OK, so you're sexy, mostly blonde, and geeky enough to post here. But brainy? Proof please.
I see your domain name is owned by Vibe Media of Beverly Hills, with an Admin Contact of "Kari, Alix" AKA Entertainment Marketing of L.A. So you'll pardon my initial skepticism that this is your homepage and your post here is just to get on everyone's bookmarks for when the logic puzzles and chemistry experiments go up on the site.
Hello? If you use C++ and don't know about Boost, you've been living in a cave. Come on out and see, it's really cool. Also check out Modern C++ Design by Alexandrescu.
Let's face it: what was the last musician/group you were driven to purchase their CD?
Dimmu Borgir - Puritanical Euphoric Misanthropia. I get pretty good prices from AllDirect - it was around 10 bucks.
Oh, I ordered it about 24 hours after downloading the whole album on eDonkey, because a friend who lives out of state mentioned that I should check it out. And I also ordered their entire back catalog, another five CDs. Correlation isn't causality, but let's not get carried away here.
If you actually read the press release you'll see that the warranty on the 5400 rpm 320 and the 7200 rpm 250 are going to be three years, not the one that was previously announced. Quote: "These drives will also carry a three-year warranty."
Well, let me restate my thesis. The reader comes away from non-fiction with something besides an altered emotional state. That's not the case with fiction. Even historical fiction, which you reference, isn't reliable in any sense. For example, there are a wealth of interesting details in _Shogun_, but some of them are wrong. And, I would argue that if a writer of a historical novel had to sacrifice one of historical accuracy and literary quality, the former should be the first to go
So while I agree that fiction isn't simply about the kind of boiler-plate romance novels you cite, and that all of the things you mention are important aspects of good fiction writing, the reason that they are is because they contribute to the reader's experience, and nothing else. Yes, Douglas Adams showed exceptional skill at making English do things one didn't expect, but that was part of the reason you bought and enjoyed his work, right? Otherwise he'd just publish the plot outline.
Just because crappy romance novels are badly written and appeal to the lowest common denominator of human emotions doesn't mean that better fiction is after a different target. For example, there's a tremendous amount of philosophy in Shakespeare, but we are exposed to it through a vehicle designed to cause us to identify with certain characters and rejoice and suffer with them. I guess that goes back to Aristotle's _poetics_, which for its faults isn't all bad either.
I've tried my hand at a novel before, as my half-shelf of writing books will attest. It seems to me that the whole reason for a novel, or fiction generally, is to communicate an emotional state to the reader. Even SF boils down to this - otherwise, why have characters, why not just write speculative monographs about technology? It's about exploring the human condition and sharing the results.
So what I'd like to understand is how you think this medium and method will enhance that purpose. Why should access to unfinished work, or continuous feedback from reader of that work, help an author convey what must initally be an internal state or vision?
It's an interesting topic more generally, since by and large (I except computer games) computers haven't really added any new media at all. And while Doom may have scared the shit out me at times, it's clear that the richness of the experience was far behind Shakespeare, or even Lovecraft.
Thanks for starting what could potentially be an interesting discussion.
Aho, et. al. "Compilers"
Alexandrescu, "Modern C++ Design"
Bentley, "Programming Pearls", 2nd ed.
Brown, et. al. "Antipatterns"
Cooper, "About Face: The Essentials of User Interface Design"
Fowler, "Refactoring"
Gamma, et. al. "Design Patterns"
Hanson, "C Interfaces and Implementations"
Johns & Lins, "Garbage Collection"
Josuttis, "The C++ Standard Library"
Kernighan & Pike, "The Practice of Programming"
Kernighan & Ritchie, "The C Programming Language" 2nd ed.
