes no difference to me. I don't believe in it and I wouldn't worship the god the commits the attrocities that are attributed to him in the old testament.
They know the facts
"Facts"? What facts? You have no proof, no facts. You have a faith, a belief, but you can't back that up with a single irrefutable fact. You've got your bible, but nothing in it is provable.
Also, don't come telling me that there are lots of homosexuality among the animal kingdom, or that most people are bisexual. I have read documents convincing enough which tell that these are no facts, but just homosexual propaganda, used slowly to turn communities' attitudes towards false tolerance towards gays.
And who wrote those documents? I suspect by your tone that they were written by those who are against homosexuality. If so, they are suspect. If you haven't done the research, then you don't know. Documents from either side are suspect. Read the texts and do *real* research. Until you do, you can have no claim on knownledge about this.
But I'm telling you all, and not only to homosexuals: turn away from your sins and put your faith in Jesus Christ, and you will be saved. Contact your local bible-believing church.
Been there, done that. Then I did some research and decided to think for myself. Got any idea how the bible was compiled? Know anything about the Gnostic Gospels, what they are, what they said, and why they aren't in the bible as it appears now? Ever read your bible and thought about it? No, not try to understand the meaning, but just thought about what was happening in the stories? Try Numbers 31 (if I remember correctly) and read about midianites.
No thanks. As I said, I don't believe in your bible. tell that these are no facts,
engourage all other people to treat gays as normal people
So they aren't normal? Your whole attitude is one I dislike intensely. They aren't normal. They're wrong. They are damned.
Sheesh. I thought your god was supposed to be merciful, kind, and forgiving.
And, as a last note, let me make it clear: I am not homosexual, I'm not attracted to others of my own gender at all. I'm just against using the bible -- or any other religious text -- to support discrimination and loathing of any group of people.
I have nothing against Christians myself. They know the facts and just don't believe them. But I treat them like I treat everyone else. (sigh.)
Sean.
You've got the wrong idea.
Okay, there are a lot of us out here who want decent resolution. But the majority of the public couldn't care less. What the majority of the public wants is a single unit that does it all.
This PS2 idea is good. WebTV sells, but not all that well, I gather. This could sell much better.
Add into a PS2 the ability to do a bunch of basic PC type things like surf the web, email, simple word processing so that when the parents get that PS2 the little Johnny wants so he can play games, they can get some use out of it as well. Besides, now it's educational, not just a game box.
And all you have to do is hook it up to your TV? It'd take off. It really could be a killer app.
Honestly, I bet MS is already planning the same thing for the XBox. I'd be extremely surprised if they don't.
Sean.
No, it's not Linux. No, it's not an open system.
But I compared features of the two, and I think ReplayTV has better features if you already know what you want to watch. It has a longer pause, a seven second skip back, and a 30 second skip ahead.
TiVo had the 30 second skip ahead function and disabled it. (For all customers.)
You pay for the service up front. (Well, that's not what they claim. They claim the service is free. You just pay more than for TiVo.) I'm extremely happy with my unit and am considering upgrading it myself (which looks easy if you've got moderate computer experience).
It isn't free is the FSF sense (or any other, really), but I don't want to support the nastiness that's been going on with TiVo toward their customers.
Sean.
I would've been satisfied if they'd just replayed the first scene with the new timeline in place. That 15 minutes or so would make all the difference.
I would've been satisfied.
But I really would've loved to see a three or four episode arch bringing the seriese to true closure. That would have been great.
Sean.
I just did some research on this based upon a comment someone made to me.
Roddenberry "blessed" the timeline that says that Robert April was the original Enterprise captain. April would've had the Enterprise for one five year mission, Pike for two.
However, none of that means anything in regards to the new series. The new series takes place 150 years before Kirk, and depending on when they actually choose, probably before the Federation.
Personally, I think all bets are off. The name "Enterprise" and the limitations put upon it by the various series mean little when we're talking that far before the beginning of TOS. (Yes there is a scene somewhere that shows all the various ships named "Enterprise". And I doubt this one will be there. Maybe they missed it :-)
Sources: Star Trek Chonology, news release about "Enterprise".
Sean.
Uh, ReplayTV (which is not Tivo) can do this.
And while I don't know which came out first, I know that I heard about ReplayTV first...
Sean.
Really? Where do I get the Linux/gcc tools to develop for WinCE?
Sean.
Yeah, I made a mistake. What I should have said was that Sun using Star Office hinders their productivity by not providing an easy way to exchange formats with their customers. I didn't mean to imply that using Star Office in itself caused poor productivity. (Though that's what I said.)
However, as much as I hate it, Word .doc is the standard document format right now, and is the only document format for most companies.
I'm all for using ascii or HTML for document sharing. I'd even accept RTF. But that's not the way things work in the US. I'm forced to provide and accept MS Word formated documents to do business with customers.
More importantly laying the blame on your customer does nothing good for you as a business. As your customer, you'ld better be willing to accept the document format I have, or I'll find someone who will. Lay the blame on the customer if you wish, but be prepared to lose business.
Sean.
Just goes to show that the correct response is to use the best tool for the job, not the in-house brand.
