Yes, I was visiting a friend at a major web-consulting firm in San Fran (near the Sega building) and the desks were arranged in a Sierpenski-triangle fashion, for maximum workable surface-area. They probably have mathematicians working out the exact shape for maximum nervous-energy generation.
Default gateways, ARP entries, DHCP, NAT, firewalls, proxys... it's all a bit much for an "appliance" company to support. Would you like to explain to your dishwasher company what version of ipfwadm you have?
Ahh, but does the space shuttle have an embedded IRC client? I think not! What about "skins"? Nope! Same old boring blue-gray metal switches as all other spaceships! And the telemetry data is completely proprietary! Why can't they code their downlinks in XML?
I think that having 2 developers on any task is a great idea, and working 9 to 5 is a great idea, but... try telling that to your rabid sales force when they have to delay the customer for two months. Gotta have proper management at the higher levels.
Anyway, "XP" sounds like I should be cutting some powder on my snowboard with a laptop in one hand and a Surge cola in the other, listening to Rage on my Rio MP3 player...
The problem is cash flow. Games are so unprofitable nowadays, and people seem to be want BMW's more than ever, so publishers are super-conservative.
Some publishers are more clueful than others, but your average game-deaf VC doesn't want art -- he wants a nice, safe game design that has cleavage, blood, and guns, in varying order. Oh, and the art should be anime-influenced (as if that was ever a question!)
Of course, maybe the Internet is killing single-player gaming? I mean, you can only have so much screen time per day (even if it's 16-20 hours:) ) -- you gotta choose whether you're going to waste that time gaming or Slashdotting.
The only mention of what this guy was actually protesting was an easily-missed two words in his article. If this guy was serious about his cause, he would have given it at least a sentence.
Maybe we could use cheaper shower curtains on ISS and launch a few more probes to Mars?
Ah, but highly regarded studies have shown that monochrome shower curtains cause Space Madness and decrease bone mass, and only curtains with the little fish on them will suffice.
Looks like poor Kurt's site is getting throttled. Ah, the web, where your deserved 15 minutes of fame are cut short by the sound of the hard drive swapping madly and "No more processes" on your console...
Sounds like you're working on this project alone? You need to talk to someone. Not about your fears and aspirations, but about engineering. It's easy to get into a rut when you're in a vacuum. Run your architectural issues by some other technical folks, share projects, or whatever. Large projects are hard to complete when you're not part of a team. Externalize!
Also you might be burnt out -- C++ is a hideous bitch goddess. Try programming in a language that's less soul-draining for a while.
Funny that Microsoft has *explicitly* discouraged users from using the command-line prompt (says so in the Windows 95 Resource Kit, on the CD). This is why the MSDOS-box still doesn't have filename completion, or any of the modern UNIX shell features -- they don't want you to use it.
But oh, now that we have whizzy NLP that works properly 10% of the time, using the keyboard is "legit" again. Puhleez.
I am of the opinion that too much is made of "group dynamics" research as pertaining to space travel. It seems to be used too often as an avenue for scientists to get large grants for research projects that solve few problems in the real world.
I have a quick way to solve the problem: Instead of the overachieving social animals typically employed as astronauts, why not pick folks content to sit in a small cubicle staring at a computer screen for months at a time? Who knows, a Slashdot veteran might be among our first Mars voyagers!:)
Well, it's the same as the equally real dangers of nuclear annihilation and environmental destruction -- nothing really bad's happened yet to *me* so let's ignore it.
Great, another language whose name is wholly unparsable by most search engines. They should name the language "+sex +porn", then they'll get plenty of hits on Altavista right off the bat.
Not at all... Legos have excellent compressive strength, if poor shearing properties. They would be excellent for first stage propellant tanks of rockets. And -- the colors!
I agree, the N-word gets unwarranted criticism nowadays. It's almost impossible to get people to understand that nuclear reactors in space are incredibly safe -- unlike Casinni's RTGs, a nuclear reactor would not become significantly radioactive until it was first started in orbit, so there would be no danger of a launch accident spreading radioactive waste. It'd probably be safer than launching a vehicle with hypergolic propellants -- those are SUPER toxic.
But the sad fact is that no one seems interested in going to Mars, so this discussion is academic. I guess if we're going to stick around Earth, we'd better grow gills sooner than later.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, I was visiting a friend at a major web-consulting firm in San Fran (near the Sega building) and the desks were arranged in a Sierpenski-triangle fashion, for maximum workable surface-area. They probably have mathematicians working out the exact shape for maximum nervous-energy generation.
Default gateways, ARP entries, DHCP, NAT, firewalls, proxys ... it's all a bit much for an "appliance" company to support. Would you like to explain to your dishwasher company what version of ipfwadm you have?
OTOH, anyone with a dial tone can use a modem.
Ahh, but does the space shuttle have an embedded IRC client? I think not! What about "skins"? Nope! Same old boring blue-gray metal switches as all other spaceships! And the telemetry data is completely proprietary! Why can't they code their downlinks in XML?
