In fact, I personally believe that if Gates and co. hadn't screwed Apple over all those years ago to bring out Windows 1.0, then we'd be in a hell of a lot worse position than we are now. At least Microsoft only have a monopoly on Software. If the 2 Steves had managed to create a monopoly where Apple had total control of the OS AND the hardware, then it would be impossible for anyone else to get a look in. We saw how Apple treated the clone system builders, and BeOS for that matter. Actually, now I think of it, Apple are setting up their own stores here in the UK and driving their formerly faithful resellers out of the market with their well know price fixing strategies (try buying apple hardware at better prices than Apple supply it direct to see what I mean).
I do like (and own) some of Apple's kit, but I'm not one of the blinkered Mac apologists who defend their every action. Apple is not a bunch of nice people; it's a corporation, and frankly I'm not surprised in the slightest at their attempts to monopolise music downloads and attack their own fans' websites. Maybe Wozniak wasn't all about making money, but Jobs and the others left steering the ship certainly are.
Have you noticed that, althought Apple's own operating system owes a lot to the open source movement, and the thousands of developers whose code they use for free, you and I still cannot run iTunes on our Linux desktop to sync an iPod? No money in it for them...
It's time some people took off the rose coloured hippy glasses and realised that Apple is just another wannabe monopolist who've (luckily for us) simply been curtailed by an unfortunate event perpetrated by the current software monopolist.
I think that anyone who still believed the EU was some sort of democrasy after all the evidence to the contrary over the past 10 years or more is an idiot.
You'll not find a higher concentration of villains, hypocrites and scoundrels than in the "power centre" of the EU. The main lure for the type of people who work there is purely financial. It's a trough of our money that these pigs stuff their wrinkled faces into whenever they can be bothered to go to work (seldom in most cases). The level of corruption is well documented, but (unsurprisingly) not so well investigated. These people are by and large, self serving, unelected scum who would be utterly unemployable anywhere else.
I find it disgusting that those gin soaked, lying, useless pigs are being paid by corporations to make decisions that affect the futures of billions of people... Including me... One bomb in Brussels would end far more problems than the current campaigns in Iraq (and wherever the US decides to go off killing people next).
...Do you really want to spend your time looking thtough all of them? That's a lot of drudgery, and the only people willing to do it would be those with an agenda or without a life...
... and by god don't let me see anyone using comments - comments are the devil's alphabet soup! Every programmer worth his/her salt knows that source code is self documenting...
Well, I know of a few that do now... Seriously, is this that much of a threat? Winzip (AFAIK) doesn't handle Rar archives, and most users wouldn't know how to open one if they did find one in their inbox...
Actually that game is about 3 years old - and was only a piece of test code when I stopped working on it. I only put it up on the site tonight to demonstrate the performance differences I mentioned in my post - I'll be removing it again tomorrow when this story drops off the front page...
Doesn't matter how optimised it is, it's still around 1% of the speed of IE when faced with certain DHTML scripts. I wrote a Javascript game library a few years ago, which I used for a bunch of JS arcade type games (including video pool that allowed people to play eachother over the internet;-)
Anyway, if you try this example of a scrolling platformer demo in IE first, it should run at a decent speed on a medium spec machine. Try it in Firefox, even on a high-end rig and it's absolutely unplayable (keys are IJKL + Z). You'll need to allow the popup window to appear, and probably disable the "Find as you type " in Firefox so that the keypresses are captured by JS.
How about this scenario: You're standing in front of a heavily armed soldier wearing full body armour. Do you think you'll be more likely to survive the encounter if you're holding a sub-machine gun, or a rock?
You seem to assume that your adversary will always attack with excessive force, but the reality is that if you pose no obvious threat, you'll have a greater chance of walking away from the confrontation.
Talk about shooting yourself in the foot: "Go to Japan and try to buy a gun"
Do you have any clue about how large the U.S. is compared with Japan?
[...] Well, perhaps the cities are attract and are a breeding ground for violent people?
It may interest you to know that Japan has at least 12 times the population density of the US. The cities are even worse, which explains the astronomic land prices. If your argument held any water, Japan would have a far higher murder rate than the US - unless Americans are simply inherently violent (which is not that hard to believe, based upon world events over last few years).
