Hopefully not, but I'm not the only one who sees Bush as the guy riding the Atom Bomb like a bucking bronco as it falls from the bomber (sorry, blanking on the name of that movie!).
We should take the billions we're spending on the "War" and use it to further the idea of not being tied to a single planet. Yeah, it's a long way off, but the sooner we start, the better chances we'll finish before someone or something (big rock from space, environmental meltdown, aliens who have to kill us for making the X-Files...) smokes the Earth.
I had heard the ugly rumor that Duke Nukem was crossing the street on the way to a contract signing and some punk drove by in a Banshee and gunned him down for his ever-present weapon cache.
My first instinct, on seeing the idea of a machine which won't boot into text mode was to cry "No Fair!" Then I realized that I haven't actually sat down and worked in a text console for years, and that the only thing I ever really "need" a text console for is diagnostics at boot time.
I still use text, but it's all via ssh in xterm (or equivalent) sessions.
Once upon a time, you could argue that text-mode was substantially faster, and worked on monitors that couldn't do the more exotic modes. With video cards today being FAR more powerful than the mainframes we used VT220's to connect to, and even sub-$100 monitors able to to 1024x768... it really doesn't matter much today.
So, over the last 20 years, I've let go of assembly language, I've let go of trying to optimize every byte of memory usage, I've let go of rewriting loops to optimize cpu caching, and now I've let go of text-mode. I wonder how long before I can let go of local storage (in favor of encrypted server storage)?
I'll be happy as long as they don't choose FORTH as their boot monitor language. Those sun consoles where just painful!
Yeah, it's pretty paranoid to think that an unchecked monopoly, unable to innovate new products and desperate to maintain their market share in the face of slowly growing competition, would ever try to make continued upgrades look appealing by damaging customers of older products who seem reluctant to provide them with further revenue...
As we all know, major technological advances in the computing field are all driven by the pr0n industry...so imagine what a current-generating fabric would be used for.
At the very least, it ought to convince people to produce efficient wearable computers. You know that the guy in jedi-robes must have a pimpin' CPU... but the model who's almost in a bikini might be highly optimized *wink wink*.
FTP is a better protocol than HTTP if you're intending to use it for transferring of files, especially directory hierarchies. Most people who complain about ftp have three gripes: It's not always friendly to firewalls (but that's a firewall problem, not ftp's fault), it's not secure (that's only partially ftp's fault.. it's really the implementation of the server that's mostly to blame), or that IE doesn't handle it well (yeah, it's a Microsoft product... you expect it to work?)
FTP almost always provides faster streaming (at least it seems that way to me), it's trivial to limit bandwidth and number of connections without impacting your web site (if you serve via http, you can only do this by setting up virtual hosts and mucking with alot of configuration files).
FTP supports continuation, which is more difficult to do in HTTP -- although not impossible.
Modern FTP servers support on-the-fly tar and compression of directories when a recursive retrieval is asked for, and usually the client can choose if they want to unpack it as it comes in, or just leave it as an archive. You could do this in apache, but I've not seen it done yet (in fact, I've not seen recursive directory retrieval in apache).
There ARE other protocols out there (FXP I seem to recall), but none in popular use. SSH also provides a way to get files using SCP or SFTP, but there aren't many good clients in the windoze world.
Now, having said all this.. nothing stops you from providing both services off the same directory.
And we all know that if there isn't a specific law which pertains to an exact version of a piece of software, then that software will bring about the downfall of humanity, right?
It doesn't matter if the *issue* is already dealt with in lots of other laws, we need to create a new digital law to deal with this CyberCrime, because...errr... think of the children!
Why didn't *I* think of filing for stupidly broad patents when I was in high-school? I could have then sat on my ASS and sued people to become rich. I could live off the hard work of others and contribute NOTHING back.
The sorrow of missed opportunities....
Maybe I can still file a patent on a method of organizing pending work so that it can be done in the most time-efficient manner possible (procrastination)!
Thank you USPTO! Thank you for validating the laziness of American Citizens. Proving once again that it's better to let others do the work, as long as you can take the credit.
True, but then again... if the company WERE guilty, they might try to pass the blame onto the former admin, citing the fact that he was fired as "evidence" of his wrongdoing.
As long as this operates on a Guilty unless Proven Innocent basis, it can and will be abused on both ends. Only the BSA comes out ahead, since they get paid on both ends.
