...to do what I do. Date out of the marketing department.;) A lot of them are geek-compatible, and relate to things like "Office Space." I recently dated a great gal who did IBM marketing and not only had heard of Linux but asked me to install it on her laptop. And she was cute. MY LONESOME BRETHREN, IT IS INDEED POSSIBLE!;)
Here's a good one. You LIKE it when Windows pauses your cursor while it's busy with something else? On a Mac you will NEVER experience much of a UI delay, not nearly as much as I notice on Windows, in any event. Macs have ALWAYS prioritized the UI experience. Even the first Mac prioritized the pointer back when Windows 3.1's pointer had a flickering sprite that they called a mouse pointer...
Don't you have a mcafee virus scan or spybot search to run or something? Yeah, when you get tired of that (and if your time is worth anything- mine is), try the "extreme" 500 buck Mac Mini. If that puts a dent in your budget... just think that you could probably resell it on eBay. Total risk to you: Probably a hundred bucks or so.
Yes, as a person who uses a Windows laptop all day at work and troubleshoots and repairs countless friends' and family members' PC machines, I freely admit that I AM an arrogant Mac user. You would be, too.
Regarding your other responses... 1) It's worth the small fee. 2) I know, and I know. 3) News to me. My bad. 4) Admittedly, no. But I've googled and tried what I could, and from my informal sampling, it really kicked ass IMHO. 5) Mostly I was trying to make the point that Windows far from dominates this little market.::snicker::
Lo and behold, WoW is teaching me basic econ...
on
Got Game
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Within the context of the World of Warcraft auction house and the/2 trade channel, I find myself learning the basic skills of supply and demand, negotiating a price on an item, marketing, etc. etc... I've actually never had this much practice negotiating prices in my whole life. I've found that the more data you have to back up your price point, the better... just like in real life (for you WoW'ers out there, look up LootLink and Auctioneer for some great in-game info) In fact, I'm getting pretty wrapped up in finding good deals (cheap buyouts) and doing turnaround sales. Which is strange, since I'm pretty much a geek and not a sales guy, but I'm actually doing OK at this. Lastly, I realized that I needed an angel investor to REALLY start earning the G's (just like in real life!), so I had 2 guildies lend me 50 gold each and that has seriously improved my profit margins, I will be paying them back soon...
This may sound funny but this all seems based on actual business principles
Funny, you'd think "stealing" would be easier/better on PC's... On this OS X machine we have the following tools:
1) Acquisition. All the search hits with none of the spyware, plus a snazzy interface. 2) Azureus. Everyman's BitTorrent client (only gripe is the high CPU usage) 3) eetee. Interesting p2p app. No spyware. 4) HandBrake. Easiest-to-use DVD ripper in existence, on any platform. 5) Many other p2p clients in various levels of development... all with no spyware
1) There is the basic money you're paying your ISP every month. 2) There is the time you're taking to search for and download a song. Don't forget the exponential time it would take to get an entire album- the most popular tracks are always easier to get and few people share albums as one file. 3) There is the extra time you're taking when the song you downloaded has bad tags/is shitty quality/is fake/etc. (i.e., zero quality control) 4) There is the cost in bandwidth while you are downloading (I can't fire up World of Warcraft, for example, due to higher latency, and in some cases my Vonage connection may be shitty). Don't forget that most p2p apps (especially Bittorrent) credit you when you share out your own stuff, adding to the bandwidth cost. Also don't forget that a movie download takes forever and hogs your connection for that entire time. 5) There is the management overhead in managing a music/media library and making it more accessible, etc.
So basically, if your time is worth more than shit (and mine is), you will usually consider an online music-store purchase. I have a huge amount of media I've accumulated (some purchased, some painstakingly pieced together) and I would say that the effort it takes me to manage it is also huge- but I love doing it, I love music and movies. And so, even though I have Acquisition, Bittorrent, etc. at the ready, what usually ends up happening is this:
1) either I purchase something from the iTunes store after initial frustration at being unable to find a decent-quality version of it, and then decrypt it with JHymn so I can access it from my Roku Soundbridge (did I mention I love music?), or 2) I hop on Netflix and order up a movie that I can't find online or that would hog my bandwidth for too long. Movie shows up in 2 days or so.