Knuth, "The Art of Computer Programming" vol 1-3
Meyers, "Effective C++"
Meyers, "More Effective C++"
Meyers, "Effective STL"
McConnell, "Code Complete"
McConnell, "Rapid Development"
Plauger, "The Standard C Library"
Stroustrup, "The C++ Programming Language"
Stroustrup, "The Design and Evolution of C++"
For specific topics: Foley, et. al. "Computer Graphics"
Kernighan & Pike, "The Unix Programming Environment"
Schneier, "Applied Cryptography"
Stevens, "Unix Network Programming"
Stevens, "Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment"
Also the Graphics Gems and Game Programming Gems series are superb. Maybe my list makes me old-school, but I like to understand what is happening from the use case all the way down to the register allocation algorithm. Of course, I can't always do that.
I don't mention any Java books because they get outdated so fast. The language hasn't changed much since 96, but the class library api is in constant flux.
The point he was replying was essentially that money can't buy happiness -- not that a raise increases his survivability.
Having kids was the best thing I ever did for my own happiness, and having the money to go get that stuffed animal, that Snow White DVD etc. really is better than being a writer in a garrett. It may not make that much difference to me, but to kids for whom the whole world is more less magical, having that Bard puppet (parents will know what I mean) really does make them happy. Its like you conjured a dream from their heart into reality.
Your "prestigious private university" apparently didn't facilitate you acquisition of any critical reading skills. You will not find in Nietzsche any doctrine of racial superiority. The fact that the Nazis used his work to try to justify their ideas does not mean that his work contained the seeds of their ideas, but rather that his aphorisms, taken out of context, could be used by them as "sound bites". For example, "the will to power" is a central concept of Nietzsche's thought. But it is complex. (Nietzsche invented the concept of sublimation - check your Freud, he gives credit.) But the PHRASE "the will to power" is simple, and can make a powerless and frustrated group very excited. That's about the level of Nietzsche you can find in Nazism. If you will trouble yourself to read Nietzsche, you will find a brilliant psychological philosopher with a firm grasp of history, a true free-thinker, and a man who found German nationalism quite repulsive, and said so.
> Shakespeare didn't write most of his plays, he primarily just took other peoples plays and wrote them down.
>Several hundred years later many people still think of him as the worlds greatest playwrite.
That is utter bullshit. Of course he explored classical themes, but anyone who has actually read any Shakespeare will recognize, if from the language alone, that they have a common author. This is to say nothing of his use of imagery, the development of a coherent philosophy of life, or other thematic issues.
How about a link or reference to back up your absurd allegation?
> "They say that 'guns don't kill people, people kill people'...well I think the gun helps...If you just stood there and yelled BANG, I don't think you'd kill too many people." >--Eddie Izzard
If you want to make decisions about political questions that touch on the sovereignty of the individual and the balance between that and the good of the community based on a joke by a grade-B homosexual transvestite commedian, be my guest. I prefer to rely on actual statisitical studies of the effects of various choices together with an analysis of the ethics involved in those choices.
>every society has some loose screws running around. The trouble is in the USA, there rather more likely to be able to get some guns.
It's "they're." The question is what happens in places where its illegal to have guns and a "loose screw" gets one and starts to go to it, vs. places where people can legally carry. And the answer is, where people can legally carry they stop the "loose screw" before he does much damage. Not to mention the fact that fewer people try to commit violent crimes in places where the victim pool can arm themselves legally.
I realize that my comment isn't funny, but perhaps you would be better served by using it as a starting point then Eddie Izzard or Bart Simpson.
Subject: DMCA action => no more customer From: [my email address] Date: 20 Feb 2002 22:16:13 -0500 To: Rod Rigole
Dear Mr. Rigole:
Blizzard has had good success in parting me from my money. I have half a shelf of the fine games your company has produced. However, that era is over. Your ridiculous and short-sighted attack on the bnetd project, claiming that the creation of a program that interfaces with your somehow infringes on your copyright, may successfully stop that interesting effort. Regardless of its success, it has cost you my business forever, and you may rest assured that I will bring to the attention of anyone soliciting my views of what to purchase your company's bad behavior.
In an industry where some companies, like iD and Sierra, find great success in opening their flagship products for interoperability with customer-designed modifications, and even release old source code as a learning resource for the larger community, your company has decided that preventing enthusiasts from working with your products somehow protects you. What it will protect you from is getting any more of my money.
