Assuming it means you can write well, the English degree might provide a base for a career in tech that has little or nothing to do with being a sys admin.
I'm a creative writing graduate myself, and I've found that since I've started teaching, one thing that I've done that really helps the students offset the problem with dense documentation is digesting and regurgitating it for them. The amount of IT-skilled people out there is pretty big. On the other hand, the amount of IT-skilled people who can explain things in a way that a fool can understand without making that person feel like a fool, is pretty small.
You might want to try pushing that English degree as much as possible, maybe helping out to document systems for companies with a high turnover or something.
I know this is a little offtopic, but I thought it might be helpful.
I sort of am, to be honest. Notwithstanding that words don't necessarily translate into action, those two quotes seem to indicate that Gates and Ballmer are starting to "get" why people dislike the company.
Given Mircosoft's arrogance over the years, that's a really big first step.
Don't forget that GNome is trying to put forward a component-oriented environment. As such, many of the flagship products are going to be pioneering many of these components that can be reused. Some of those hundreds of thousands of lines of code is stuff a future programmer can take advantage of.
Now, if you want to go into a discussion of the problems of bloated component environments in general, that's another thing entirely. But following the model is hardly Evolution's fault.
You bring up fifty instances of WINE. Each one of those instances brings up its own LINE emulator (okay, except it's not an emulator, but you know what I mean). You get each one of THOSE instances to broadcast on a different local IP on the machine, and then you cluster them all together from a serving process, no?
How'm I doing? Better not quit my job as a VB instructor?
Let's be frank. C# was designed to replace Java. It's got a C-like object-oriented syntax that allows package importation and that, through.NET, is compiled and delivered in binary form throughout the internet, right?
What I want to know is what the heck the point is of continuing J++ as J#, which I assume also has a C-like object-oriented syntax that allows package importation and that, through regular Java compilation, is delivered in binary form throughout the internet?
Is the J++ user-base so large that it's profitable to help them migrate to.NET?
Let's face it. With the ridiculous performance and capacity gains that hardware makes, whether or not software is bloated or slow is not really an issue anymore. If it is, wait six months, and the hardware will be there that'll MAKE it a non-issue for the same cost as today's.
The software they make isn't really all that crappy anymore, either. Witness Carmack saying that the latest incarnations of DirectX are actually quite good. Witness the folks at Ximian breathlessly chasing Microsoft's.NET specs. Witness the fact that they own the office and home desktop. And witness the fact that some of their subdivisions make some great stuff (Age of Empires, anyone?).
If we're going to criticize Microsoft, let's keep it above the belt. Go after their shady business practices or go after their pricey licences or go after the handcuffs of dealing with proprietary formats, protocols and libraries. These are really the only three things that you can still legitimately criticize Microsoft on these days, and they're worthy enough topics to explore.
But covering our mouths and giggling because some guy got 11% less performance with one over the other? Come on...
Does that mean that I can be arrested and then not be presented with a warrant, or that my house could be searched and I could not be presented with a warrant?
Sure! Why not? After all, this is the same U.S. gov't that's bombing Afghanistan civilians before presenting them with any proof that either the Taliban or Bin Laden were behind Sept 11th.
I don't know about anyone else, but I think that after the Sept 11th attacks they're probably stepping up the security for pilot training schools, right? And given that the West is currently in the middle of an anthrax scare, doesn't it make a little sense that medical centres and chemical labs be under a little bit of heightened security?
I think the rationale being applied is this: if the place is a potential conduit for attacks by subterfuge, it's fair game while everything's still on red alert, which we currently are.
Now, ask me this again in five years when the War on Terrorism goes the same route as the War on Drugs or the War on Communism (ie: a nebulous foe that is redefined to justify continuing budgets for miscellaneous useless defense departments), and I'll probably have a different answer...
Sorry for the sort of offtopic question (it's inspired by the fact that, if this story is true, there's yet another PDA OS in the works): I've been thinking about getting into PDA development, and I was wondering if there was, at the moment, any sort of cross-platform WORA way of going about things? That way if somebody had an OSX-driven PDA, or a Palm, or one of those Linux ones, you wouldn't need to rewrite the ap for each one... If there's nothing for it yet, has there been any discussion on it between the various PDA companies?
