There needs to be a way to weed out dumb court cases. Maybe you could ask ten people, and if nine of them say "that's dumb" then you throw the case out. Or maybe use some kind of roulette wheel with flashing lights or something.
As a former CS major, I must concur. Not only is avoiding doing your own research an act of sloth, but if you are not cognisant enough to PARAPHRASE the purloined material, then you should employ yourself at a fast-food restaurant until you decide you're ready to fill your cup of knowledge at a state university.
(Though design is becoming less and less accessible to programmers.)
This is sort of a tangent... but why is this happening? I know that game design today is supposed to consist of taking a known engine, tweaking the heck out of it, adding content, and shipping. Whee, another FPS.
But it seems to me that truly innovative (and therefore great) games come from programmers or ex-programmers, who wield the power to identify something that hasn't been done with the hardware, and do it. Carmack, Wright, Molyneux, Meier, Lord British, etc.
Perhaps the decline of the programmer/designer is a symptom of the stagnant state of the game design practice?
Or maybe good game designers who aren't programmers just don't get enough press? (I'm not talking about level designers here, I mean the creators of totally new genres)
When I was a rebellious OS/2 user, I sent at least a dozen detailed bug reports on the OS to IBM tech support. Usually I got some sort of human response, and a couple times I worked out the problem with the engineers over the phone. And me being just a lowly student/user. Try getting this level of support from Microsoft!
Nowadays I don't even bother to send in bug reports for anything, except on the Sun Java JDK, which has an excellent and completely public bug-reporting system. If I reported every crash in every piece of software I use, I'd be a full time beta tester.
Anyway... what was the point of this article? Oh yeah, tech support sucks. So do taxes, death, nukes, and movies with Julia Roberts.
Bloated code is good for marketing! No one wants to spend $300 on a measly 1 MB.exe. No, I want to see a 23 MB executable, 42 megs of DLLs, and preferably help files with uncompressed 32-bit images embedded. Oh, and 3D animated renderings of my desktop assistant, Sal the Tufted Titmouse.
Yes, the "Hello World" of the future will barely fit on a DVD.
Nope. What your cycles/RAM will be occupied with in the future is running 12 different versions of MSVCRT.DLL (or glibc) and flashing 3D-rendered banner ads at you.
New software is like foam, it fills all available space. Even my tax program seems like it needs a 1 GHz machine to run properly. The problem is that most developers are divorced from thinking about performance problems because it's absolutely last on their list of TODOs ('cept for game programmers, obviously) and if their program swaps for a few seconds, who cares? Their users will just spend a little more time in the AOL chat room.
I don't see what the fuss is... sure I don't get 100 FPS on my PII-400 and TNT2, but come on, this isn't a twitch game. Pretty amazing graphics for the framerate actually. The last Ultima was much worse.
So my options of getting "legit" music reduce down to: listen to the "alternative" tenny bopper pop station, listen to the Steely Dan station, listen to the Metallica station, listen to the Kool & the Gang station, pay $18 for a CD, pay $6 for a cd-single.
I remember Cyc... it was built when the Japanese were beginning their "5th generation computer language" project, that was supposed to enable giant robotic mechs to wander the landscape breathing fire, right? As I remember their project went nowhere.
I wish Cyc would release *something* playable-withable soon... I mean come on, it's been *17 years*!!! Put that thing to work checking my IRS forms!
Re:The last vestiges of irrational exuburance
on
Mars Odyssey begins
·
· Score: 2
Seems we have no shortage of Katz apprentices...
You seem to forget, however, that part of the success of the Apollo program was due to abandoning old methodologies.
I am talking about the "all-up" Saturn V testing program, which was a departure from previous multistage rockets which were all tested stage-by-stage. The first Saturn V flew with all 3 stages firing for the first time. This concept scared the piss out of lots of people, and it was a big gamble.
But it worked, and you know what, there would have been no way we'd have gotten to the Moon by 1969 (or ever, judging by the tenacity of the public's acceptance of Apollo) without that integrated testing.