In either of the latter cases, I "caved" into the legal procurement model! How about that!
...and any other possible computer game with roleplaying elements. Dungeon Siege? Jesus. There are some big sellers here. If, statistically speaking, they wish to include the dumb-jock element (who tend to love watching and playing sports and loathe anything remotely resembling an RPG, or even a computer, for that matter) and disenfranchise the smart-creative-gamer element (who tend to not be a huge fan of sports and love imaginative gaming stuff), be my guest. I would just love to see who is the more innovative problem-solver in battle if all they have are people who only know how to brute-force a problem.
Please mod parent down. My browser fucked up and this became a double-post (see following post that is nearly identical but not quite). My bad (and terrible form on my part!)
1) Run a file search on Windows. Go get a coffee and then see the results. Realize that you can only search on basic attributes of the file, like name/dates/raw content.
2) Run a file search on OS X. Click your heels twice and then see the results. Still, you're limited to some basic attributes.
Some months (or years, in the case of WinFS) from now...
3) Run a file search on WinFS. In theory you get hits pretty damn quickly, if they ever finish this technology. I'm not sure yet what extra file info you'll be able to search on, but I imagine it's more than the basics.
4) Run a file search on OS X Tiger. Not only is your search blindingly fast, but you can search on arbitrary file metadata (it will index things like EXIF data, ID3 tags etc). Also, you can save stock searches which will automatically update when new matches appear in the FS. I believe this technology was brought over with BeOS coders.
I am so used to the OS X file search speed and Mail.app search speed that on my work Windows laptop I was forced to buy X1.com's search tool to get around the incredibly annoying (when you're not desensitized to it) delay when searching in either Windows Explorer or Outlook. The market for this utility should frankly not even exist. It should be the responsibility of the OS to help you find things as quickly as possible, and it should have been done YESTERDAY. I mean Jesus, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to embed something like a SQLite engine in your email client code.
I'm glad that Microsoft is finally getting around to this (someday) but in the meantime I will be quite happy when Apple's Tiger shows up on my doorstep early this summer.
1) Run a file search on Windows. Go get a coffee and then see the results. Realize that you can only search on basic attributes of the file, like name/dates/raw content. 2) Run a file search on OS X. Click your heels twice and then see the results. Still, you're limited to some basic attributes.
Some months (or years) from now... 3) Run a file search on WinFS. In theory you get hits pretty damn quickly, if they ever finish this technology. I'm not sure yet what extra file info you'll be able to search on. 4) Run a file search on OS X Tiger. Not only is your search blindingly fast, but you can search on arbitrary file metadata. Also, you can save stock searches which will automatically update when new matches appear in the FS. I believe this technology was brought over with BeOS coders.
I am so used to the OS X file search speed and Mail.app search speed that on my work Windows laptop I was forced to buy X1.com's search tool to get around the incredibly annoying (when you're not desensitized to it) delay when searching in either Windows Explorer or Outlook. The market for this utility should frankly not even exist. It should be the responsibility of the OS to help you find things as quickly as possible, and it should have been done YESTERDAY. I mean Jesus, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to embed something like a SQLite engine in your email client code.
I'm glad that Microsoft is finally getting around to this (someday) but in the meantime I will be quite happy when Apple's Tiger shows up on my doorstep early this summer.
On the other hand, what if it had some very low noise? Perhaps something recorded a few hundred yards from a beach? Something subtle and minimalist? Does it become patentable then?
Anything with nearly zero information content (via compression) shouldn't be patentable, but this is such a nerdy testing-the-limits-of-the-system thing to do that I can't help but watch.
Windowsland: Today: Partly viral, chance of spyware in the evening. Run Windows Update and reboot. Tomorrow: Unpatched viral storm expected! Leave your Internet disconnected. Run Windows Update and... ah, nevermind
Macland: Today: Not a virus in the sky. Security update and a chance of reboot. Nothing urgent however. Jobs doppler is picking up some activity on the west coast Tomorrow: Sunny interface, clear connections, low ping. Rumor flurries in the evening
I'm playing World of Warcraft lately (lvl33 elven hunter), which is not that bad a way to spend gaming time, if you have some free time in your life to begin with. Fun stuff for the most part.
