You may not be bothered by bad dialogue and lack of continuity, but both issues remain aspects of a poor film. The first Matrix movie committed the fewest sins in this regard. The dialogue was many times poorly written, but you could follow the movie from start to finish, and the action scenes at least had a purpose. In the second movie, nearly every action scene served only to show off special effects, and the dialogue was terrible. The third movie had a little more purpsoe to it's scenes, but it still had major issues with common sense and horrible dialogue.
The Matrix movies pale in comparison to any truly good movies. They certianly aren't masterpieces. The Seven Samurai is a masterpiece. The Usual Suspects is a masterpiece. The Matrix movies are wads of special effects run through an obfuscated Perl generator of inanely cryptic dialogue.
I don't think he was saying his friends hired him or vice versa. He was saying that he got the jobs as a result of knowing people who worked for the companies. Your analogy of hiring friends to executive positions does not refute the intended meaning of the original post. Plenty of skilled people find appropriate positions by getting an email from a friend or a former co-worker asking them if they're interested in a new opening...etc. Also, if you, yourself, are a CFO or Director of R&D, you might very well have former co-workers that are at similar levels of skill and experience as those strangers who are also being considered for the positions.
Once again, the issue here is the context of the discussion. The post was in response to a comparison of the languages. Equivalent skill levels must be assumed if the comparison is to be considered in even the smallest sense.
However, in response to your specific point, though I do feel it was tangential to my point... I've been debugging C, C++, Java, Delphi, Perl, and PHP for over a decade (well, a decade for C, C++, and Perl at least), and I don't find anything easier or harder about debugging any of them. Any of them can be totally convoluted and illogical when written in a totally convoluted and illogical way. Perl and PHP can be just as clear to read as C, C++, and Java. You just have to read them in the appropriate mindset, which may or may not be similar to the one you need when deciphering C, C++, and Java.
My post was in response to a post comparing Java, PHP, and Perl. You must accept equivalent skill levels are present in all three languages in order to make such a comparison, so my response was perfectly valid in that context.
I'll give you scalability, and I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt on performance, but Java is definitely not more "rapid" than Perl. If you were holding a gun to my head to get something done as quickly as possible, I would not hesitate to choose Perl over anything else (unless you're talking Windows GUI, in which case I'd use Delphi).
Someone should take them to court for failure to properly operate backhoes. I can't count the number of times they've cut major connectivity lines when they were trying to dig them up. On one day, they cut both of our upstream providers' pipes within an hour of each other. One was cut north of us and one was cut to the south.
This geek uses Gnome Evolution. I would think Evolution would make a lot more sense for an organiation than Mozilla's mail client. Most organizations are going to be predominantly addicted to Outlook.
I love my Shuttle SS51G. I don't feel any desire to go smaller. My monitor is always the real pain when going to lan parties. I really don't care for LCDs. Until they come up with an affordable, perfect looking, compact screen with zero trailing and latency, getting a smaller box isn't going to help me all that much. I'm sure they'll get there someday, but for right now I'm sticking with my mini and my CRT.
I'm not sure creativity is a plus if the market doesn't want it. I don't feel that we're losing out from lack of creativity. When I find a game I like, I look for more games similar to it. I'm irritated if I buy a game that appears similar but has some new innovative element that changes gameplay. As an example, I really love Starcraft. I was very excited to see Warcraft 3 coming out and I bought it immediately after I saw it getting great reviews as an RTS. When I started playing it, I was angered by the Hero/RPG addition to the game. It changed the gameplay enough to where I did not care to play the game. My buddies and I played it for about a month before we shelved it and haven't played it since. Meanwhile, we still play Starcraft, though it's over 5 years old. We would be most drawn to buying a new (technologically) game that has nearly identical gameplay to Starcraft than we would something innovative and different.
I'm sure there are people who never want to see new games that mirror old ones, but we aren't those people. We'd rather see better looking higher content versions of old game mechanics.