And did you forget that Pathfinder worked, although it has a completely insane landing strategy?
Things break. The Voyager 2 spacecraft was about one flaky capacitor away from total loss of communication with the Earth, but JPL wrangled with it until it worked. Give the guys some credit.
That's just what OS/2 did, ran Windows 3.1 in its own little VM. I could even run 2 instances on the same machine and run sockets between them!! Too bad OS/2 sucked in general...
That reminds me, I have a flash animation I want to run in lynx, but it says "plug in not available, use color xterm"... who knows what this means? I'm running on a Diablo teleprinter.
Wargames made me go out and get a modem. Unfortunately there were about 2 BBS's within dialing distance where I lived:-p Brodrick's character was a pretty accurate depiction of a hacker -- a goofy kid, not a black-wearing uptight cyberwannabe.
So you build the Cure For Cancer wonder. You only get 1 happy face in each city. Forget that -- switch to Communism, build the Great Library, and mop up the rest of the world while you get their techs. Diplomats too.
(For those that don't understand -- you've not truly lived:) )
Does anyone know a person who is both an expert (*complete* fluency) in both C++ and Perl? I have a feeling that these two languages are too large to be contained in a human head at the same time.
Perhaps we will have to evolve super-intelligent Khan-like coder clones in the future, using nanotech, Beowulf clusters, and in-dash Atari 2600 emulators.
All I see is a shift from products to services. Instead of creating a total package which is 99% complete and charging $1000 a head, you download an 80% complete package for free and pay someone (internal or external) to add the other 19%.
The 1% of course is that feature which never gets done:)
You know how some sites dumb down their stories because they're getting TOO popular, and need to reduce their hits to get their bandwidth fees lower? Well...
Slashdot Mirror
There needs to be a way to weed out dumb court cases. Maybe you could ask ten people, and if nine of them say "that's dumb" then you throw the case out. Or maybe use some kind of roulette wheel with flashing lights or something.
Hopefully X-Box Technologies doesn't make an operating system called QDOS :)
As a former CS major, I must concur. Not only is avoiding doing your own research an act of sloth, but if you are not cognisant enough to PARAPHRASE the purloined material, then you should employ yourself at a fast-food restaurant until you decide you're ready to fill your cup of knowledge at a state university.
Raiders of the Lost Ark (2600)
Star Wars (arcade, vector)
Hmmm.. that's about it
(Though design is becoming less and less accessible to programmers.)
This is sort of a tangent... but why is this happening? I know that game design today is supposed to consist of taking a known engine, tweaking the heck out of it, adding content, and shipping. Whee, another FPS.
But it seems to me that truly innovative (and therefore great) games come from programmers or ex-programmers, who wield the power to identify something that hasn't been done with the hardware, and do it. Carmack, Wright, Molyneux, Meier, Lord British, etc.
Perhaps the decline of the programmer/designer is a symptom of the stagnant state of the game design practice?
Or maybe good game designers who aren't programmers just don't get enough press? (I'm not talking about level designers here, I mean the creators of totally new genres)
When I was a rebellious OS/2 user, I sent at least a dozen detailed bug reports on the OS to IBM tech support. Usually I got some sort of human response, and a couple times I worked out the problem with the engineers over the phone. And me being just a lowly student/user. Try getting this level of support from Microsoft!
Nowadays I don't even bother to send in bug reports for anything, except on the Sun Java JDK, which has an excellent and completely public bug-reporting system. If I reported every crash in every piece of software I use, I'd be a full time beta tester.
Anyway... what was the point of this article? Oh yeah, tech support sucks. So do taxes, death, nukes, and movies with Julia Roberts.
Need new moderator status:
+9999 (Carmack)
:)
Yeah that show was awesome, and so was the little Aussie hottie... I guess there weren't enough shark chases or car attacks for Discovery's audiences.
