You have to look at the 0-20 record in context though. They've sought out races in which there was no outside support. The DCCC is horrible about writing off races far too quickly. Markos and Jerome seem to believe that campaigns aren't about going for the sure things, they're about you know, campaigning. Trying to change minds. It doesn't happen overnight, and it doesn't happen in one or two cycles.
You don't seem to see the difference between the courts holding an ISP responsible and users shunning an ISP. Since everybody loves analogies when we talk about spam, how about this one:
Your local mall rents space to the Ku Klux Klan.I can boycott the KKK store, but it's pretty meaningless, since I already have a defacto boycott against them. Should the mall be forced by law to kick out the Klan? No, why should the goverment be involved in this private transaction? Will I want to be seen entering a mall that has a Klan store? Will I feel safe there? Will I want my family to visit that mall? No, no, and no. Boycotting the mall hurts the taco stand in the food court, but I still wouldn't visit.
Boycotting the ISP is the same as private citizens boycotting the mall.They enable something I feel is immoral. There are people in the world who would boycott an entire ISP for hosting a pr0n site. More power to 'em. I disagree, but they have the right to do it.
You don't care about cheating in games? Fine. Everytime you pick up a mystery book, I'll tell you the ending of it.
The point isn't which stupid way any particular person cares to waste his or her time. It's that you should should be able to enjoy your leisure activities without assholes ruining it for everyone.
Yes, the best programs do use brute force, but the key to making a strong program is not in how they generate moves. The trickiest bit is in evauluating the reletive strength of each position.
It doesn't really matter how you come up with the list of moves to eval. Computers do it very differently from the way humans do, but the only important bit is the scoring.
Human players tend to look at chunks of the board, and go with much more of a gut instinct. They try for a favored style, and play the other person much more than the board. Computers crank out moves and look for the objectivly best, without worrying about whether the opponent prefers open or closed positions, etc.
Anybody can write a brute force move generator, but you still need an IM on your team if you want the computer to know if the generated moves are actually any good.
If you define sport as something that can be won or lost based on your physical condition, chess is certainly a sport. I spent an entire tournament weekend drinking and dancing (make a move, go hit on the hotel bartender, repeat). I actually made it into the final round on Sunday, and got a draw (which should have been a win) from a player 300 points better than I was. I had slept for about two hours, under the table where my game was to be held, and I was almost sober when game time came.
In the final round, I fell apart completely. Resigned after ~20 moves. I'd played my oppenent before that tournament, and after it, and I'm much better than he is, but the weekend caught up with me. Still my favorite tourney ever though.:)
Am I the only person in the world who gets very sick of anti-technology movies? Yes, yes, I know all about the Bill Joy interview. And yes, he raises some issues about technology that we need to be concerned about. However, his was not just a knee-jerk piece saying "technology bad." When's the last time you saw something from Hollywood that wasn't? Anytime technology shows up in a movie the result is as predicable as the plucky heroine of a Disney movie. The Matrix was no better than any other movie in this respect (and probably worse than some). How long until Hollywood makes a movie about technology whose theme is not the loss of humanity that tech inevitably brings? Will we ever see a movie in which technology is empowering, and not just for a Bond villian who wants to destroy the world? Although I should point out that the Bond movies (at least the later ones) do a better job of showing technology as a tool that can be used for good or evil than most. (RIP Desmond Llewelyn) Surely I'm not the only geek in the world who gets sick of seeing my life's work portraied as a way to enslave humanity. Dr. Faustus was a great play. But how many times do we have to remake it?
I've worn the golden handcuffs twice, and both times I've been lucky.
At the first one (a prime source of evil on the net) we used to joke that there was a good reason why our logo looked a lot like an eye in a pyramid(which also appears on the US dollar). The company I'm currently with IPO'd in October at 17 and is now somewhere around 120 (after going as high as 170something).
When you ask what options are worth, you're really asking what the company is worth. Since it usually takes four years to become fully vested, ask yourself if this company (and the people running it) are really going to be around in four years.
These days a decent geek can get a job in about 15 minutes. Are you looking at this company as a real long term prospect, or just something to pass the time? If it's short term, just look for the most cash you can get right now.
The most important thing is, will you be happy at this place, working in a very stressful atmosphere (as all startups are) for four years? Four years from now, what job will you be doing for this company? Will it be the same as when you came in, or will you be promoted? If the tech they use bores you, or you don't like the people, or they don't give you free sodas and coffee, then go somewhere else.
