Just be happy that most of the language & political-correctness debate has subsided.
Maybe debate has subsided, but what was the outcome? We're currently in a state where it's unacceptable to acknowledge & celebrate our differences & uniqueness.
To see where we stand today, here's a little thought experiment. You're standing around the water cooler with a few people from the office: a couple you know well and a couple you don't know well. The five of you are discussing the recent new hires. Not knowing their names you are forced to describe them to speak about them. One is of Irish heritage and you can safely refer to his red hair and every one knows who you're talking about. Another is of African heritage, but in many cases you have to be weary about refering to the color of his skin for fear of being misconstrued as rascist. Logic states that the easiest way to describe this person is to single out the features that make them unique. Ooh, but don't use that feature, because in a PC world skin color doesn't matter. Even when you're not making a judgement about the person in question it's still taboo.
Do you see my point? The debate about PCness has subsided only because we've all grown sick of talking about it. The PCness, though is still here and accepted.
In the US we're taught as children that the puritans fled Europe looking for religious freedom. I realized some time ago that that's not entirely true. They were thrown out for being party-poopers. Two hundred plus years later and we're still being ruled by those narrow-minded fearful puritans.
Wow, finally, someone else who likes Call To Power. I loved it. Had great fun giving up large chunks of my life to the game.
I still have fond memories of waging global War Walker style war while just ahead of the front lines I'd be waging an info war with those blimps (can't remember what they're called.) Nothing was worse than hitting a city only to find out it had a Leviathan parked in it.
Hell, maybe I'll re-install it tonight to play through just a few turns.;)
Maybe, but the way I figure it, if you can't afford a Mac, then you can't afford Photoshop. I wouldn't expect to see it going for less than $500, probably a cool $1k for the whole suite. While a single copy wouldn't break the bank, if you're the sort of company that won't spend a couple grand for a Mac for your artists, then you're not going to give them Photoshop either.
Even if you don't want to go the whole way to 5.1, I'd recommend everyone pick up a set of 2.1 (stereo + sub) computer speakers and plug them into the TV or DVD player. What a difference that makes! Those little speakers jammed in the TV housing are just horrible and for about $40 can be replaced or augmented easily.
~~Galen~~
Re:Obligatory Futurama reference ...
on
3D Monitor
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· Score: 1
Indeed. For additional digression of memory/perception from reality check out the September 1997 issue of Scientific American. It contains an article about false memories. I think that's the article I'm remembering, but I can't be sure. It's the most promising in my quick search results.
I'm also reminded of the Hindu concept of an illusory reality, the veils of Maya.
In any case, it's an interesting puzzle to tumble over in one's head.
Faster than light communication may violate relativity, but remember that relativity is a theory. It is a proposed description of the way the universe behaves. Granted, so far it has proven to be a highly accurate description. Also keep in mind that relativity operates on the scale of the very large and has never been incorporated with quantum theories.
So, having said that, history is filled with theories that are very accurate within their intended scope, but fail when applied to a different or expanded problem space. For example, when masses, distances, and speeds get astronomically large, Newton's mechanical theories need correcting.
As a quirky aside, IIRC relativity does not rule out faster than light travel. It does forbid acceleration to and beyond the speed of light, but that all hinges around mass. What about the possibility of massless phenomena? If photon entanglement doesn't involve the transmission of mass for communication, there's nothing in relativity that would prevent the communication from happening faster than light. The fact that we currently base all of our physics on mass movement may be limiting our imaginations here. (Or I may be full of it. I'm not a phycisist after all.)
I remember playing Jane's Advanced Tactical Fighter a bit way back when and one of the coolest things it incorporated was sun-blindness. I imagine it's pretty standard in modern flight sims. Adding this (and a gradually increasing dark vision) to FPSs would drastically raise the realism factor as you moved from bright to dark rooms and back.
(It's also notable that Neverwinter Nights tries to include something similar for the elves' dark-vision, but it fails miserably since the timing's all off and the final 'see in the dark' state is still to dark to be of any use in my opinion.)
What's to wonder about? You're also missing the line in Battle of Evermore "...the Ring Wraiths ride in black..." and the fact that Jimmy Page's nickname is Strider (as introduced on stage on several occasions by Plant.)
His chair probably doesn't even have an "Angry" voice
Maybe not, but he has been known to run over people's toes (among other insults) if they annoy him.
Re:Personally, I would go one step further.
on
Game with God
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Tell that to Augustine or Galileo, some of the greatest minds were devout followers of the church. I'd be willing to bet that they rank higher on the intelligence scale than you do.
They may have been devoutly Christian, but they also lived during a time when not being a devout follower was enough to get you killed in any of a dozen nasty ways. Or, if the church was feeling generous, you'd merely be excomunicated. At which point you lost all rights as a human and citizen of the state.
