Actually, I'm of the opinion it's due to the greater age of the average geek. Teens, 20s? Cola. 30s, 40s? Not every geek makes the switch, but you're more likely to be drinking coffee and abandoning the sugar as you get older. Just a statistical trend, but I suspect that's part of the reason for the switch to coffee as a prototypical nerd drink.
I honestly don't see any reason - and I'm going to bold this now, again - for THE VICE PRESIDENT OF AFFINITY MEDIA to flat out lie to everyone, only to have people scrutinize his statement with a fine-tooth comb and then have someone explode it as controversy and bad business practices. Hmm. Honestly, you have more trust in people than I do, and I consider myself a pretty strong optimist. Corporations, politicians, parents... they all lie at some point or another. They think they won't be caught, or they didn't think up a good way to spin the truth before the interview, so they lie reflexively when the question comes up. It happens, it will always happen. I've done it myself (In my defense, I was dead at the time</obscure joke>).
I'm a complete gadget whore. I have a DS, an iPod, my desktop, a laptop, and 2 linux servers. I'm in front of a computer 10-20 hours per day (wide variation). When I'm not at my computer, I'm often playing with my DS, my Wii, or listening to my iPod.
But I really don't miss them when they're gone. When I went to visit my father for a couple weeks, I only took books. He's a luddite; the computer I bought him was in a box for 2 years before he finally gave it away. He has a VCR with a few movies... half of them porn.
And I don't mind. I bring books. I draw. I have fun. And when I come back, I don't the 'addict rush' of sitting back on my computer. I really don't miss it when I'm gone. The only time I miss gadgets is when I'm bored... the book I'm reading is lame, everyone is busy, and my hand is tired from writing/drawing. Then I miss the gadgets. But not nearly as much as any other nerd I know.
I take comfort in that. I'll still be sane when the zombie war destroys civilization. As long as I loot the library first.
I agree. Except for one point... the entire theme of steampunk fantasy embraces the implausible complexity of steam engines, and extrapolates out to implusibility.
Steam engines were always cantankerous, requiring as much or more maintenance as helicopters do today (and helicopters have a downtime for repairs that about matches their flying time, which is insane). They were high maintenance, and high failure. Fast forward to the first computers... thousands of glass tubes, which had to be replaced endlessly because there was always SOME of them that were dying at any particular moment.
Steampunk isn't about practicality. It's about imagining a world where the practical never came about... where innovation was occurring so rapidly that we never took the time to make things work WELL, we were too busy implementing new ideas.
It's not so far fetched... take a look at computers. Innovation is happening so fast that we don't take the time to make it work well... we're just hitting new advances left and right so fast, we never the time to get it RIGHT before we're on to the next idea. These guns are like early 90's computers... so many new ideas, and rough edges all around.
Write Once, Run Anywhere will never happen for two reasons.
First, there are different utilities and features available to each operating system. Every developer that ignores these features and utilities in order to write a program once for all systems will be at a disadvantage relative to the person that writes a native app. In other words, the native app will run better than the generic app.
Second, people gain access to a flexible choice of operating systems, but the developers get locked into a proprietary language/framework. Again, limited choices means that for some (many?) problem domains, a different language/framework will be a better choice, and by denying themselves that choice, the developer loses a competetive advantage to another developer.
And that's ignoring the issue of just getting it to work as advertised... Java hasn't even gotten there, 15 years later. I'm sure a small subset of problems will work just great with Lina... but I don't think it will do any better than Java in the long run.
Email isn't bankrupt... some PEOPLE are. People overdose on anything... TV, drugs, food, and now email. Some idiots tie themselves to email, and have a fixation on replying instantly to any communication. They're the ones that are ill, not email. Admittedly, this addiction is widespread. But it's still a people problem, not a technological problem.
Virtual Rape will become a crime when owning virtual property is a law-sanctioned RIGHT. Right now it is a PRIVILEGE that people pay for. You pay Linden Labs to get your virtual property, to exist in their virtual world. That existence is a privilege you pay for, and it can be revoked at any time for any reason by Linden Labs.
