Well, Lois is a control freak who becomes incoherent with rage at the utter stupidity of her children. I can identify with the latter part on a daily basis.
Hal is a big kid at heart, very insecure, and is hopelessly infatuated with his wife. He also tends to parent by "looking the other way" until problems blow up in his face. I can identify with that.
Francis is basically a really good guy who is not above going to extreme measures to retaliate against people who treat him badly, and rebels strongly against abused authority. I can idintify with that, especially the latter... strongly.
Reese is someone who is happy to completely let life pass him by, remaining blissfully ignorant of everything important, regardless of the consequences, which he doesn't let bother him. I can identify with that.
Malcolm is the kid genius, who despite his prodigious IQ still has the same defective judgement of any teenager. He also fails to fit in precisely because he tries too hard to fit in. I can definitely relate to the former, although I never fit because I never fit in... and didn't try.
Dewey is completely lost in his own world and therefore is the happiest and most normal of the lot. I can identify with that too.
I think each character takes common traits (or personality foibles, what-have-you) and exaggerates them to comic proportion. That plus numerous examples of elaborate revenge against people who really have it coming to them. And to top it all off, like the Simpsons, despite being a seriously, dysfunctional family they really do love each other. And I can relate to that too.
Hey, if you don't like it, you don't like it, but the show is definitely deeper than your average dumb sitcom.
Perhaps it hits home better if you have kids. I find it to be probably the most genuine (if quite exaggerated) family sitcoms ever.
They hit on so many aspects of the family dynamic that it amazes me. And I also have to disagree about the characters: I think they are all funny, perhaps because I identify with each of them in some way.
Maybe the show only appeals to people with mental problems.
They did everything they could to screw this series. I guess Groening pissed them off. Too bad... without Futurama Fox cuts their average audience IQ by a third.
They are working their way to become the network for mouth-breathers. All they need to do is lose the Simpsons and Malcolm in the Middle.
Well, I guess you didn't mind the fact that the Hildebrandt brothers had defined the visuals of the LotR a generation ago in the Tolkien calendars. Or the Ralph Bakshi movie, which certainly capitalized on the huge popularity that Tolkien had in the 70's, and defined many of the visual elements of Tolkien (admittedly poorly in places). There were "Frodo Lives" bumper stickers and Harvard Lampoon riding the wave with their brilliant parody "Bored of the Rings". I had a LotR board game, which was actually very well implemented for a fairly simple game.
The fact remains that fads will come and go, but the story will remain. You will always be able to read the book. So what if someone else's exposure to Tolkien consists solely of having seen the movies and having a Burger King fake-crystal glass shaped like Aragorn's head. Anyone not willing to take the opportunity to read the books doesn't deserve to experience what you and I have cherised. That's their loss, not ours.
More erosion of liberties, more contradictions of the plainly worded Constitution, particularly the Bill of Rights.
We can get mad at the current administration for it, but really they are just carrying on a proud tradition that's been going on for many years... since the Civil War.
However, the International Bartenders are controlled by the Boy Sprouts, who in turn are controlled by the Fnord Motor Company who in turn is controlled by the Fred Birch Society.
Ultimately, to find the real source of the power you have to follow the tiny yellow lucre. Of course, the real problem with world domination is that if someone sneezes, everything is reduced to anarchy.
I disagree. I think it's a great recording. It was just butchered by the production. For a band that has been releasing records for 30 years, I found this release to be fresh and energetic.
Alex's decision to forgo solos is confusing, since he has a degree of finesse that is rare outside of jazz circles, but his always-good rhythm playing and ultra-dense chord structures are still there.
This has been a big controversy ever since the album was released, and I recall seeing an article very similar to this one in content and conclusion last fall or so.
After taking 6 years to record this album, including some really tough times, it's a shame to see it hamstrung by lousy production.
And as far as clipping goes, I don't need to see graphs to prove it's going on, I can HEAR it. Worse, if you turn the music up loud enough to hear all the details, your ears will get tired of the wall of sound. If you turn it down, you will miss what's going on in the music.
This License is a contract between the Microsoft Corporation (hereafter known as "Thy God") and you, the customer, (hereafter known and "worthless technoserf")...
Actually writing from scratch is _faster_, once you know what you're doing. Microsoft's code generators are completely useless and I've never met anyone with any real experience that uses them. At best, they could be used as a tutorial, but even still, I doubt you could learn much and code it produces is unreadably ugly. I mean REALLY UGLY. No consistent indentation. Tons of garbage comments that it needs because writing something that can grok MFC is obviously too much trouble for them.