Unless you believe in the company, there's no point in rolling the dice on them. There are just too many other places you can work right now. Do what you love and the money will follow.
>They don;t even need to hire a UI guy from Apple > - just pick up Apple's 'Human User Interface >Guidelines' (available in every bookstore), and >use that as a target.
Uhm, no.
The Apple UI guidelines tell you the proper way to use the Apple Widget set with the Mac OS. They teach you nothing about good program design.
Using the right widget in the right place is only a very small part of design.
Besides, I really don't want a Mac clone any more than I want a Win95 clone.
Actually, I feel like my new manager is one of the best things that has happened to the dev staff where I work, and the really surprising thing is he knows *nothing* about programming, or computers in general.
The difference is that he *knows* he knows nothing, and doesn't try to bullshit his staff. He's been an effective buffer between my team and the rest of the company and he lets us do things our way. OK, he lets us do things our way because he doesn't know any better, but productivity has skyrocketed, and he's managed to weasel more equipment money out of the folks upstairs.
He knows his job. He's there to manage, not write code. He does a good job making the rest of the company stick to its commitments to the dev staff, and we do our part in return. And even better, as the lead developer, I'm making more money than him.:) So when our last manager left, I wound up with all the rewards and none of the headaches of being the alpha geek.
Now if we could only replace the VP of IT with someone like this guy....
Thank god somebody else mentioned Pynchon here. As I read the book, all I could think of, especially during the Slothrop, er, Shaftoe sections, was Gravity's Rainbow. Was he intentionally modeling large chunks of this book on GR?
While GR is possibly my favorite book of all time, I just hate being reminded of it by a pale imitation. I would go so far as to say Cryptonomicon is Gravity's Rainbow for people who have never done acid. A bit (ok, a LOT) more linear, easier to follow, not as much distracting depth.
Don't get me wrong. I *really* like Cryptonomicon so far (650 pages in), but I keep waiting for the characters to break into Pynchonesque song (sorry, haiku doesn't count), or dive down a toilet to retrieve a harmonica.
At least it's something good to read while we wait another dozen years for the next Pynchon book.
Slashdot Mirror
This should be a good fight. Who do you cheer for? Injuries!
You have to look at the 0-20 record in context though. They've sought out races in which there was no outside support. The DCCC is horrible about writing off races far too quickly. Markos and Jerome seem to believe that campaigns aren't about going for the sure things, they're about you know, campaigning. Trying to change minds. It doesn't happen overnight, and it doesn't happen in one or two cycles.
The groups are 527s.
Waiting for everyone to agree is precisely the wrong answer. Nothing will ever happen.
If you want a tool or protocol to gain widespread use on the net, write code. Release it. Get people using it.
The real reason we've seen no Martians. Nobody knows the proper way to read home pregnacy tests there. They all died out.
You don't seem to see the difference between the courts holding an ISP responsible and users shunning an ISP. Since everybody loves analogies when we talk about spam, how about this one:
Your local mall rents space to the Ku Klux Klan.I can boycott the KKK store, but it's pretty meaningless, since I already have a defacto boycott against them. Should the mall be forced by law to kick out the Klan? No, why should the goverment be involved in this private transaction? Will I want to be seen entering a mall that has a Klan store? Will I feel safe there? Will I want my family to visit that mall? No, no, and no. Boycotting the mall hurts the taco stand in the food court, but I still wouldn't visit.
Boycotting the ISP is the same as private citizens boycotting the mall.They enable something I feel is immoral. There are people in the world who would boycott an entire ISP for hosting a pr0n site. More power to 'em. I disagree, but they have the right to do it.
You don't care about cheating in games? Fine. Everytime you pick up a mystery book, I'll tell you the ending of it.
The point isn't which stupid way any particular person cares to waste his or her time. It's that you should should be able to enjoy your leisure activities without assholes ruining it for everyone.
Yes, the best programs do use brute force, but the key to making a strong program is not in how they generate moves. The trickiest bit is in evauluating the reletive strength of each position.
It doesn't really matter how you come up with the list of moves to eval. Computers do it very differently from the way humans do, but the only important bit is the scoring.
Human players tend to look at chunks of the board, and go with much more of a gut instinct. They try for a favored style, and play the other person much more than the board. Computers crank out moves and look for the objectivly best, without worrying about whether the opponent prefers open or closed positions, etc.
