Strange, I remember reading something about the history of Dilbert done by Scott Adams (I think it used to be on the website but I can't find it.) He tells how he submitted to a number of major syndicates, all of which (including United Features, as I remember) rejected him. He had scans of the comic strips he submitted, as well as the responses from the syndicates, some of which said 'the humour is good but you should hire an artist'. I couldn't remember all the details, but I saved it somewhere. It definitely did not, though, just "require one submissions package". I'll have to see if I can locate that article. My netscape in Linux seems to hose itself whenever I go to dilbertzone.com.
It's not as if the net hasn't tried to help this situation
Yes, it does seem that the Net has been slightly more useful for cartoonists than it has for musicians. Dilbert is probably one of the most well-known examples - none of the syndicates wanted to publish his original Dilbert submissions, so he published them on the Internet. The syndicates were interested after Dilbert became a success.
I think the main reason that programmers start new projects instead of contributing to existing ones is simply that programmers naturally just want to rewrite everything. Its more fun. They would rather rewrite something than use somebody else's component. I think when one is trying to use someone else's stuff, one tends to often think "this is not exactly how I would have designed this" or "I would have named this function differently" or "I can write a better class than this" etc. It often also *seems* easier to rewrite something than to learn how somebody else's code works. This problem can be alleviated by teaching programmers to be disciplined about documenting their code nicely. But quite frankly it is usually more fun to write something yourself (the fun part is solving the problems) than wading through documentation learning how to use somebody else's existing solution.
I believe the OSS world could benefit a lot from an attitude change, more people working together. Take a look at just how much effort is being duplicated just between KDE and gnome. So rather than having one good 3d modelling program that rivals 3DSMAX, we have 5 or 6 crummy ones. Rather than having one good development environment that rivals Visual Studio, we have about a dozen (ranging from crummy to mediocre). Rather than having one good DirectX-equivalent, we have about half a dozen (ranging from crummy to fair.) And I think it makes it that much harder for newcomers to join a project. For example, I'd like to contribute to building a Visual Studio equivalent, but quite frankly, I'm stuck in indecision as to which of the several contenders might succeed. It seems impossible to predict. Perhaps this also causes people to start new projects - they see that there are 5 or 6 *crummy* ones, so they think "we need a *good* one", and off they go starting yet another mediocre project. Gosh, I'm rambling now.
It doesn't always turn out like this though - some projects are clearly "the" projects in their class, e.g. Apache, GIMP. I wonder why.. ?
I worked at Microsoft on the Visual C++ team for a couple years
The only good MS product! When using Linux, this is the software I miss the most. Linux has no development environment that even comes close - and the few that do come even vaguely near have ridiculous learning curves.
I think schooling can help a lot, if you are really serious about programming, then I think a well-schooled person generally grasps new concepts faster and adjusts more easily to different paradigms. Not to knock engineers, but I knew quite a few electronic engineers at university that were self-taught, and thought they could program really well, that they could program as well as the best comp sci students. After examining some of their code and their coding practices though, it becomes quite clear that their knowledge is not that broad (e.g. they'll say they know all about classes, when they don't really understand even virtual functions). The lack of schooling shows too; they will learn techniques slooowly, through trial and error, that are learned quickly when taught. I guess it depends on the individual though. I think some of the people I'm talking about were fairly arrogant, and would say stuff like "pah, computer science is such a joke, I don't need books and lessons to learn the stuff". Then their code shows that they haven't read books or taken lessons! But I guess if those same individuals were a bit more humble, and actually read some books first, then schooling wouldn't be so useful. So I guess if you *aren't* going to do a comp sci course, then at least adopt the right attitude:) Myself, the most useful things I learned at Univ. was NOT programming, but all the other things that I would not have had the initiative to pick up a book and teach myself, e.g. all the math, phsyics, electronics, AI etc. That stuff is pretty useful in my job.
