Well, I don't know what your career goal is with this degree, so let's suppose for instance that you'd like to work in the games industry.
I work for a major game developer as a software engineer.
I did a B.Sc. in computer science, at a university that is rather oriented towards the more theoretical side of the curriculum spectrum. I then did a M.Sc. specializing in computer graphics and animation.
And... I can guarantee you that your Theory of Computation course will provide you with essential knowledge in any algorithm-heavy job (which is definitely the case when writing games). Your Numerical Analysis class also has a direct application in physics engines for games.
The other two I can't comment on as my area of expertise is not AI, but there's a good chance that the AI guys where I work would tell you that those courses would be valuable as well.
Ahh, ARexx.. Brings back memories. When I was a teenager with too much time on my hands, I built a really nice graphical front-end to control my uucp and fidonet nodes (using WelMat, Juliet, and a bunch of other software from AMICUS people, the Ottawa Amiga users group). The UI was all AmigaVision, and ARexx was doing the back-end.
And _that_ reminds me of one of the weirdest quirks of Rexx: it has DYNAMIC SCOPE!! The variables you have access to from within a procedure depend on where that procedure was called from. How's THAT for wacky!
Ok, I cancelled my subscription recently, but I played it for quite a while. You could say, by stretching it, that it's a new genre (massively multiplayer FPS). IMHO, it's not getting the attention or success that it deserves.
Sit ups either, unless you are fit enough that you can do those long enough. FYI, I'm no trainer, this is just what I hear at the gym...
They definitely will build your arms and abs though, but unless you can keep at it for extended periods of time, you won't be burning fat.
I think I'm in pretty good shape for a programmer ( Taekwon-do 2-3 times a week, squash 1-2 times a week, slightly under normal weight), and although it's not something I aim for, I can't do enough push ups to consider it a weight-losing exercise. If I push myself I can do a few series of 100 situps, at that level it might start helping.
But if you want to lose weight, nothing beats a 30-45 minute session of biking at a good pace (nothing that'll make your heart jump out, then you'd be working on your cardio and it's overkill, just the effort level at which you're sweating). Stationay bikes in gyms have heartrate monitors and a little graphs that tell you the target heart rate to lose weight that is right for your age.
Note that the article ends by saying that the Weekly World News will follow the story as it unfolds. This should have been enough of a hint that this is a prank to anyone who ever stood in line for the cash register at the supermarket.
For those who don't know, the Weekly World News is similar to the National Enquirer (ie a hoax news magazine), except that WWN goes a bit further and usually features on its cover a picture of some cat with an alien growing on the side of its head or of the virgin Mary doin' the streets of Vegas..
Just buy a PDA to be used exclusively as a universal remote; it'll be a lot less expensive than a dedicated universal remote with a touchscreen... I got my m100 for the equivalent of 65$US.
As for the range issue, that actually depends on the model. Handsprings aren't that good apparently, and Palms are better (I believe I read 15 ft on the Novii site, that's good enough for me).
I don't understand the reason for these overpriced universal remotes..
My Palm has a nice touch-sensitive display, quite enough memory and cpu power to handle such a trivial task, and lookadat, it even has an IR emitter!
There are a few companies out there that make universal remotes for PalmOS, one of which is Novii (found them with google). I'm surprised I can't find anything on SourceForge, this seems so much like the perfect geek project and surely isn't all that hard to do.
You might be interested to know that you
Concerning your points #2 and 4 (technology and repairability), and, to a certain extent, #3 (usability)...
You know, it's really not that hard to tear down a sheet rock wall, make whatever changes you want and build another one. We're talking about one Saturday's work here. The materials are dirt cheap too: have you ever bought 2x4's? Or sheet rock? The most expensive thing you'll buy is likely to be the case of 24 beers for your pals who'll help you out.
So if you're planning to build a house that's going to last hundreds of years, a few Saturday's worth of the owner's time really doesn't weigh in heavily in the sum of the relevent considerations.
... Well, at least it's not necessarily about making more money. It's primarily to regularize cash income for companies who have had a cyclic stock price tied to their release cycles.
In fact, they want to do this so much that they'll sometimes make that option more attractive than purchasing: they're willing to sacrifice a little income if it means it's going to be flowing regularly instead of in chunks.