I think the main weakness of SourceForge is that it is hosted by a single entity. The tremendously valuable information hosted by freshmeat is a similar example. It does the FS/OS community no good to have the various project sources cached all over the place if we have no way to access information about the projects, including where they are, what they do, and so forth.
How can we surmount this problem? Maybe by making a set of standards (beyond the informal ones that exist now) for how to document what your software is and where to get it. This could be a variation on the old.lsm (linux software map) files. This could be submitted to multiple places on the web. Freshmeat might parse it into their database, while metalab might just through it in the.osm directory. But at least there would be a way to track things down. Google would help a lot.
I am concerned that a lot of good code and good projects are left to die while other people re-invent that particular wheel. Since FS/OS is based on volunteer work, we can't really afford to throw it away or waste it. I hope other people who also have ideas about this will reply to this, and perhaps we can get together a mailing list or something to brainstorm about possible solutions to this problem.
It would be useful to (re)build this on SDL so that they don't have to re-invent the wheel for audio, 2D, etc. (all the non D3D parts). Already SDL allows (hell, requires) you to call OGL directly when you need 3d accel. So by implementing their calls as an SDL layer they would lose nothing and gain a very nice cross-platform layer.
Your boss sounds like a "buzzword-compliant" type. Ask him why each feature is necessary so that you can decide what you really need and what that actually exists is closest. Note that even if you find some research language like Haskell (no disrespect) that meets all these features it will not do well on real-world criteria like "good supply of programmers who can use it".
If you are presented with a feature list and explanations for why each feature is necessary are not forthcoming, you may be working for a dangerous idiot. Consider transferring or finding other employment.
>Whatever happened to the high quality of reporting/editing of Slashdot?
ROTFLMAO
Re:Blech. Most of them are pretty bad.
on
Java IDEs?
·
· Score: 1
Mapics defines a dysfunctional organization. And, they were developing in Java in 1998 when I worked there. And, in 1999 they were using rpg to java converter programs. And, no one was using smalltalk. I wonder about your comment.
Re:Blech. Most of them are pretty bad.
on
Java IDEs?
·
· Score: 1
So your theory is that no tool is useful unless it is the best choice for everything? What do you progam in, then?
Remarks like this make you look like a shithead. How about this for a reason: because the statistics show that Java code can be developed faster and with fewer errors in shorter time than many other systems languages. And, its syntax is familiar to most programmers already.
So it's not a good choice for a lightning fast compiler or perhaps a text editor. But often the moderate slowness of Java code can be overcome by fast hardware for less money than it would cost to implement in another language. And there are more programmers who know Java than who know all the quirks of this that and the other OS's libc. And I defy you to come up with something as powerful as a session bean in as little code, in a module that can be deployed on anything from an ipaq to a s390, in C++.
So its a good tool for some jobs, and not for others. You're so busy being glib that you forgot to think.
Ge, that's too bad. Your parents wouldn't pay for a fifth year of college because you changed your mind about what you like?
All you can say is "Grrr" about some shit like that? Those fucking asshole parents of yours! I think you should probably just put a bullet in them. Fuck them! Assholes!
Unless... you did have a job at the time, right? I mean, you were working and saving before college and during college, and there were loans available to you, and if you had been performing worth a shit, maybe even some scholarship money. So it was all up to you, and not your parents at all. You could easily have decided to stay another year if you had been willing to accept the financial consequences like an adult, like a man in his early twenties. Instead you acted like a little boy and you still are, complaining about your "'rents" and what they will or won't buy you.
Wake up jerk. There are people getting Bachelor's and post-graduate degrees with no financial help from anyone, some of them are even orphans. I know a girl whose parents were killed when she was in junior high, and she managed to put herself through school with loans, scholarships, and hard fucking work. And, by the way, she misses her parents and would probably throw her degree away and start over again for one more week with them. You immature piece of shit.
Slashdot Mirror
OK, so you're sexy, mostly blonde, and geeky enough to post here. But brainy? Proof please.