Up until 1994, it was most commonly the case that the owners/managers of establishments (such as McDonalds) would be white, while the people you see (e.g. those manning the tills etc) would be black. This situation is still very common, but since 1994 it has become increasingly (and quite noticeably) more common for the owners/managers to also be black, making an establishment *entirely* black. Of course, this does not mean that the minimum wage workers are under any better conditions working for a black boss than for a white boss - whites don't hire blacks because they're racists but because blacks are generally cheap labour - I would venture to guess that conditions are extremely similar for them, i.e. they still earn extremely little. A businessman is a businessman, white or black; you'll still see the owner driving around in a really nice car while his employees earn barely enough to live on. I don't have any actual statistics on what percentage of places have become black-owned, but I would make a rough thumbsuck guess that in the area where I live (Pretoria) its probably somewhere between 20 and 40 %. That figure could be completely off though. You do also, of course, see many places where the poorly paid guys manning the tills are whites. They are *no* better off than their black counterparts - they also earn next to nothing. This is not really the norm though, but it is not uncommon. South Africa does have poor whites too:) I think not many foreigners really realise that, one always gets a somewhat simplified view from international media. I like that many black south africans are embracing capitalism and making a success of their lives, I think they deserve it after the apartheid years. But I have some doubts about the government. There are many within the ANC government that are anti-white racists, and would like to see the country rid of whites (I believe this is why they are so soft on crime, I think some of them feel that as long as the crime is still chasing away whites then they will tolerate the huge amount of harm that crime inflicts on south african blacks also.) Some of them also seem to tend towards socialist/communist policies, even though on the surface they try to make a noise about being democratic/capitalist. For example, our local telecommunications has been granted a monopoly in exchange for installing telephones in poorer areas. This smells a bit communist to me. The result is that we have VERY expensive telecomms, with really lousy service (as I write this my modem disconnected me:), it took Telkom nearly 5 months to simply install a telephone line in somebody I know's house. If you're well off financially you can afford ISDN, but the best internet option you can get below that is 56K modem. Phone calls are metered, so you pay minute you're connected. What the government don't seem to realise is that maintaining this monopoly actually *harms* south african blacks by keeping the country poor. The monopoly is supposed to run out next year, but it looks like they're only going to grant one more license, and thats to another pseudo-monopoly that they've put together by combining local electricity supply company and local (train) transport company. I don't foresee any "real" telecomms competition anytime in the near future - and I believe telecomms is quite critical to economic prosperity. Anyway, I seem to be going off on quite a tangent here..:) This stuff is all just my opinions, of course.
Thats a very interesting point! I didn't think of that. If I remember back, there were a fair number of people at school who also thought that many of the rules were stupid. It didn't seem to turn too many of them into scientists though:) But I guess it must influence their modes of thinking later in life.
Thats the second time I've seen somebody recommend 'the diamond age'. I think I'll get hold of a copy and read it.
Son, that's not true. That's just because the McDonald's we go to, there's more black people that live around there." (and we drove to another area of town to show him that all types of people work in fast-food
Come visit South Africa for a bit. Only black people work at McDonalds..:) Unemployment is high (about 30%) and blacks constitute about 80% of the country's population - so pretty much all the "crappy" jobs are filled by blacks. This has quite visibly begun to change since 1994, you see a lot more black people driving expensive cars on the road etc.. this sort of change doesn't happen overnight.
Anyways.. I am very strongly against the view that children are these precious fragile things that should be protected from learning about the real world so that they can "enjoy their childhood and innocence". What a crock, you don't need to live in a world of lies and hidden truths to enjoy your childhood. The biggest tragedy about raising kids in such a protected fashion is that they grow up to be adults who close off the real world. I believe kids are NOT as stupid and/or fragile as the majority of people think they are. Treat kids like people capable of thinking and reasoning, and they'll grow up as thinking, reasoning adults. Treat kids as stupid and they'll grow up stupid.
What kind of society would we have if kids were taught that they didn't have to do anything on a schedule, that they didn't have to be on time and organized, that they didn't have a place in a power structure, that they didn't have to respect authority?
Pah. Bait n switch. The guy DID NOT SAY THAT THAT WAS THE ALTERNATIVE.
OK, now thats out the way - it has nothing to do with teaching kids discipline. What he is talking about is teaching people to think for themselves, or more generally, to actually think and question things. "Question" doesn't mean "rebel" as you state it does - "question" implies questioning things in a reasonable, disciplined scientific manner. When I was in school we had all sorts of rules that even today I still cannot figure out the logic behind them - and yet we were FORCED to carry out those rules, we were NOT allowed to question them, and back then we were literally caned (this is no longer legal in the country I live in. for some additional background, we still have mandatory school uniforms (there is a "winter uniform" and a "summer uniform", and even if its a scorching hot day near the end of winter, if its still a certain date, you have to wear the winter uniform), also there are stupid rules like "boys cannot grow their hair long" etc) if we did not blindly follow them. I sunburn easily, and South Africa is a pretty hot country - I remember many times being forced to sit or stand for hours burning myself to a cinder in the sun for completely meaningless things like mock military parades. And for gods sake, idiot teachers, you CANNOT make people become interested in watching athletics by forcing them to sit in the sun on one spot all day - sheesh, and then they wonder why there is no "school spirit" at the athletics.