Actually, it's much worse than that. By far the largest part of most CEO's income doesn't come from the token salary they receive, but by the stock options they get. The CEO of the company I work for (which is on the Fortune list BTW) also took a significant pay cut of 20% out of his/her salary of a few hundred thousand dollars a year. He/she still made several tens of millions in the same year with stock options.
The kind of situation where you get killed on a motorcycle (provided that you're already wearing protective gear) is when, after the impact, you hit the ground and then incoming traffic runs you over. No air bag will help there.
The primary (and only true) safety device on a motorcycle is your own ability to not put yourself in trouble in the first place.
I've driven motorcycles almost every day (execpt when there's snow) for nearly ten years. No accident yet. I've sworn to myself that if I ever have one, no matter how benign, I'll quit driving a bike, as it would then prove that I don't have enough discipline or skills to drive one.
-- owner of a nice new Yamaha FZ-1, and loving it!
When I was a kid, I had windows for the same reason I had linux (which wasn't such a smooth ride at the time either). Although I didn't realize it at the time, I enjoyed things that broke, and I enjoyed fixing them. I spent most of my time on my computer just fixing it rather than using it for anything useful. In that context, windows fit in quite nicely.
These days, I still have it for strangely similar reasons. I wouldn't say it's my main OS, as I have it solely to run games without a linux version (yet -- nwn should have a linux client any time now). But since I mainly use my home computer for games, well...
Oh, and I also have an X-Box, which, in a certain way, Microsft pays me to use. I'm okay with that.
If I add up my computer time, then I spend most of it on this guy.
I didn't do any benchmarks, I was more interested in getting the work done, but I remember one occasion where I scanned about 30 pages total and never got concerned by the battery's charge.
The scanner I linked to in my initial comment uses a series of RGB LEDs rather than a fluorescent tube to light up the page. I expect that it takes very little power. The only other concern is the motor, which isn't very fast (and a row of leds is lighter than a tube assembly I guess).
Flatbed scanners have become really slim and rugged. My GF has one that's 8.5x14 and slimmer than her iBook. It's a USB scanner that requires no external power source (it has all it needs from the usb port). If you're already carrying the laptop around, this adds almost no weight or volume to the total. This is what I used for my trips to the library.
The scanner she has is something like this one, and I'm sure there are other ones. Pretty cheap too!
Check out DSI Technologies. Go to their product page to have a look at their multipoint touchpad called HandGear. It does exactly that. They have drivers for various applications including 3DSMax. I've tried this thing here at discreet, it works amazingly well; the "jar opening" movement rotates objects, stretching out your hand zooms, etc, as in the article in this story.
At requesting credit where they think it is due, then how come, when they concede that X is a pretty big part of the picture, do they refer to it as X11?
X11 is short for X protocol, version 11. That's defined by the X consortium. What most people use is XFree86, developed by the XFree86 Project.
And by the way RMS, add in the code base of XFree86 and KDE, and you've got much, much more code already than all of the GNU stuff that gets installed in a typical distribution, even considering gcc.
I'd really like to be able to say that it wasn't that great, but then a bunch of you would come running at me with machettes.
Oh and btw, make sure you have the credentials if you want to be in the same room as these guys. They're lev21 geeks and won't teach to anyone below lev18, sorry.
Then, on a computer, the survey team plotted the markers on a detailed map and connected them with a straight line
Am I the only one thinking that this doesn't sound right? On most maps, a straight line on the (spherical) ground does not equate to a straight line on a map. I'm not going to work through the numbers, but I wouldn't be surprised if it makes a few feet of difference on a line that's a few miles long..
You are comparing a heavily shielded co-ax cable with a practically unshielded twisted pair that already has most of its bandwidth potential occupied (quite unefficiently) by analog voice transmission. The reason why DSL has such a widely varying data rate from one location to the next is because for any given location, that's the maximum you'll get given your distance from your neighboorhood's switch. If the phone companies could offer the same speeds as the cable guys, they would.
Where I live, Videotron (cable) gives around 2.4Mbit/s while Bell Canada offers 1MBit/s. (Yes, Canada is one of the rare places where broadband is truly fast & relatively cheap. And that speed on DSL is due to Bell's network here which has very short distances between switches and residences, typically a few hundred meters).
Now come on, really, these guys aren't stupid. If it were possible to strip down Windows, they would have done it already and would be
spending lots of money trying to dominate new markets.