"We are a small mom-and-pop ISP, and we get charged by the telco per kilobyte of traffic."
So, how does NAT affect this in any way? If I have 20 people all playing a text mud on individual computers, I'll still use less bandwidth that 1 person running a P2P file sharing system.
"It isn't THAT hard to determine who the dishonest are, using the simple question: you are using twice (or three times) the bandwidth that an average customer would use connected with one PC 24/7."
That is just plain wrong. You cannot assume that Joe Smith (who downlaods iso images all day) is doing to use the same bandwidth as the Jones family (who have 5 computers, but they only ever play Diablo online with them).
Maybe you should take the time to educate yourself about how networks function before making blanket assumptions that encourage greedy single connections and discourage proper LAN administration.
"After an audit, we discovered that fewer than 5% of our customers were consuming the majority of our bandwidth. It was either raise prices for everyone, or disallow P2P file-sharing."
Ever think of option 3: Creating a finer tier structure in your pricing scheme and charging accordingly? You screwd up originally by offering more bandwidth than you could actually support... and now you're trying to find ways to recover -- fine. Instead of charging Joe Download the same price you charge Grandma Email, how about adjusting their fees by their consumption?
This would encourage NAT firewalls, as they can also be transparent proxies so web traffic gets cached (3 people look at the same page, 1 copy gets downloaded)... doesn't matter to you since it's all just packets, and it's more secure for the end-user since they aren't fully exposed.
But oh well, either you get it, or you don't.. and it sounds like you don't. Good luck!
Mr. Riccitiello can go hang out with Mr. Bremen and discuss how they don't really understand their audience because they aren't a part of it. I'm sure Rick would buy him a beer.
Simulating ordinary people can be kindof fun to do, but it's something I'd setup and then go do something else and check back every so often to see how well they're doing. Sorry, it just isn't riviting to watch a simulation of normality.
At least in other MMPORPG's, you have the sense that you're exploring, improving, or possibly just being a prick to someone else. In the Sims, you're watching a character sit around and talk (presumably about how they were sitting around at work). In the single-player game, it's a challenge to try to convince the AI to do something interesting.. in the multi-player game, you can't even do that.
First of all, educate the public. Nobody wants to see people die, and of course it's a terrible tragedy... but you know if I had the chance to go up in space, I'd gladly do it without hesitation. Those people died doing something most of can only dream of, and the odds that they faced were probably not that much worse than when you and I drive to work in the morning. The knew the risks, and accepted them. Is this how we choose to honor their sacrifice? By putting an end to the very ideals they died trying to advance? Did it never occur to anyone that maybe if NASA had a budget that was more than a joke, they might have been able to research more reliable materials?
That said, it is difficult for me to imagine what goes through the minds of people trying to stop NASA at every mishap. Do they really believe that we'll magically fix all the problems we have here on Earth before the population density grows so high that real-estate in Antarctica starts looking attractive to management? I believe our future lies in space, spreading out from the Earth is the only way to ensure the long-term survival of the species, and Mars is the second step in that goal.
For those of you with less lofty ideas, might I remind you of the HUGE number of technological advances that came out of the well-funded space program of the 1960's? Anyone here use plastic? How about microwave ovens? Miniaturized computers (aka laptops)? Batteries to run them? All of these are available to us now, because they were developed for use in the space program, and then refined by the military.
Imagine what kinds of new technology we'd see if Congress would toss the same $2 billion dollars at NASA that they're tossing to AIDS resarch. Isn't our long-term survival and quality-of-life worth just as much as our short-term survival? Probably not. Most politicians can't see beyond the next election, so having things like an actual Goal for the nation is a concept that died with the Soviet Union.
I think if the public knew (or remembered) all the good that CAN come from a well-funded space program, they'd be screaming at Congress to fund them, knowing that in 5 years they'd get it all back in lower-priced consumer goods.
It's not really that hard to see why the entire Star Trek Empire is falling... the Eastern and Western Emporers (B&B) have put such a tight stranglehold on their creation, that it can't breathe.
Star Trek has the classic problems of any television series that refuses to change. It has become stagnant. Bremen refuses to hire decent writers and let them run loose. He won't allow any cliffhangers that can't be resolved in 2 or 3 episodes. He also won't allow major characters to die, or fail, or turn evil, or just plain disappear from sight for more than 1 short story.