Society has to have rules, yes. But they must actually make some sense. Although according to what I learnt in psychology, most people do not progress past moral thinking level phase 4 (which is basically what you're spouting, "we must all follow society's rules".)
I remember from the days of playing on my brothers ZX Spectrum, there were some really good games, but for every good game there dozens of really crappy games. The situation has not changed. People seem to forget that there were also so many crappy old games.
I think the "don't make them like they used to" mindset is a load of crap. People point to all the best games from 5 - 10 years ago and compare them to the hundreds of really mediocre games on the shelves today. What they seem to forget is that 5 - 10 years ago there were also hundreds of really mediocre games for every good game. I used to play on my brothers ZX Spectrum, and while there were some really great games, and I remember quite well that there were hundreds of other games that just sucked. The technology has changed, but I don't think the situation has. There are some really good games on the shelves these days. If somebody can't seem to find any good games today, then I suspect the problem is not with the games. There are really good action games (q3, CS etc), LucasArts has consistently made really good quests (e.g. Grim Fandango, Monkey Island series etc), and I'm pretty sure in every common genre you can find a number of really good recent games. The number of new genres appearing has probably diminished (that will get harder over time) but that has nothing to do with what makes a game good. Just like it is possible to make a really good movie without doing anything new or original. If anything, game developers can be stifled by trying too hard to focus on doing something *new* rather than doing something *well* - the problem with trying to make a good game is that everything has to be done well and just "gel" (the sound, the graphics, playability, story (if applicable) - if just one of those things is not quite right, a game tends to flop. So game makers who tell themselves that because some central concept in their game is new and original then they're likely to succeed are fooling themselves. The 1%/99% inspiration/perspiration rule applies. Dogma2001 seems to imply that original==fun.
They went to Congress to whine rather than competing against MS with their own products
No, MS was brought to court by the DOJ because they broke the law, plain and simple. Tying the two products was the LEAST of the many things that MS did to stifle competition and keep Netscape out (in fact, it is quite possible that nobody would ever have complained about the product tying had it not been done in conjunction with so many other anti-competitive practices) - I recommend you go read the findings of fact and other documents resulting from the case. You don't seem to know much about antitrust laws and the reasons for their existence. I recommend you go do some reading.
Yes. Why fry a $500 CPU because a $5 fan fails? The BIOS in my work computers are configured to check factors such as CPU temperature, fan RPM etc, and to shut down on serious problems.
I realize you weren't saying anything about the patents in your post.. my response was mentally more targetted towards somebody elses post that sounded similar to yours, but they were arguing that since building a *good* fan can be very difficult that the company may deserve to patent it.
"there are at least a few things about metallurgy, magnetics, lubrication and airflow which are neither obvious nor easy to understand, but are certainly required for engineering an efficient, well-designed, and long-lasting fan"
So what? Designing a good fan might be difficult, but you can't patent something just because it was difficult to make - you can only patent something that is a new and original technique. It may have been difficult to build, but if the basic principles are exactly the same as in Joe Cheap Fan, you can't patent it. You may be able to patent a new type of design for a fan, if the design had something new, original and creative in it to distinguish it technologically from Joe Cheap Fan. Simply making all the parts from better materials, and changing the shape of the blades, does NOT constitute an original technique. A "design" maybe, but that is a different IP concept to the patent. You also may be able to patent a new, original process that you'd come up with for building fans. I haven't read the article, so I'm not sure what their patent is about. Disclaimer, IANAL.
The problem with computing metaphors is that by teaching abstractions of techonologies rather than teaching people how those technologies work circumvents user education of how a system really works. This isn't a problem in itself if the metaphors are good ones, but its been my experience that more often that not the metaphors chosen are rather bad. Mainstream media, in particular, tends to come up with really lousy metaphors. This can be very dangerous, particularly for liberties, as it can leave many people with a very distorted view of technologies such as encryption, surveillance, hacking/cracking etc. This is only made worse by the fact that mainstream media, in order to get more readers, often adopts the 'scarepiece' approach and intentionally presents a distorted, sensationalist view of a technology. Also, the FBI very often deliberately presents twisted metaphors designed to scare people and convince the public and lawmakers that they need more snooping rights etc. I wish I could think of some good examples right now.
The only true solution is proper user education of how systems work - then nobody can be manipulated by the presentation of incorrect facts through cleverly chosen unsuitable metaphors. I don't know if this is realistic though, unless you want to send thousands of lawyers, judges, politicians, journalists etc on extensive computer courses.
You'd swear those seats were designed to hold munchkins
Its not just the seats, its everything. You get a tiny meal on a tiny plate which you have to eat with tiny knives and forks. You get drinks in tiny little cups, and Coke from tiny cans.