The common use of templates for generic programming makes C++ a lot harder to read than Perl. I'd be a lot less concerned about someone decompiling my C++ app than someone reading my Perl source.
There still needs to be work done on proving that when 6 monkeys are thrown up into the air, they will come down on their tails not as often as they land on their...heads.
Having been the recipient of a lot of commercial support, I have to say it's extremely overrated. The only thing it really buys you is the ability to push the blame for something onto someone else. Hardware support is probably a good thing, and I've seen some companies provide great support for malfunctioning hardware. Software, though, usually costs you more time waiting for the people to a) agree that it's their problem, b) assemble their people to work on the problem, and c) getting those people to a point where they can actually be more of a help than a hindrance.
You're far better off just hiring people who know what they're doing and having them troubleshoot software issues. You have to buy the software support expressly because you're using closed source and some information won't be available to your local developers. With open source, this issue goes away. Sometimes you can even get free expert support from the author as well. I know that Damian Conway was very accessible to us when we had an issue with one of his Perl modules.
One of the big issues I've had with some support is that the 'developers' supporting the product aren't the people who built it and only really know what they've got in their Support Handbook or personal experience from past support issues. They don't actually know how the application really works, and they don't seem to have all that much of an advantage over any good developer given the same amount of time you have to spend to actually get the support person ready to help.
Some companies I've had personal experience with:
IBM - (sysadmin didn't know what 'ps' did and didn't know how to kill processes)
Informix - (on-site support had to use trial and error to determine what the correct config variables were and took 8 hours to get a simple install up and running)
Blue Martini - (although they had some heavy hitters they would bring in that really knew their stuff, multiple on-site support people were found to have no real clue how anything we were using worked)
You obviously haven't seen the movie, and/or you don't understand that an accurate depiction of one segment still provides an example of accuracy. If you expect a movie to contain examples of all possible programmers, you are destined to be eternally unsatisfied.
The best game for NES was Zanac. It was arcade quality and it was such an obscure title that it sold for $10 in a lot of stores. That was the best game I ever owned. I think my second favorite would be Dragon Warrior 1. Then there's always Metroid.
I can't speak for many, but most of the folks I used to catch Star Trek movies with couldn't care less about ST:TNG movies. The whole point seeing the older movies was to revisit the familiar faces of the original cast. It's not that they were better actors (Shatner is obviously less talented than Stewart), but that they felt like old friends. You knew they weren't going to amaze you, but you put up with them because they made you feel good. I don't get that feeling about ST:TNG and I wager there are others who feel similarly. When the point of seeing the movie changes focus from the people to the plot, the plot has to be able to hold it's own. Very few of the Star Trek plots, past or present, can do so. The only one I can think of is possibly #6. #2 was my favorite, but the plot wasn't the reason, it was Kahn. The plot in #5 was so bad that it killed the movie despite the cast.
They'll have to come up with -worthy- movie plots if they want to attract the non-hardcore-trekkie folks who flocked to the older movies.
Without doubt, Ian M. Banks is the best true writer in the Sci-Fi genre. He is above and beyond pretty much anyone I've ever read, including the great and the dead (not necssarily both). As far as pure enjoyment, I'd also include C. J. Cherryh as a very good writer of Sci-Fi, as well as some Fantasy.
As far as Fantasy goes, my favorite author is L. E. Modesitt Jr. (except for the magic singer books which I will never believe he wrote). However, the best writer at this time has got to be George R. R. Martin. His Song of Ice and Fire series is extremely well written with intricate plots and in-depth characters.
Your reply doesn't address the stated problem. You can prevent this with code. Any negative impact would be offset by the positive if the change was implemented correctly. This has nothing to do with whether or not you care about having your kills stolen. When things are against the rules in a computer game, whenever possible, the rules should be implemented in the code, not in some unworkable social contract.