I'm posting this a bit late, but I noticed that no one here (with a rating of at least 3 anyway) noticed how ridiculous this story is. The claim is that the brain expects the ball to have a parapolic trajectory due to gravity, and so it is dificult to catch because it goes straight at constant speed...
Hm. A rolling soccer ball and, better yet, a hockey puck have pretty much a constant speed (minus friction) and in the simplest case don't have a parabolic trajectory: they move the very same way a ball in space does. Yet it doesn't take 15 days for any of us to figure out how to stop them.
Slashdot Mirror
I work for a major game developer as a software engineer.
I did a B.Sc. in computer science, at a university that is rather oriented towards the more theoretical side of the curriculum spectrum. I then did a M.Sc. specializing in computer graphics and animation.
And... I can guarantee you that your Theory of Computation course will provide you with essential knowledge in any algorithm-heavy job (which is definitely the case when writing games). Your Numerical Analysis class also has a direct application in physics engines for games.
The other two I can't comment on as my area of expertise is not AI, but there's a good chance that the AI guys where I work would tell you that those courses would be valuable as well.
Wasn't it "Fat Boy", and then "Little Man"?
The article called the bomb "Little Boy". America does need more history classes it seems.
And _that_ reminds me of one of the weirdest quirks of Rexx: it has DYNAMIC SCOPE!! The variables you have access to from within a procedure depend on where that procedure was called from. How's THAT for wacky!
Ok, I cancelled my subscription recently, but I played it for quite a while. You could say, by stretching it, that it's a new genre (massively multiplayer FPS). IMHO, it's not getting the attention or success that it deserves.
IMHO, it's the best one ever; without selling any punches, it ends in bloodshed :-)...
Sit ups either, unless you are fit enough that you can do those long enough. FYI, I'm no trainer, this is just what I hear at the gym...
They definitely will build your arms and abs though, but unless you can keep at it for extended periods of time, you won't be burning fat.
I think I'm in pretty good shape for a programmer ( Taekwon-do 2-3 times a week, squash 1-2 times a week, slightly under normal weight), and although it's not something I aim for, I can't do enough push ups to consider it a weight-losing exercise. If I push myself I can do a few series of 100 situps, at that level it might start helping.
But if you want to lose weight, nothing beats a 30-45 minute session of biking at a good pace (nothing that'll make your heart jump out, then you'd be working on your cardio and it's overkill, just the effort level at which you're sweating). Stationay bikes in gyms have heartrate monitors and a little graphs that tell you the target heart rate to lose weight that is right for your age.
Note that the article ends by saying that the Weekly World News will follow the story as it unfolds. This should have been enough of a hint that this is a prank to anyone who ever stood in line for the cash register at the supermarket.
For those who don't know, the Weekly World News is similar to the National Enquirer (ie a hoax news magazine), except that WWN goes a bit further and usually features on its cover a picture of some cat with an alien growing on the side of its head or of the virgin Mary doin' the streets of Vegas..
Just buy a PDA to be used exclusively as a universal remote; it'll be a lot less expensive than a dedicated universal remote with a touchscreen... I got my m100 for the equivalent of 65$US.
As for the range issue, that actually depends on the model. Handsprings aren't that good apparently, and Palms are better (I believe I read 15 ft on the Novii site, that's good enough for me).
My Palm has a nice touch-sensitive display, quite enough memory and cpu power to handle such a trivial task, and lookadat, it even has an IR emitter!
There are a few companies out there that make universal remotes for PalmOS, one of which is Novii (found them with google). I'm surprised I can't find anything on SourceForge, this seems so much like the perfect geek project and surely isn't all that hard to do. You might be interested to know that you
Concerning your points #2 and 4 (technology and repairability), and, to a certain extent, #3 (usability)...
You know, it's really not that hard to tear down a sheet rock wall, make whatever changes you want and build another one. We're talking about one Saturday's work here. The materials are dirt cheap too: have you ever bought 2x4's? Or sheet rock? The most expensive thing you'll buy is likely to be the case of 24 beers for your pals who'll help you out.
So if you're planning to build a house that's going to last hundreds of years, a few Saturday's worth of the owner's time really doesn't weigh in heavily in the sum of the relevent considerations.
... Well, at least it's not necessarily about making more money. It's primarily to regularize cash income for companies who have had a cyclic stock price tied to their release cycles.