Bloated code is good for marketing! No one wants to spend $300 on a measly 1 MB
Yes, the "Hello World" of the future will barely fit on a DVD.
Nope. What your cycles/RAM will be occupied with in the future is running 12 different versions of MSVCRT.DLL (or glibc) and flashing 3D-rendered banner ads at you.
New software is like foam, it fills all available space. Even my tax program seems like it needs a 1 GHz machine to run properly. The problem is that most developers are divorced from thinking about performance problems because it's absolutely last on their list of TODOs ('cept for game programmers, obviously) and if their program swaps for a few seconds, who cares? Their users will just spend a little more time in the AOL chat room.
I don't see what the fuss is ... sure I don't get 100 FPS on my PII-400 and TNT2, but come on, this isn't a twitch game. Pretty amazing graphics for the framerate actually. The last Ultima was much worse.
So my options of getting "legit" music reduce down to: listen to the "alternative" tenny bopper pop station, listen to the Steely Dan station, listen to the Metallica station, listen to the Kool & the Gang station, pay $18 for a CD, pay $6 for a cd-single.
I think I'll hum quietly to myself.
I remember Cyc ... it was built when the Japanese were beginning their "5th generation computer language" project, that was supposed to enable giant robotic mechs to wander the landscape breathing fire, right? As I remember their project went nowhere.
I wish Cyc would release *something* playable-withable soon... I mean come on, it's been *17 years*!!! Put that thing to work checking my IRS forms!
Seems we have no shortage of Katz apprentices...
You seem to forget, however, that part of the success of the Apollo program was due to abandoning old methodologies.
I am talking about the "all-up" Saturn V testing program, which was a departure from previous multistage rockets which were all tested stage-by-stage. The first Saturn V flew with all 3 stages firing for the first time. This concept scared the piss out of lots of people, and it was a big gamble.
But it worked, and you know what, there would have been no way we'd have gotten to the Moon by 1969 (or ever, judging by the tenacity of the public's acceptance of Apollo) without that integrated testing.
And did you forget that Pathfinder worked, although it has a completely insane landing strategy?
Things break. The Voyager 2 spacecraft was about one flaky capacitor away from total loss of communication with the Earth, but JPL wrangled with it until it worked. Give the guys some credit.
That's just what OS/2 did, ran Windows 3.1 in its own little VM. I could even run 2 instances on the same machine and run sockets between them!! Too bad OS/2 sucked in general...
That reminds me, I have a flash animation I want to run in lynx, but it says "plug in not available, use color xterm" ... who knows what this means? I'm running on a Diablo teleprinter.
At my last company, resumes that featured "Java/JavaScript" went instantly into the atomic shredder.
Wargames made me go out and get a modem. Unfortunately there were about 2 BBS's within dialing distance where I lived
Neato... what I'd like to see is a ports tree, like FreeBSD.
/usr/ports ; make install
:)
cd
Oh yeeeeeah....
So you build the Cure For Cancer wonder. You only get 1 happy face in each city. Forget that -- switch to Communism, build the Great Library, and mop up the rest of the world while you get their techs. Diplomats too.
:) )
(For those that don't understand -- you've not truly lived
Does anyone know a person who is both an expert (*complete* fluency) in both C++ and Perl? I have a feeling that these two languages are too large to be contained in a human head at the same time.
Perhaps we will have to evolve super-intelligent Khan-like coder clones in the future, using nanotech, Beowulf clusters, and in-dash Atari 2600 emulators.
All I see is a shift from products to services. Instead of creating a total package which is 99% complete and charging $1000 a head, you download an 80% complete package for free and pay someone (internal or external) to add the other 19%.
:)
The 1% of course is that feature which never gets done
You know how some sites dumb down their stories because they're getting TOO popular, and need to reduce their hits to get their bandwidth fees lower? Well...
Information on Saturn V's Iterative Guidance Mode and source code. (with Makefile)
Hey man, copies of Win2K just blew across the road and sprouted on my desktop