Of course, MFC becomes a lead weight the moment you try to do anything outside of Microsoft's extremely narrow idea of writing Windows code, unless you spent a great deal of time filling out all the stuff Microsoft has been too lazy to do in a product that's only been around for almost 10 years.
Fortunately I have spent a great deal of time doing so, so I can function effectively and prolifically with MFC _and_ the code I've added on to it over the years.
Here's what I did. I ran the code generator once for an SDI app and once for a DLL app. Then I cleaned up the code, removed the goat-spew comments, formatted the code (how ironic that machine-generated code is not formatted) and removed all the dead-weight functionality. I can now take these stripped down plain-vanilla apps and go to town, with my own classes, which add a lot of java-inspired ideas to MFC and hide some of the nonsense that MS is too lazy or stupid to encapsulate. At the end of the day, it's a good environment to work in and I do like using Visual Studio (version 6, 7 has some nice features but it is bloated and builds about 3 times slower with the same code on the same machine). Of course, improvements I have made have essentially been by replacing aspects of MFC... collection classes, string class, database support, ActiveX support, TCP/IP support, etc. Some day, I hope to replace GUI support and break away from MFC altogther, at which point I will be able to write apps with about a third of the code needed to use MFC.
Anyhow, I didn't mean to ramble so long, but my point is that anyone who has any real experience isn't going to be using code generators anyway, and if he or she was, it would be easy enough to avoid it for project whose IP might be imperiled.
Of course, there's nothing to stop Microsoft from sticking their new MNU MPL license (MNU == "Microsoft's, Not Yours", MPL == "Monopolist's Private License") in a service pack and 0wNzOring half the software industry overnight.
Sadly, this system is totally unworkable in our society: it requires more than a tiny minority to give a damn.
Unfortunately, internecine political bickering and sound-byte oneupmanship is what passes for most political discourse in the U.S. these days, so you can't blame people for being disinterested. It's hard work to cut through the crap and actually _learn_ about the issues, because the politicians themselves often don't want you understand the details. In fact, it seems few candidates have anything to say about themselves, everything is directed towards bashing their opponents.
Look at the Democratic Party. That seems to be their whole platform for the last few years.
Before that it was a joint effort by MS and IBM, until they came to a disagreement and split. IBM's OS/2 was successful, at least inasmuch as it sold for many years and had many features that were superior to Windows.
No, you're absolutely right. Most of IE is loaded with the rest of the OS. It's as big and bloated as anything, but since it's in bed with the OS, it looks and acts snappy. The end result is fine, unless you want to use another browser... you still have all that bloat loaded.
Good thing memory is as cheap as water. Too bad the company I work for will only spring for 256MB and doesn't allow us to modify the machines ourselves.:-(
So the judgement is saying McDonald's is negligent when 700 people are burned out of 10 BILLION cups of coffee?!
I dare you find another product that safe.
Your facts are not in dispute, but here are some others:
1. 700 injuries out of a billion makes McD's coffee safer than crossing the street, getting out of bed or going to the bathroom. How safe does it have to be to make the lawyers happy?
2. McDonald's sold their coffee that hot because that's how the customers want it. Otherwise, why waste the electricity?
3. It's unfortunate that this woman got hurt, but to blame McDonald's for selling her hot coffee is ludicrous. Anything is potentially dangerous and when you sell 10 billion of something, you can guarantee someone somewhere will manage to have something awful happen to them.
Regardless of the verdict, it was a stupid case. Life is dangerous, people get hurt. Why does there always have to be a scapegoat with deep pockets every time someone experiences so much as mild discomfort?
Crazy mathematicians. But less soul-destroying than I/T, that's for sure.
For one thing, grotesquely incompetent mathematicians rarely get hired. Competent IT people are at a disadvantage... while they waste time learning things and acquiring skills, their ignorant peers are out making money working at places like the IT department where I work, installing software incorrectly, acting arrogant about their draconian rules and generally tempting me with thoughts of going postal.
Math doesn't destroy your soul, it builds it. In fact, after reading a book on Number Theory I've come to the conclusion it's one of the best proofs of God there is. Only God could make something as indescribably beautiful as numbers.
There's matching behavior, and then reimplementing without first understanding.
And there's the third alternative... compatibility. While it probably doesn't make sense in a GUI, matching bugs in someone else's code can be critical for maintaining compatability.