This is similar to any business... you have no RIGHT to be there, just the privilege to do so if the owner allows it. That is why casinos can kick you out for any reason they like... they cannot arrest you or hurt you for counting cards or being a dick, but they can punt you from their property.
Now, let's imagine there is some future virtual world that is sanctioned and governed by law. It is your right to purchase 'property' there or to maintain your virtual presence. Once there are laws in effect that grant you the right to be there, then we will quickly see it become unlawful to harass someone when they are in their virtual world.
We have already seen this with services like the phone... in most states, there are actual laws that give you the right to own a phone as long as you pay your bill. The phone company can't arbitrarily deny you phone service just because you're unprofitable or something. The US government subsidized the deployment of phone lines to reach everyone. Having a phone is a right, though not as fundamental a right as things like free speech. Thus, if someone harasses you on the phone... calling you late at night, calling incessantly, etc... there are legal recourses you can take.
Once your virtual presence becomes a right protected by law, then virtual crime like harassment, rape, and theft will also become punishable by law.
Until then, anyone claiming that this was rape is an idiot.
What if I taped up a door so it wouldn't close, then broke in? The school is liable for their own security, so if I broke in using my taped door, that's their own fault!
Security IS the schools responsibility. But part of security is the rules, policies, and procedures set forth... 'lock the doors behind you', 'don't leave the windows open'... which equates to stuff like 'you can't use proxies'. If someone deliberately breaks a security rule... like leaving the back door to the school open so it's more convenient for them to get back in if they forget their key... then that is a punishable offence.
If I keep a door held open with a rock, that doesn't mean that I should whine about their lax security just because it didn't crush the rock and close anyway.
Now... that said, and despite a previous job as a sysadmin, I would like to see less of a focus on prosecuting students for stuff like this. It's wasteful... the students that do the most violating are likely to be the students most competant in computers, the ones we need the most now and in the future. Can't we get some kind of 'nerd-exemption' going, like all those jock-exemptions they use to keep their stupid football team competetive?
15 years worth of phone switches and high performance networking equipment, written in erlang. In fact, most of the calls you make, and some of the Internet traffic you receive, has passed through high performance, 5 9s uptime, massively parallel data switches written in erlang.
I am not certain it is better. But there are some possible reasons it is better:
It may be stable without any control inputs. Internal-fan lifting bodies tend to precess and flip without corrective control.
It may be resistant to bumping walls. The air flowing over the surface may push it away from obstructions, making it valuable for maneuvering in tight spaces.
I suspect it is less maneuverable, but more stable, than a contained propeller VTOL. This is an advantage in urban situations. But it's pure speculation... I don't know any more than you do.
The collider throws objects about the size of a grain of rice around. While each atom in object is far less energetic than a cosmic ray, the sum momentum of the entire lump is higher.
We don't even track bandwidth. I couldn't tell you who used the most bandwidth this month, and I have access to the databases that could store that info. We do keep track of connection history via PPPoE... I could tell you how long your DSL was connected to us.
But so far, bandwidth hasn't been an issue. Our DS3 isn't even 1/2 utilized at peak, so there's no need. Of course, we have under a thousand DSL customers so far... ahh, the joys of being a tiny, failing ISP trying to switch from dialup to broadband while competing with telcos.
And I've owned many other vacuums in the past as well. The Dyson is easier to empty, easier to manipulate (add extensions, use the hose, etc), and more reliable than any other vacuum I've ever used or owned. Honestly, I was pretty surprised at Consumer Report's mediocre ratings for the Dyson as well. I chalk it up to three things:
- They're nice to their vacuums. I suspect they don't try to vacuum up trash, paperclips, tacks, and other detritus. I've had my Dyson suck up things that stunned me... a normal bic lighter got sucked up without getting stuck. In fact, I've NEVER had anything stick inside yet, despite abusing it horribly. And if something did stick, the joins where they are likely to stick snap off easily.