I can't help but get the feeling that if one ever gets to take a tour of Boeing's engineering department, you'll find hundreds of really small engineers toiling away to build better planes for people, all seemingly unaware that real people are much bigger.
I suspect it might be because when women are younger (say in school), IN GENERAL they're more interested in having fun and not in serious commitment, so they'll go out with guys who are "cool". Then when they hit their early twenties they start looking to settle down, so then it makes more sense to go for the more "boring" predictable guy who brings home a fat paycheck for financial stability. I could be talking a load of crap though. Its probably more something like: the "cool" school chicks who dated the cool guys at school end up married with children in their early twenties with one of the "cool" guys who turns out to be a real asshole who beats her and drinks away his anyway-pathetic paycheck (but they'll never leave him), while the girls who start dating later who are looking for stable guys are the girls that never dated at school, they're they nerdy chicks who did their homework every day and stayed home on friday nights. Just a couple of theories. Either way it'll still suck to be a clever male in school.
We need qualified C++ programmers at our work. We couldn't give a stuff if they're black, pink, green, male, asexual, raving queens, chinese, swedish, whatever - we just need people who can program. No we don't have any female C++ programmers (except the one), but only because they're so damn hard to come by. Believe me if we knew of one we would hire her. We have one female programmer working for us but not doing C++ yet because shes still studying, so shes still learning. I know some female coders working for other companies, and they are no better or no worse than their male colleagues. Same with the female Comp Sci students I studied with. Not once in my 4 years at university did I see any of the female students being treated disrespectfully; most of them were fairly hard workers and did quite well. Naturally, there will be a few places where there is discrimination, but I'm prepared to bet that its a small minority of places, certainly not "alive and well", which implies that it is widespread. Of course, I don't live in Boston, I live in South Africa, maybe it is really widespread in america, but something tells me that its more likely you're exaggerating and/or your perception is distorted.
And it was pretty clear to me that Annie's view of comp. sci men is (and was already) very low, and appears to be based on some cliched movie stereotypes. The majority of tech workers I know are not "dirty" and "ugly" and "dateless" and "unbathed" and all those other stereotypes Annie threw around - they're just regular people, most of them with quite a wide variety of hobbies and other activities that have nothing to do with computers. Sounds to me like Annie had made up her mind even before she started working where she is that male tech workers were like that. Her view does not correlate at all with my experience of the "real world", sorry, and I know a *lot* of comp scientists and engineers. Less than 10% of the male programmers working at my work are "dateless", none of them are "sociopathic" or "unfortunate looking", NONE of them treat women badly, and I think I'm the only one who might be "occasionally unbathed" (if that means skipping a shower on average one day every two months.) I don't think Annie's problem is with the people around her, I think its a perception problem.
Re:Protocols and latency
on
Quake on IPv6
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· Score: 2
I've done a fair amount of network programming so I'm not completely clueless here.. anyway, I've found that sometimes (depending on how the network code is structured) a higher frame rate can make the network less responsive. Games like Quake are frame-rate limited (even at 90fps, on a good PC, you'll have some idle). Limitting the frame rate implies having a bit of time left over after each frame leaves some CPU idle which (depending on the OS too) can give a quite noticeable boost to the performance on a fast network such as a 100MB LAN. If the rendering process/thread is hogging as much CPU time as it can (3d rendering tends to be very CPU intensive), processing of network packets tends to get worse. This is usually most noticeable if the network communications makes use of a seperate thread or process, but I don't think Quake is structured like that - Quake seem to work as you say, polling the network between frames. The network code I've written for our work uses a seperate thread, and limiting the frame rate does help a little. Other network systems that I've done some system integration with, which use a seperate process for network communications on WinNT, leaving some CPU idle gave a VERY noticeable boost to network performance.
of course, very slow frame rates (like 25 fps) will again be counterproductive to the network, for games like Q3, as you say. I've found Q3 quite interesting to study, they seem to use 100% of the CPU no matter what the frame limit is - its 100% even if you limit the frame rate to 10. Presumably they continue to consume all CPU time with the game simulation and network.
Quake1 is GPL, if i remember correctly. Of course, they'll still be wanting to actually make some money off Quake3, but they'll probably open that up in a few years, when Carmack's newest creations are making Q3 look old.
Slashdot Mirror
Strange, I remember reading something about the history of Dilbert done by Scott Adams (I think it used to be on the website but I can't find it.) He tells how he submitted to a number of major syndicates, all of which (including United Features, as I remember) rejected him. He had scans of the comic strips he submitted, as well as the responses from the syndicates, some of which said 'the humour is good but you should hire an artist'. I couldn't remember all the details, but I saved it somewhere. It definitely did not, though, just "require one submissions package". I'll have to see if I can locate that article. My netscape in Linux seems to hose itself whenever I go to dilbertzone.com.