Do you remember the Borland Turbo Assembler having a switch to mimic MASM's bugs? Do you understand why that might be necessary?
That's an interesting view of American politics from overseas... and pretty accurate I might say.
I think the problem with America's system of Law, which I do have great respect for, is that we have had great prosperity in the U.S.A for 60 years. Without any huge national crises, the government has been free to address less critical problems, which is good, but unfortunately, government solutions tend to consist almost entirely or increasingl more and complex regulation of more and more aspects of our lives. Does that mean I want another Depression or World War to shake things up? Certainly not, but given that the majority of Americans have a pretty decent life, the bureaucracy must work harder to maintain its existance, because an efficient bureaucracy, by its very nature will become smaller, or vanish entirely.
Of course, the flip side of the coin is that in the climate of increasing government intrusion in our lives (banning Jarts, regulating toilets, making a tax code so complex the government itself can't figure it out), the response to a true large-scale crisis (9/11 and global terrorism) is more and more pervasive and intrusive legislation. The U.S. government is 10 times more "oppresive" than the English government we fought a war to throw out, and like you said Delifisek, we asked for it, voted for it, and continue to tolerate it of our own free will.
I wouldn't choose to live in any other country than the U.S., but I am still concerned over the radical change that has taken place in the latter half of the 20th century (and in fact stretches back to the Civil War). However, we are still a free country and a democracy (like our friend Turkey!) so it is possible (and out duty) to do everything we can to correct the problems.
If "going postal" has made it into the dictionary, like "D'Oh!" has, and presumably "blog" will, if it already hasn't. The the USPS's trademark is already too diluted for them to complain.
Of course, the reason for the name choice in the first place is ironic. I guess the USPS thought it was time to "go postal" on RwS.
The USPS does a good job overall, but as the article said, they are financed as much as necessary no matter how efficient they are.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, Lois is a control freak who becomes incoherent with rage at the utter stupidity of her children. I can identify with the latter part on a daily basis.
Hal is a big kid at heart, very insecure, and is hopelessly infatuated with his wife. He also tends to parent by "looking the other way" until problems blow up in his face. I can identify with that.
Francis is basically a really good guy who is not above going to extreme measures to retaliate against people who treat him badly, and rebels strongly against abused authority. I can idintify with that, especially the latter... strongly.
Reese is someone who is happy to completely let life pass him by, remaining blissfully ignorant of everything important, regardless of the consequences, which he doesn't let bother him. I can identify with that.
Malcolm is the kid genius, who despite his prodigious IQ still has the same defective judgement of any teenager. He also fails to fit in precisely because he tries too hard to fit in. I can definitely relate to the former, although I never fit because I never fit in... and didn't try.
Dewey is completely lost in his own world and therefore is the happiest and most normal of the lot. I can identify with that too.
I think each character takes common traits (or personality foibles, what-have-you) and exaggerates them to comic proportion. That plus numerous examples of elaborate revenge against people who really have it coming to them. And to top it all off, like the Simpsons, despite being a seriously, dysfunctional family they really do love each other. And I can relate to that too.
Hey, if you don't like it, you don't like it, but the show is definitely deeper than your average dumb sitcom.
Perhaps it hits home better if you have kids. I find it to be probably the most genuine (if quite exaggerated) family sitcoms ever.
They hit on so many aspects of the family dynamic that it amazes me. And I also have to disagree about the characters: I think they are all funny, perhaps because I identify with each of them in some way.
Maybe the show only appeals to people with mental problems.
Simple answer: FOX sucks!
They did everything they could to screw this series. I guess Groening pissed them off. Too bad... without Futurama Fox cuts their average audience IQ by a third.
They are working their way to become the network for mouth-breathers. All they need to do is lose the Simpsons and Malcolm in the Middle.
Well, I guess you didn't mind the fact that the Hildebrandt brothers had defined the visuals of the LotR a generation ago in the Tolkien calendars. Or the Ralph Bakshi movie, which certainly capitalized on the huge popularity that Tolkien had in the 70's, and defined many of the visual elements of Tolkien (admittedly poorly in places). There were "Frodo Lives" bumper stickers and Harvard Lampoon riding the wave with their brilliant parody "Bored of the Rings". I had a LotR board game, which was actually very well implemented for a fairly simple game.
The fact remains that fads will come and go, but the story will remain. You will always be able to read the book. So what if someone else's exposure to Tolkien consists solely of having seen the movies and having a Burger King fake-crystal glass shaped like Aragorn's head. Anyone not willing to take the opportunity to read the books doesn't deserve to experience what you and I have cherised. That's their loss, not ours.