- They don't test them for long. The only thing I've had to clean on my Dyson is the sweeper brush, about once or twice a year... long hairs get wrapped around it, and eventually it interferes with the belt that turns it. It's relatively easy to remove that rotating brush... MUCH easier than any other vacuum I've owned. The screws that hold it in are large so you can remove them with a coin, and there's only three parts... the plastic bottom, the brush itself, and the drive belt.
- They don't put a rating on how easy they are to empty. With the Dyson you just detach the container, hold it over the garbage... pull trigger... tap it to get the light dust out. Close it up. Compared to the dust, mess, and cost of bags and there is no comparison. Even compared with other bagless vacuums I've used, the Dyson is far easier to empty... many of them require you to lift and dump the container, or they don't seal well and let dust leak out. Other bagless vacuums often have filters you need to change for the light particulate dust.
Is Dyson perfect? Hardly. But I don't think the Consumer Reports tests are comprehensive enough to rate the things where Dyson is superior. I've had my Dyson for three years now, and I'm still quite satisfied.
First, let me say that I'm a Libertarian.
The best thing about this is that rich people create incentives for creativity and growth, and spending on luxury items just fuels that.
Think about the laptop maker, web designer, advertising agency -- all of the people who make a living off of the sale of just one of these. However, let me also state that this is completely fallacious reasoning. This is just the 'smashed-glass = good economy' fallacy repackaged. All those laptop makers, web designers, and advertising agencies are spending money creating a useless, inefficient product, when they could instead be creating a useful, efficient product.
Besides, someone who is dirt poor in Africa would say the same thing about you. Why do you need to spend an amount of money that would supply a lifetime of food on a computer in the first place?
In a perfect world, there would be no market for $1,000,000 laptops because everyone would be busy creating more wealth by curing diseases and solving energy crises. Since that's never going to happen, this is the next best thing. That said, the later argument is correct... there is a continuous line from practical to useless. In between are things like stereos and TVs... sure, they have SOME practical use (weather channel, news), but a lot of their use is pointless entertainment. At the extreme end we have pure trivialities, like jewelry and luxury sports cars. This million dollar laptop is pretty far toward the useless end. There's no one point along the chain where you can safely point and say 'THIS is practical, but THAT thing right next to it is IMPRACTICAL and sinful'. Anyone who claims they can draw that line between what is OK and what is sinful is ignorant or delusional. It is far more harmful to society to try to legislate sinful (luxury) spending than the actual luxuries themselves.
There's a long thread about how Zork deserves to be on the list.
There's another long thread about how Warcraft does not, since Dune II preceded it.
One of these threads is wrong, and I believe it to be the latter. The problem is that Zork was NOT the first text adventure... there were several that preceded it. Zork just refined them, and was a better and vastly more successful implementation of the idea. In the same vein, Warcraft is a better and far more successful refinement of the RTS genre that Dune II created.
First movers do not always deserve the prize... sometimes it's the person that first does it RIGHT. For example, I wouldn't be surprised if 20 years from now, World of Warcraft is heralded as the 'originator' of the MMO. Dozens will bring up examples like Ultima Online, or Everquest, or MUDs... but WoW will be the one everyone REMEMBERS. WoW will be the one that pop culture remembers. And thus, despite being late to the party, it will (likely... this IS the future I'm talking about, and nothing is certain) be the one that is recognized as the popularizer of the genre.
Similarly, Doom and Half Life are both seen as the beginning of the FPS genre, in different ways... despite being preceded by games like Wolfenstein and Rise of the Triad. Doom was the technical achievement: the creation of a 3d environment good enough for you to suspend disbelief. And Half Life was the artistic achievement: the creation of a shooter plot and world that was good enough to suspend disbelief. Neither was first, but on most 'best of' lists both are more likely to be listed than Wolfenstein 3D.
I've read many discussions of strong AI... how it'll be possible once we have computers that are as powerful as our mind. I disagree. I don't think we'll get strong AI until we have computers somewhere between 10 and 100 times as powerful as our minds, because it takes more computing power to CREATE a mind (develop, engineer, design, breed, whatever) than it does to RUN a mind.