And what most people in this thread appear to be forgetting is this simple fact: When guns are banned (as handguns are here in the UK), carrying a gun automatically makes you a criminal, and very likely to spend some time behind bars. Thus, even thugs don't carry them around as a rule, where they'd be more likely to use them in a fit of rage.
The argument that "guns save lives" is just just so ridiculous it doesn't even deserve a response.
... how about banning the sale of guns to idiots/psychopaths/anyone? I'm sure there's a more tangible correlation between guns + murder than computer games and murder.
Now see here, you bloody colonial; we don't spell correctly, or use correct grammar to "piss you off", but rather because we prefer to use language as a form of civilised communication. One day perhaps you too can evolve and adopt this method of interaction, rather than stomping around the globe spreading violence, obesity, patents and litigation (I'm assuming you're American?)
The reason they are asking you is because they think you are old enough and experienced enough to be able to give an estimate.
No no no, the reason they are asking for timeframes whilst providing virtually no useful information about the project is laziness, and possibly the desire to cover their asses. A "manager", as the title implies, is supposed to "manage" a project to some extent. Gathering user requirements, and performing some basic analysis and sanity checking should be part of that role. Spending all day in pointless meeting after pointless meeting, hoping the team will carry the entire workload is not managing.
If you really are the sort of "manager" that stomps over to a programmer's workstation and demands any sort of accurate estimation without bothering to supply the required info, and I were working for you, I'd be more than happy to HELP you find my replacement...
I don't know how many times in the past I've had a dumb manager ask me how long this task will take, and refuse to accept "I don't have enough information to answer that and here is why" as an answer.
No shit! This happens at least once a fortnight for me. After explaining that due to a lack of documentation, specs, detailed requirements etc it's impossible to estimate, for several minutes each time, the end result is always "Well, give a ballpark figure". This is where I tend to give some outrageously long timescale (6 months, 2 years etc - when it's plainly nowhere near that much work - even for a manager). The best course of action, I've found, is to refuse to budge from these ludicrous statements. Make the bastards wait!
To be honest, I thought they'd give up on asking me by now, but no...
This is interesting - do you know of any Sendmail milters / other service that can digitally sign all outgoing emails, and maybe decrypt incoming? We could then have a "company" keypair. Of course it wouldn't allow users to encrypt outgoing mail (since it obviously requires the recipients public key), but it's a good first step.
The main problem this project will encounter will be gaining momentum. PGP already has a huge userbase and infrastructure. It's not that difficult to use for anyone technically minded, and you can already buy "idiot proof" versions to plug into Outlook (I believe). For anyone using Thunderbird, the enigmail plugin offers PGP for free, which works great.
I'm helping... I've decided to pick my way through the atricks website to find a chink in their case. Unfortunately, I'm such a bumbler that the wget script I set up to collate information has a serious bug and appears to be stuck in a loop! I believe it's the part where I set a loop counter to 16,000,000 near the top but I can't be bothered to go changing things now... might lead to more bugs... Guess I'll just wait until it stops on its own;-)
...programmatic entities -- like: record. Wacky, but perhaps wacky enough to be possible?
Hopefully, no. Christ almighty, why is there this surge in interest for pointless layers of abstraction on top of the code? It seems some people are desperate to do anything to avoid actual implementation (work?), prefering to dance around the periphery of a project, adding needless fluff and speedbumps. Honestly, will the addition of XML markup in source code REALLY help to advance a project, make the code more readable or avoid bugs?
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In fact, I personally believe that if Gates and co. hadn't screwed Apple over all those years ago to bring out Windows 1.0, then we'd be in a hell of a lot worse position than we are now. At least Microsoft only have a monopoly on Software. If the 2 Steves had managed to create a monopoly where Apple had total control of the OS AND the hardware, then it would be impossible for anyone else to get a look in. We saw how Apple treated the clone system builders, and BeOS for that matter. Actually, now I think of it, Apple are setting up their own stores here in the UK and driving their formerly faithful resellers out of the market with their well know price fixing strategies (try buying apple hardware at better prices than Apple supply it direct to see what I mean).