But I wish there were even more creative (and epic) quests in the game. I want to be on some quest where I HAVE TO go to some holy fire pit or something, in just 1 place in the game world, in order to forge some insane weapon (with ingredients procured with difficulty already), I have to fight some big mothers on the way who yell all sorts of intimidating/funny taunts as we fight, I want to literally be yelling at the screen as i charge valiantly into battle with my compatriots, I want MORE and BETTER battle animations and more in-game taunts and emotes (WoW is already pretty great with these, but it just makes me want MORE), I want to be able to pat the ass of the guy who just saved mine like they do in football games, I want to be able to pat gnomes on the head affectionately (maybe give them the ability to kick me in the shin in order to keep things balanced), I want to be able to taunt by waving my crazy Steel Fishing Rod of Death around my head threateningly, I want to be able to hug people in-game, etc.
Actually, Blizzard, don't bother with these things, your fun game threatens my having-a-life enough as it is;)
It took Europe (and the rest of the world) YEARS to realize that toothless agreements made with a certain German tyrant were ineffective and diplomacy had to give way to the use of force.
This is why there will always come a time when force becomes necessary (same as with human-human interactions), although we would obviously try to keep this to a minimum.
There will also come times when a country that believes that it is in the right (even to the disagreement of others), and has the bravery and might to make things right, does so;) This is also not unlike relations down at the person-to-person level. History will hopefully show that this whole Iraq thing, for example, wasn't a mistake, just a "short-term cost to achieve long-term gain" decision.
In any event, I wish that idealists would please give up their pipe dreams of world peace through diplomatic means only. It won't happen. As long as there will be violence in our society (bar fights, spouse abuse, child abuse, violent crime), there will be idiots in power that must be stopped with the use of force.
See, although I have an Ivy League degree, psych major and CS minor... I'm supposedly quite a smart guy... I pulled a stint in the US Air Force, once upon a time. Let me tell you a little bit about Air Force basic training.
When you're in USAF Basic Training (Lackland AFB, Texas), one of the duties you are expected to perform regularly (and impeccably) is Dorm Guard.
You'd do Dorm Guard for a half hour. Your turn could come at any time of day. If it was in the middle of the night, the previous Dorm Guard would wake you, you'd go relieve him, and then after you were done yawning for a half hour (hopefully unchallenged) you'd wake up the next one and go back to bed.
Your duties as Dorm Guard include making sure that anyone who wants in, has the proper identification/authorization, before you open the door. Now, there is a series of steps you have to follow, before you can let someone in. All of these are taken very seriously. These steps are posted *right next to the door*, and the TI even tells you to go ahead and (still with me?)...put your finger... on each step, as you go through the security checks. I know, you're thinking, what is so damn hard about that.
If you failed to perform the steps properly, bad things would happen. You would get a U ("unsatisfactory") for the week, which was bad because 3 U's and you'd get "recycled", meaning you'd have to switch to a different "flight" and stay in Basic longer. Oh, and you'd get quite an ass-chewing. In front of everyone. Suffice it to say there was a lot of pressure not to mess up, but that wasn't the worst of it...
These TI's would pull all sorts of shit to try to trip you up. They'd show an ID with Mickey Mouse as the picture. With a dead-serious face, they'd show an ID with a false name like Ivana Koknballs (you couldn't laugh). They'd show an ID that expired in 1945. Etc. And if you were a little slow, fuggedaboutit. The worst thing, they'd start yelling. Sometimes even kicking the door. "Let me the hell in! LET ME IN! Airman, I'm going to send you to KP duty all weekend unless you open this door RIGHT THIS GODDAMN SECOND!" You were supposed to ignore it and do the steps. If you were successful, you were fine.
It was the yelling that got to me. Every time. Even though the steps were RIGHT THERE IN FRONT OF YOUR FACE, when a TI with the wide-brimmed hat is there, yelling red-faced and going full-force at the door, and you have to be firm and check all these things... I would constantly fuck it up. And then the REAL ass-chewing began. It got to a point where I would trade Dorm Guard for other duties- which was also a general Basic Training strategy to keep your nose clean- trade what you're good at for what you're not.