Try designing a cellphone... ON a cellphone. Not gonna happen. Try designing a watch... using the watch's processing power. Unlikely. So until computers are a ton faster than necessary to run a strong AI, I don't think we'll have enough power to design an AI.
Hmm... maybe you just overlooked it, but if you want to learn Ruby, then read the source code for Rails. There's a ton of it, and it's relatively well written and easy to follow, with good commenting. It makes heavy use of Ruby-isms like polymorphic code. It's huge, and it works.
If you want to learn Rails, well... that's a bit harder. I recommend the Rails Cookbook... lots of good practical code in there. I don't know of a big, open source, Rails website that you can examine though. Haven't looked.
This is like saying "Alpine stereos are better" and buying the lowest model level alpine without comparing it to anything else in the price range, nobody who is going to be installing it themselves can be that stupid
Yes... yes, they can. You'd be amazed how much people equate PRODUCT quality with BRAND quality. It's a well known, and very frequently exploited, marketing strategy.
While the amount of fiber laid is underutilized by an order of magnitude or two, there is a far more limited ROUTING capacity. Existing routers would melt under the load of 10Gb per household in a large city all trying to download something through bittorrent... and that's even assuming all that dark fiber has any equipment at all on either end.
When you're willing to drop a few hundred million dollars on routing hardware for San Jose to light up all that fiber, you get back to me.
I've read several articles over the past couple years about this or that encryption method broken... can someone who has kept up let me know what is still safe? AES? I'm kinda lost, I just want the executive summary of 'use this, this, or this', rather than 'this isn't safe, that isn't safe'. I'm looking for a positive list (what still works) rather than a negative list (this was broken, that is no longer secure).
I've looked around on Google, but I keep finding negative articles rather than something listing the encryption methods that haven't yet been broken.
While some franchises were thrown away I'm sure, I think it's less a matter of 'hit that quarterly report', and more a matter of 'trying something new that didn't work out'.
Final Fantasy had several iterations that were pretty crappy. Seriously... Magical Girl transformations in 10.5? 8 was also a no-fly for me, though I hear others liked it.
Quake III was a multiplayer-only departure from the series... the single player was pretty crappy. Quake IV returned to the original series style, and improved it in many ways. It may have not been great in comparison to its contemporaries, but it was a far sight better than Quake 2.
Your rant is why developers fear to take risks, and keep doing repetitive sequels. Some series do die horrible deaths, killed by greedy publishers (Ultima, anyone), but others just try taking risks... some work, some don't. It's not always an indication of greed.
Gee... Blizzard, a big company, makes extremely good, genre defining games. But for some bizarre reason, they choose to only work on one game at a time, focusing on that one game to make it really good.
Crazy.
You know, and this is just a wild stab in the dark... maybe the quality of their games is because they only... no... no, that's crazy talk. I mean, EA develops tons of games at once, and their quality is...
They are being camped... but they're respawning so fast it's not an issue. So I had to wait 2 minutes to kill a bossman to finish a quest... oh no. It's obvious that Blizzard tweaked the respawn rates far higher than you'd normally see; whether this is a permanent feature of the Outlands, or a temporary measure, I don't know. It can be disconcerting to kill a big bad bossman... and 30 seconds later he's respawned behind me, beating me in the back. Of course, within a few seconds another group of players has attacked him and pulled him off because they need him.
So yes, it's crazy... but it's not frustrating. And some of it is truly spectacular... the bombing runs are some of the most (solo) fun I've had in WoW in ages.:-)
Sorry to go on a slight tangent, and this will probably hurt my karma, but... what do you propose to do to give these people in backward countries good jobs? Why aren't you opening your factory in Malasia and India and offering them good wages and short working hours?
Maybe because a factory that did that would probably go out of business in a very short time... driven out of business by the ones that are heartless, inhumane, and efficient.
All the posturing, talking, and aid-giving hasn't helped africa one fucking bit. But sweatshops are lifting China out of its hole... high-tech industries are opening plants elsewhere, because China's too expensive now. Not because it's communist or they were forced to be nice to workers because the government made them... but because demand for employees has pushed wages up to where other countries are now cheaper.
