Netscape 4 rules! I am writing cross-browser dhtml, and ns 4 has one thing going it for it: it is fast! IE in any version has fewer bugs, and is fast enough. But NS 6.2 is THE WORST. It has so many bugs coding for it is like walking through a mine-field. And, to top that off, its 10 times slower at many DHTML tasks than version 4 was.
I wrote 3000 line javascript program that uses fairly sophisticated logic with dhtml objects, frames and forms. I have battled every browser I've tested it on until now; it worked the first time with no problems at all.
Of course, this code has already been carefully constructed to be compatible with NS4,NS6 and IE, but still, I'm impressed.
I am from the RIAAA [as far as you know] and am hereby officially notifying you, as an administrator or electronic services at your institution, to cease and desist illegal activity or face civil and criminal prosecution.
When they complain, just tell them you were given a cease and desist notice;)
I find myself extremely ashamed to see fellow slashdotters actually advocating the Federal government taking away basic rights based on hysterical rationalization.
How many people have commented that they do it for the movies, so they should do it for video games? My friends, there are no federal regulations on movies. That would be a violation of the First amendment. Anybody can go to a rated R or even rated X movie with no impediments from the federal government.
Video games do not cause violence. There is no evidence of this at all. In fact, statistics show violent crime in this country going down since the advent of Doom.
Choosing to build laws that, in the end, marginalize and punish end-market retailers, and do nothing constructive, is a mindless mob reaction.
Are you the uniformed uninformed masses that the Nazis bottled so well?
Movie ratings are not regulated by the federal government, they are maintained by the movie industry. So you statement about 'simply' regulating the kinds of things in movies is misconcieved.
Federal laws that limit the actions of private citizens in their own homes is anathma to the basic ideas of freedom America was founded upon. We do not need bureaucrats doing our parenting for us.
A store having a policy about video game sales to minors and federal law are very different in character. You don't go to prison when you break Kmart policies.
Yes, it is a big deal. A law that would restrict video game purchases to minors would likely destroy the industry. The video game market is largely supported by teenagers.
What is Modeling?
on
Agile Modeling
·
· Score: 1, Redundant
I've visited the links on Agile Modeling, and they use the term "Modeling" over and over and over. But no place do they say what Modelling means.
The last thing I want to see is a Software Engineer Union or licensing of code writers.
If you think your employer is doing something you think is unethical, you can refuse. If they fire you, then you have the option of finding another software job or flipping burgers at McDonalds.
It is not the end of the world to lose your job, especially if you lost it because of your principles.
It says he died from asphyxiation in a 'deadly gas'. This makes no sense. Nitrogen is not deadly, and asphyxiation takes time; he should have been able to open the door once he noticed he couldnt breath..
Also, you are assuming that there were only 11 deaths, which is probably not the case. What stands out about these deaths is that they have mysterious causes, or blantant criminal intent.
Go do more investigation and you will find that there really may be something to this story.
Here are links to news stories on six of the deaths.
Dr Benito Que was beaten to death on Nov 12 by 4 unknown men Miami Herald. He was a cell biologist working on infection diseases at the University of Miami's School of medicine, and was killed as he left work.
Dr Don Wiley drowned under mysterious circumstances on Nov 16.
Only a week after Dr Que, Dr Wiley disappeared after a dinner party. Criminal intent has been noted by the Memphis police. Dr Wiley was the foremost infectious disease research at Harvard.
Dr. Vladimir Pasechnik was found dead on November 23 Nytimes.
Dr pasechnik was a soviet defector from the Russian biological warfare who was an expert in Anthrax.
Dr. Robert M. Schwartz was stabbed to death on Dec 10. msnbc.
Dr Schwartz was an expert in DNA sequencing, 'cultists' are blamed.
Set Van Nguyen died in an airlock on Dec 14. Chemical incidents report center. He was in the field of animal diseases (anthrax) and died in an airlock filled with nitrogen. This is very odd since he should have been able to notice he was suffocating and open the door.
Steven Mostow died in a mysterious plane crash on March 25.Colorado 9news One of the country's leading infectious disease and bioterrorism experts from the Colorado Health Sciences Center. Preliminary reports say the airplane engine failed. This is an extremely uncommon event, and does not necessarily lead to fatality. I am a pilot and can testify that the events of this death are highly suspicious.