My God, I just finished downloading 5.1, and now they're already up to 7.2? Great. Just great. Next you're going to tell me they've gone past the 2.2.14 kernel...
Sorry to interrupt the mutual-masturbation fest that's going on here, but isn't it high time we started seeing something new out of Sid Meier? I had a lot of respect for the guy when the first Civilization came out, because between that, Pirates! and Railroad Tycoon, he'd really created a variety of strategy games that were engrossing and fun to play, and also replayable in different ways. I'd skipped Civ2 because there were other new games coming out that I wanted to try out instead, and when I bought Colonization and Alpha Centauri, I was a little bit underwhelmed, to be blunt. (Didn't try Antietam so I can't comment on that...)
I know that Sid Meier has what it takes to make a really fun and creative and new game, so why is he limiting himself to sequels and knock-offs of his previous stuff? I mean, here was a guy who practically created his own genre of games -- and it's this sort of experimentation and risk that pushes the industry forward. Right now, though, he's just resting on his laurels.
I've seen the descriptions of Civ3 and I'll probably be all over it when it gets to the bargain bin, and I'll probably play it so much that I'll lose sleep or miss a deadline or something. But still, I'd be a lot more excited about an impending product from Firaxis if I knew it was going to do what it did in the late 80s/early 90s and take some chances and try to push the entire industry to a new level, instead of just improving the game logic on his own tried-and-true formulas.
Not only will this benefit home users who want to play games, but it will offer arguably the first Linux games and multimedia standard to work with. This will be GREAT for developers, who not only won't have to go through several days' worth of download and internetial documentation searching in order to get their machine ready to develop games for, but also to ensure that all these developers are working from a similar base, which will help reduce dependency issues.
Hopefully they'll talk it out with some of the prominent developers out there too, including some in the open source world. I'm probably going to get my hands on this, not just for the included games, but the possibility that downloading other free games will be made easier.
(sorry if this got posted more than once, I'm getting weird formkeys errors...)
It seems that the article is motivated by an anger towards the fringe lunatics. This is too bad -- wiping a hard drive and installing linux on it isn't a linux problem, it's a stupid fucking employee problem.
As for whether or not Linux is going to lose on the desktop, time will tell. It's staying on mine, but I don't do any word processing that other people need to see. I do find it funny that the writer considers the competition for the desktop a bad thing, and writes it off as duplication of effort. I suppose there's an argument for that, but you might as well say that Darwinism is a duplication of effort when it comes to evolution -- the only other recourse is to accept being stagnant or having your evolution determined for you. No thanks.
Jason Alexander once said in an interview that every single episode he did as George on Seinfeld made it harder and harder for him to be marketable in showbiz as any other sort of character. Given that most people know you as Welsey Crusher, do you ever worry about it? If that's a problem, how does an actor break out of it?
Is there any company that doesn't want to exploit a tragedy for financial gain?
I know exactly what you're talking about. Trust me, you're not alone. Don't you feel like you should say something? Don't you just want to scream out loud, "Let's have some dignity!" Of course you do! And for $12.99 you too can get a T-Shirt that says just that! Just call this 1-800 number and get yours...
(sorry, it's pissing me off too. thought maybe some black humour would help)
In my opinion, if you're comparing DirectX and OpenGL then you're really talking about group multimedia projects, and I really think that sticking it out in C isn't the way to go for that.
I love C, but there are huge design benefits in going OO with C++. Eventually you'll get to the point where there'll be a large body of accepted base classes that should handle all the standard 3D objects you might need for a game, and then you won't have to (eg) search all over the internet to find obscure libraries in beta form just to get your program to load a model from a 3D cad program.
I've been thinking about getting into PDA development for a while. I was wondering, with a machine like this, what skills would it be good to know in order to develop for it? Languages, toolkits, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
Just a thought.
Assuming it means you can write well, the English degree might provide a base for a career in tech that has little or nothing to do with being a sys admin.
I'm a creative writing graduate myself, and I've found that since I've started teaching, one thing that I've done that really helps the students offset the problem with dense documentation is digesting and regurgitating it for them. The amount of IT-skilled people out there is pretty big. On the other hand, the amount of IT-skilled people who can explain things in a way that a fool can understand without making that person feel like a fool, is pretty small.