Yeah. China is losing factories to other asian countries because their wages and cost of land are too high.
All the legislation in the world hasn't done jack-shit for China, but economics doesn't care about politics... it just works. It may take 50 years, but it's better than pissing money down a hole. So you can keep on having faith in your 'intelligent design' theory of helping third world countries, and I'll keep on believing in my 'economic evolution' theory backed by real world evidence.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, I'm of the opinion it's due to the greater age of the average geek. Teens, 20s? Cola. 30s, 40s? Not every geek makes the switch, but you're more likely to be drinking coffee and abandoning the sugar as you get older. Just a statistical trend, but I suspect that's part of the reason for the switch to coffee as a prototypical nerd drink.
I'm a complete gadget whore. I have a DS, an iPod, my desktop, a laptop, and 2 linux servers. I'm in front of a computer 10-20 hours per day (wide variation). When I'm not at my computer, I'm often playing with my DS, my Wii, or listening to my iPod.
But I really don't miss them when they're gone. When I went to visit my father for a couple weeks, I only took books. He's a luddite; the computer I bought him was in a box for 2 years before he finally gave it away. He has a VCR with a few movies... half of them porn.
And I don't mind. I bring books. I draw. I have fun. And when I come back, I don't the 'addict rush' of sitting back on my computer. I really don't miss it when I'm gone. The only time I miss gadgets is when I'm bored... the book I'm reading is lame, everyone is busy, and my hand is tired from writing/drawing. Then I miss the gadgets. But not nearly as much as any other nerd I know.
I take comfort in that. I'll still be sane when the zombie war destroys civilization. As long as I loot the library first.
I agree. Except for one point... the entire theme of steampunk fantasy embraces the implausible complexity of steam engines, and extrapolates out to implusibility.
Steam engines were always cantankerous, requiring as much or more maintenance as helicopters do today (and helicopters have a downtime for repairs that about matches their flying time, which is insane). They were high maintenance, and high failure. Fast forward to the first computers... thousands of glass tubes, which had to be replaced endlessly because there was always SOME of them that were dying at any particular moment.
Steampunk isn't about practicality. It's about imagining a world where the practical never came about... where innovation was occurring so rapidly that we never took the time to make things work WELL, we were too busy implementing new ideas.
It's not so far fetched... take a look at computers. Innovation is happening so fast that we don't take the time to make it work well... we're just hitting new advances left and right so fast, we never the time to get it RIGHT before we're on to the next idea. These guns are like early 90's computers... so many new ideas, and rough edges all around.
Raven
Write Once, Run Anywhere will never happen for two reasons.
First, there are different utilities and features available to each operating system. Every developer that ignores these features and utilities in order to write a program once for all systems will be at a disadvantage relative to the person that writes a native app. In other words, the native app will run better than the generic app.
Second, people gain access to a flexible choice of operating systems, but the developers get locked into a proprietary language/framework. Again, limited choices means that for some (many?) problem domains, a different language/framework will be a better choice, and by denying themselves that choice, the developer loses a competetive advantage to another developer.
And that's ignoring the issue of just getting it to work as advertised... Java hasn't even gotten there, 15 years later. I'm sure a small subset of problems will work just great with Lina... but I don't think it will do any better than Java in the long run.
Raven
Email isn't bankrupt... some PEOPLE are. People overdose on anything... TV, drugs, food, and now email. Some idiots tie themselves to email, and have a fixation on replying instantly to any communication. They're the ones that are ill, not email. Admittedly, this addiction is widespread. But it's still a people problem, not a technological problem.
Raven
Virtual Rape will become a crime when owning virtual property is a law-sanctioned RIGHT. Right now it is a PRIVILEGE that people pay for. You pay Linden Labs to get your virtual property, to exist in their virtual world. That existence is a privilege you pay for, and it can be revoked at any time for any reason by Linden Labs.
This is similar to any business... you have no RIGHT to be there, just the privilege to do so if the owner allows it. That is why casinos can kick you out for any reason they like... they cannot arrest you or hurt you for counting cards or being a dick, but they can punt you from their property.