I do like (and own) some of Apple's kit, but I'm not one of the blinkered Mac apologists who defend their every action. Apple is not a bunch of nice people; it's a corporation, and frankly I'm not surprised in the slightest at their attempts to monopolise music downloads and attack their own fans' websites. Maybe Wozniak wasn't all about making money, but Jobs and the others left steering the ship certainly are.
Have you noticed that, althought Apple's own operating system owes a lot to the open source movement, and the thousands of developers whose code they use for free, you and I still cannot run iTunes on our Linux desktop to sync an iPod? No money in it for them...
It's time some people took off the rose coloured hippy glasses and realised that Apple is just another wannabe monopolist who've (luckily for us) simply been curtailed by an unfortunate event perpetrated by the current software monopolist.
I think that anyone who still believed the EU was some sort of democrasy after all the evidence to the contrary over the past 10 years or more is an idiot.
You'll not find a higher concentration of villains, hypocrites and scoundrels than in the "power centre" of the EU. The main lure for the type of people who work there is purely financial. It's a trough of our money that these pigs stuff their wrinkled faces into whenever they can be bothered to go to work (seldom in most cases). The level of corruption is well documented, but (unsurprisingly) not so well investigated. These people are by and large, self serving, unelected scum who would be utterly unemployable anywhere else.
I find it disgusting that those gin soaked, lying, useless pigs are being paid by corporations to make decisions that affect the futures of billions of people... Including me... One bomb in Brussels would end far more problems than the current campaigns in Iraq (and wherever the US decides to go off killing people next).
...Do you really want to spend your time looking thtough all of them? That's a lot of drudgery, and the only people willing to do it would be those with an agenda or without a life...
Hey! Welcome to Slashdot!
... and by god don't let me see anyone using comments - comments are the devil's alphabet soup! Every programmer worth his/her salt knows that source code is self documenting...
...most firewalls do not block the extension yet.
Well, I know of a few that do now... Seriously, is this that much of a threat? Winzip (AFAIK) doesn't handle Rar archives, and most users wouldn't know how to open one if they did find one in their inbox...
Woah! I thought this was just another troll - I just got through reading another of his books too...
... or if using Firefox with the Adblock plugin, just add *vibrantmedia.com* and *intellitxt.com* ;-)
They could have at least made sure the arrows on the diagrams were round the right way!
Actually that game is about 3 years old - and was only a piece of test code when I stopped working on it. I only put it up on the site tonight to demonstrate the performance differences I mentioned in my post - I'll be removing it again tomorrow when this story drops off the front page...
;-)
I agree with you about popups, BTW
Doesn't matter how optimised it is, it's still around 1% of the speed of IE when faced with certain DHTML scripts. I wrote a Javascript game library a few years ago, which I used for a bunch of JS arcade type games (including video pool that allowed people to play eachother over the internet ;-)
Anyway, if you try this example of a scrolling platformer demo in IE first, it should run at a decent speed on a medium spec machine. Try it in Firefox, even on a high-end rig and it's absolutely unplayable (keys are IJKL + Z). You'll need to allow the popup window to appear, and probably disable the "Find as you type " in Firefox so that the keypresses are captured by JS.
I just like the fact that Slashdot have published this story using their classy "babyshit" stylesheet.
How about this scenario: You're standing in front of a heavily armed soldier wearing full body armour. Do you think you'll be more likely to survive the encounter if you're holding a sub-machine gun, or a rock?
You seem to assume that your adversary will always attack with excessive force, but the reality is that if you pose no obvious threat, you'll have a greater chance of walking away from the confrontation.
Talk about shooting yourself in the foot:
"Go to Japan and try to buy a gun"
Do you have any clue about how large the U.S. is compared with Japan?
[...]
Well, perhaps the cities are attract and are a breeding ground for violent people?
It may interest you to know that Japan has at least 12 times the population density of the US. The cities are even worse, which explains the astronomic land prices. If your argument held any water, Japan would have a far higher murder rate than the US - unless Americans are simply inherently violent (which is not that hard to believe, based upon world events over last few years).
