Exactly. The parent opinion is, in all seriousness, completely absurd. Get with the program, buddy, that's not how it actually works.
I'm at a stellar company, one of the best in its field. So good, in fact, that next month we're due to be acquired by one of the largest corporations in the world, because they want what we can deliver. Yippee for us, I know, but it still points out: we're not a bunch of moronic slackers.
I look around me at my fellow workers, all of whom bust their asses day in and day out to get the job done. I see plenty of the above marks of "offense". Somehow, we manage to be competant, well-mannered, hard-working people. Who just happen to (in many cases) be wearing Jeans, t-shirts, and have tattoos/piercings.
Maybe I'm just offended because right now, I've got all of the above. The whole wardrobe is black. My cube might have action figures and big pile of "alternative" music CDs in it. Oh, and I shave my head. Some people might think I'm a bit strange, although I myself think I'm relatively mild overall.
Regardless, I'm also among the absolute best programmers you will ever find. Seriously. It's 8pm, I've been here since 9am, and I'm not going to leave tonight until this particular bug is squashed. I'm dedicated, smart, and I love my job. Also, when I'm not here, I sometimes put on a suit and teach motivational speaking and personal growth courses. I blend in as well in that venue as I do when I'm out at the local bar filled with people in fetish gear and sporting more piercings in them than Custer on his worst day. The first impression in any of these places doesn't convey the totality of who I am, and most people who are open-minded enough to get to know me realize I've got a lot to offer.
So, sorry, buddy. I can find people who wear nice suits at any business school. Good programmers, who work their asses off and love it? Not so easy to find, and so long as they are willing to be a team player, they're a welcome addition to the crew.
> "Think about where you thought you'd be five-years' hence way back then. Have you made it? Are you better off now than you were?"
Yes, I am. But then again, I'm not a moron and I don't run up credit card debt. I'm no fan of unbridled capitalism either, but I also think some of this starts at the lowest level with people (as Marx put it) throwing off their chains and pushing back. No amount of advertising or social pressure should make us consume when we do not need to. A more sane mode of living is possible.
I'm not talking eating granola and living out of your VW minivan. I have a very good job, I made a very good salary, and I live in a nice house (but not a house any bigger than I can justify, even if I can afford it according to what my mortgage guy says when he tries to sell me on the idea of moving). I just also save and invest and make myself think twice before I blow my money on anything that I can't really justify. I haven't had any credit card debt in over 7 years, and I've saved and put 401K money away that whole time too.
So, no, I don't blame "The Man". That means denying that I have control over my future, and I can't really do that. "The Man" deserves to have his ass kicked, and I'll grab a gun when the revolution starts, but since most other people are sitting it out, I just try to do what I can to protect me, and unlike most people I actually do vote to try to change things within the system that is supposed to protect all of us.
I can't say I agree with that. Where in the world would you get that idea? Threads and exceptions are nice, but so many programs of considerable value can be written without ever touching those concepts that they are not fundamentals in any way.
I don't at all get your point(s). Especially knocking data structure support in Scheme -- that would have to be the fundamental structure of the entire language, isn't it? Lists and atoms are, well, kind of it, and everything else can be built from those (and often already are, via slib for example).
The concept isn't bad, but the execution of it (at least to me) seems so crippled and, well, un-fun, that I wonder if it will actually be used. The basic idea is good -- but then they fall flat on finding a way to make it compelling.
If they could pair this with some music recommendation service concept like Last.fm or Pandora, and make it so that when my Zune comes near your Zune, they chat and exchange some info and maybe I get some music *recommendations* dropped onto my box, that might be cool. Fraught with security problems? Sure! But solve those, and it might be fun. I know I might find it fun to tell my Zune "accept up to 10 tracks broadcast/offered to you at a time". Go check my "recommended" tracks every so often, and if I found even one cool song in the process -- bonus! Even if the song expired after three listens (hopefully with no time limit, three days is lame), I still got the chance to try something new, and I got it "for free".
This is like telling your Tivo to record stuff it thinks you might like. You go every so often and check what it's chosen, refine the recommendations via thumbs up / thumbs down, and eventually it starts getting "only the good stuff" for you. Why is that so hard to program in? Most of the work for that could be done via a Zune link-up to your PC or the Internet directly, and it would drive more music sales or drive a partnership with someone like Last.fm.
Now, see... that is a killer feature. Still DRM, but at least it gives me something of worth right there. Certainly, for tech geeks, talking to people is tough -- but letting your computer talk to their computer and get some stuff works.