Unless you have written a book and published it, I don't think you have a pot to piss in on the issue. If Mr Ellison thinks he is being screwed by piracy, its his perogative to believe it, and to take action. Flint's or anyone else's ideas on what Ellison's business plan should be are completely irrelevant.
Writing is hard work, harder than coding because you have to please people, not just a machine. Professional writers do it for money, and they really are hurt financially when they lose control of their works.
If you don't agree with me, just you go write yourself a book and get it published, and then come back to me and tell me he is not within his rights.
My dead end is Mai Tais on the beach and more programming! I'm loving it. I started coding for pure fun. Turned that fun into profit. Layed myself off. Now I just have fun, no profit. Truly, a 'real programmer' doesn't give one hoot about a successful career and impressing the Joneses. He is like a crack addict who will live in a shambling garbage heap just to get his coding fix. If selling his wares gives him a mansion and a fast car, then so be it, but given a choice, he's always choose the addiction.
I had several programmers who were paid substantially more than me when I was a manager and Microsoft. My coding skills were also better. They had come from other companies that paid a lot more. I didnt feel bad about it all. Why should I feel bad about their good fortune? Anyway, their efforts helped push the stock up, so why should I complain.
People who play together create together
on
Games in the Workplace?
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
I am a firm believer in playing games in the workplace. As a manager of software engineers, I want people working for me to really be into computers, to be the type that notice every little thing. I want them to be people who know how to have fun. I want them to be creative people.
I also want them to be productive, and certainly would not let game playing get out of control. But I would much rather my reports not wince and hit the Boss key when I 'catch' them goofing off [heh, do you think you actually fool us with that quick alt-tab?]. As long as they are getting work done, why not let them blow off some steam? Maybe even have team building exercises where teams compete against each other.
Microsoft spends billions on Human-Computer research. I worked in speech recognition research there for a couple of years. They routinely do a survey of what the universities are doing, and share code from CMU and MIT. Microsoft has usually has several projects researching the Next Big Thing, be it speech, natural language, vision, AI or just new mouse designs. They do make some progress, but it is very slow.
They are not getting their money's worth. Oddly, they don't expect to. Its pure research, some people say its the only pure research in industry today; possibly there is a good reason for the demise of the other pure research labs.
For those of you who want to do research on some pie in the sky concept after your PHd, Microsoft is a great place to be, as it pays well and gives a fairly long leash.
MIT and CMU are both leaders in HCI. MIT is for bright team players, and functions pretty similar to Microsoft..transitioning from MIT to Microsoft is pretty smooth. CMU is apparently for Mad Scientist loners. This is where the really radical stuff gets done. Of course, you need a big brain for either:)
I cannot believe anyone would actually publish a review for a game they had barely finished! Would you publish a review for a book when you had only read the first chapter? The game companies count on loosers like you doing the review, always looking for something good to say, and not finishing the game. The big companies do a great job on the game intro, so anyone who just played a few minutes thinks their great. Arcanum comes to mind. It starts out great, but turns into garbage real fast; no doubt the reviewers were like you, and only played the first couple of minutes.
Look at the 'top' PC games of the year. Sierra's Arcanum won PCGamer RPG of the year, yet its one of the worst released. The graphics are mid 90's, the gameplay is terrible.
Then there's Black&White which won best PC game of the year from several places is nearly impossible to control, and while cute, has little real gameplay.
On the other hand, there's Gothic, a German import, which was great, and if it wasn't best game of the year, it was far better than the two mention above, yet it got terrible reviews by the rags.
Its infuriating because I went out and bought those games on the reviewer say-so, and would never have even looked at Gothic had I found the others so bad I needed anything for a fix.
I think the article really only touches the surface of the problem. Many of the rags are completely in the pocket of Sierra and EA its clear. Another problem is that they rate games before their release, based on beta copies. Thus there is absolutely no way they can honestly rate the games because they only get through the intro, which in fact is nearly always good in the big name games.
Also, I have seen obvious ballot stuffers and fake raters on the web sites, even the 'honest' ones. The game companies (one starting with M comes to mind) clearly stuff the votes with gushing reviews that pretty much quote their own marketing hype, and never say anything specific about the game. For example, go find the first-day reviews which mention no load screnes for Dungeon Siege. No gamer would ever rate that as a priority in the game, especially after the first game..obvious stuffing.