Anybody can write a brute force move generator, but you still need an IM on your team if you want the computer to know if the generated moves are actually any good.
In the final round, I fell apart completely. Resigned after ~20 moves. I'd played my oppenent before that tournament, and after it, and I'm much better than he is, but the weekend caught up with me. Still my favorite tourney ever though.
Am I the only person in the world who gets very sick of anti-technology movies? Yes, yes, I know all about the Bill Joy interview. And yes, he raises some issues about technology that we need to be concerned about. However, his was not just a knee-jerk piece saying "technology bad." When's the last time you saw something from Hollywood that wasn't? Anytime technology shows up in a movie the result is as predicable as the plucky heroine of a Disney movie. The Matrix was no better than any other movie in this respect (and probably worse than some). How long until Hollywood makes a movie about technology whose theme is not the loss of humanity that tech inevitably brings? Will we ever see a movie in which technology is empowering, and not just for a Bond villian who wants to destroy the world? Although I should point out that the Bond movies (at least the later ones) do a better job of showing technology as a tool that can be used for good or evil than most. (RIP Desmond Llewelyn) Surely I'm not the only geek in the world who gets sick of seeing my life's work portraied as a way to enslave humanity. Dr. Faustus was a great play. But how many times do we have to remake it?
I've worn the golden handcuffs twice, and both times I've been lucky.
At the first one (a prime source of evil on the net) we used to joke that there was a good reason why our logo looked a lot like an eye in a pyramid(which also appears on the US dollar). The company I'm currently with IPO'd in October at 17 and is now somewhere around 120 (after going as high as 170something).
When you ask what options are worth, you're really asking what the company is worth. Since it usually takes four years to become fully vested, ask yourself if this company (and the people running it) are really going to be around in four years.
These days a decent geek can get a job in about 15 minutes. Are you looking at this company as a real long term prospect, or just something to pass the time? If it's short term, just look for the most cash you can get right now.
The most important thing is, will you be happy at this place, working in a very stressful atmosphere (as all startups are) for four years? Four years from now, what job will you be doing for this company? Will it be the same as when you came in, or will you be promoted? If the tech they use bores you, or you don't like the people, or they don't give you free sodas and coffee, then go somewhere else.
Unless you believe in the company, there's no point in rolling the dice on them. There are just too many other places you can work right now. Do what you love and the money will follow.
>They don;t even need to hire a UI guy from Apple
> - just pick up Apple's 'Human User Interface >Guidelines' (available in every bookstore), and
>use that as a target.
Uhm, no.
The Apple UI guidelines tell you the proper way to use the Apple Widget set with the Mac OS. They teach you nothing about good program design.
Using the right widget in the right place is only a very small part of design.
Besides, I really don't want a Mac clone any more than I want a Win95 clone.
Actually, I feel like my new manager is one of the best things that has happened to the dev staff where I work, and the really surprising thing is he knows *nothing* about programming, or computers in general.
:) So when our last manager left, I wound up with all the rewards and none of the headaches of being the alpha geek.
The difference is that he *knows* he knows nothing, and doesn't try to bullshit his staff. He's been an effective buffer between my team and the rest of the company and he lets us do things our way. OK, he lets us do things our way because he doesn't know any better, but productivity has skyrocketed, and he's managed to weasel more equipment money out of the folks upstairs.
He knows his job. He's there to manage, not write code. He does a good job making the rest of the company stick to its commitments to the dev staff, and we do our part in return. And even better, as the lead developer, I'm making more money than him.
Now if we could only replace the VP of IT with someone like this guy....
>But he's not Pynchon, at least not yet.
Thank god somebody else mentioned Pynchon here. As I read the book, all I could think of, especially during the Slothrop, er, Shaftoe sections, was Gravity's Rainbow. Was he intentionally modeling large chunks of this book on GR?
While GR is possibly my favorite book of all time, I just hate being reminded of it by a pale imitation. I would go so far as to say Cryptonomicon is Gravity's Rainbow for people who have never done acid. A bit (ok, a LOT) more linear, easier to follow, not as much distracting depth.
Don't get me wrong. I *really* like Cryptonomicon so far (650 pages in), but I keep waiting for the characters to break into Pynchonesque song (sorry, haiku doesn't count), or dive down a toilet to retrieve a harmonica.
At least it's something good to read while we wait another dozen years for the next Pynchon book.