I played EQ for about 3 months steady, then coasted for 3 months before quitting. As a programmer that has written game code in the past, it became readily apparent that the people supporting EQ either don't do any work at all or are so technically inept that productive work is beyond them. "kill stealing" is probably the most complained of problem in EQ. It would not be terribly difficult to code around, yet no advances in that regard have ever surfaced since the game was created. When you cannot go 5 minutes in the game without hearing someone whining about someone else stealing their kill, the issue should have been addressed long ago. This is just one example of their complete lack of ability to properly evolve and improve their codebase.
Judging by what I've seen in the workplace, and the quality of the people I've worked with, it usually boils down to a question of real skill. If your profession has moderate demand (which Engineering does), and you area truly skilled at what you do, then you will find a job. The field is currently overflowing with useless inviduals who jumped on the bandwagon for the money. Their time is up. As companies begin to seriously cut costs, more and more excess will be shed. The truly skilled will find jobs.
Oh, and most folks would find that a serious career at McDonald's would be far more challenging than your average Engineering position. McDonald's knows how to run a business. If the tech companies in America displayed as much business skill as McDonald's, most of these people getting fired wouldn't have been hired in the first place. Businesses are simply deflating to the proper size. They grossly overhired, and now they're finally realizing the mistakes of the last 5 years.
Frankly, I think the comment put the story in perspective. This issue is no different from many that occur day-to-day for everyone. People are often dishonest and egotistical. The only worthwhile news here is that the decision was made. Who was right/wrong? Why does anyone care?
Slashdot Mirror
You may not be bothered by bad dialogue and
lack of continuity, but both issues remain
aspects of a poor film. The first Matrix movie
committed the fewest sins in this regard. The
dialogue was many times poorly written, but you
could follow the movie from start to finish,
and the action scenes at least had a purpose.
In the second movie, nearly every action scene
served only to show off special effects, and
the dialogue was terrible. The third movie had
a little more purpsoe to it's scenes, but it
still had major issues with common sense and
horrible dialogue.
The Matrix movies pale in comparison to any truly
good movies. They certianly aren't masterpieces.
The Seven Samurai is a masterpiece. The Usual
Suspects is a masterpiece. The Matrix movies are
wads of special effects run through an obfuscated
Perl generator of inanely cryptic dialogue.
I've yet to see Eddie be anything but great, even in stuff that sucks. I think he's make a great Dr., regardless of the truth of the rumor.
I don't think he was saying his friends hired him or vice versa. He was saying that he got the jobs as a result of knowing people who worked for the companies. Your analogy of hiring friends to executive positions does not refute the intended meaning of the original post. Plenty of skilled people find appropriate positions by getting an email from a friend or a former co-worker asking them if they're interested in a new opening...etc. Also, if you, yourself, are a CFO or Director of R&D, you might very well have former co-workers that are at similar levels of skill and experience as those strangers who are also being considered for the positions.
Can any anti-theft protection ever truly prevent real audio equipment from simply piping the decrypted music to a recording device?
I'm speaking from ignorance, but if it can get to the speakers at all, surely it can be intercepted along the way for recording purposes?
Once again, the issue here is the context of the discussion. The post was in response to a comparison of the languages. Equivalent skill levels must be assumed if the comparison is to be considered in even the smallest sense.
However, in response to your specific point, though I do feel it was tangential to my point...
I've been debugging C, C++, Java, Delphi, Perl, and PHP for over a decade (well, a decade for C, C++, and Perl at least), and I don't find anything easier or harder about debugging any of them. Any of them can be totally convoluted and illogical when written in a totally convoluted and illogical way. Perl and PHP can be just as clear to read as C, C++, and Java. You just have to read them in the appropriate mindset, which may or may not be similar to the one you need when deciphering C, C++, and Java.
My post was in response to a post comparing Java, PHP, and Perl. You must accept equivalent skill levels are present in all three languages in order to make such a comparison, so my response was perfectly valid in that context.