It's not as if the net hasn't tried to help this situation
Yes, it does seem that the Net has been slightly more useful for cartoonists than it has for musicians. Dilbert is probably one of the most well-known examples - none of the syndicates wanted to publish his original Dilbert submissions, so he published them on the Internet. The syndicates were interested after Dilbert became a success.
The syndicates have done to comic strip art what the record companies have done to music. Family Circus is to comics as Boyzone is to music.
A worthwhile read is a speech given by Bill Watterson (creator of Calvin and Hobbes, who would not "sell out") called The cheapening of the comics.
It sounded to me like something that could've originated from Pokey the Penguin (http://www.yellow5.com/pokey/), but evidently it isn't.
I think the main reason that programmers start new projects instead of contributing to existing ones is simply that programmers naturally just want to rewrite everything. Its more fun. They would rather rewrite something than use somebody else's component. I think when one is trying to use someone else's stuff, one tends to often think "this is not exactly how I would have designed this" or "I would have named this function differently" or "I can write a better class than this" etc. It often also *seems* easier to rewrite something than to learn how somebody else's code works. This problem can be alleviated by teaching programmers to be disciplined about documenting their code nicely. But quite frankly it is usually more fun to write something yourself (the fun part is solving the problems) than wading through documentation learning how to use somebody else's existing solution.
I believe the OSS world could benefit a lot from an attitude change, more people working together. Take a look at just how much effort is being duplicated just between KDE and gnome. So rather than having one good 3d modelling program that rivals 3DSMAX, we have 5 or 6 crummy ones. Rather than having one good development environment that rivals Visual Studio, we have about a dozen (ranging from crummy to mediocre). Rather than having one good DirectX-equivalent, we have about half a dozen (ranging from crummy to fair.) And I think it makes it that much harder for newcomers to join a project. For example, I'd like to contribute to building a Visual Studio equivalent, but quite frankly, I'm stuck in indecision as to which of the several contenders might succeed. It seems impossible to predict. Perhaps this also causes people to start new projects - they see that there are 5 or 6 *crummy* ones, so they think "we need a *good* one", and off they go starting yet another mediocre project. Gosh, I'm rambling now.
It doesn't always turn out like this though - some projects are clearly "the" projects in their class, e.g. Apache, GIMP. I wonder why .. ?
I worked at Microsoft on the Visual C++ team for a couple years
The only good MS product! When using Linux, this is the software I miss the most. Linux has no development environment that even comes close - and the few that do come even vaguely near have ridiculous learning curves.
I think schooling can help a lot, if you are really serious about programming, then I think a well-schooled person generally grasps new concepts faster and adjusts more easily to different paradigms. Not to knock engineers, but I knew quite a few electronic engineers at university that were self-taught, and thought they could program really well, that they could program as well as the best comp sci students. After examining some of their code and their coding practices though, it becomes quite clear that their knowledge is not that broad (e.g. they'll say they know all about classes, when they don't really understand even virtual functions). The lack of schooling shows too; they will learn techniques slooowly, through trial and error, that are learned quickly when taught. I guess it depends on the individual though. I think some of the people I'm talking about were fairly arrogant, and would say stuff like "pah, computer science is such a joke, I don't need books and lessons to learn the stuff". Then their code shows that they haven't read books or taken lessons! But I guess if those same individuals were a bit more humble, and actually read some books first, then schooling wouldn't be so useful. So I guess if you *aren't* going to do a comp sci course, then at least adopt the right attitude :) Myself, the most useful things I learned at Univ. was NOT programming, but all the other things that I would not have had the initiative to pick up a book and teach myself, e.g. all the math, phsyics, electronics, AI etc. That stuff is pretty useful in my job.
That is a good question to ask.