In fact, they want to do this so much that they'll sometimes make that option more attractive than purchasing: they're willing to sacrifice a little income if it means it's going to be flowing regularly instead of in chunks.
I chose not to. The goal was not to make one CEO look bad, it was simply to bring that point to attention.
Actually, it's much worse than that. By far the largest part of most CEO's income doesn't come from the token salary they receive, but by the stock options they get. The CEO of the company I work for (which is on the Fortune list BTW) also took a significant pay cut of 20% out of his/her salary of a few hundred thousand dollars a year. He/she still made several tens of millions in the same year with stock options.
The kind of situation where you get killed on a motorcycle (provided that you're already wearing protective gear) is when, after the impact, you hit the ground and then incoming traffic runs you over. No air bag will help there.
The primary (and only true) safety device on a motorcycle is your own ability to not put yourself in trouble in the first place.
I've driven motorcycles almost every day (execpt when there's snow) for nearly ten years. No accident yet. I've sworn to myself that if I ever have one, no matter how benign, I'll quit driving a bike, as it would then prove that I don't have enough discipline or skills to drive one.
-- owner of a nice new Yamaha FZ-1, and loving it!
These days, I still have it for strangely similar reasons. I wouldn't say it's my main OS, as I have it solely to run games without a linux version (yet -- nwn should have a linux client any time now). But since I mainly use my home computer for games, well...
Oh, and I also have an X-Box, which, in a certain way, Microsft pays me to use. I'm okay with that.
If I add up my computer time, then I spend most of it on this guy.
The scanner I linked to in my initial comment uses a series of RGB LEDs rather than a fluorescent tube to light up the page. I expect that it takes very little power. The only other concern is the motor, which isn't very fast (and a row of leds is lighter than a tube assembly I guess).
The scanner she has is something like this one, and I'm sure there are other ones. Pretty cheap too!
Check out DSI Technologies. Go to their product page to have a look at their multipoint touchpad called HandGear. It does exactly that. They have drivers for various applications including 3DSMax. I've tried this thing here at discreet, it works amazingly well; the "jar opening" movement rotates objects, stretching out your hand zooms, etc, as in the article in this story.
X11 is short for X protocol, version 11. That's defined by the X consortium. What most people use is XFree86, developed by the XFree86 Project.
And by the way RMS, add in the code base of XFree86 and KDE, and you've got much, much more code already than all of the GNU stuff that gets installed in a typical distribution, even considering gcc.
I'd really like to be able to say that it wasn't that great, but then a bunch of you would come running at me with machettes.
Oh and btw, make sure you have the credentials if you want to be in the same room as these guys. They're lev21 geeks and won't teach to anyone below lev18, sorry.
Am I the only one thinking that this doesn't sound right? On most maps, a straight line on the (spherical) ground does not equate to a straight line on a map. I'm not going to work through the numbers, but I wouldn't be surprised if it makes a few feet of difference on a line that's a few miles long..
THat would be the effect of a lack of blood circulation of your brain, caused by positive G's.
You are comparing a heavily shielded co-ax cable with a practically unshielded twisted pair that already has most of its bandwidth potential occupied (quite unefficiently) by analog voice transmission. The reason why DSL has such a widely varying data rate from one location to the next is because for any given location, that's the maximum you'll get given your distance from your neighboorhood's switch. If the phone companies could offer the same speeds as the cable guys, they would.
Where I live, Videotron (cable) gives around 2.4Mbit/s while Bell Canada offers 1MBit/s. (Yes, Canada is one of the rare places where broadband is truly fast & relatively cheap. And that speed on DSL is due to Bell's network here which has very short distances between switches and residences, typically a few hundred meters).
Now come on, really, these guys aren't stupid. If it were possible to strip down Windows, they would have done it already and would be spending lots of money trying to dominate new markets.
I'm posting this a bit late, but I noticed that no one here (with a rating of at least 3 anyway) noticed how ridiculous this story is. The claim is that the brain expects the ball to have a parapolic trajectory due to gravity, and so it is dificult to catch because it goes straight at constant speed...
Hm. A rolling soccer ball and, better yet, a hockey puck have pretty much a constant speed (minus friction) and in the simplest case don't have a parabolic trajectory: they move the very same way a ball in space does. Yet it doesn't take 15 days for any of us to figure out how to stop them.