Once you have a setting (which Gene provided for you), and a cast with some chemistry (DS9 and Enterprise, not Voyager), all you need to do is get some good solid writing. What makes good sci-fi? What makes good writing!
Surprise! If I can predict how the episode will turn out before the first commercial break, it's not really that much fun to watch. Yes, I enjoy seeing T'Pol bounce around in her jumpsuit... but that's not enough.
Suspense! If I know that everything will all turn out O.K. in the end, because the next episode will be out in a week... why do I care? In good writing, you are never quite sure if any character or endeavour will work out. Major characters can die too. They can also become evil, or just disappear without a trace. Watch Babylon 5 someday... see how the characters evolve, and see who survives and who doesn't.... and why.
Common Sense! Enough with the time travel out of your ass already. There's a difference between asking us to suspend our disbelief and go with the idea of phased particle weapons, or warp drive; and smacking us with technobabble just to see how much blood pours out of our ears. Cause and Effect work well together, and can do wonders for finding holes in a plot.
While I'm at it, might I also suggest not only sticking with it (don't change the direction a show is headed just because a week or two were unpopular), but letting the characters evolve over time? The Piccard of "All Good Things" was a vastly different man than the one in "Encounter at Farpoint"... and that evolution was part of the show's charm. You got the sense that he'd learned from his experiences, and that he had become a hero.
Many people have complained about Enterprise... it certainly isn't a "Next Generation", but the chemistry is already better than TNG was for several seasons. If they would just toss them a few really GOOD scripts, I think we'd all be impressed with the results.
*sigh* It will never happen though, it's too risky. B & B have grown too accustomed to their regular paychecks to risk failure. If they keep to the formula and let the show die a whimpering death, they can blame the fans, or competing TV shows, or sunspots. If they dare produce real stories, they might get blamed for those that don't do well.
I think ST can be saved, if B&B will keep their damn hands off it. Hire writers who have proven track records, tell them they can do whatever they want -- but they have to ask before they can kill off major characters, and let the stories flow and stretch across seasons. See the "Thieves World" set of novels as a great example of cooperative and competitve storytelling in a common universe.
It kindof depends on your goals. If you only intend to play with pure game design, then yes... use python. It's a very clean language, and quite popular these days.
OTOH, if you want to learn how to write efficient code, and produce something fun in the process, then coding for an older computer architecture is a very good way to do it.
I've often remarked on how learning Assembly on the C64 (6510 CPU, wonderful!) made learning C and other language soooo much easier, as I already understood at a very fundamental level, what pointers were, and what the computer was going to do with if(a) printf("%s", a);
A couple of points here... masking the taste of rotting meat, or spoiled milk DOES have a huge negative, it means you can eat such things without realizing it and then wonder why you become violently ill. Or are you naieve enough to think the fast food industry won't leap on this like a starved wolf on a no-legged lamb?
Secondly, if we WERE to make a magical tastes-good-to-everyone chemical and start using it, by what criteria would you judge the excellence of a chef? Presently, when something tastes good, you know that a certain amount of effort and care went into making it. Yes, a fast food burger tastes good, but a carefully prepared, seasoned, and cooked piece of ground sirloin tastes much better. By making everything taste "good", you dilute the pool, and now nothing will really taste "good" anymore at all.
Lastly, many people (myself included) have varying degrees of allergies to perfume/colognes. For me, it's just mildly annoying, but for others it can become difficult to breathe. I'd say that's a pretty big negative.
I don't want a chemical to make garbage taste good, I want a magical device to allow me to create good food without having to spend all day preparing it. The microwave comes close, but it's not quite magical.:)
Experience without learning isn't worth very much. If I have extensive experience stabbing a knife into my finger, it doesn't mean I'm a world class knife expert. It means I didn't learn from prior mistakes.
"in terms of practical security benefit, the recent spending of taxpayer dollars on a set of minimum Windows security standards"
Why should the federal government, an agency which really should be dealing with foreign policy, civil defense, interstate commerce, and perhaps judicial matters which supercede the ability of a single state; be spending taxpayer dollars setting "guidlines" or "standards" for a private corporation which should have done that itself, many years ago?
Microsoft should have cleaned house long ago, and only the fact that they are a monopoly has allowed them to continue selling such a bug-riddled product. Now that some amount of competition is surfacing, we seem them scrambling to tidy up their product before everyone realizes that they don't *really* need it as much as they think.