Now, let's imagine there is some future virtual world that is sanctioned and governed by law. It is your right to purchase 'property' there or to maintain your virtual presence. Once there are laws in effect that grant you the right to be there, then we will quickly see it become unlawful to harass someone when they are in their virtual world.
We have already seen this with services like the phone... in most states, there are actual laws that give you the right to own a phone as long as you pay your bill. The phone company can't arbitrarily deny you phone service just because you're unprofitable or something. The US government subsidized the deployment of phone lines to reach everyone. Having a phone is a right, though not as fundamental a right as things like free speech. Thus, if someone harasses you on the phone... calling you late at night, calling incessantly, etc... there are legal recourses you can take.
Once your virtual presence becomes a right protected by law, then virtual crime like harassment, rape, and theft will also become punishable by law.
Until then, anyone claiming that this was rape is an idiot.
What if I taped up a door so it wouldn't close, then broke in? The school is liable for their own security, so if I broke in using my taped door, that's their own fault!
Security IS the schools responsibility. But part of security is the rules, policies, and procedures set forth... 'lock the doors behind you', 'don't leave the windows open'... which equates to stuff like 'you can't use proxies'. If someone deliberately breaks a security rule... like leaving the back door to the school open so it's more convenient for them to get back in if they forget their key... then that is a punishable offence.
If I keep a door held open with a rock, that doesn't mean that I should whine about their lax security just because it didn't crush the rock and close anyway.
Now... that said, and despite a previous job as a sysadmin, I would like to see less of a focus on prosecuting students for stuff like this. It's wasteful... the students that do the most violating are likely to be the students most competant in computers, the ones we need the most now and in the future. Can't we get some kind of 'nerd-exemption' going, like all those jock-exemptions they use to keep their stupid football team competetive?
15 years worth of phone switches and high performance networking equipment, written in erlang. In fact, most of the calls you make, and some of the Internet traffic you receive, has passed through high performance, 5 9s uptime, massively parallel data switches written in erlang.
I am not certain it is better. But there are some possible reasons it is better:
It may be stable without any control inputs. Internal-fan lifting bodies tend to precess and flip without corrective control.
It may be resistant to bumping walls. The air flowing over the surface may push it away from obstructions, making it valuable for maneuvering in tight spaces.
I suspect it is less maneuverable, but more stable, than a contained propeller VTOL. This is an advantage in urban situations. But it's pure speculation... I don't know any more than you do.
The collider throws objects about the size of a grain of rice around. While each atom in object is far less energetic than a cosmic ray, the sum momentum of the entire lump is higher.
What, you think anyone uses their OWN credit card for this? Why do you think they're using exploits... they just use a stolen CC to signup.
:-)
I suspect the service doesn't do much repeat billing...
We don't even track bandwidth. I couldn't tell you who used the most bandwidth this month, and I have access to the databases that could store that info. We do keep track of connection history via PPPoE... I could tell you how long your DSL was connected to us.
But so far, bandwidth hasn't been an issue. Our DS3 isn't even 1/2 utilized at peak, so there's no need. Of course, we have under a thousand DSL customers so far... ahh, the joys of being a tiny, failing ISP trying to switch from dialup to broadband while competing with telcos.
And I've owned many other vacuums in the past as well. The Dyson is easier to empty, easier to manipulate (add extensions, use the hose, etc), and more reliable than any other vacuum I've ever used or owned. Honestly, I was pretty surprised at Consumer Report's mediocre ratings for the Dyson as well. I chalk it up to three things:
- They're nice to their vacuums. I suspect they don't try to vacuum up trash, paperclips, tacks, and other detritus. I've had my Dyson suck up things that stunned me... a normal bic lighter got sucked up without getting stuck. In fact, I've NEVER had anything stick inside yet, despite abusing it horribly. And if something did stick, the joins where they are likely to stick snap off easily.
- They don't test them for long. The only thing I've had to clean on my Dyson is the sweeper brush, about once or twice a year... long hairs get wrapped around it, and eventually it interferes with the belt that turns it. It's relatively easy to remove that rotating brush... MUCH easier than any other vacuum I've owned. The screws that hold it in are large so you can remove them with a coin, and there's only three parts... the plastic bottom, the brush itself, and the drive belt.