I see your domain name is owned by Vibe Media of Beverly Hills, with an Admin Contact of "Kari, Alix" AKA Entertainment Marketing of L.A. So you'll pardon my initial skepticism that this is your homepage and your post here is just to get on everyone's bookmarks for when the logic puzzles and chemistry experiments go up on the site.
Hello? If you use C++ and don't know about Boost, you've been living in a cave. Come on out and see, it's really cool. Also check out Modern C++ Design by Alexandrescu.
el gamal is based on discrete logs on a finite field
Dimmu Borgir
Let's face it: what was the last musician/group you were driven to purchase their CD?
Dimmu Borgir - Puritanical Euphoric Misanthropia. I get pretty good prices from AllDirect - it was around 10 bucks.
Oh, I ordered it about 24 hours after downloading the whole album on eDonkey, because a friend who lives out of state mentioned that I should check it out. And I also ordered their entire back catalog, another five CDs. Correlation isn't causality, but let's not get carried away here.
Enjoy.
If you actually read the press release you'll see that the warranty on the 5400 rpm 320 and the 7200 rpm 250 are going to be three years, not the one that was previously announced. Quote: "These drives will also carry a three-year warranty."
Thanks for your reply.
Well, let me restate my thesis. The reader comes away from non-fiction with something besides an altered emotional state. That's not the case with fiction. Even historical fiction, which you reference, isn't reliable in any sense. For example, there are a wealth of interesting details in _Shogun_, but some of them are wrong. And, I would argue that if a writer of a historical novel had to sacrifice one of historical accuracy and literary quality, the former should be the first to go
So while I agree that fiction isn't simply about the kind of boiler-plate romance novels you cite, and that all of the things you mention are important aspects of good fiction writing, the reason that they are is because they contribute to the reader's experience, and nothing else. Yes, Douglas Adams showed exceptional skill at making English do things one didn't expect, but that was part of the reason you bought and enjoyed his work, right? Otherwise he'd just publish the plot outline.
Just because crappy romance novels are badly written and appeal to the lowest common denominator of human emotions doesn't mean that better fiction is after a different target. For example, there's a tremendous amount of philosophy in Shakespeare, but we are exposed to it through a vehicle designed to cause us to identify with certain characters and rejoice and suffer with them. I guess that goes back to Aristotle's _poetics_, which for its faults isn't all bad either.
I've tried my hand at a novel before, as my half-shelf of writing books will attest. It seems to me that the whole reason for a novel, or fiction generally, is to communicate an emotional state to the reader. Even SF boils down to this - otherwise, why have characters, why not just write speculative monographs about technology? It's about exploring the human condition and sharing the results.
So what I'd like to understand is how you think this medium and method will enhance that purpose. Why should access to unfinished work, or continuous feedback from reader of that work, help an author convey what must initally be an internal state or vision?
It's an interesting topic more generally, since by and large (I except computer games) computers haven't really added any new media at all. And while Doom may have scared the shit out me at times, it's clear that the richness of the experience was far behind Shakespeare, or even Lovecraft.
Thanks for starting what could potentially be an interesting discussion.
Aho, et. al. "Compilers"
Alexandrescu, "Modern C++ Design"
Bentley, "Programming Pearls", 2nd ed.
Brown, et. al. "Antipatterns"
Cooper, "About Face: The Essentials of User Interface Design"
Fowler, "Refactoring"
Gamma, et. al. "Design Patterns"
Hanson, "C Interfaces and Implementations"
Johns & Lins, "Garbage Collection"
Josuttis, "The C++ Standard Library"
Kernighan & Pike, "The Practice of Programming"
Kernighan & Ritchie, "The C Programming Language" 2nd ed.
Knuth, "The Art of Computer Programming" vol 1-3
Meyers, "Effective C++"
Meyers, "More Effective C++"
Meyers, "Effective STL"
McConnell, "Code Complete"
McConnell, "Rapid Development"
Plauger, "The Standard C Library"
Stroustrup, "The C++ Programming Language"
Stroustrup, "The Design and Evolution of C++"
For specific topics:
Foley, et. al. "Computer Graphics"
Kernighan & Pike, "The Unix Programming Environment"
Schneier, "Applied Cryptography"
Stevens, "Unix Network Programming"
Stevens, "Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment"
Also the Graphics Gems and Game Programming Gems series are superb. Maybe my list makes me old-school, but I like to understand what is happening from the use case all the way down to the register allocation algorithm. Of course, I can't always do that.