I realized about 2 years ago that the ONLY reason I still "need" windows is to play games. I found reasonable (in some cases superior, in others not) alternatives for everything else I do in the linux environment. YMMV.
My point is, if Microsoft made such a wonderful product, why did it take government intervention to force them to produce quality? Same reason it takes federal laws to keep paper mills from dumping tons of heavy metals into the well-water you drink from, greed and laziness. MS knew perfectly well that their code was bloated, buggy, and full of security holes, but if everyone kept buying it... why fix it?
I guess we go back to the old reliable way of doing things... maintaining our own/etc/hosts file.
I understand the need/desire for international character support, but since I can't read Kanji... it doesn't really matter if I get the correct UTF-8 name, or an ASCII mangling of it... it will won't mean anything to me.
What we really need is not character representations, but rather translations. If we had "root" servers which would respond to language-specific lookup requests, we could ask for the name in whatever character set we needed.
In a prior example, Mönsterås might come up as Mönsterås in swedish, but in english it would resolve to whatever that actually translates to (sorry, don't have a lookup handy), and in ASCII it would become "Monsteras".
I get tons of spam email on one of my accounts, and I asked the postmaster (yahoo, BTW) why they didn't just filter out all messages where the sender or subject didn't use ASCII from my delivery? *I* can't read it, so either it should be translated or ignored. BTW: Their anti-spam filter can't handle non-ascii characters, and thus defaults to delivery... joy.
Heh... yes indeed. Not to scare you, but I had actually contemplated using Crystal Space (or similar) to make a 3D "first-person" nethack. *gasp* *shudder* No, not a shooter... the actual nethack game with giant spinning 3D-rendered ASCII symbols in space that you'd move through.
Slashdot Mirror
It's ALWAYS Christmas in PC-Hardware land.... it's just that often Santa-Bill brings you lumps of coal.
So would a DDoS attack be a couple of guys standing around the receiver taking flash photographs?
...and most of them are in the Middle East.
Hopefully not, but I'm not the only one who sees Bush as the guy riding the Atom Bomb like a bucking bronco as it falls from the bomber (sorry, blanking on the name of that movie!).
We should take the billions we're spending on the "War" and use it to further the idea of not being tied to a single planet. Yeah, it's a long way off, but the sooner we start, the better chances we'll finish before someone or something (big rock from space, environmental meltdown, aliens who have to kill us for making the X-Files...) smokes the Earth.
...now that we have leeched all we need to make sure we can prevent it from working in WinXP! Muahahahaha!!!!
Whew! That's a releif!
I had heard the ugly rumor that Duke Nukem was crossing the street on the way to a contract signing and some punk drove by in a Banshee and gunned him down for his ever-present weapon cache.
My first instinct, on seeing the idea of a machine which won't boot into text mode was to cry "No Fair!" Then I realized that I haven't actually sat down and worked in a text console for years, and that the only thing I ever really "need" a text console for is diagnostics at boot time.
I still use text, but it's all via ssh in xterm (or equivalent) sessions.
Once upon a time, you could argue that text-mode was substantially faster, and worked on monitors that couldn't do the more exotic modes. With video cards today being FAR more powerful than the mainframes we used VT220's to connect to, and even sub-$100 monitors able to to 1024x768... it really doesn't matter much today.
So, over the last 20 years, I've let go of assembly language, I've let go of trying to optimize every byte of memory usage, I've let go of rewriting loops to optimize cpu caching, and now I've let go of text-mode. I wonder how long before I can let go of local storage (in favor of encrypted server storage)?
I'll be happy as long as they don't choose FORTH as their boot monitor language. Those sun consoles where just painful!
Who told you that? Who did they work for??? :)
Yeah, it's pretty paranoid to think that an unchecked monopoly, unable to innovate new products and desperate to maintain their market share in the face of slowly growing competition, would ever try to make continued upgrades look appealing by damaging customers of older products who seem reluctant to provide them with further revenue...
As we all know, major technological advances in the computing field are all driven by the pr0n industry...so imagine what a current-generating fabric would be used for.
At the very least, it ought to convince people to produce efficient wearable computers. You know that the guy in jedi-robes must have a pimpin' CPU... but the model who's almost in a bikini might be highly optimized *wink wink*.