- They don't put a rating on how easy they are to empty. With the Dyson you just detach the container, hold it over the garbage... pull trigger... tap it to get the light dust out. Close it up. Compared to the dust, mess, and cost of bags and there is no comparison. Even compared with other bagless vacuums I've used, the Dyson is far easier to empty... many of them require you to lift and dump the container, or they don't seal well and let dust leak out. Other bagless vacuums often have filters you need to change for the light particulate dust.
Is Dyson perfect? Hardly. But I don't think the Consumer Reports tests are comprehensive enough to rate the things where Dyson is superior. I've had my Dyson for three years now, and I'm still quite satisfied.
Think about the laptop maker, web designer, advertising agency -- all of the people who make a living off of the sale of just one of these. However, let me also state that this is completely fallacious reasoning. This is just the 'smashed-glass = good economy' fallacy repackaged. All those laptop makers, web designers, and advertising agencies are spending money creating a useless, inefficient product, when they could instead be creating a useful, efficient product. Besides, someone who is dirt poor in Africa would say the same thing about you. Why do you need to spend an amount of money that would supply a lifetime of food on a computer in the first place?
In a perfect world, there would be no market for $1,000,000 laptops because everyone would be busy creating more wealth by curing diseases and solving energy crises. Since that's never going to happen, this is the next best thing. That said, the later argument is correct... there is a continuous line from practical to useless. In between are things like stereos and TVs... sure, they have SOME practical use (weather channel, news), but a lot of their use is pointless entertainment. At the extreme end we have pure trivialities, like jewelry and luxury sports cars. This million dollar laptop is pretty far toward the useless end. There's no one point along the chain where you can safely point and say 'THIS is practical, but THAT thing right next to it is IMPRACTICAL and sinful'. Anyone who claims they can draw that line between what is OK and what is sinful is ignorant or delusional. It is far more harmful to society to try to legislate sinful (luxury) spending than the actual luxuries themselves.
There's a long thread about how Zork deserves to be on the list.
There's another long thread about how Warcraft does not, since Dune II preceded it.
One of these threads is wrong, and I believe it to be the latter. The problem is that Zork was NOT the first text adventure... there were several that preceded it. Zork just refined them, and was a better and vastly more successful implementation of the idea. In the same vein, Warcraft is a better and far more successful refinement of the RTS genre that Dune II created.
First movers do not always deserve the prize... sometimes it's the person that first does it RIGHT. For example, I wouldn't be surprised if 20 years from now, World of Warcraft is heralded as the 'originator' of the MMO. Dozens will bring up examples like Ultima Online, or Everquest, or MUDs... but WoW will be the one everyone REMEMBERS. WoW will be the one that pop culture remembers. And thus, despite being late to the party, it will (likely... this IS the future I'm talking about, and nothing is certain) be the one that is recognized as the popularizer of the genre.
Similarly, Doom and Half Life are both seen as the beginning of the FPS genre, in different ways... despite being preceded by games like Wolfenstein and Rise of the Triad. Doom was the technical achievement: the creation of a 3d environment good enough for you to suspend disbelief. And Half Life was the artistic achievement: the creation of a shooter plot and world that was good enough to suspend disbelief. Neither was first, but on most 'best of' lists both are more likely to be listed than Wolfenstein 3D.
I've read many discussions of strong AI... how it'll be possible once we have computers that are as powerful as our mind. I disagree. I don't think we'll get strong AI until we have computers somewhere between 10 and 100 times as powerful as our minds, because it takes more computing power to CREATE a mind (develop, engineer, design, breed, whatever) than it does to RUN a mind.
Try designing a cellphone... ON a cellphone. Not gonna happen. Try designing a watch... using the watch's processing power. Unlikely. So until computers are a ton faster than necessary to run a strong AI, I don't think we'll have enough power to design an AI.