Ad hoc wireless, in my experience, actually doesn't work well at all. I've had nothing but problems with laptops, even laptops of the same type, syncing up. I'm not saying it's a constant failure, but in a situation where I want to spontaneously share a tune, who wants to struggle at all with any step of that process? The frustration factor in those cases is a real concern.
And I certainly think I'm insightful, so there!!!:-P
The problem is, it's a feature that is completely useless until you hit that critical mass. If you're the first person with a Zune, you get nothing out of the feature. You don't even know if it's cool, or if it's flaky and doesn't ever manage to work as expect -- like I said, you need a starting population of at least 2 to even begin to grassroots-market this.
I'm not in high school, but I also know (and this hasn't changed since I was in high school) that fads are entrenched. You don't want to be the kid who has the new untested thing -- you want to be the kid who has the black IPod Nano just like every other kid. Short of them giving this away en masse, I'm not sure how it's going to take off. I certainly don't see song sharing as a killer feature that will get it there, that's for sure.
That is the stupidest feature I have ever heard of. Did they do any market research that led them to believe this was something people actually *wanted*? And that it worked the way they would want it to work?
So let me get this straight... if I have a Zune... and my friend has a Zune...
I can send them a track. Presuming the units sync up, and wireless works, and the phase of the moon is correct, because wireless is still basically tin-can-and-string at times......and he can listen to it for three days before it self-destructs?
Lame. Useless. Unless my friend and I both decided to take a risk and go out and get one of these doohickies each, how would this situation ever come up? Even if you find another Zune owner, what are the chances he also shares you musical interests?
Well, considering that the monitor alone is somewhere around $700-$800, then I'm not sure where the huge price premium is. If I were trying to cut corners, no, I wouldn't buy a Mac (in any circumstances). But if you're willing to pay the premium and trade money for time (presuming that owning a Mac results in a better experience and fewer headaches -- anecdotal evidence goes both ways, but seems to skew towards saying Macs are 'better' in this measure).
I'm still not buying one, but boy am I trying to get my relatives to buy them -- no more PC support questions for me, thanks.
Oh, RAH had a rich personal life. He got married three times, and his 3rd wife, Ginny, was very influential to his work, and I'd say his female characters suffered from too many of them being various recastings of his idealized views of her.
I don't know where the bad dirty old man writing came from. I just know I don't find it engaging at all, and obviously I've given numerous books of his a try (mostly because I love so many other bits of his work).
He intrigues me with his ideas, but he also (horribly) has the habit of writing the same basic 3-4 stories with some small details changed. I could read Xanth, The Apprentice Adept, The Incarnations of Immortality, etc... and I get the feeling I got too few characters/ideas for the amount of pages read.
"Bio of a Space Tyrant" intrigued me (as much as the first book was a please-shoot-me-now downer), but then the pedophilic themes in the last few books tipped me over the edge. I stuck with him through rape, through incest (implied at least), but the 12 year old (possibly mentally retarded) girl seducing the 50 year old was just wrong, sorry.
So, yeah... tried him. Liked him in my youth. Wouldn't touch his books now, unfortunately.
I'm far (far) from a prude. In fact, my biggest beef with Heinlein's sexual obsessions in his works is that they seemed to make what should have been damn hot sex into really icky, kind of boring sex.
Oh, and the reply below about Piers Anthony -- I agree with that times ten. I can't read Xanth books anymore without seeing the same embarassingly bad sexual overtones. Blech.:-P
That's funny, because I thought everything after "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress" blew donkey dongs. I got rapidly tired of the endless retelling of stories of randy old men and super-intelligent, pneumatic, horny women who loved to please them. Blech. "Friday" was barely tolerable, in that at least I felt like an interesting story was happening around the ridiculous sex scenes. By the time of "Number of the Beast", I gave up. I completely skipped "Time Enough For Love" and it's ilk, one I knew Lazurus Long was just an annoying twit who would prattle on while shagging his mother.
What I'm really mad about, though, is that I still gave the old bugger a chance and read "The Cat Who Walks Through Walls". I mostly was intrigued by the return to the setting of MiaHM, but the book (although not horrible) just left me feeling "eh". I wanted something more satisfying out of a "sequel" to one of my favorite books.
So, yeah... give me juvenile fiction Heinlein (and short-story Heinlein) any day over the stuff he churned out in the late sixties onward.