Up until 1994, it was most commonly the case that the owners/managers of establishments (such as McDonalds) would be white, while the people you see (e.g. those manning the tills etc) would be black. This situation is still very common, but since 1994 it has become increasingly (and quite noticeably) more common for the owners/managers to also be black, making an establishment *entirely* black. Of course, this does not mean that the minimum wage workers are under any better conditions working for a black boss than for a white boss - whites don't hire blacks because they're racists but because blacks are generally cheap labour - I would venture to guess that conditions are extremely similar for them, i.e. they still earn extremely little. A businessman is a businessman, white or black; you'll still see the owner driving around in a really nice car while his employees earn barely enough to live on. I don't have any actual statistics on what percentage of places have become black-owned, but I would make a rough thumbsuck guess that in the area where I live (Pretoria) its probably somewhere between 20 and 40 %. That figure could be completely off though. You do also, of course, see many places where the poorly paid guys manning the tills are whites. They are *no* better off than their black counterparts - they also earn next to nothing. This is not really the norm though, but it is not uncommon. South Africa does have poor whites too :) I think not many foreigners really realise that, one always gets a somewhat simplified view from international media. I like that many black south africans are embracing capitalism and making a success of their lives, I think they deserve it after the apartheid years. But I have some doubts about the government. There are many within the ANC government that are anti-white racists, and would like to see the country rid of whites (I believe this is why they are so soft on crime, I think some of them feel that as long as the crime is still chasing away whites then they will tolerate the huge amount of harm that crime inflicts on south african blacks also.) Some of them also seem to tend towards socialist/communist policies, even though on the surface they try to make a noise about being democratic/capitalist. For example, our local telecommunications has been granted a monopoly in exchange for installing telephones in poorer areas. This smells a bit communist to me. The result is that we have VERY expensive telecomms, with really lousy service (as I write this my modem disconnected me :), it took Telkom nearly 5 months to simply install a telephone line in somebody I know's house. If you're well off financially you can afford ISDN, but the best internet option you can get below that is 56K modem. Phone calls are metered, so you pay minute you're connected. What the government don't seem to realise is that maintaining this monopoly actually *harms* south african blacks by keeping the country poor. The monopoly is supposed to run out next year, but it looks like they're only going to grant one more license, and thats to another pseudo-monopoly that they've put together by combining local electricity supply company and local (train) transport company. I don't foresee any "real" telecomms competition anytime in the near future - and I believe telecomms is quite critical to economic prosperity. Anyway, I seem to be going off on quite a tangent here .. :) This stuff is all just my opinions, of course.
Thats a very interesting point! I didn't think of that. If I remember back, there were a fair number of people at school who also thought that many of the rules were stupid. It didn't seem to turn too many of them into scientists though :) But I guess it must influence their modes of thinking later in life.
Thats the second time I've seen somebody recommend 'the diamond age'. I think I'll get hold of a copy and read it.
Son, that's not true. That's just because the McDonald's we go to, there's more black people that live around there." (and we drove to another area of town to show him that all types of people work in fast-food
Come visit South Africa for a bit. Only black people work at McDonalds .. :) Unemployment is high (about 30%) and blacks constitute about 80% of the country's population - so pretty much all the "crappy" jobs are filled by blacks. This has quite visibly begun to change since 1994, you see a lot more black people driving expensive cars on the road etc .. this sort of change doesn't happen overnight.
Anyways .. I am very strongly against the view that children are these precious fragile things that should be protected from learning about the real world so that they can "enjoy their childhood and innocence". What a crock, you don't need to live in a world of lies and hidden truths to enjoy your childhood. The biggest tragedy about raising kids in such a protected fashion is that they grow up to be adults who close off the real world. I believe kids are NOT as stupid and/or fragile as the majority of people think they are. Treat kids like people capable of thinking and reasoning, and they'll grow up as thinking, reasoning adults. Treat kids as stupid and they'll grow up stupid.
What kind of society would we have if kids were taught that they didn't have to do anything on a schedule, that they didn't have to be on time and organized, that they didn't have a place in a power structure, that they didn't have to respect authority?
Pah. Bait n switch. The guy DID NOT SAY THAT THAT WAS THE ALTERNATIVE.
OK, now thats out the way - it has nothing to do with teaching kids discipline. What he is talking about is teaching people to think for themselves, or more generally, to actually think and question things. "Question" doesn't mean "rebel" as you state it does - "question" implies questioning things in a reasonable, disciplined scientific manner. When I was in school we had all sorts of rules that even today I still cannot figure out the logic behind them - and yet we were FORCED to carry out those rules, we were NOT allowed to question them, and back then we were literally caned (this is no longer legal in the country I live in. for some additional background, we still have mandatory school uniforms (there is a "winter uniform" and a "summer uniform", and even if its a scorching hot day near the end of winter, if its still a certain date, you have to wear the winter uniform), also there are stupid rules like "boys cannot grow their hair long" etc) if we did not blindly follow them. I sunburn easily, and South Africa is a pretty hot country - I remember many times being forced to sit or stand for hours burning myself to a cinder in the sun for completely meaningless things like mock military parades. And for gods sake, idiot teachers, you CANNOT make people become interested in watching athletics by forcing them to sit in the sun on one spot all day - sheesh, and then they wonder why there is no "school spirit" at the athletics.