I don't mention any Java books because they get outdated so fast. The language hasn't changed much since 96, but the class library api is in constant flux.
The point he was replying was essentially that money can't buy happiness -- not that a raise increases his survivability.
Having kids was the best thing I ever did for my own happiness, and having the money to go get that stuffed animal, that Snow White DVD etc. really is better than being a writer in a garrett. It may not make that much difference to me, but to kids for whom the whole world is more less magical, having that Bard puppet (parents will know what I mean) really does make them happy. Its like you conjured a dream from their heart into reality.
Your "prestigious private university" apparently didn't facilitate you acquisition of any critical reading skills. You will not find in Nietzsche any doctrine of racial superiority. The fact that the Nazis used his work to try to justify their ideas does not mean that his work contained the seeds of their ideas, but rather that his aphorisms, taken out of context, could be used by them as "sound bites". For example, "the will to power" is a central concept of Nietzsche's thought. But it is complex. (Nietzsche invented the concept of sublimation - check your Freud, he gives credit.) But the PHRASE "the will to power" is simple, and can make a powerless and frustrated group very excited. That's about the level of Nietzsche you can find in Nazism. If you will trouble yourself to read Nietzsche, you will find a brilliant psychological philosopher with a firm grasp of history, a true free-thinker, and a man who found German nationalism quite repulsive, and said so.
> Shakespeare didn't write most of his plays, he primarily just took other peoples plays and wrote them down.
>Several hundred years later many people still think of him as the worlds greatest playwrite.
That is utter bullshit. Of course he explored classical themes, but anyone who has actually read any Shakespeare will recognize, if from the language alone, that they have a common author. This is to say nothing of his use of imagery, the development of a coherent philosophy of life, or other thematic issues.
How about a link or reference to back up your absurd allegation?
Hi Nate
> "They say that 'guns don't kill people, people kill people'...well I think the gun helps...If you just stood there and yelled BANG, I don't think you'd kill too many people."
>--Eddie Izzard
If you want to make decisions about political questions that touch on the sovereignty of the individual and the balance between that and the good of the community based on a joke by a grade-B homosexual transvestite commedian, be my guest. I prefer to rely on actual statisitical studies of the effects of various choices together with an analysis of the ethics involved in those choices.
>every society has some loose screws running around. The trouble is in the USA, there rather more likely to be able to get some guns.
It's "they're." The question is what happens in places where its illegal to have guns and a "loose screw" gets one and starts to go to it, vs. places where people can legally carry. And the answer is, where people can legally carry they stop the "loose screw" before he does much damage. Not to mention the fact that fewer people try to commit violent crimes in places where the victim pool can arm themselves legally.
I realize that my comment isn't funny, but perhaps you would be better served by using it as a starting point then Eddie Izzard or Bart Simpson.
That's the plot of Moorcock's _Behold the Man_ or _Dying for Tomorrow_ (difference in UK and US editions)
An xlib port to windows is already underway, and Donald Becker is doing it. See w11
Subject: DMCA action => no more customer
From: [my email address]
Date: 20 Feb 2002 22:16:13 -0500
To: Rod Rigole
Dear Mr. Rigole:
Blizzard has had good success in parting me from my money. I have half a
shelf of the fine games your company has produced. However, that era is
over. Your ridiculous and short-sighted attack on the bnetd project,
claiming that the creation of a program that interfaces with your
somehow infringes on your copyright, may successfully stop that
interesting effort. Regardless of its success, it has cost you my
business forever, and you may rest assured that I will bring to the
attention of anyone soliciting my views of what to purchase your
company's bad behavior.
In an industry where some companies, like iD and Sierra, find great
success in opening their flagship products for interoperability with
customer-designed modifications, and even release old source code as a
learning resource for the larger community, your company has decided
that preventing enthusiasts from working with your products somehow
protects you. What it will protect you from is getting any more of my
money.