Anyway, I still got recycled for 2 weeks, eventually. But after that I was fine. Sure taught me that being a smartypants was NOT everything...
I read a few of these guys posts and determined 4 things.
1) He has no sense of discretion and a disturbing air of entitlement 2) Having Microsoft on his resume, he really had NO clue how lucky he was to even get a job there (and how careful he should have been in Month 1, not to mention Months 2-12)... easy come, easy go 3) I have just become as useless as most bloggers by burning work time to read his blog 4) That rat bastard wasted his opportunity to pick up hot Seattle geek-compatible chicks with the "Actually, I work at Google" pick-up line. Man, I'd almost kill for that.
Let's get back to work, people. Nothing to see here, move along...
I totally understand. But while my geeky friend was blabbing about MCA, I was trying to convey my awe because the Mac OS (at the time, and before the onslaught of nubile women started beating down my door*) was THE MOST AMAZING thing I had ever seen in my entire short life. I mean literally, this thing existed when green-on-black terminal-esque interfaces were still in vogue (think: IBM PC XT with DOS)
Yeah, there was no Mac expansion bus until NuBus with the Mac II in '87. (I've seriously been using Macs consistently since the 128k Mac Plus in 12/84.)
But my friend's point at the time was along the lines of, "Only REAL computers have expansion buses". My retort of "Duude, but you have to check out this mouse thing, and the windows and menus. And it has a 4 VOICE DIGITIZED SOUND chip!" seemed to fall on deaf ears because it wasn't as buzzword-friendly.
Even at the tender age of 11-12, REAL geeks are already having architecture arguments;) (thankfully, I seem to have adjusted better than my friend)
I can't help feeling that some small percentage of this type of back-and-forth is something like a junior-high whiny geek arguing about how the Micro Channel bus architecture is better than ISA and that , incidentally, Apples are utterly irrelevant....Oh, wait. That geek was at one time a friend of mine, and this was circa 1985, and this was an actual discussion.;) (hi, don ulrich! i still use a Mac, and Apple still exists! where's your precious PS/2 micro-channel NOW?!?! nyaaah, nyaaah!!)
While you're patching your lovely Windows box and doing the reboot parade, why not switch over to your Mac Mini and catch up on some Ruby tutorials? =)
I've seen the reluctance (hell, I've seen it in myself... I've been a steadfast Mac user since 1984, even during the "dark years"* [1993-1997]) and I've also seen the light.
I sincerely hope that the Mini changes some creaky minds, if only (and this is the usual litany these days) to provide MORE STIMULATING COMPETITION for that maker-of-game-machine-or-sql-server-OS'es, Microsoft!
*By the way, the apple "dark days" were completely manufactured by the media, as the real problem was that the Apple clones were stealing bottom line from Apple, Mac marketshare was actually INCREASING, yet the media insisted on focusing only on Apple. Leading Steve to kill off the clones. Gil Amelio was still a poor CEO, however...
A) No spam at work. I guess the intranet monkeys who work for Deloitte & Touche are doing SOMEthing right.
B) No spam at home. After getting fed up, I redirected my spam-infested email address to an autoreply which posed a simple riddle to determine my new email address, that humans who knew me could figure out but not machines. My new email address is owned by my domain, and THAT in turn gets redirected to my GMail account. When I picked the account, I made sure it wasn't easily guessable, and longer than a few characters... and when I need to enter in an email address on ANY site online, I use a mailinator.com disposable email address if at ALL possible. Hey, no spam at all! Zilch! How about that? Why is this so hard in this day and age???
Maybe I should start an antispam consulting practice. Clean all this shit up real fast...
Come back here in a few months, after a few hundred (or maybe a few dozen) more postings to your site. Bogged down yet?
After all, I bet Slashdot would have been fine using just TEXT FILES... at least in the first few weeks or so.
Indexes are why databases exist. And indexes take a huge heap of data, and prevent you from having to examine every little blade of hay every time you're looking for a needle.