Society has to have rules, yes. But they must actually make some sense. Although according to what I learnt in psychology, most people do not progress past moral thinking level phase 4 (which is basically what you're spouting, "we must all follow society's rules".)
I remember from the days of playing on my brothers ZX Spectrum, there were some really good games, but for every good game there dozens of really crappy games. The situation has not changed. People seem to forget that there were also so many crappy old games.
I think the "don't make them like they used to" mindset is a load of crap. People point to all the best games from 5 - 10 years ago and compare them to the hundreds of really mediocre games on the shelves today. What they seem to forget is that 5 - 10 years ago there were also hundreds of really mediocre games for every good game. I used to play on my brothers ZX Spectrum, and while there were some really great games, and I remember quite well that there were hundreds of other games that just sucked. The technology has changed, but I don't think the situation has. There are some really good games on the shelves these days. If somebody can't seem to find any good games today, then I suspect the problem is not with the games. There are really good action games (q3, CS etc), LucasArts has consistently made really good quests (e.g. Grim Fandango, Monkey Island series etc), and I'm pretty sure in every common genre you can find a number of really good recent games. The number of new genres appearing has probably diminished (that will get harder over time) but that has nothing to do with what makes a game good. Just like it is possible to make a really good movie without doing anything new or original. If anything, game developers can be stifled by trying too hard to focus on doing something *new* rather than doing something *well* - the problem with trying to make a good game is that everything has to be done well and just "gel" (the sound, the graphics, playability, story (if applicable) - if just one of those things is not quite right, a game tends to flop. So game makers who tell themselves that because some central concept in their game is new and original then they're likely to succeed are fooling themselves. The 1%/99% inspiration/perspiration rule applies. Dogma2001 seems to imply that original==fun.
They went to Congress to whine rather than competing against MS with their own products
No, MS was brought to court by the DOJ because they broke the law, plain and simple. Tying the two products was the LEAST of the many things that MS did to stifle competition and keep Netscape out (in fact, it is quite possible that nobody would ever have complained about the product tying had it not been done in conjunction with so many other anti-competitive practices) - I recommend you go read the findings of fact and other documents resulting from the case. You don't seem to know much about antitrust laws and the reasons for their existence. I recommend you go do some reading.
Yes. Why fry a $500 CPU because a $5 fan fails? The BIOS in my work computers are configured to check factors such as CPU temperature, fan RPM etc, and to shut down on serious problems.
I realize you weren't saying anything about the patents in your post .. my response was mentally more targetted towards somebody elses post that sounded similar to yours, but they were arguing that since building a *good* fan can be very difficult that the company may deserve to patent it.
"there are at least a few things about metallurgy, magnetics, lubrication and airflow which are neither obvious nor easy to understand, but are certainly required for engineering an efficient, well-designed, and long-lasting fan"
So what? Designing a good fan might be difficult, but you can't patent something just because it was difficult to make - you can only patent something that is a new and original technique. It may have been difficult to build, but if the basic principles are exactly the same as in Joe Cheap Fan, you can't patent it. You may be able to patent a new type of design for a fan, if the design had something new, original and creative in it to distinguish it technologically from Joe Cheap Fan. Simply making all the parts from better materials, and changing the shape of the blades, does NOT constitute an original technique. A "design" maybe, but that is a different IP concept to the patent. You also may be able to patent a new, original process that you'd come up with for building fans. I haven't read the article, so I'm not sure what their patent is about. Disclaimer, IANAL.
I've read 1984 (and animal farm) and I wasn't even *aware* there was a 1984 movie. Of course, I'm not exactly Joe Sixpack.
The problem with computing metaphors is that by teaching abstractions of techonologies rather than teaching people how those technologies work circumvents user education of how a system really works. This isn't a problem in itself if the metaphors are good ones, but its been my experience that more often that not the metaphors chosen are rather bad. Mainstream media, in particular, tends to come up with really lousy metaphors. This can be very dangerous, particularly for liberties, as it can leave many people with a very distorted view of technologies such as encryption, surveillance, hacking/cracking etc. This is only made worse by the fact that mainstream media, in order to get more readers, often adopts the 'scarepiece' approach and intentionally presents a distorted, sensationalist view of a technology. Also, the FBI very often deliberately presents twisted metaphors designed to scare people and convince the public and lawmakers that they need more snooping rights etc. I wish I could think of some good examples right now.
The only true solution is proper user education of how systems work - then nobody can be manipulated by the presentation of incorrect facts through cleverly chosen unsuitable metaphors. I don't know if this is realistic though, unless you want to send thousands of lawyers, judges, politicians, journalists etc on extensive computer courses.