Oh god, now we're going to see Harlan Ellison campaigning for this, aren't we? Of course, in this case, it is a restoration of what the original author's intent was.
(Ref the linked article above about "City on the Edge of Forever" for people who don't know the backstory).
My employer does love it, actually. I do a good job, and can honestly say I'm among the best in my field, because I do enjoy it. If I were just doing this for the money, I wouldn't be able to give it the dedication and hard work I do. Sometimes, a paycheck is just a paycheck and you get your kicks elsewhere... but in those cases, I wouldn't expect someone to do anything but punch in and punch out, and they are never going to excel in that area.
I knew Tribes 2 did it, but no, I never did play it. I'm not claiming Halo invented it, but it probably exposed more people to that new play style than any other game up until then.
What you need in a game like this is something else surrounding the fighting action. I still play the various wrestling games on the PS2 a ton, and that's because they have plotlines and character design elements that are fun. Nothing like deciding one night to make up a tag team of Kim Jong Il and Osama Bin Laden to wrestle as the "Axis of Evil" in the WWE:-). Took my friend three hours to design the characters and graphics in the game designer, but it was worth it to see them body-slamming Steven Austin!
So, yeah, fighting and weapon games can still be fun. It's just harder to be imaginative now. Halo is a good example of a game that took FPS and threw in a few new elements -- vehicle combat is one example -- and rejuvenated it to great success.
Nah, it would have been just as funny if a guy walked in and said "Sorry, lads, but I really need to whip this out!"...and don't even begin to tell me this sort of immature humor is endemic to only the IT field. I've seen plenty of sales and marketing departments that make these boys look plenty all-growed-up.
Nitpick: She just covered the song. Thank Andy Partridge of XTC for that one (and he did a lot better job singing it with gut-wrenching conviction too!).
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I meant to say that... I needed a break because the bug was making my head hurt :-)
Exactly. The parent opinion is, in all seriousness, completely absurd. Get with the program, buddy, that's not how it actually works.
I'm at a stellar company, one of the best in its field. So good, in fact, that next month we're due to be acquired by one of the largest corporations in the world, because they want what we can deliver. Yippee for us, I know, but it still points out: we're not a bunch of moronic slackers.
I look around me at my fellow workers, all of whom bust their asses day in and day out to get the job done. I see plenty of the above marks of "offense". Somehow, we manage to be competant, well-mannered, hard-working people. Who just happen to (in many cases) be wearing Jeans, t-shirts, and have tattoos/piercings.
Maybe I'm just offended because right now, I've got all of the above. The whole wardrobe is black. My cube might have action figures and big pile of "alternative" music CDs in it. Oh, and I shave my head. Some people might think I'm a bit strange, although I myself think I'm relatively mild overall.
Regardless, I'm also among the absolute best programmers you will ever find. Seriously. It's 8pm, I've been here since 9am, and I'm not going to leave tonight until this particular bug is squashed. I'm dedicated, smart, and I love my job. Also, when I'm not here, I sometimes put on a suit and teach motivational speaking and personal growth courses. I blend in as well in that venue as I do when I'm out at the local bar filled with people in fetish gear and sporting more piercings in them than Custer on his worst day. The first impression in any of these places doesn't convey the totality of who I am, and most people who are open-minded enough to get to know me realize I've got a lot to offer.
So, sorry, buddy. I can find people who wear nice suits at any business school. Good programmers, who work their asses off and love it? Not so easy to find, and so long as they are willing to be a team player, they're a welcome addition to the crew.
> "Think about where you thought you'd be five-years' hence way back then. Have you made it? Are you better off now than you were?"
Yes, I am. But then again, I'm not a moron and I don't run up credit card debt. I'm no fan of unbridled capitalism either, but I also think some of this starts at the lowest level with people (as Marx put it) throwing off their chains and pushing back. No amount of advertising or social pressure should make us consume when we do not need to. A more sane mode of living is possible.
I'm not talking eating granola and living out of your VW minivan. I have a very good job, I made a very good salary, and I live in a nice house (but not a house any bigger than I can justify, even if I can afford it according to what my mortgage guy says when he tries to sell me on the idea of moving). I just also save and invest and make myself think twice before I blow my money on anything that I can't really justify. I haven't had any credit card debt in over 7 years, and I've saved and put 401K money away that whole time too.
So, no, I don't blame "The Man". That means denying that I have control over my future, and I can't really do that. "The Man" deserves to have his ass kicked, and I'll grab a gun when the revolution starts, but since most other people are sitting it out, I just try to do what I can to protect me, and unlike most people I actually do vote to try to change things within the system that is supposed to protect all of us.