Slashdot Mirror
...to do what I do. Date out of the marketing department. ;) A lot of them are geek-compatible, and relate to things like "Office Space." I recently dated a great gal who did IBM marketing and not only had heard of Linux but asked me to install it on her laptop. And she was cute. MY LONESOME BRETHREN, IT IS INDEED POSSIBLE! ;)
Here's a good one. You LIKE it when Windows pauses your cursor while it's busy with something else? On a Mac you will NEVER experience much of a UI delay, not nearly as much as I notice on Windows, in any event. Macs have ALWAYS prioritized the UI experience. Even the first Mac prioritized the pointer back when Windows 3.1's pointer had a flickering sprite that they called a mouse pointer...
Don't you have a mcafee virus scan or spybot search to run or something? Yeah, when you get tired of that (and if your time is worth anything- mine is), try the "extreme" 500 buck Mac Mini. If that puts a dent in your budget... just think that you could probably resell it on eBay. Total risk to you: Probably a hundred bucks or so.
::snicker::
Yes, as a person who uses a Windows laptop all day at work and troubleshoots and repairs countless friends' and family members' PC machines, I freely admit that I AM an arrogant Mac user. You would be, too.
Regarding your other responses...
1) It's worth the small fee.
2) I know, and I know.
3) News to me. My bad.
4) Admittedly, no. But I've googled and tried what I could, and from my informal sampling, it really kicked ass IMHO.
5) Mostly I was trying to make the point that Windows far from dominates this little market.
Within the context of the World of Warcraft auction house and the /2 trade channel, I find myself learning the basic skills of supply and demand, negotiating a price on an item, marketing, etc. etc... I've actually never had this much practice negotiating prices in my whole life. I've found that the more data you have to back up your price point, the better... just like in real life (for you WoW'ers out there, look up LootLink and Auctioneer for some great in-game info) In fact, I'm getting pretty wrapped up in finding good deals (cheap buyouts) and doing turnaround sales. Which is strange, since I'm pretty much a geek and not a sales guy, but I'm actually doing OK at this. Lastly, I realized that I needed an angel investor to REALLY start earning the G's (just like in real life!), so I had 2 guildies lend me 50 gold each and that has seriously improved my profit margins, I will be paying them back soon...
This may sound funny but this all seems based on actual business principles
Funny, you'd think "stealing" would be easier/better on PC's... On this OS X machine we have the following tools:
1) Acquisition. All the search hits with none of the spyware, plus a snazzy interface.
2) Azureus. Everyman's BitTorrent client (only gripe is the high CPU usage)
3) eetee. Interesting p2p app. No spyware.
4) HandBrake. Easiest-to-use DVD ripper in existence, on any platform.
5) Many other p2p clients in various levels of development... all with no spyware
Still snickering at the Windows holdouts...
I simply cannot imagine someone being that detached from reality...
1) There is the basic money you're paying your ISP every month.
2) There is the time you're taking to search for and download a song. Don't forget the exponential time it would take to get an entire album- the most popular tracks are always easier to get and few people share albums as one file.
3) There is the extra time you're taking when the song you downloaded has bad tags/is shitty quality/is fake/etc. (i.e., zero quality control)
4) There is the cost in bandwidth while you are downloading (I can't fire up World of Warcraft, for example, due to higher latency, and in some cases my Vonage connection may be shitty). Don't forget that most p2p apps (especially Bittorrent) credit you when you share out your own stuff, adding to the bandwidth cost. Also don't forget that a movie download takes forever and hogs your connection for that entire time.
5) There is the management overhead in managing a music/media library and making it more accessible, etc.
So basically, if your time is worth more than shit (and mine is), you will usually consider an online music-store purchase. I have a huge amount of media I've accumulated (some purchased, some painstakingly pieced together) and I would say that the effort it takes me to manage it is also huge- but I love doing it, I love music and movies. And so, even though I have Acquisition, Bittorrent, etc. at the ready, what usually ends up happening is this:
1) either I purchase something from the iTunes store after initial frustration at being unable to find a decent-quality version of it, and then decrypt it with JHymn so I can access it from my Roku Soundbridge (did I mention I love music?), or
2) I hop on Netflix and order up a movie that I can't find online or that would hog my bandwidth for too long. Movie shows up in 2 days or so.
In either of the latter cases, I "caved" into the legal procurement model! How about that!