No, 'cause then it would be a DOS slash rather than a Linux slash.
Rick (going back to his good old Republican Windows 2000)
The copyright will expire eventually.
Just wait 70 years after everyone dies and you're home free.
More erosion of liberties, more contradictions of the plainly worded Constitution, particularly the Bill of Rights.
We can get mad at the current administration for it, but really they are just carrying on a proud tradition that's been going on for many years... since the Civil War.
To be honest, I've never written an ActiveX control. But I would bet that I could improve on the existing process.
Of course talk is cheap.
No, you're not crazy.
However, the International Bartenders are controlled by the Boy Sprouts, who in turn are controlled by the Fnord Motor Company who in turn is controlled by the Fred Birch Society.
Ultimately, to find the real source of the power you have to follow the tiny yellow lucre. Of course, the real problem with world domination is that if someone sneezes, everything is reduced to anarchy.
6 of one, half dozen of the other...
:-)
I didn't mean to imply they were working on it for 6 years.
Nevertheless, I hope they continue... but get someone different to produce the next record.
I disagree. I think it's a great recording. It was just butchered by the production. For a band that has been releasing records for 30 years, I found this release to be fresh and energetic.
Alex's decision to forgo solos is confusing, since he has a degree of finesse that is rare outside of jazz circles, but his always-good rhythm playing and ultra-dense chord structures are still there.
This has been a big controversy ever since the album was released, and I recall seeing an article very similar to this one in content and conclusion last fall or so.
After taking 6 years to record this album, including some really tough times, it's a shame to see it hamstrung by lousy production.
And as far as clipping goes, I don't need to see graphs to prove it's going on, I can HEAR it. Worse, if you turn the music up loud enough to hear all the details, your ears will get tired of the wall of sound. If you turn it down, you will miss what's going on in the music.
Actually writing from scratch is _faster_, once you know what you're doing. Microsoft's code generators are completely useless and I've never met anyone with any real experience that uses them. At best, they could be used as a tutorial, but even still, I doubt you could learn much and code it produces is unreadably ugly. I mean REALLY UGLY. No consistent indentation. Tons of garbage comments that it needs because writing something that can grok MFC is obviously too much trouble for them.
Of course, MFC becomes a lead weight the moment you try to do anything outside of Microsoft's extremely narrow idea of writing Windows code, unless you spent a great deal of time filling out all the stuff Microsoft has been too lazy to do in a product that's only been around for almost 10 years.
Fortunately I have spent a great deal of time doing so, so I can function effectively and prolifically with MFC _and_ the code I've added on to it over the years.
Here's what I did. I ran the code generator once for an SDI app and once for a DLL app. Then I cleaned up the code, removed the goat-spew comments, formatted the code (how ironic that machine-generated code is not formatted) and removed all the dead-weight functionality. I can now take these stripped down plain-vanilla apps and go to town, with my own classes, which add a lot of java-inspired ideas to MFC and hide some of the nonsense that MS is too lazy or stupid to encapsulate. At the end of the day, it's a good environment to work in and I do like using Visual Studio (version 6, 7 has some nice features but it is bloated and builds about 3 times slower with the same code on the same machine). Of course, improvements I have made have essentially been by replacing aspects of MFC... collection classes, string class, database support, ActiveX support, TCP/IP support, etc. Some day, I hope to replace GUI support and break away from MFC altogther, at which point I will be able to write apps with about a third of the code needed to use MFC.
Anyhow, I didn't mean to ramble so long, but my point is that anyone who has any real experience isn't going to be using code generators anyway, and if he or she was, it would be easy enough to avoid it for project whose IP might be imperiled.
Of course, there's nothing to stop Microsoft from sticking their new MNU MPL license (MNU == "Microsoft's, Not Yours", MPL == "Monopolist's Private License") in a service pack and 0wNzOring half the software industry overnight.
Sadly, this system is totally unworkable in our society: it requires more than a tiny minority to give a damn.
Unfortunately, internecine political bickering and sound-byte oneupmanship is what passes for most political discourse in the U.S. these days, so you can't blame people for being disinterested. It's hard work to cut through the crap and actually _learn_ about the issues, because the politicians themselves often don't want you understand the details. In fact, it seems few candidates have anything to say about themselves, everything is directed towards bashing their opponents.