FTP is a better protocol than HTTP if you're intending to use it for transferring of files, especially directory hierarchies. Most people who complain about ftp have three gripes: It's not always friendly to firewalls (but that's a firewall problem, not ftp's fault), it's not secure (that's only partially ftp's fault.. it's really the implementation of the server that's mostly to blame), or that IE doesn't handle it well (yeah, it's a Microsoft product... you expect it to work?)
FTP almost always provides faster streaming (at least it seems that way to me), it's trivial to limit bandwidth and number of connections without impacting your web site (if you serve via http, you can only do this by setting up virtual hosts and mucking with alot of configuration files).
FTP supports continuation, which is more difficult to do in HTTP -- although not impossible.
Modern FTP servers support on-the-fly tar and compression of directories when a recursive retrieval is asked for, and usually the client can choose if they want to unpack it as it comes in, or just leave it as an archive. You could do this in apache, but I've not seen it done yet (in fact, I've not seen recursive directory retrieval in apache).
There ARE other protocols out there (FXP I seem to recall), but none in popular use. SSH also provides a way to get files using SCP or SFTP, but there aren't many good clients in the windoze world.
Now, having said all this.. nothing stops you from providing both services off the same directory.
Yeah, now Legolas doesn't have to board across pesky stairs and orcs anymore, he can have real CGI snow!
And we all know that if there isn't a specific law which pertains to an exact version of a piece of software, then that software will bring about the downfall of humanity, right?
It doesn't matter if the *issue* is already dealt with in lots of other laws, we need to create a new digital law to deal with this CyberCrime, because...errr... think of the children!
Can we go home now?
Why didn't *I* think of filing for stupidly broad patents when I was in high-school? I could have then sat on my ASS and sued people to become rich. I could live off the hard work of others and contribute NOTHING back.
The sorrow of missed opportunities....
Maybe I can still file a patent on a method of organizing pending work so that it can be done in the most time-efficient manner possible (procrastination)!
Thank you USPTO! Thank you for validating the laziness of American Citizens. Proving once again that it's better to let others do the work, as long as you can take the credit.
So when can we get keyboards coated with this?
It will make ALL the difference, you know...
Solid.
"You mess with the fro, you got to go!"
"Vib*cough**cough* personal massagers! Imagine the possibilities!"
Ok, link the intensity to the speed of your data transfer. Gives P2P networks a whole new appeal, no?
True, but then again... if the company WERE guilty, they might try to pass the blame onto the former admin, citing the fact that he was fired as "evidence" of his wrongdoing.
As long as this operates on a Guilty unless Proven Innocent basis, it can and will be abused on both ends. Only the BSA comes out ahead, since they get paid on both ends.
IA(lso)ANAL.
"We are a small mom-and-pop ISP, and we get charged by the telco per kilobyte of traffic."
So, how does NAT affect this in any way? If I have 20 people all playing a text mud on individual computers, I'll still use less bandwidth that 1 person running a P2P file sharing system.
"It isn't THAT hard to determine who the dishonest are, using the simple question: you are using twice (or three times) the bandwidth that an average customer would use connected with one PC 24/7."
That is just plain wrong. You cannot assume that Joe Smith (who downlaods iso images all day) is doing to use the same bandwidth as the Jones family (who have 5 computers, but they only ever play Diablo online with them).
Maybe you should take the time to educate yourself about how networks function before making blanket assumptions that encourage greedy single connections and discourage proper LAN administration.
"After an audit, we discovered that fewer than 5% of our customers were consuming the majority of our bandwidth. It was either raise prices for everyone, or disallow P2P file-sharing."
Ever think of option 3: Creating a finer tier structure in your pricing scheme and charging accordingly? You screwd up originally by offering more bandwidth than you could actually support... and now you're trying to find ways to recover -- fine. Instead of charging Joe Download the same price you charge Grandma Email, how about adjusting their fees by their consumption?
This would encourage NAT firewalls, as they can also be transparent proxies so web traffic gets cached (3 people look at the same page, 1 copy gets downloaded)... doesn't matter to you since it's all just packets, and it's more secure for the end-user since they aren't fully exposed.
But oh well, either you get it, or you don't.. and it sounds like you don't. Good luck!
Mr. Riccitiello can go hang out with Mr. Bremen and discuss how they don't really understand their audience because they aren't a part of it. I'm sure Rick would buy him a beer.
Simulating ordinary people can be kindof fun to do, but it's something I'd setup and then go do something else and check back every so often to see how well they're doing. Sorry, it just isn't riviting to watch a simulation of normality.