...and any other possible computer game with roleplaying elements. Dungeon Siege? Jesus. There are some big sellers here. If, statistically speaking, they wish to include the dumb-jock element (who tend to love watching and playing sports and loathe anything remotely resembling an RPG, or even a computer, for that matter) and disenfranchise the smart-creative-gamer element (who tend to not be a huge fan of sports and love imaginative gaming stuff), be my guest. I would just love to see who is the more innovative problem-solver in battle if all they have are people who only know how to brute-force a problem.
Please mod parent down. My browser fucked up and this became a double-post (see following post that is nearly identical but not quite). My bad (and terrible form on my part!)
Ahahahaha. Let's review.
1) Run a file search on Windows. Go get a coffee and then see the results. Realize that you can only search on basic attributes of the file, like name/dates/raw content.
2) Run a file search on OS X. Click your heels twice and then see the results. Still, you're limited to some basic attributes.
Some months (or years, in the case of WinFS) from now...
3) Run a file search on WinFS. In theory you get hits pretty damn quickly, if they ever finish this technology. I'm not sure yet what extra file info you'll be able to search on, but I imagine it's more than the basics.
4) Run a file search on OS X Tiger. Not only is your search blindingly fast, but you can search on arbitrary file metadata (it will index things like EXIF data, ID3 tags etc). Also, you can save stock searches which will automatically update when new matches appear in the FS. I believe this technology was brought over with BeOS coders.
I am so used to the OS X file search speed and Mail.app search speed that on my work Windows laptop I was forced to buy X1.com's search tool to get around the incredibly annoying (when you're not desensitized to it) delay when searching in either Windows Explorer or Outlook. The market for this utility should frankly not even exist. It should be the responsibility of the OS to help you find things as quickly as possible, and it should have been done YESTERDAY. I mean Jesus, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to embed something like a SQLite engine in your email client code.
I'm glad that Microsoft is finally getting around to this (someday) but in the meantime I will be quite happy when Apple's Tiger shows up on my doorstep early this summer.
Ahahahaha. Let's review.
1) Run a file search on Windows. Go get a coffee and then see the results. Realize that you can only search on basic attributes of the file, like name/dates/raw content.
2) Run a file search on OS X. Click your heels twice and then see the results. Still, you're limited to some basic attributes.
Some months (or years) from now...
3) Run a file search on WinFS. In theory you get hits pretty damn quickly, if they ever finish this technology. I'm not sure yet what extra file info you'll be able to search on.
4) Run a file search on OS X Tiger. Not only is your search blindingly fast, but you can search on arbitrary file metadata. Also, you can save stock searches which will automatically update when new matches appear in the FS. I believe this technology was brought over with BeOS coders.
I am so used to the OS X file search speed and Mail.app search speed that on my work Windows laptop I was forced to buy X1.com's search tool to get around the incredibly annoying (when you're not desensitized to it) delay when searching in either Windows Explorer or Outlook. The market for this utility should frankly not even exist. It should be the responsibility of the OS to help you find things as quickly as possible, and it should have been done YESTERDAY. I mean Jesus, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to embed something like a SQLite engine in your email client code.
I'm glad that Microsoft is finally getting around to this (someday) but in the meantime I will be quite happy when Apple's Tiger shows up on my doorstep early this summer.
No.
On the other hand, what if it had some very low noise? Perhaps something recorded a few hundred yards from a beach? Something subtle and minimalist? Does it become patentable then?
Anything with nearly zero information content (via compression) shouldn't be patentable, but this is such a nerdy testing-the-limits-of-the-system thing to do that I can't help but watch.
Windowsland:
Today: Partly viral, chance of spyware in the evening. Run Windows Update and reboot.
Tomorrow: Unpatched viral storm expected! Leave your Internet disconnected. Run Windows Update and... ah, nevermind
Macland:
Today: Not a virus in the sky. Security update and a chance of reboot. Nothing urgent however. Jobs doppler is picking up some activity on the west coast
Tomorrow: Sunny interface, clear connections, low ping. Rumor flurries in the evening
Ah. So I haven't seen these because I'm 1) not a paladin, 2) not a blacksmith, and 3) level 33.
Looking forward to more interesting times in the game in a month or two, then =)
(incidentally, I never thought I'd be willing to pay a subscription fee for a game... I stand corrected)
I'm playing World of Warcraft lately (lvl33 elven hunter), which is not that bad a way to spend gaming time, if you have some free time in your life to begin with. Fun stuff for the most part.