I used to believe in the whole idea of grammar. Until I went into Speech research and learned more about language. One of the big breakthroughs in speech recognition was when they went to hidden markov models for language. This language modelling technique is now used on all modern recogniziers is statistical in nature, not grammatical [rule based]. Grammatical models are never flexible or robust enough to represent true spoken speech.
The fact is that English is an organic language, and has organic properties. It grows. It changes. It has fuzzy boundaries. We must expect language constructions to change with time--it has been changing all along! All the rules and regulations you learned about grammar are generally context senstive, and do not hold up in all contexts, most notably, spoken speech. The rules of grammar are artificial, really imposed by publishers as a standard, but they do not actually reflect the full spectrum of the language.
The most advanced toiled I've ever seen was in Monte Carlo several years ago. It was completely robotic. It had something like a carwash hooked up to it, and commodes on a rotating table. After each flush, it would rotate out the toilet and pressure wash the previous one. They really pamper the high rollers I tell ya!
Slashdot Mirror
Netscape 4 rules! I am writing cross-browser dhtml, and ns 4 has one thing going it for it: it is fast! IE in any version has fewer bugs, and is fast enough. But NS 6.2 is THE WORST. It has so many bugs coding for it is like walking through a mine-field. And, to top that off, its 10 times slower at many DHTML tasks than version 4 was.
I wrote 3000 line javascript program that uses fairly sophisticated logic with dhtml objects, frames and forms. I have battled every browser I've tested it on until now; it worked the first time with no problems at all.
Of course, this code has already been carefully constructed to be compatible with NS4,NS6 and IE, but still, I'm impressed.
well it was supposed to be funny anyway :P
I am from the RIAAA [as far as you know] and am hereby officially notifying you, as an administrator or electronic services at your institution, to cease and desist illegal activity or face civil and criminal prosecution.
;)
When they complain, just tell them you were given a cease and desist notice
I find myself extremely ashamed to see fellow slashdotters actually advocating the Federal government taking away basic rights based on hysterical rationalization.
How many people have commented that they do it for the movies, so they should do it for video games? My friends, there are no federal regulations on movies. That would be a violation of the First amendment. Anybody can go to a rated R or even rated X movie with no impediments from the federal government.
Video games do not cause violence. There is no evidence of this at all. In fact, statistics show violent crime in this country going down since the advent of Doom.
Choosing to build laws that, in the end, marginalize and punish end-market retailers, and do nothing constructive, is a mindless mob reaction.
Are you the uniformed uninformed masses that the Nazis bottled so well?
The article specifially mentions jail time. Did *you* read it?
The movie industry does NOT have such laws imposed against them.
You are are the uninformed masses, and you scare me.
Movie ratings are not regulated by the federal government, they are maintained by the movie industry. So you statement about 'simply' regulating the kinds of things in movies is misconcieved.
Federal laws that limit the actions of private citizens in their own homes is anathma to the basic ideas of freedom America was founded upon. We do not need bureaucrats doing our parenting for us.
A store having a policy about video game sales to minors and federal law are very different in character. You don't go to prison when you break Kmart policies.
Yes, it is a big deal. A law that would restrict video game purchases to minors would likely destroy the industry. The video game market is largely supported by teenagers.
I've visited the links on Agile Modeling, and they use the term "Modeling" over and over and over. But no place do they say what Modelling means.
The last thing I want to see is a Software Engineer Union or licensing of code writers.
If you think your employer is doing something you think is unethical, you can refuse. If they fire you, then you have the option of finding another software job or flipping burgers at McDonalds.
It is not the end of the world to lose your job, especially if you lost it because of your principles.
Check this out chemsafety.gov.
It says he died from asphyxiation in a 'deadly gas'. This makes no sense. Nitrogen is not deadly, and asphyxiation takes time; he should have been able to open the door once he noticed he couldnt breath..
see this post for more precise math.
Also, you are assuming that there were only 11 deaths, which is probably not the case. What stands out about these deaths is that they have mysterious causes, or blantant criminal intent.
Go do more investigation and you will find that there really may be something to this story.
Absense of evidence is not evidence of absence!
news report on plane crash
Here are links to news stories on six of the deaths.
Dr Benito Que was beaten to death on Nov 12 by 4 unknown men Miami Herald. He was a cell biologist working on infection diseases at the University of Miami's School of medicine, and was killed as he left work.
Dr Don Wiley drowned under mysterious circumstances on Nov 16.