Hmm... maybe you just overlooked it, but if you want to learn Ruby, then read the source code for Rails. There's a ton of it, and it's relatively well written and easy to follow, with good commenting. It makes heavy use of Ruby-isms like polymorphic code. It's huge, and it works.
If you want to learn Rails, well... that's a bit harder. I recommend the Rails Cookbook... lots of good practical code in there. I don't know of a big, open source, Rails website that you can examine though. Haven't looked.
Yes... yes, they can. You'd be amazed how much people equate PRODUCT quality with BRAND quality. It's a well known, and very frequently exploited, marketing strategy.
While the amount of fiber laid is underutilized by an order of magnitude or two, there is a far more limited ROUTING capacity. Existing routers would melt under the load of 10Gb per household in a large city all trying to download something through bittorrent... and that's even assuming all that dark fiber has any equipment at all on either end.
When you're willing to drop a few hundred million dollars on routing hardware for San Jose to light up all that fiber, you get back to me.
I've read several articles over the past couple years about this or that encryption method broken... can someone who has kept up let me know what is still safe? AES? I'm kinda lost, I just want the executive summary of 'use this, this, or this', rather than 'this isn't safe, that isn't safe'. I'm looking for a positive list (what still works) rather than a negative list (this was broken, that is no longer secure).
I've looked around on Google, but I keep finding negative articles rather than something listing the encryption methods that haven't yet been broken.
Thanks.
While some franchises were thrown away I'm sure, I think it's less a matter of 'hit that quarterly report', and more a matter of 'trying something new that didn't work out'.
Final Fantasy had several iterations that were pretty crappy. Seriously... Magical Girl transformations in 10.5? 8 was also a no-fly for me, though I hear others liked it.
Quake III was a multiplayer-only departure from the series... the single player was pretty crappy. Quake IV returned to the original series style, and improved it in many ways. It may have not been great in comparison to its contemporaries, but it was a far sight better than Quake 2.
Your rant is why developers fear to take risks, and keep doing repetitive sequels. Some series do die horrible deaths, killed by greedy publishers (Ultima, anyone), but others just try taking risks... some work, some don't. It's not always an indication of greed.
Gee... Blizzard, a big company, makes extremely good, genre defining games. But for some bizarre reason, they choose to only work on one game at a time, focusing on that one game to make it really good.
Crazy.
You know, and this is just a wild stab in the dark... maybe the quality of their games is because they only... no... no, that's crazy talk. I mean, EA develops tons of games at once, and their quality is...
Hmm.
They are being camped... but they're respawning so fast it's not an issue. So I had to wait 2 minutes to kill a bossman to finish a quest... oh no. It's obvious that Blizzard tweaked the respawn rates far higher than you'd normally see; whether this is a permanent feature of the Outlands, or a temporary measure, I don't know. It can be disconcerting to kill a big bad bossman... and 30 seconds later he's respawned behind me, beating me in the back. Of course, within a few seconds another group of players has attacked him and pulled him off because they need him.
:-)
So yes, it's crazy... but it's not frustrating. And some of it is truly spectacular... the bombing runs are some of the most (solo) fun I've had in WoW in ages.
The Raven
Sorry to go on a slight tangent, and this will probably hurt my karma, but... what do you propose to do to give these people in backward countries good jobs? Why aren't you opening your factory in Malasia and India and offering them good wages and short working hours?
Maybe because a factory that did that would probably go out of business in a very short time... driven out of business by the ones that are heartless, inhumane, and efficient.
All the posturing, talking, and aid-giving hasn't helped africa one fucking bit. But sweatshops are lifting China out of its hole... high-tech industries are opening plants elsewhere, because China's too expensive now. Not because it's communist or they were forced to be nice to workers because the government made them... but because demand for employees has pushed wages up to where other countries are now cheaper.
Yeah. China is losing factories to other asian countries because their wages and cost of land are too high.
All the legislation in the world hasn't done jack-shit for China, but economics doesn't care about politics... it just works. It may take 50 years, but it's better than pissing money down a hole. So you can keep on having faith in your 'intelligent design' theory of helping third world countries, and I'll keep on believing in my 'economic evolution' theory backed by real world evidence.