Seems pretty obvious to me that regardless of what they truly believed, anyone smarter than gnat will happily swear publicly that they're devoutly anything.
The system is called Massive. During one of the early runs they noticed the guys in the back (on both sides) were wandering off. The problem was that they couldn't 'see' the action so they wandered around randomly looking for opponents. The effect was that it looked like they were running away. The problem was solved by giving the agents something similar to the ability to hear. Thus they could sense the action over greater distances and act accordingly.
I've seen this misrepresented so many times it's begun to bug me. I believe all the information I just dropped is available on the Extended Edition DVDs special features (probably FotR). If not, then I'm sure a Google search will turn it up.
An obscure Roman name? You've got to be kidding me. In the ancient pantheon, Ceres/Demeter was the goddess of fertility and agriculture. In other words, she was the mother goddess. Every year she mourns for her lost daughter Persephone and forsakes her duty. During this period all living things on the earth wither and die; thus we have winter.
If such an important goddess has really become "obscure" then maybe I'll go into mourning, though I doubt anyone will notice.
Just FYI, I've been stuck developing for Windows for the past couple of years and the worst thing about it? No layout managers in Visual C++. The MFC libraries are very dumb when it comes to screen layout. Everything is hardcoded on a grid system and if you want to handle resizing you've got to do it yourself.
(Okay, so maybe that's not the worst thing about programming on Windows, but it's up there with about 800 other awful 'features' of the platform.)
Re:CORBA failure largely due to its awful C++ API
on
Software Fashion
·
· Score: 1
Whoever designed the CORBA C++ API should be shot.
After about a year and a half, I've become our project's CORBA "expert". Hell, it takes that long just to get comfortable with the C++ mapping. So you're absolutely correct there.
However, I've also had a bit of experience with the Java mapping. Let me tell you, the Java mapping is just beautiful. If you can find an excuse I'd recommend working with it a bit if for no other reason than to experience what a good CORBA mapping can be like. I don't know what those who wrote the C++ mapping were thinking.
Let me add my interpretation of the phrase, "if you need distortion...". I'd say if you think you need distortion and other effects to make good music then you're not making good music.
I completely agree with Mr. Barnson that "distortion and effects can be used to make good music." They are a wonderful tool to enhance the expressivness of the instrument, but I also feel that when you strip the distortion and effects away from a piece of music it should still have merit. King Crimson is a perfect example of this with guitars that will melt your brains, but the music is so well crafted that it can be played on accoustic or classical guitars and still completely engage the listener.
The whole point of banning bic-type lighters in checked baggage is that under the low pressure conditions that exist in the cargo hold they can explode or leak. They've never been disallowed in carry-on because the cabin is pressurized. It's just common sense.
Sometimes it takes seeing things more than once, or from more than one teacher, before it makes sense.
Agreed. The first year I took algebra, I had a teacher who was really stubborn about requiring all work to be done in pencil. I, of course, was really stubborn about doing all work in pen (I still hate pencils.) She failed me, forcing me to take algebra in summer school. I cursed her at the time, but it was the best thing that could have happened to further my understanding of basic algebra. My summer school teacher (great teacher, btw) actually asked me why I was there since I seemed to know it all already, but it was that second viewing that allowed all the pieces to fall together.
Just a note to mention one of my fondest memories from junior high. One of our assistant principals sponsored a Dungeons & Dragons club after school. Just a handful of us RPG geeks would gather weekly to adventure and goof off for an hour or two. Great fun. (This was, of course, quite some time before the popularity of computer gaming really took off.)
Others here have mentioned Warhammer, chess, go, etc. I'd love to see a local gaming club where the kids are encouraged to play any game.
Anyway, great thread. Now I've got the gaming itch and need to find some folks to roll the dice with.:)
"Imagine, CD sales UP in stores that sell them cheaply!"
This has long been my complaint. The record companies/stores are simply pricing these albums out of a market. How many of us are willing to experiment several times a month with $15 to $20? Not me. However, you cut the price of those albums to $5 and I'll be out there buying 10 albums a month. Likewise with concert tickets. I used to go to 8 concerts a summer when the tickets cost me $20, but now with each show costing 4 times that, forget it.
And on top of it all, of that $18 I spent on an album or the $75 for the concert, the artist receives a mere pittance. I have no problem supporting artists, but I'm not going to support those damned executives living fat off the art of the starving. You want me to happily pay $18 for a CD? Give $15 of it to the artist.
Slashdot Mirror
Just be happy that most of the language & political-correctness debate has subsided.
Maybe debate has subsided, but what was the outcome? We're currently in a state where it's unacceptable to acknowledge & celebrate our differences & uniqueness.