You might want to try pushing that English degree as much as possible, maybe helping out to document systems for companies with a high turnover or something.
I know this is a little offtopic, but I thought it might be helpful.
>GNU/Gnome
Gnome itself has GNU in the acronym.
I just read the rest of it.
I sort of am, to be honest. Notwithstanding that words don't necessarily translate into action, those two quotes seem to indicate that Gates and Ballmer are starting to "get" why people dislike the company.
Given Mircosoft's arrogance over the years, that's a really big first step.
Don't forget that GNome is trying to put forward a component-oriented environment. As such, many of the flagship products are going to be pioneering many of these components that can be reused. Some of those hundreds of thousands of lines of code is stuff a future programmer can take advantage of.
Now, if you want to go into a discussion of the problems of bloated component environments in general, that's another thing entirely. But following the model is hardly Evolution's fault.
You bring up fifty instances of WINE. Each one of those instances brings up its own LINE emulator (okay, except it's not an emulator, but you know what I mean). You get each one of THOSE instances to broadcast on a different local IP on the machine, and then you cluster them all together from a serving process, no?
How'm I doing? Better not quit my job as a VB instructor?
Let's be frank. C# was designed to replace Java. It's got a C-like object-oriented syntax that allows package importation and that, through .NET, is compiled and delivered in binary form throughout the internet, right?
.NET?
What I want to know is what the heck the point is of continuing J++ as J#, which I assume also has a C-like object-oriented syntax that allows package importation and that, through regular Java compilation, is delivered in binary form throughout the internet?
Is the J++ user-base so large that it's profitable to help them migrate to
Let's face it. With the ridiculous performance and capacity gains that hardware makes, whether or not software is bloated or slow is not really an issue anymore. If it is, wait six months, and the hardware will be there that'll MAKE it a non-issue for the same cost as today's.
.NET specs. Witness the fact that they own the office and home desktop. And witness the fact that some of their subdivisions make some great stuff (Age of Empires, anyone?).
The software they make isn't really all that crappy anymore, either. Witness Carmack saying that the latest incarnations of DirectX are actually quite good. Witness the folks at Ximian breathlessly chasing Microsoft's
If we're going to criticize Microsoft, let's keep it above the belt. Go after their shady business practices or go after their pricey licences or go after the handcuffs of dealing with proprietary formats, protocols and libraries. These are really the only three things that you can still legitimately criticize Microsoft on these days, and they're worthy enough topics to explore.
But covering our mouths and giggling because some guy got 11% less performance with one over the other? Come on...
>5pm -> 3am = 10 hours, not 8
Actually, you're both right. Civ3 is so cool it morphs the space-time continuum.
So... Deanna Troy, Tasha Yar or Dr. Crusher?
Does that mean that I can be arrested and then not be presented with a warrant, or that my house could be searched and I could not be presented with a warrant?
Sure! Why not? After all, this is the same U.S. gov't that's bombing Afghanistan civilians before presenting them with any proof that either the Taliban or Bin Laden were behind Sept 11th.
Assuming we want to help them control their violent tendencies...
I don't know about anyone else, but I think that after the Sept 11th attacks they're probably stepping up the security for pilot training schools, right? And given that the West is currently in the middle of an anthrax scare, doesn't it make a little sense that medical centres and chemical labs be under a little bit of heightened security?
I think the rationale being applied is this: if the place is a potential conduit for attacks by subterfuge, it's fair game while everything's still on red alert, which we currently are.
Now, ask me this again in five years when the War on Terrorism goes the same route as the War on Drugs or the War on Communism (ie: a nebulous foe that is redefined to justify continuing budgets for miscellaneous useless defense departments), and I'll probably have a different answer...
Sorry for the sort of offtopic question (it's inspired by the fact that, if this story is true, there's yet another PDA OS in the works): I've been thinking about getting into PDA development, and I was wondering if there was, at the moment, any sort of cross-platform WORA way of going about things? That way if somebody had an OSX-driven PDA, or a Palm, or one of those Linux ones, you wouldn't need to rewrite the ap for each one... If there's nothing for it yet, has there been any discussion on it between the various PDA companies?
Just curious.