;)
But I wish there were even more creative (and epic) quests in the game. I want to be on some quest where I HAVE TO go to some holy fire pit or something, in just 1 place in the game world, in order to forge some insane weapon (with ingredients procured with difficulty already), I have to fight some big mothers on the way who yell all sorts of intimidating/funny taunts as we fight, I want to literally be yelling at the screen as i charge valiantly into battle with my compatriots, I want MORE and BETTER battle animations and more in-game taunts and emotes (WoW is already pretty great with these, but it just makes me want MORE), I want to be able to pat the ass of the guy who just saved mine like they do in football games, I want to be able to pat gnomes on the head affectionately (maybe give them the ability to kick me in the shin in order to keep things balanced), I want to be able to taunt by waving my crazy Steel Fishing Rod of Death around my head threateningly, I want to be able to hug people in-game, etc.
Actually, Blizzard, don't bother with these things, your fun game threatens my having-a-life enough as it is
What's that old adage about catching more flies?
;) This is also not unlike relations down at the person-to-person level. History will hopefully show that this whole Iraq thing, for example, wasn't a mistake, just a "short-term cost to achieve long-term gain" decision.
It took Europe (and the rest of the world) YEARS to realize that toothless agreements made with a certain German tyrant were ineffective and diplomacy had to give way to the use of force.
This is why there will always come a time when force becomes necessary (same as with human-human interactions), although we would obviously try to keep this to a minimum.
There will also come times when a country that believes that it is in the right (even to the disagreement of others), and has the bravery and might to make things right, does so
In any event, I wish that idealists would please give up their pipe dreams of world peace through diplomatic means only. It won't happen. As long as there will be violence in our society (bar fights, spouse abuse, child abuse, violent crime), there will be idiots in power that must be stopped with the use of force.
This article made me laugh. I have an anecdote.
...put your finger... on each step, as you go through the security checks. I know, you're thinking, what is so damn hard about that.
See, although I have an Ivy League degree, psych major and CS minor... I'm supposedly quite a smart guy... I pulled a stint in the US Air Force, once upon a time. Let me tell you a little bit about Air Force basic training.
When you're in USAF Basic Training (Lackland AFB, Texas), one of the duties you are expected to perform regularly (and impeccably) is Dorm Guard.
You'd do Dorm Guard for a half hour. Your turn could come at any time of day. If it was in the middle of the night, the previous Dorm Guard would wake you, you'd go relieve him, and then after you were done yawning for a half hour (hopefully unchallenged) you'd wake up the next one and go back to bed.
Your duties as Dorm Guard include making sure that anyone who wants in, has the proper identification/authorization, before you open the door. Now, there is a series of steps you have to follow, before you can let someone in. All of these are taken very seriously. These steps are posted *right next to the door*, and the TI even tells you to go ahead and (still with me?)
If you failed to perform the steps properly, bad things would happen. You would get a U ("unsatisfactory") for the week, which was bad because 3 U's and you'd get "recycled", meaning you'd have to switch to a different "flight" and stay in Basic longer. Oh, and you'd get quite an ass-chewing. In front of everyone. Suffice it to say there was a lot of pressure not to mess up, but that wasn't the worst of it...
These TI's would pull all sorts of shit to try to trip you up. They'd show an ID with Mickey Mouse as the picture. With a dead-serious face, they'd show an ID with a false name like Ivana Koknballs (you couldn't laugh). They'd show an ID that expired in 1945. Etc. And if you were a little slow, fuggedaboutit. The worst thing, they'd start yelling. Sometimes even kicking the door. "Let me the hell in! LET ME IN! Airman, I'm going to send you to KP duty all weekend unless you open this door RIGHT THIS GODDAMN SECOND!" You were supposed to ignore it and do the steps. If you were successful, you were fine.
It was the yelling that got to me. Every time. Even though the steps were RIGHT THERE IN FRONT OF YOUR FACE, when a TI with the wide-brimmed hat is there, yelling red-faced and going full-force at the door, and you have to be firm and check all these things... I would constantly fuck it up. And then the REAL ass-chewing began. It got to a point where I would trade Dorm Guard for other duties- which was also a general Basic Training strategy to keep your nose clean- trade what you're good at for what you're not.