To see where we stand today, here's a little thought experiment. You're standing around the water cooler with a few people from the office: a couple you know well and a couple you don't know well. The five of you are discussing the recent new hires. Not knowing their names you are forced to describe them to speak about them. One is of Irish heritage and you can safely refer to his red hair and every one knows who you're talking about. Another is of African heritage, but in many cases you have to be weary about refering to the color of his skin for fear of being misconstrued as rascist. Logic states that the easiest way to describe this person is to single out the features that make them unique. Ooh, but don't use that feature, because in a PC world skin color doesn't matter. Even when you're not making a judgement about the person in question it's still taboo.
Do you see my point? The debate about PCness has subsided only because we've all grown sick of talking about it. The PCness, though is still here and accepted.
In the US we're taught as children that the puritans fled Europe looking for religious freedom. I realized some time ago that that's not entirely true. They were thrown out for being party-poopers. Two hundred plus years later and we're still being ruled by those narrow-minded fearful puritans.
Every day I find a new reason to move to Europe.
Wow, finally, someone else who likes Call To Power. I loved it. Had great fun giving up large chunks of my life to the game.
;)
I still have fond memories of waging global War Walker style war while just ahead of the front lines I'd be waging an info war with those blimps (can't remember what they're called.) Nothing was worse than hitting a city only to find out it had a Leviathan parked in it.
Hell, maybe I'll re-install it tonight to play through just a few turns.
~~Galen~~
Maybe, but the way I figure it, if you can't afford a Mac, then you can't afford Photoshop. I wouldn't expect to see it going for less than $500, probably a cool $1k for the whole suite. While a single copy wouldn't break the bank, if you're the sort of company that won't spend a couple grand for a Mac for your artists, then you're not going to give them Photoshop either.
At least, that's what I'd speculate.
Even if you don't want to go the whole way to 5.1, I'd recommend everyone pick up a set of 2.1 (stereo + sub) computer speakers and plug them into the TV or DVD player. What a difference that makes! Those little speakers jammed in the TV housing are just horrible and for about $40 can be replaced or augmented easily.
~~Galen~~
Indeed. For additional digression of memory/perception from reality check out the September 1997 issue of Scientific American. It contains an article about false memories. I think that's the article I'm remembering, but I can't be sure. It's the most promising in my quick search results.
I'm also reminded of the Hindu concept of an illusory reality, the veils of Maya.
In any case, it's an interesting puzzle to tumble over in one's head.
~~Galen~~
Faster than light communication may violate relativity, but remember that relativity is a theory. It is a proposed description of the way the universe behaves. Granted, so far it has proven to be a highly accurate description. Also keep in mind that relativity operates on the scale of the very large and has never been incorporated with quantum theories.
So, having said that, history is filled with theories that are very accurate within their intended scope, but fail when applied to a different or expanded problem space. For example, when masses, distances, and speeds get astronomically large, Newton's mechanical theories need correcting.
As a quirky aside, IIRC relativity does not rule out faster than light travel. It does forbid acceleration to and beyond the speed of light, but that all hinges around mass. What about the possibility of massless phenomena? If photon entanglement doesn't involve the transmission of mass for communication, there's nothing in relativity that would prevent the communication from happening faster than light. The fact that we currently base all of our physics on mass movement may be limiting our imaginations here. (Or I may be full of it. I'm not a phycisist after all.)
~~Galen~~
I remember playing Jane's Advanced Tactical Fighter a bit way back when and one of the coolest things it incorporated was sun-blindness. I imagine it's pretty standard in modern flight sims. Adding this (and a gradually increasing dark vision) to FPSs would drastically raise the realism factor as you moved from bright to dark rooms and back.
(It's also notable that Neverwinter Nights tries to include something similar for the elves' dark-vision, but it fails miserably since the timing's all off and the final 'see in the dark' state is still to dark to be of any use in my opinion.)
~~Galen~~
What's to wonder about? You're also missing the line in Battle of Evermore "...the Ring Wraiths ride in black..." and the fact that Jimmy Page's nickname is Strider (as introduced on stage on several occasions by Plant.)
They're Tolkien geeks. Simple as that.
His chair probably doesn't even have an "Angry" voice
Maybe not, but he has been known to run over people's toes (among other insults) if they annoy him.
Tell that to Augustine or Galileo, some of the greatest minds were devout followers of the church. I'd be willing to bet that they rank higher on the intelligence scale than you do.
They may have been devoutly Christian, but they also lived during a time when not being a devout follower was enough to get you killed in any of a dozen nasty ways. Or, if the church was feeling generous, you'd merely be excomunicated. At which point you lost all rights as a human and citizen of the state.
Seems pretty obvious to me that regardless of what they truly believed, anyone smarter than gnat will happily swear publicly that they're devoutly anything.