I'll give you scalability, and I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt on performance, but Java is definitely not more "rapid" than Perl. If you were holding a gun to my head to get something done as quickly as possible, I would not hesitate to choose Perl over anything else (unless you're talking Windows GUI, in which case I'd use Delphi).
Someone should take them to court for failure to properly operate backhoes. I can't count the number of times they've cut major connectivity lines when they were trying to dig them up. On one day, they cut both of our upstream providers' pipes within an hour of each other. One was cut north of us and one was cut to the south.
Talk about denial of service.
This geek uses Gnome Evolution. I would think Evolution would make a lot more sense for an organiation than Mozilla's mail client. Most organizations are going to be predominantly addicted to Outlook.
I love my Shuttle SS51G. I don't feel any desire to go smaller. My monitor is always the real pain when going to lan parties. I really don't care for LCDs. Until they come up with an affordable, perfect looking, compact screen with zero trailing and latency, getting a smaller box isn't going to help me all that much. I'm sure they'll get there someday, but for right now I'm sticking with my mini and my CRT.
I'm not sure creativity is a plus if the market doesn't want it. I don't feel that we're losing out from lack of creativity. When I find a game I like, I look for more games similar to it. I'm irritated if I buy a game that appears similar but has some new innovative element that changes gameplay. As an example, I really love Starcraft. I was very excited to see Warcraft 3 coming out and I bought it immediately after I saw it getting great reviews as an RTS. When I started playing it, I was angered by the Hero/RPG addition to the game. It changed the gameplay enough to where I did not care to play the game. My buddies and I played it for about a month before we shelved it and haven't played it since. Meanwhile, we still play Starcraft, though it's over 5 years old. We would be most drawn to buying a new (technologically) game that has nearly identical gameplay to Starcraft than we would something innovative and different.
I'm sure there are people who never want to see new games that mirror old ones, but we aren't those people. We'd rather see better looking higher content versions of old game mechanics.
The common use of templates for generic programming makes C++ a lot harder to read than Perl. I'd be a lot less concerned about someone decompiling my C++ app than someone reading my Perl source.
There still needs to be work done on proving that
when 6 monkeys are thrown up into the air, they
will come down on their tails not as often as they
land on their...heads.
We played it for a week once and still weren't able to achieve any significant rank. It sure
was fun selling Arms and Opium, though.
"Bad joss, Captain. 427,000 pirates are attacking."
Having been the recipient of a lot of commercial
support, I have to say it's extremely overrated.
The only thing it really buys you is the ability
to push the blame for something onto someone else.
Hardware support is probably a good thing, and
I've seen some companies provide great support
for malfunctioning hardware. Software, though,
usually costs you more time waiting for the
people to a) agree that it's their problem, b)
assemble their people to work on the problem, and
c) getting those people to a point where they can
actually be more of a help than a hindrance.
You're far better off just hiring people who know
what they're doing and having them troubleshoot
software issues. You have to buy the software
support expressly because you're using closed
source and some information won't be available
to your local developers. With open source,
this issue goes away. Sometimes you can even
get free expert support from the author as well.
I know that Damian Conway was very accessible
to us when we had an issue with one of his
Perl modules.
One of the big issues I've had with some support
is that the 'developers' supporting the product
aren't the people who built it and only really
know what they've got in their Support Handbook
or personal experience from past support issues.
They don't actually know how the application
really works, and they don't seem to have all
that much of an advantage over any good developer
given the same amount of time you have to spend
to actually get the support person ready to help.
Some companies I've had personal experience with:
IBM - (sysadmin didn't know what 'ps' did and
didn't know how to kill processes)
Informix - (on-site support had to use trial and
error to determine what the correct config
variables were and took 8 hours to get a simple
install up and running)
Blue Martini - (although they had some heavy
hitters they would bring in that really knew
their stuff, multiple on-site support people
were found to have no real clue how anything
we were using worked)
You obviously haven't seen the movie, and/or you don't understand that an accurate depiction of one segment still provides an example of accuracy. If you expect a movie to contain examples of all possible programmers, you are destined to be eternally unsatisfied.