My God, I just finished downloading 5.1, and now they're already up to 7.2? Great. Just great. Next you're going to tell me they've gone past the 2.2.14 kernel...
Sorry to interrupt the mutual-masturbation fest that's going on here, but isn't it high time we started seeing something new out of Sid Meier? I had a lot of respect for the guy when the first Civilization came out, because between that, Pirates! and Railroad Tycoon, he'd really created a variety of strategy games that were engrossing and fun to play, and also replayable in different ways. I'd skipped Civ2 because there were other new games coming out that I wanted to try out instead, and when I bought Colonization and Alpha Centauri, I was a little bit underwhelmed, to be blunt. (Didn't try Antietam so I can't comment on that...)
I know that Sid Meier has what it takes to make a really fun and creative and new game, so why is he limiting himself to sequels and knock-offs of his previous stuff? I mean, here was a guy who practically created his own genre of games -- and it's this sort of experimentation and risk that pushes the industry forward. Right now, though, he's just resting on his laurels.
I've seen the descriptions of Civ3 and I'll probably be all over it when it gets to the bargain bin, and I'll probably play it so much that I'll lose sleep or miss a deadline or something. But still, I'd be a lot more excited about an impending product from Firaxis if I knew it was going to do what it did in the late 80s/early 90s and take some chances and try to push the entire industry to a new level, instead of just improving the game logic on his own tried-and-true formulas.
Not only will this benefit home users who want to play games, but it will offer arguably the first Linux games and multimedia standard to work with. This will be GREAT for developers, who not only won't have to go through several days' worth of download and internetial documentation searching in order to get their machine ready to develop games for, but also to ensure that all these developers are working from a similar base, which will help reduce dependency issues.
Hopefully they'll talk it out with some of the prominent developers out there too, including some in the open source world. I'm probably going to get my hands on this, not just for the included games, but the possibility that downloading other free games will be made easier.
(sorry if this got posted more than once, I'm getting weird formkeys errors...)
It seems that the article is motivated by an anger towards the fringe lunatics. This is too bad -- wiping a hard drive and installing linux on it isn't a linux problem, it's a stupid fucking employee problem.
As for whether or not Linux is going to lose on the desktop, time will tell. It's staying on mine, but I don't do any word processing that other people need to see. I do find it funny that the writer considers the competition for the desktop a bad thing, and writes it off as duplication of effort. I suppose there's an argument for that, but you might as well say that Darwinism is a duplication of effort when it comes to evolution -- the only other recourse is to accept being stagnant or having your evolution determined for you. No thanks.
Linux Counter Drops 90.000 Users
At least that's better than the time they dropped 89.947 users. My buddy still can't find his finger.
Jason Alexander once said in an interview that every single episode he did as George on Seinfeld made it harder and harder for him to be marketable in showbiz as any other sort of character. Given that most people know you as Welsey Crusher, do you ever worry about it? If that's a problem, how does an actor break out of it?
Is there any company that doesn't want to exploit a tragedy for financial gain?
I know exactly what you're talking about. Trust me, you're not alone. Don't you feel like you should say something? Don't you just want to scream out loud, "Let's have some dignity!" Of course you do! And for $12.99 you too can get a T-Shirt that says just that! Just call this 1-800 number and get yours...
(sorry, it's pissing me off too. thought maybe some black humour would help)
In my opinion, if you're comparing DirectX and OpenGL then you're really talking about group multimedia projects, and I really think that sticking it out in C isn't the way to go for that.
I love C, but there are huge design benefits in going OO with C++. Eventually you'll get to the point where there'll be a large body of accepted base classes that should handle all the standard 3D objects you might need for a game, and then you won't have to (eg) search all over the internet to find obscure libraries in beta form just to get your program to load a model from a 3D cad program.
Don't be stupid, the "victims" as you call them are the terrorist groups.
Correction: The Intended victims are terrorist groups.
Now go look up the term "collateral damage". Or, alternatively, check out the success/failure ratio of your smart bombs during the Gulf War.
Just so long as the victims get to be robots too.
Not bloody likely to happen anytime soon though.
I've been thinking about getting into PDA development for a while. I was wondering, with a machine like this, what skills would it be good to know in order to develop for it? Languages, toolkits, etc.