I think that having 2 developers on any task is a great idea, and working 9 to 5 is a great idea, but ... try telling that to your rabid sales force when they have to delay the customer for two months. Gotta have proper management at the higher levels.
Anyway, "XP" sounds like I should be cutting some powder on my snowboard with a laptop in one hand and a Surge cola in the other, listening to Rage on my Rio MP3 player...
The problem is cash flow. Games are so unprofitable nowadays, and people seem to be want BMW's more than ever, so publishers are super-conservative.
:) ) -- you gotta choose whether you're going to waste that time gaming or Slashdotting.
Some publishers are more clueful than others, but your average game-deaf VC doesn't want art -- he wants a nice, safe game design that has cleavage, blood, and guns, in varying order. Oh, and the art should be anime-influenced (as if that was ever a question!)
Of course, maybe the Internet is killing single-player gaming? I mean, you can only have so much screen time per day (even if it's 16-20 hours
The only mention of what this guy was actually protesting was an easily-missed two words in his article. If this guy was serious about his cause, he would have given it at least a sentence.
All right! I can finally print web pages on that 8-pen plotter that's been lying around the house.
Now do you thing W3C will come up with an XML ASCII-art standard, so I can use up the rest of my daisy-wheel ribbons?
Maybe we could use cheaper shower curtains on ISS and launch a few more probes to Mars?
Ah, but highly regarded studies have shown that monochrome shower curtains cause Space Madness and decrease bone mass, and only curtains with the little fish on them will suffice.
Now if everyone goes to dejavu.org and enters www.slashdot.org in the URL, won't Slashdot get slashdotted? :)
... all the papers I want to read are in .DOC format! Whatever happened to ugly, ugly LaTeX documents and barely parsable Postscript files, huh? :)
Looks like poor Kurt's site is getting throttled. Ah, the web, where your deserved 15 minutes of fame are cut short by the sound of the hard drive swapping madly and "No more processes" on your console...
Sounds like you're working on this project alone? You need to talk to someone. Not about your fears and aspirations, but about engineering. It's easy to get into a rut when you're in a vacuum. Run your architectural issues by some other technical folks, share projects, or whatever. Large projects are hard to complete when you're not part of a team. Externalize!
Also you might be burnt out -- C++ is a hideous bitch goddess. Try programming in a language that's less soul-draining for a while.
Funny that Microsoft has *explicitly* discouraged users from using the command-line prompt (says so in the Windows 95 Resource Kit, on the CD). This is why the MSDOS-box still doesn't have filename completion, or any of the modern UNIX shell features -- they don't want you to use it.
But oh, now that we have whizzy NLP that works properly 10% of the time, using the keyboard is "legit" again. Puhleez.
- Tasty crispy salty treat
- Hacker dude
- Racial slur for 'white guy'
- Mediocre early '90's alternative band
Or, it could have been all of the above... now THAT would be a story!I have a quick way to solve the problem: Instead of the overachieving social animals typically employed as astronauts, why not pick folks content to sit in a small cubicle staring at a computer screen for months at a time? Who knows, a Slashdot veteran might be among our first Mars voyagers! :)
Improve a mechanical device and you may double productivity. But improve man, you gain a thousandfold!
Soon after which, of course, Kirk gets put into the pressure chamber/laundromat...
Well, it's the same as the equally real dangers of nuclear annihilation and environmental destruction -- nothing really bad's happened yet to *me* so let's ignore it.
Great, another language whose name is wholly unparsable by most search engines. They should name the language "+sex +porn", then they'll get plenty of hits on Altavista right off the bat.
Not at all... Legos have excellent compressive strength, if poor shearing properties. They would be excellent for first stage propellant tanks of rockets. And -- the colors!
I agree, the N-word gets unwarranted criticism nowadays. It's almost impossible to get people to understand that nuclear reactors in space are incredibly safe -- unlike Casinni's RTGs, a nuclear reactor would not become significantly radioactive until it was first started in orbit, so there would be no danger of a launch accident spreading radioactive waste. It'd probably be safer than launching a vehicle with hypergolic propellants -- those are SUPER toxic.
But the sad fact is that no one seems interested in going to Mars, so this discussion is academic. I guess if we're going to stick around Earth, we'd better grow gills sooner than later.
Maybe if my Windows box didn't lock up everytime it went on standby, I could leave on the power-saving features and and not waste so much juice!
:)
Also to blame are screensavers and key-cracking programs. Heck, blame Canada!
Maybe they'll port my favorite game, "A Phone Forever Roaming" ... har har ummmm, yeah.
"Oh no! The lamprey is no longer responding to the mind control! AIEEEEEEEEEEE!"
BSD has pthreads.
I don't see why there would be a difference, as long as the JIT is retained... I run Linux JDK 1.2 on FreeBSD at perfectly acceptable speeds.
but what if I sneeze?