"biased"
It doesn't get anymore accurate.
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0308808
The best game for NES was Zanac. It was arcade
quality and it was such an obscure title that it
sold for $10 in a lot of stores. That was the
best game I ever owned. I think my second
favorite would be Dragon Warrior 1. Then there's
always Metroid.
I can't speak for many, but most of the folks I used to catch Star Trek movies with couldn't
care less about ST:TNG movies. The whole point seeing the older movies was to revisit the
familiar faces of the original cast. It's not that they were better actors (Shatner is obviously
less talented than Stewart), but that they felt like old friends. You knew they weren't going
to amaze you, but you put up with them because they made you feel good. I don't get that
feeling about ST:TNG and I wager there are others who feel similarly. When the point of
seeing the movie changes focus from the people to the plot, the plot has to be able to hold it's
own. Very few of the Star Trek plots, past or present, can do so. The only one I can think
of is possibly #6. #2 was my favorite, but the plot wasn't the reason, it was Kahn. The
plot in #5 was so bad that it killed the movie despite the cast.
They'll have to come up with -worthy- movie plots if they want to attract the non-hardcore-trekkie
folks who flocked to the older movies.
The following is my opinion.
Without doubt, Ian M. Banks is the best true
writer in the Sci-Fi genre. He is above and
beyond pretty much anyone I've ever read,
including the great and the dead (not necssarily
both). As far as pure enjoyment, I'd also
include C. J. Cherryh as a very good writer of
Sci-Fi, as well as some Fantasy.
As far as Fantasy goes, my favorite author is
L. E. Modesitt Jr. (except for the magic singer
books which I will never believe he wrote).
However, the best writer at this time has got
to be George R. R. Martin. His Song of Ice
and Fire series is extremely well written with
intricate plots and in-depth characters.
Your reply doesn't address the stated problem.
You can prevent this with code. Any negative
impact would be offset by the positive if the
change was implemented correctly. This has
nothing to do with whether or not you care
about having your kills stolen. When things
are against the rules in a computer game,
whenever possible, the rules should be implemented
in the code, not in some unworkable social contract.
I played EQ for about 3 months steady, then coasted
for 3 months before quitting. As a programmer that
has written game code in the past, it became readily
apparent that the people supporting EQ either don't
do any work at all or are so technically inept that
productive work is beyond them. "kill stealing" is
probably the most complained of problem in EQ. It
would not be terribly difficult to code around, yet
no advances in that regard have ever surfaced since
the game was created. When you cannot go 5 minutes
in the game without hearing someone whining about
someone else stealing their kill, the issue should
have been addressed long ago. This is just one
example of their complete lack of ability to
properly evolve and improve their codebase.
Judging by what I've seen in the workplace, and
the quality of the people I've worked with, it
usually boils down to a question of real skill.
If your profession has moderate demand (which
Engineering does), and you area truly skilled
at what you do, then you will find a job. The
field is currently overflowing with useless
inviduals who jumped on the bandwagon for the
money. Their time is up. As companies begin
to seriously cut costs, more and more excess
will be shed. The truly skilled will find jobs.
Oh, and most folks would find that a serious
career at McDonald's would be far more challenging
than your average Engineering position.
McDonald's knows how to run a business. If the
tech companies in America displayed as much
business skill as McDonald's, most of these people
getting fired wouldn't have been hired in the
first place. Businesses are simply deflating
to the proper size. They grossly overhired,
and now they're finally realizing the mistakes
of the last 5 years.
He definitely wasn't animated. I'm confused as to
how the king was ever influenced by him. Didn't he know that the stains become a warning?
Frankly, I think the comment put the story in
perspective. This issue is no different from
many that occur day-to-day for everyone. People
are often dishonest and egotistical. The only
worthwhile news here is that the decision was
made. Who was right/wrong? Why does anyone
care?