Anyway, I still got recycled for 2 weeks, eventually. But after that I was fine. Sure taught me that being a smartypants was NOT everything...
I read a few of these guys posts and determined 4 things.
1) He has no sense of discretion and a disturbing air of entitlement
2) Having Microsoft on his resume, he really had NO clue how lucky he was to even get a job there (and how careful he should have been in Month 1, not to mention Months 2-12)... easy come, easy go
3) I have just become as useless as most bloggers by burning work time to read his blog
4) That rat bastard wasted his opportunity to pick up hot Seattle geek-compatible chicks with the "Actually, I work at Google" pick-up line. Man, I'd almost kill for that.
Let's get back to work, people. Nothing to see here, move along...
I totally understand. But while my geeky friend was blabbing about MCA, I was trying to convey my awe because the Mac OS (at the time, and before the onslaught of nubile women started beating down my door*) was THE MOST AMAZING thing I had ever seen in my entire short life. I mean literally, this thing existed when green-on-black terminal-esque interfaces were still in vogue (think: IBM PC XT with DOS)
;)
I guess I got "Steve'd" REAL early on
*slight exaggeration
Yeah, there was no Mac expansion bus until NuBus with the Mac II in '87. (I've seriously been using Macs consistently since the 128k Mac Plus in 12/84.) But my friend's point at the time was along the lines of, "Only REAL computers have expansion buses". My retort of "Duude, but you have to check out this mouse thing, and the windows and menus. And it has a 4 VOICE DIGITIZED SOUND chip!" seemed to fall on deaf ears because it wasn't as buzzword-friendly.
;) (thankfully, I seem to have adjusted better than my friend)
Even at the tender age of 11-12, REAL geeks are already having architecture arguments
I can't help feeling that some small percentage of this type of back-and-forth is something like a junior-high whiny geek arguing about how the Micro Channel bus architecture is better than ISA and that , incidentally, Apples are utterly irrelevant. ...Oh, wait. That geek was at one time a friend of mine, and this was circa 1985, and this was an actual discussion. ;) (hi, don ulrich! i still use a Mac, and Apple still exists! where's your precious PS/2 micro-channel NOW?!?! nyaaah, nyaaah!!)
While you're patching your lovely Windows box and doing the reboot parade, why not switch over to your Mac Mini and catch up on some Ruby tutorials? =)
I've seen the reluctance (hell, I've seen it in myself... I've been a steadfast Mac user since 1984, even during the "dark years"* [1993-1997]) and I've also seen the light.
I sincerely hope that the Mini changes some creaky minds, if only (and this is the usual litany these days) to provide MORE STIMULATING COMPETITION for that maker-of-game-machine-or-sql-server-OS'es, Microsoft!
*By the way, the apple "dark days" were completely manufactured by the media, as the real problem was that the Apple clones were stealing bottom line from Apple, Mac marketshare was actually INCREASING, yet the media insisted on focusing only on Apple. Leading Steve to kill off the clones. Gil Amelio was still a poor CEO, however...
A) No spam at work.
I guess the intranet monkeys who work for Deloitte & Touche are doing SOMEthing right.
B) No spam at home.
After getting fed up, I redirected my spam-infested email address to an autoreply which posed a simple riddle to determine my new email address, that humans who knew me could figure out but not machines. My new email address is owned by my domain, and THAT in turn gets redirected to my GMail account. When I picked the account, I made sure it wasn't easily guessable, and longer than a few characters... and when I need to enter in an email address on ANY site online, I use a mailinator.com disposable email address if at ALL possible. Hey, no spam at all! Zilch! How about that? Why is this so hard in this day and age???
Maybe I should start an antispam consulting practice. Clean all this shit up real fast...
ooooohhhh man.
Come back here in a few months, after a few hundred (or maybe a few dozen) more postings to your site. Bogged down yet?
After all, I bet Slashdot would have been fine using just TEXT FILES... at least in the first few weeks or so.
Indexes are why databases exist. And indexes take a huge heap of data, and prevent you from having to examine every little blade of hay every time you're looking for a needle.