And what most people in this thread appear to be forgetting is this simple fact: When guns are banned (as handguns are here in the UK), carrying a gun automatically makes you a criminal, and very likely to spend some time behind bars. Thus, even thugs don't carry them around as a rule, where they'd be more likely to use them in a fit of rage.
The argument that "guns save lives" is just just so ridiculous it doesn't even deserve a response.
... how about banning the sale of guns to idiots/psychopaths/anyone? I'm sure there's a more tangible correlation between guns + murder than computer games and murder.
Next time try a little research before spell laming, otherwise you tend to look a bit foolish... ;-)
Yes very funny, or at least it was once I managed to read your comment after Slashdot rendered like this in my web browser...
Well, interestingly my search for circumspect elephantitis displays exactly one result - the same number as the same search on Google!.
But the REALLY interesting thing about this is that the results are different - how about THAT for a Moogle Whack?!
Now see here, you bloody colonial; we don't spell correctly, or use correct grammar to "piss you off", but rather because we prefer to use language as a form of civilised communication. One day perhaps you too can evolve and adopt this method of interaction, rather than stomping around the globe spreading violence, obesity, patents and litigation (I'm assuming you're American?)
The reason they are asking you is because they think you are old enough and experienced enough to be able to give an estimate.
No no no, the reason they are asking for timeframes whilst providing virtually no useful information about the project is laziness, and possibly the desire to cover their asses. A "manager", as the title implies, is supposed to "manage" a project to some extent. Gathering user requirements, and performing some basic analysis and sanity checking should be part of that role. Spending all day in pointless meeting after pointless meeting, hoping the team will carry the entire workload is not managing.
If you really are the sort of "manager" that stomps over to a programmer's workstation and demands any sort of accurate estimation without bothering to supply the required info, and I were working for you, I'd be more than happy to HELP you find my replacement...
I don't know how many times in the past I've had a dumb manager ask me how long this task will take, and refuse to accept "I don't have enough information to answer that and here is why" as an answer.
No shit! This happens at least once a fortnight for me. After explaining that due to a lack of documentation, specs, detailed requirements etc it's impossible to estimate, for several minutes each time, the end result is always "Well, give a ballpark figure". This is where I tend to give some outrageously long timescale (6 months, 2 years etc - when it's plainly nowhere near that much work - even for a manager). The best course of action, I've found, is to refuse to budge from these ludicrous statements. Make the bastards wait!
To be honest, I thought they'd give up on asking me by now, but no...
This is interesting - do you know of any Sendmail milters / other service that can digitally sign all outgoing emails, and maybe decrypt incoming? We could then have a "company" keypair. Of course it wouldn't allow users to encrypt outgoing mail (since it obviously requires the recipients public key), but it's a good first step.
I actually pre-ordered a PS2, it arrived DOA, which meant I would have to wait a month for another. I've never bothered re-ordering.
This was unusual though, as I own a lot of Sony gear - TVs, Monitors, CD players, laptops, cameras, all of which has worked fine.
The main problem this project will encounter will be gaining momentum. PGP already has a huge userbase and infrastructure. It's not that difficult to use for anyone technically minded, and you can already buy "idiot proof" versions to plug into Outlook (I believe). For anyone using Thunderbird, the enigmail plugin offers PGP for free, which works great.
Maybe I'm missing something?
I'm helping... I've decided to pick my way through the atricks website to find a chink in their case. Unfortunately, I'm such a bumbler that the wget script I set up to collate information has a serious bug and appears to be stuck in a loop! I believe it's the part where I set a loop counter to 16,000,000 near the top but I can't be bothered to go changing things now... might lead to more bugs... Guess I'll just wait until it stops on its own ;-)
...programmatic entities -- like: record. Wacky, but perhaps wacky enough to be possible?
Hopefully, no. Christ almighty, why is there this surge in interest for pointless layers of abstraction on top of the code? It seems some people are desperate to do anything to avoid actual implementation (work?), prefering to dance around the periphery of a project, adding needless fluff and speedbumps. Honestly, will the addition of XML markup in source code REALLY help to advance a project, make the code more readable or avoid bugs?