~~Galen~~
And you thought the blink tag was bad. Just wait until they start flinging feces.
...And PNGs, and CSS, and standards compliance, and a download manager, and themes, and...
You may want to look up the phrase "musical genius." I don't think it means what you think it means.
The system is called Massive. During one of the early runs they noticed the guys in the back (on both sides) were wandering off. The problem was that they couldn't 'see' the action so they wandered around randomly looking for opponents. The effect was that it looked like they were running away. The problem was solved by giving the agents something similar to the ability to hear. Thus they could sense the action over greater distances and act accordingly.
I've seen this misrepresented so many times it's begun to bug me. I believe all the information I just dropped is available on the Extended Edition DVDs special features (probably FotR). If not, then I'm sure a Google search will turn it up.
Maybe, but why bother since you've just basically turned off the JPEG compression? Might as well save it as a lossless format and not worry about it.
...legitimate programmers continue to reinvent the wheel.
(e.g. Ceres, which is an obscure Roman name)
An obscure Roman name? You've got to be kidding me. In the ancient pantheon, Ceres/Demeter was the goddess of fertility and agriculture. In other words, she was the mother goddess. Every year she mourns for her lost daughter Persephone and forsakes her duty. During this period all living things on the earth wither and die; thus we have winter.
If such an important goddess has really become "obscure" then maybe I'll go into mourning, though I doubt anyone will notice.
~~Galen~~
Just FYI, I've been stuck developing for Windows for the past couple of years and the worst thing about it? No layout managers in Visual C++. The MFC libraries are very dumb when it comes to screen layout. Everything is hardcoded on a grid system and if you want to handle resizing you've got to do it yourself.
(Okay, so maybe that's not the worst thing about programming on Windows, but it's up there with about 800 other awful 'features' of the platform.)
Whoever designed the CORBA C++ API should be shot.
After about a year and a half, I've become our project's CORBA "expert". Hell, it takes that long just to get comfortable with the C++ mapping. So you're absolutely correct there.
However, I've also had a bit of experience with the Java mapping. Let me tell you, the Java mapping is just beautiful. If you can find an excuse I'd recommend working with it a bit if for no other reason than to experience what a good CORBA mapping can be like. I don't know what those who wrote the C++ mapping were thinking.
~~Galen~~
Let me add my interpretation of the phrase, "if you need distortion...". I'd say if you think you need distortion and other effects to make good music then you're not making good music.
I completely agree with Mr. Barnson that "distortion and effects can be used to make good music." They are a wonderful tool to enhance the expressivness of the instrument, but I also feel that when you strip the distortion and effects away from a piece of music it should still have merit. King Crimson is a perfect example of this with guitars that will melt your brains, but the music is so well crafted that it can be played on accoustic or classical guitars and still completely engage the listener.
~~Galen~~
The whole point of banning bic-type lighters in checked baggage is that under the low pressure conditions that exist in the cargo hold they can explode or leak. They've never been disallowed in carry-on because the cabin is pressurized. It's just common sense.
Sometimes it takes seeing things more than once, or from more than one teacher, before it makes sense.
Agreed. The first year I took algebra, I had a teacher who was really stubborn about requiring all work to be done in pencil. I, of course, was really stubborn about doing all work in pen (I still hate pencils.) She failed me, forcing me to take algebra in summer school. I cursed her at the time, but it was the best thing that could have happened to further my understanding of basic algebra. My summer school teacher (great teacher, btw) actually asked me why I was there since I seemed to know it all already, but it was that second viewing that allowed all the pieces to fall together.
~~Galen~~
Just a note to mention one of my fondest memories from junior high. One of our assistant principals sponsored a Dungeons & Dragons club after school. Just a handful of us RPG geeks would gather weekly to adventure and goof off for an hour or two. Great fun. (This was, of course, quite some time before the popularity of computer gaming really took off.)
:)
Others here have mentioned Warhammer, chess, go, etc. I'd love to see a local gaming club where the kids are encouraged to play any game.
Anyway, great thread. Now I've got the gaming itch and need to find some folks to roll the dice with.
~~Galen~~
"Imagine, CD sales UP in stores that sell them cheaply!"
This has long been my complaint. The record companies/stores are simply pricing these albums out of a market. How many of us are willing to experiment several times a month with $15 to $20? Not me. However, you cut the price of those albums to $5 and I'll be out there buying 10 albums a month. Likewise with concert tickets. I used to go to 8 concerts a summer when the tickets cost me $20, but now with each show costing 4 times that, forget it.
And on top of it all, of that $18 I spent on an album or the $75 for the concert, the artist receives a mere pittance. I have no problem supporting artists, but I'm not going to support those damned executives living fat off the art of the starving. You want me to happily pay $18 for a CD? Give $15 of it to the artist.
~~Galen~~