At least in other MMPORPG's, you have the sense that you're exploring, improving, or possibly just being a prick to someone else. In the Sims, you're watching a character sit around and talk (presumably about how they were sitting around at work). In the single-player game, it's a challenge to try to convince the AI to do something interesting.. in the multi-player game, you can't even do that.
First of all, educate the public. Nobody wants to see people die, and of course it's a terrible tragedy... but you know if I had the chance to go up in space, I'd gladly do it without hesitation. Those people died doing something most of can only dream of, and the odds that they faced were probably not that much worse than when you and I drive to work in the morning. The knew the risks, and accepted them. Is this how we choose to honor their sacrifice? By putting an end to the very ideals they died trying to advance? Did it never occur to anyone that maybe if NASA had a budget that was more than a joke, they might have been able to research more reliable materials?
That said, it is difficult for me to imagine what goes through the minds of people trying to stop NASA at every mishap. Do they really believe that we'll magically fix all the problems we have here on Earth before the population density grows so high that real-estate in Antarctica starts looking attractive to management? I believe our future lies in space, spreading out from the Earth is the only way to ensure the long-term survival of the species, and Mars is the second step in that goal.
For those of you with less lofty ideas, might I remind you of the HUGE number of technological advances that came out of the well-funded space program of the 1960's? Anyone here use plastic? How about microwave ovens? Miniaturized computers (aka laptops)? Batteries to run them? All of these are available to us now, because they were developed for use in the space program, and then refined by the military.
Imagine what kinds of new technology we'd see if Congress would toss the same $2 billion dollars at NASA that they're tossing to AIDS resarch. Isn't our long-term survival and quality-of-life worth just as much as our short-term survival? Probably not. Most politicians can't see beyond the next election, so having things like an actual Goal for the nation is a concept that died with the Soviet Union.
I think if the public knew (or remembered) all the good that CAN come from a well-funded space program, they'd be screaming at Congress to fund them, knowing that in 5 years they'd get it all back in lower-priced consumer goods.
It's not really that hard to see why the entire Star Trek Empire is falling... the Eastern and Western Emporers (B&B) have put such a tight stranglehold on their creation, that it can't breathe.
Star Trek has the classic problems of any television series that refuses to change. It has become stagnant. Bremen refuses to hire decent writers and let them run loose. He won't allow any cliffhangers that can't be resolved in 2 or 3 episodes. He also won't allow major characters to die, or fail, or turn evil, or just plain disappear from sight for more than 1 short story.
Once you have a setting (which Gene provided for you), and a cast with some chemistry (DS9 and Enterprise, not Voyager), all you need to do is get some good solid writing. What makes good sci-fi? What makes good writing!
Surprise! If I can predict how the episode will turn out before the first commercial break, it's not really that much fun to watch. Yes, I enjoy seeing T'Pol bounce around in her jumpsuit... but that's not enough.
Suspense! If I know that everything will all turn out O.K. in the end, because the next episode will be out in a week... why do I care? In good writing, you are never quite sure if any character or endeavour will work out. Major characters can die too. They can also become evil, or just disappear without a trace. Watch Babylon 5 someday... see how the characters evolve, and see who survives and who doesn't.... and why.
Common Sense! Enough with the time travel out of your ass already. There's a difference between asking us to suspend our disbelief and go with the idea of phased particle weapons, or warp drive; and smacking us with technobabble just to see how much blood pours out of our ears. Cause and Effect work well together, and can do wonders for finding holes in a plot.
While I'm at it, might I also suggest not only sticking with it (don't change the direction a show is headed just because a week or two were unpopular), but letting the characters evolve over time? The Piccard of "All Good Things" was a vastly different man than the one in "Encounter at Farpoint"... and that evolution was part of the show's charm. You got the sense that he'd learned from his experiences, and that he had become a hero.
Many people have complained about Enterprise... it certainly isn't a "Next Generation", but the chemistry is already better than TNG was for several seasons. If they would just toss them a few really GOOD scripts, I think we'd all be impressed with the results.
*sigh* It will never happen though, it's too risky. B & B have grown too accustomed to their regular paychecks to risk failure. If they keep to the formula and let the show die a whimpering death, they can blame the fans, or competing TV shows, or sunspots. If they dare produce real stories, they might get blamed for those that don't do well.