Look at the Democratic Party. That seems to be their whole platform for the last few years.
Before that it was a joint effort by MS and IBM, until they came to a disagreement and split. IBM's OS/2 was successful, at least inasmuch as it sold for many years and had many features that were superior to Windows.
Jusr goes to show what all those phone phreaks from the 1980's did when they grew up. I wonder if Cap'n Crunch works for MCI now.
At least I'm willing to admit when I make a mistake. If bugs aren't anyone's fault then who shoulf take credit when it works right?
Wipe the spittle from your mouth, please.
Don't forget the gigantic bronze strap-on chins.
p.s. Relevant sig...
No, you're absolutely right. Most of IE is loaded with the rest of the OS. It's as big and bloated as anything, but since it's in bed with the OS, it looks and acts snappy. The end result is fine, unless you want to use another browser... you still have all that bloat loaded.
:-(
Good thing memory is as cheap as water. Too bad the company I work for will only spring for 256MB and doesn't allow us to modify the machines ourselves.
So the judgement is saying McDonald's is negligent when 700 people are burned out of 10 BILLION cups of coffee?!
I dare you find another product that safe.
Your facts are not in dispute, but here are some others:
1. 700 injuries out of a billion makes McD's coffee safer than crossing the street, getting out of bed or going to the bathroom. How safe does it have to be to make the lawyers happy?
2. McDonald's sold their coffee that hot because that's how the customers want it. Otherwise, why waste the electricity?
3. It's unfortunate that this woman got hurt, but to blame McDonald's for selling her hot coffee is ludicrous. Anything is potentially dangerous and when you sell 10 billion of something, you can guarantee someone somewhere will manage to have something awful happen to them.
Regardless of the verdict, it was a stupid case. Life is dangerous, people get hurt. Why does there always have to be a scapegoat with deep pockets every time someone experiences so much as mild discomfort?
</rant>
Crazy mathematicians. But less soul-destroying than I/T, that's for sure.
For one thing, grotesquely incompetent mathematicians rarely get hired. Competent IT people are at a disadvantage... while they waste time learning things and acquiring skills, their ignorant peers are out making money working at places like the IT department where I work, installing software incorrectly, acting arrogant about their draconian rules and generally tempting me with thoughts of going postal.
Math doesn't destroy your soul, it builds it. In fact, after reading a book on Number Theory I've come to the conclusion it's one of the best proofs of God there is. Only God could make something as indescribably beautiful as numbers.
There's matching behavior, and then reimplementing without first understanding.
And there's the third alternative... compatibility. While it probably doesn't make sense in a GUI, matching bugs in someone else's code can be critical for maintaining compatability.
Do you remember the Borland Turbo Assembler having a switch to mimic MASM's bugs? Do you understand why that might be necessary?
That's an interesting view of American politics from overseas... and pretty accurate I might say.
I think the problem with America's system of Law, which I do have great respect for, is that we have had great prosperity in the U.S.A for 60 years. Without any huge national crises, the government has been free to address less critical problems, which is good, but unfortunately, government solutions tend to consist almost entirely or increasingl more and complex regulation of more and more aspects of our lives. Does that mean I want another Depression or World War to shake things up? Certainly not, but given that the majority of Americans have a pretty decent life, the bureaucracy must work harder to maintain its existance, because an efficient bureaucracy, by its very nature will become smaller, or vanish entirely.
Of course, the flip side of the coin is that in the climate of increasing government intrusion in our lives (banning Jarts, regulating toilets, making a tax code so complex the government itself can't figure it out), the response to a true large-scale crisis (9/11 and global terrorism) is more and more pervasive and intrusive legislation. The U.S. government is 10 times more "oppresive" than the English government we fought a war to throw out, and like you said
Delifisek, we asked for it, voted for it, and continue to tolerate it of our own free will.
I wouldn't choose to live in any other country than the U.S., but I am still concerned over the radical change that has taken place in the latter half of the 20th century (and in fact stretches back to the Civil War). However, we are still a free country and a democracy (like our friend Turkey!) so it is possible (and out duty) to do everything we can to correct the problems.
If "going postal" has made it into the dictionary, like "D'Oh!" has, and presumably "blog" will, if it already hasn't. The the USPS's trademark is already too diluted for them to complain.
Of course, the reason for the name choice in the first place is ironic. I guess the USPS thought it was time to "go postal" on RwS.
The USPS does a good job overall, but as the article said, they are financed as much as necessary no matter how efficient they are.