Um, you did see MySpace is on the list, right?
That site is the biggest turd ever foisted on this earth since the mammoth stopped taking dumps in Siberia.
I can't say I agree with that. Where in the world would you get that idea? Threads and exceptions are nice, but so many programs of considerable value can be written without ever touching those concepts that they are not fundamentals in any way.
I don't at all get your point(s). Especially knocking data structure support in Scheme -- that would have to be the fundamental structure of the entire language, isn't it? Lists and atoms are, well, kind of it, and everything else can be built from those (and often already are, via slib for example).
Right.
:-P
Then Lucy gets pissed when three days/plays later the track she fell in love with that totally expresses her inner teen angst turmoil is gone.
BEEEM, zapo rapidly turns into: "This sucks! Let's go shopping at the mall!"
PS: I am armed constantly with 3-4 gadgets, depending on pocket space. I'll out-wired these little Paris Hilton clones any day
The concept isn't bad, but the execution of it (at least to me) seems so crippled and, well, un-fun, that I wonder if it will actually be used. The basic idea is good -- but then they fall flat on finding a way to make it compelling.
If they could pair this with some music recommendation service concept like Last.fm or Pandora, and make it so that when my Zune comes near your Zune, they chat and exchange some info and maybe I get some music *recommendations* dropped onto my box, that might be cool. Fraught with security problems? Sure! But solve those, and it might be fun. I know I might find it fun to tell my Zune "accept up to 10 tracks broadcast/offered to you at a time". Go check my "recommended" tracks every so often, and if I found even one cool song in the process -- bonus! Even if the song expired after three listens (hopefully with no time limit, three days is lame), I still got the chance to try something new, and I got it "for free".
This is like telling your Tivo to record stuff it thinks you might like. You go every so often and check what it's chosen, refine the recommendations via thumbs up / thumbs down, and eventually it starts getting "only the good stuff" for you. Why is that so hard to program in? Most of the work for that could be done via a Zune link-up to your PC or the Internet directly, and it would drive more music sales or drive a partnership with someone like Last.fm.
Now, see... that is a killer feature. Still DRM, but at least it gives me something of worth right there. Certainly, for tech geeks, talking to people is tough -- but letting your computer talk to their computer and get some stuff works.
Ad hoc wireless, in my experience, actually doesn't work well at all. I've had nothing but problems with laptops, even laptops of the same type, syncing up. I'm not saying it's a constant failure, but in a situation where I want to spontaneously share a tune, who wants to struggle at all with any step of that process? The frustration factor in those cases is a real concern.
:-P
And I certainly think I'm insightful, so there!!!
The problem is, it's a feature that is completely useless until you hit that critical mass. If you're the first person with a Zune, you get nothing out of the feature. You don't even know if it's cool, or if it's flaky and doesn't ever manage to work as expect -- like I said, you need a starting population of at least 2 to even begin to grassroots-market this.
I'm not in high school, but I also know (and this hasn't changed since I was in high school) that fads are entrenched. You don't want to be the kid who has the new untested thing -- you want to be the kid who has the black IPod Nano just like every other kid. Short of them giving this away en masse, I'm not sure how it's going to take off. I certainly don't see song sharing as a killer feature that will get it there, that's for sure.
That is the stupidest feature I have ever heard of. Did they do any market research that led them to believe this was something people actually *wanted*? And that it worked the way they would want it to work?
...and he can listen to it for three days before it self-destructs?
So let me get this straight... if I have a Zune... and my friend has a Zune...
I can send them a track. Presuming the units sync up, and wireless works, and the phase of the moon is correct, because wireless is still basically tin-can-and-string at times...
Lame. Useless. Unless my friend and I both decided to take a risk and go out and get one of these doohickies each, how would this situation ever come up? Even if you find another Zune owner, what are the chances he also shares you musical interests?
Well, considering that the monitor alone is somewhere around $700-$800, then I'm not sure where the huge price premium is. If I were trying to cut corners, no, I wouldn't buy a Mac (in any circumstances). But if you're willing to pay the premium and trade money for time (presuming that owning a Mac results in a better experience and fewer headaches -- anecdotal evidence goes both ways, but seems to skew towards saying Macs are 'better' in this measure).
I'm still not buying one, but boy am I trying to get my relatives to buy them -- no more PC support questions for me, thanks.
Wow, apparently disliking something is "Flamebait".