Sincerely,
[signature]
So I'm redundant, this time I think I can be forgiven...
:)
Congratulations to you both. Marriage is a lot of fun, and a lot of work, and it can be really terrific. Don't forget to have fun.
Good luck. Oh, and after the ceremony, you should invite us all to your reception, millionaire-man
I think the main weakness of SourceForge is that it is hosted by a single entity. The tremendously valuable information hosted by freshmeat is a similar example. It does the FS/OS community no good to have the various project sources cached all over the place if we have no way to access information about the projects, including where they are, what they do, and so forth.
.lsm (linux software map) files. This could be submitted to multiple places on the web. Freshmeat might parse it into their database, while metalab might just through it in the .osm directory. But at least there would be a way to track things down. Google would help a lot.
How can we surmount this problem? Maybe by making a set of standards (beyond the informal ones that exist now) for how to document what your software is and where to get it. This could be a variation on the old
I am concerned that a lot of good code and good projects are left to die while other people re-invent that particular wheel. Since FS/OS is based on volunteer work, we can't really afford to throw it away or waste it. I hope other people who also have ideas about this will reply to this, and perhaps we can get together a mailing list or something to brainstorm about possible solutions to this problem.
It would be useful to (re)build this on SDL so that they don't have to re-invent the wheel for audio, 2D, etc. (all the non D3D parts). Already SDL allows (hell, requires) you to call OGL directly when you need 3d accel. So by implementing their calls as an SDL layer they would lose nothing and gain a very nice cross-platform layer.
Your boss sounds like a "buzzword-compliant" type. Ask him why each feature is necessary so that you can decide what you really need and what that actually exists is closest. Note that even if you find some research language like Haskell (no disrespect) that meets all these features it will not do well on real-world criteria like "good supply of programmers who can use it".
If you are presented with a feature list and explanations for why each feature is necessary are not forthcoming, you may be working for a dangerous idiot. Consider transferring or finding other employment.
>Whatever happened to the high quality of reporting/editing of Slashdot?
ROTFLMAO
Mapics defines a dysfunctional organization. And, they were developing in Java in 1998 when I worked there. And, in 1999 they were using rpg to java converter programs. And, no one was using smalltalk. I wonder about your comment.
So your theory is that no tool is useful unless it is the best choice for everything? What do you progam in, then?
Remarks like this make you look like a shithead. How about this for a reason: because the statistics show that Java code can be developed faster and with fewer errors in shorter time than many other systems languages. And, its syntax is familiar to most programmers already.
So it's not a good choice for a lightning fast compiler or perhaps a text editor. But often the moderate slowness of Java code can be overcome by fast hardware for less money than it would cost to implement in another language. And there are more programmers who know Java than who know all the quirks of this that and the other OS's libc. And I defy you to come up with something as powerful as a session bean in as little code, in a module that can be deployed on anything from an ipaq to a s390, in C++.
So its a good tool for some jobs, and not for others. You're so busy being glib that you forgot to think.
Ge, that's too bad. Your parents wouldn't pay for a fifth year of college because you changed your mind about what you like?
All you can say is "Grrr" about some shit like that? Those fucking asshole parents of yours! I think you should probably just put a bullet in them. Fuck them! Assholes!
Unless... you did have a job at the time, right? I mean, you were working and saving before college and during college, and there were loans available to you, and if you had been performing worth a shit, maybe even some scholarship money. So it was all up to you, and not your parents at all. You could easily have decided to stay another year if you had been willing to accept the financial consequences like an adult, like a man in his early twenties. Instead you acted like a little boy and you still are, complaining about your "'rents" and what they will or won't buy you.
Wake up jerk. There are people getting Bachelor's and post-graduate degrees with no financial help from anyone, some of them are even orphans. I know a girl whose parents were killed when she was in junior high, and she managed to put herself through school with loans, scholarships, and hard fucking work. And, by the way, she misses her parents and would probably throw her degree away and start over again for one more week with them. You immature piece of shit.