I think the article made that clear. Sun doesn't use MS office, but it hinders their productivity and makes it more difficult for their customers. MS wants people to use a PC even though the designer could've done the work more quickly and efficiently on a Mac.
It seems to me the best shop would be one that had different computers for different jobs. End users will probably get Windows, because that's what they're used to and that's what will make them most productive. Servers might be Unix or Windows, based upon need. Designers might get Macs. Admins or competent users might choose Solaris 86 or Linux (Or Windows with VMWare running Linux, as I do) based upon corporate need and individual desire.
Use it because it makes sense, not because of some misplaced loyalty.
Sean.
The pictures also point something else out -- just how less reflective to outside sources the screen of the Sony is vs. the screen of the Prism. That's something I noticed right away when I bought the Prism. No glare.
Okay, it's hard to see in sunlight. But that just points out that the Sony will be more difficult to read in darkness. Someone said it uses the same type screen as the Gameboy Color. My son has one of those and I *much* prefer my Prism's screen to the Gameboy screen. In 95% of the places I've seen both, the Prism's screen is *much* easier to read than the Gameboy's.
Maybe Sony has corrected that -- I haven't actually seen the unit yet. But unless they did, I'll stick to the Prism, or maybe buy the Palm 505 when I get a chance to look at it.
Sean.
The question is really whether these lights would add to the experience or detract from it. I tend to think they would detract, rather than add.
Part of the reason for having a dark theater is to allow you to disassociate yourself with the world around you. With the general tendency of talking and other distractions in the typical theater now-a-days, that's hard to do.
I suspect that lighting as described would tend to remind you that you're in a theater rather than draw you further into the film. And I think that would be especially true in the smaller screen theaters.
Now, I also suspect that in special venues such a technique could be experience enhancing. I feel like I saw a similar thing at some amusment park several years ago. But it enhanced the affect because the "theater" was built with that in mind.
I have serious doubts that it would work in the typical theater.
Sean.
No, but it helps.
It's much easier to get good at something if it interests you, further -- and more importantly -- it's easier to care about the quality of your work if it interests you.
I've been in IT in one form or another for 20 years. Thinking back over those years, the people who stand out in my mind as being very good programmers or very good sys admins are the people who also had fun with it, who had multiple systems at home or who wrote complex 2000+ line programs simply because it was fun.
That's not to say there weren't others who were competent. But the *really* good ones had fun with it.
And the flip side is just as important. While there are (and were) people I know who programmed or sys admined just as a job and did it competently or even moderately well, it's a lot more likely those people would be the ones who shouldn't be in programming. They could write the code. And it would do what was asked of it. But it took them longer, the code was much less efficient, and was often practically unreadable.
It's not required to think of programming or sys admining as fun to be good at it. But it helps a lot.
Sean.
At which point in which movie did Vader ever come into contact with C3PO? (Well, in episodes 4, 5, and 6.)
I admit the possibility of being wrong, but I just went through each film in my head and I can't figure out any time when they came together.
As far as I can remember, the closest they ever came was in the sky city -- but 3po was disassembled early in that sequence, and they never met face to face.
Sean.
It may be a great language. It may be better than perl. I don't know. I've never used Ruby. But then I've never used Python, either.
Most of my scripting is still in (Bourne) sh, simply because most of the time I can't afford to worry about whether or not a particular language has been downloaded onto and compiled for the system I'm using. I need cross-machine compatibility, and I can't afford the time or worry of pushing out copies of some language onto dozens -- or more -- machines.
I use Perl for things that I need, and it is becoming more prevalent, but when that script is going out to production machines, I stick with the basics.
Great or not, it's worth nothing if it isn't there.
Sean.
I would argue that the end result of either is what is truly significant, and that applications will reach the elegance of Beethoven.
I don't think we're there yet. After all, programming and application design is only, what, 50 or so years old? Beethoven had many centuries of music development -- composition and instrument development -- by others to build upon.
Who knows how elegant application may be in a couple more centuries.
Sean.
As a consultant, you are there to suggest/implement the best hardware/software combination for your client, not for yourself. The whole point of your being there is that the client probably can't make the right decision because the client doesn't have the knowledge that you, as the computer specialist, are supposed to have. If you choose to profit yourself at the expense of your client then you are not only harming the client, you are harming your future relations with the client. Further, you are harming the client's view of other consultants.
This attitude is exactly what people make fun of in things like car repair. How often have you heard stories about someone being charged $1000 for a $100 repair? How often do we wonder whether or not the repair shop is reputable?
Do you want people to wonder whether you are reputable because of the actions of others? I don't, but attitudes like the above will ensure that people will.
S.
Other's I've heard mentioned I'm not so sure about, but how about Othello? Each person starts with an equal position, and while the board is a limited resource, it seems to me to fit the definition fairly well.
Chutes and Ladders fits, as well. The battle is to see who can get to the end first, and no person affects another.
How about Battleship? Everything is absolutely equal.
Trivial Persuit? Again, the battle is for completion, not resources.
Many of the crayon rail games would seem to fit (North American Rails, European Rails, Iron Dragon, etc.). As before, you battle for completion. (Okay, I guess medium/small cities can be called a resource, but I've had relatively few times when it mattered.)
I'm sure there are others I'm not thinking of...
Sean.