I think ST can be saved, if B&B will keep their damn hands off it. Hire writers who have proven track records, tell them they can do whatever they want -- but they have to ask before they can kill off major characters, and let the stories flow and stretch across seasons. See the "Thieves World" set of novels as a great example of cooperative and competitve storytelling in a common universe.
It kindof depends on your goals. If you only intend to play with pure game design, then yes... use python. It's a very clean language, and quite popular these days.
OTOH, if you want to learn how to write efficient code, and produce something fun in the process, then coding for an older computer architecture is a very good way to do it.
I've often remarked on how learning Assembly on the C64 (6510 CPU, wonderful!) made learning C and other language soooo much easier, as I already understood at a very fundamental level, what pointers were, and what the computer was going to do with if(a) printf("%s", a);
A couple of points here... masking the taste of rotting meat, or spoiled milk DOES have a huge negative, it means you can eat such things without realizing it and then wonder why you become violently ill. Or are you naieve enough to think the fast food industry won't leap on this like a starved wolf on a no-legged lamb?
:)
Secondly, if we WERE to make a magical tastes-good-to-everyone chemical and start using it, by what criteria would you judge the excellence of a chef? Presently, when something tastes good, you know that a certain amount of effort and care went into making it. Yes, a fast food burger tastes good, but a carefully prepared, seasoned, and cooked piece of ground sirloin tastes much better. By making everything taste "good", you dilute the pool, and now nothing will really taste "good" anymore at all.
Lastly, many people (myself included) have varying degrees of allergies to perfume/colognes. For me, it's just mildly annoying, but for others it can become difficult to breathe. I'd say that's a pretty big negative.
I don't want a chemical to make garbage taste good, I want a magical device to allow me to create good food without having to spend all day preparing it. The microwave comes close, but it's not quite magical.
"Look, do you want extensive experience or not?"
Experience without learning isn't worth very much. If I have extensive experience stabbing a knife into my finger, it doesn't mean I'm a world class knife expert. It means I didn't learn from prior mistakes.
"in terms of practical security benefit, the recent spending of taxpayer dollars on a set of minimum Windows security standards"
Why should the federal government, an agency which really should be dealing with foreign policy, civil defense, interstate commerce, and perhaps judicial matters which supercede the ability of a single state; be spending taxpayer dollars setting "guidlines" or "standards" for a private corporation which should have done that itself, many years ago?
Microsoft should have cleaned house long ago, and only the fact that they are a monopoly has allowed them to continue selling such a bug-riddled product. Now that some amount of competition is surfacing, we seem them scrambling to tidy up their product before everyone realizes that they don't *really* need it as much as they think.
I realized about 2 years ago that the ONLY reason I still "need" windows is to play games. I found reasonable (in some cases superior, in others not) alternatives for everything else I do in the linux environment. YMMV.
My point is, if Microsoft made such a wonderful product, why did it take government intervention to force them to produce quality? Same reason it takes federal laws to keep paper mills from dumping tons of heavy metals into the well-water you drink from, greed and laziness. MS knew perfectly well that their code was bloated, buggy, and full of security holes, but if everyone kept buying it... why fix it?
I guess we go back to the old reliable way of doing things... maintaining our own /etc/hosts file.
I understand the need/desire for international character support, but since I can't read Kanji... it doesn't really matter if I get the correct UTF-8 name, or an ASCII mangling of it... it will won't mean anything to me.
What we really need is not character representations, but rather translations. If we had "root" servers which would respond to language-specific lookup requests, we could ask for the name in whatever character set we needed.
In a prior example, Mönsterås might come up as Mönsterås in swedish, but in english it would resolve to whatever that actually translates to (sorry, don't have a lookup handy), and in ASCII it would become "Monsteras".
I get tons of spam email on one of my accounts, and I asked the postmaster (yahoo, BTW) why they didn't just filter out all messages where the sender or subject didn't use ASCII from my delivery? *I* can't read it, so either it should be translated or ignored. BTW: Their anti-spam filter can't handle non-ascii characters, and thus defaults to delivery... joy.
Heh... yes indeed. Not to scare you, but I had actually contemplated using Crystal Space (or similar) to make a 3D "first-person" nethack. *gasp* *shudder* No, not a shooter... the actual nethack game with giant spinning 3D-rendered ASCII symbols in space that you'd move through.
Yes, it is insane, but it sure would be funny!