:-P
Good thing I have practically impregnable Karma.
Oh, RAH had a rich personal life. He got married three times, and his 3rd wife, Ginny, was very influential to his work, and I'd say his female characters suffered from too many of them being various recastings of his idealized views of her.
I don't know where the bad dirty old man writing came from. I just know I don't find it engaging at all, and obviously I've given numerous books of his a try (mostly because I love so many other bits of his work).
He intrigues me with his ideas, but he also (horribly) has the habit of writing the same basic 3-4 stories with some small details changed. I could read Xanth, The Apprentice Adept, The Incarnations of Immortality, etc... and I get the feeling I got too few characters/ideas for the amount of pages read.
"Bio of a Space Tyrant" intrigued me (as much as the first book was a please-shoot-me-now downer), but then the pedophilic themes in the last few books tipped me over the edge. I stuck with him through rape, through incest (implied at least), but the 12 year old (possibly mentally retarded) girl seducing the 50 year old was just wrong, sorry.
So, yeah... tried him. Liked him in my youth. Wouldn't touch his books now, unfortunately.
Thank you.
:-P
I'm far (far) from a prude. In fact, my biggest beef with Heinlein's sexual obsessions in his works is that they seemed to make what should have been damn hot sex into really icky, kind of boring sex.
Oh, and the reply below about Piers Anthony -- I agree with that times ten. I can't read Xanth books anymore without seeing the same embarassingly bad sexual overtones. Blech.
That's funny, because I thought everything after "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress" blew donkey dongs. I got rapidly tired of the endless retelling of stories of randy old men and super-intelligent, pneumatic, horny women who loved to please them. Blech. "Friday" was barely tolerable, in that at least I felt like an interesting story was happening around the ridiculous sex scenes. By the time of "Number of the Beast", I gave up. I completely skipped "Time Enough For Love" and it's ilk, one I knew Lazurus Long was just an annoying twit who would prattle on while shagging his mother.
What I'm really mad about, though, is that I still gave the old bugger a chance and read "The Cat Who Walks Through Walls". I mostly was intrigued by the return to the setting of MiaHM, but the book (although not horrible) just left me feeling "eh". I wanted something more satisfying out of a "sequel" to one of my favorite books.
So, yeah... give me juvenile fiction Heinlein (and short-story Heinlein) any day over the stuff he churned out in the late sixties onward.
Oh god, now we're going to see Harlan Ellison campaigning for this, aren't we? Of course, in this case, it is a restoration of what the original author's intent was.
(Ref the linked article above about "City on the Edge of Forever" for people who don't know the backstory).
My employer does love it, actually. I do a good job, and can honestly say I'm among the best in my field, because I do enjoy it. If I were just doing this for the money, I wouldn't be able to give it the dedication and hard work I do. Sometimes, a paycheck is just a paycheck and you get your kicks elsewhere... but in those cases, I wouldn't expect someone to do anything but punch in and punch out, and they are never going to excel in that area.
"'The first time I picked up that sucker I couldn't stop playing it.'"
;-)
I've always felt that way about my wee also...
I was just thinking, this would totally be the tactic that Dog The Bounty Hunter would use if he wanted to catch the guy. :-)
I knew Tribes 2 did it, but no, I never did play it. I'm not claiming Halo invented it, but it probably exposed more people to that new play style than any other game up until then.
Huh.
I figured this was some sort of bukkake story.
thank you folks, I'll be here all night. Tip your waiters!
What you need in a game like this is something else surrounding the fighting action. I still play the various wrestling games on the PS2 a ton, and that's because they have plotlines and character design elements that are fun. Nothing like deciding one night to make up a tag team of Kim Jong Il and Osama Bin Laden to wrestle as the "Axis of Evil" in the WWE :-). Took my friend three hours to design the characters and graphics in the game designer, but it was worth it to see them body-slamming Steven Austin!
So, yeah, fighting and weapon games can still be fun. It's just harder to be imaginative now. Halo is a good example of a game that took FPS and threw in a few new elements -- vehicle combat is one example -- and rejuvenated it to great success.
Nah, it would have been just as funny if a guy walked in and said "Sorry, lads, but I really need to whip this out!" ...and don't even begin to tell me this sort of immature humor is endemic to only the IT field. I've seen plenty of sales and marketing departments that make these boys look plenty all-growed-up.
Nitpick: She just covered the song. Thank Andy Partridge of XTC for that one (and he did a lot better job singing it with gut-wrenching conviction too!).