You'd swear those seats were designed to hold munchkins
Its not just the seats, its everything. You get a tiny meal on a tiny plate which you have to eat with tiny knives and forks. You get drinks in tiny little cups, and Coke from tiny cans.
I can't help but get the feeling that if one ever gets to take a tour of Boeing's engineering department, you'll find hundreds of really small engineers toiling away to build better planes for people, all seemingly unaware that real people are much bigger.
It doesn't make your bones *bigger*, just increases their mass by making them *denser*. It doesn't make you taller.
I suspect it might be because when women are younger (say in school), IN GENERAL they're more interested in having fun and not in serious commitment, so they'll go out with guys who are "cool". Then when they hit their early twenties they start looking to settle down, so then it makes more sense to go for the more "boring" predictable guy who brings home a fat paycheck for financial stability. I could be talking a load of crap though. Its probably more something like: the "cool" school chicks who dated the cool guys at school end up married with children in their early twenties with one of the "cool" guys who turns out to be a real asshole who beats her and drinks away his anyway-pathetic paycheck (but they'll never leave him), while the girls who start dating later who are looking for stable guys are the girls that never dated at school, they're they nerdy chicks who did their homework every day and stayed home on friday nights. Just a couple of theories. Either way it'll still suck to be a clever male in school.
We need qualified C++ programmers at our work. We couldn't give a stuff if they're black, pink, green, male, asexual, raving queens, chinese, swedish, whatever - we just need people who can program. No we don't have any female C++ programmers (except the one), but only because they're so damn hard to come by. Believe me if we knew of one we would hire her. We have one female programmer working for us but not doing C++ yet because shes still studying, so shes still learning. I know some female coders working for other companies, and they are no better or no worse than their male colleagues. Same with the female Comp Sci students I studied with. Not once in my 4 years at university did I see any of the female students being treated disrespectfully; most of them were fairly hard workers and did quite well. Naturally, there will be a few places where there is discrimination, but I'm prepared to bet that its a small minority of places, certainly not "alive and well", which implies that it is widespread. Of course, I don't live in Boston, I live in South Africa, maybe it is really widespread in america, but something tells me that its more likely you're exaggerating and/or your perception is distorted.
And it was pretty clear to me that Annie's view of comp. sci men is (and was already) very low, and appears to be based on some cliched movie stereotypes. The majority of tech workers I know are not "dirty" and "ugly" and "dateless" and "unbathed" and all those other stereotypes Annie threw around - they're just regular people, most of them with quite a wide variety of hobbies and other activities that have nothing to do with computers. Sounds to me like Annie had made up her mind even before she started working where she is that male tech workers were like that. Her view does not correlate at all with my experience of the "real world", sorry, and I know a *lot* of comp scientists and engineers. Less than 10% of the male programmers working at my work are "dateless", none of them are "sociopathic" or "unfortunate looking", NONE of them treat women badly, and I think I'm the only one who might be "occasionally unbathed" (if that means skipping a shower on average one day every two months.) I don't think Annie's problem is with the people around her, I think its a perception problem.
I've done a fair amount of network programming so I'm not completely clueless here .. anyway, I've found that sometimes (depending on how the network code is structured) a higher frame rate can make the network less responsive. Games like Quake are frame-rate limited (even at 90fps, on a good PC, you'll have some idle). Limitting the frame rate implies having a bit of time left over after each frame leaves some CPU idle which (depending on the OS too) can give a quite noticeable boost to the performance on a fast network such as a 100MB LAN. If the rendering process/thread is hogging as much CPU time as it can (3d rendering tends to be very CPU intensive), processing of network packets tends to get worse. This is usually most noticeable if the network communications makes use of a seperate thread or process, but I don't think Quake is structured like that - Quake seem to work as you say, polling the network between frames. The network code I've written for our work uses a seperate thread, and limiting the frame rate does help a little. Other network systems that I've done some system integration with, which use a seperate process for network communications on WinNT, leaving some CPU idle gave a VERY noticeable boost to network performance.
of course, very slow frame rates (like 25 fps) will again be counterproductive to the network, for games like Q3, as you say. I've found Q3 quite interesting to study, they seem to use 100% of the CPU no matter what the frame limit is - its 100% even if you limit the frame rate to 10. Presumably they continue to consume all CPU time with the game simulation and network.
Quake1 is GPL, if i remember correctly. Of course, they'll still be wanting to actually make some money off Quake3, but they'll probably open that up in a few years, when Carmack's newest creations are making Q3 look old.