CNN.
Only a week after Dr Que, Dr Wiley disappeared after a dinner party. Criminal intent has been noted by the Memphis police. Dr Wiley was the foremost infectious disease research at Harvard.
Dr. Vladimir Pasechnik was found dead on November 23 Nytimes.
Dr pasechnik was a soviet defector from the Russian biological warfare who was an expert in Anthrax.
Dr. Robert M. Schwartz was stabbed to death on Dec 10. msnbc.
Dr Schwartz was an expert in DNA sequencing, 'cultists' are blamed.
Set Van Nguyen died in an airlock on Dec 14. Chemical incidents report center. He was in the field of animal diseases (anthrax) and died in an airlock filled with nitrogen. This is very odd since he should have been able to notice he was suffocating and open the door.
Steven Mostow died in a mysterious plane crash on March 25.Colorado 9news
One of the country's leading infectious disease and bioterrorism experts from the Colorado Health Sciences Center. Preliminary reports say the airplane engine failed. This is an extremely uncommon event, and does not necessarily lead to fatality. I am a pilot and can testify that the events of this death are highly suspicious.
Dell: good
At&t: poor
Qwest: criminal
Unless you have written a book and published it, I don't think you have a pot to piss in on the issue. If Mr Ellison thinks he is being screwed by piracy, its his perogative to believe it, and to take action. Flint's or anyone else's ideas on what Ellison's business plan should be are completely irrelevant.
Writing is hard work, harder than coding because you have to please people, not just a machine. Professional writers do it for money, and they really are hurt financially when they lose control of their works.
If you don't agree with me, just you go write yourself a book and get it published, and then come back to me and tell me he is not within his rights.
My dead end is Mai Tais on the beach and more programming! I'm loving it.
I started coding for pure fun. Turned that fun into profit. Layed myself off. Now I just have fun, no profit.
Truly, a 'real programmer' doesn't give one hoot about a successful career and impressing the Joneses. He is like a crack addict who will live in a shambling garbage heap just to get his coding fix. If selling his wares gives him a mansion and a fast car, then so be it, but given a choice, he's always choose the addiction.
I had several programmers who were paid substantially more than me when I was a manager and Microsoft. My coding skills were also better. They had come from other companies that paid a lot more.
I didnt feel bad about it all. Why should I feel bad about their good fortune? Anyway, their efforts helped push the stock up, so why should I complain.
I am a firm believer in playing games in the workplace. As a manager of software engineers, I want people working for me to really be into computers, to be the type that notice every little thing. I want them to be people who know how to have fun. I want them to be creative people.
I also want them to be productive, and certainly would not let game playing get out of control. But I would much rather my reports not wince and hit the Boss key when I 'catch' them goofing off [heh, do you think you actually fool us with that quick alt-tab?]. As long as they are getting work done, why not let them blow off some steam? Maybe even have team building exercises where teams compete against each other.
Microsoft spends billions on Human-Computer research. I worked in speech recognition research there for a couple of years. They routinely do a survey of what the universities are doing, and share code from CMU and MIT. Microsoft has usually has several projects researching the Next Big Thing, be it speech, natural language, vision, AI or just new mouse designs. They do make some progress, but it is very slow.
:)
They are not getting their money's worth. Oddly, they don't expect to. Its pure research, some people say its the only pure research in industry today; possibly there is a good reason for the demise of the other pure research labs.
For those of you who want to do research on some pie in the sky concept after your PHd, Microsoft is a great place to be, as it pays well and gives a fairly long leash.
MIT and CMU are both leaders in HCI. MIT is for bright team players, and functions pretty similar to Microsoft..transitioning from MIT to Microsoft is pretty smooth. CMU is apparently for Mad Scientist loners. This is where the really radical stuff gets done. Of course, you need a big brain for either
I cannot believe anyone would actually publish a review for a game they had barely finished! Would you publish a review for a book when you had only read the first chapter?
The game companies count on loosers like you doing the review, always looking for something good to say, and not finishing the game. The big companies do a great job on the game intro, so anyone who just played a few minutes thinks their great. Arcanum comes to mind. It starts out great, but turns into garbage real fast; no doubt the reviewers were like you, and only played the first couple of minutes.
Look at the 'top' PC games of the year. Sierra's Arcanum won PCGamer RPG of the year, yet its one of the worst released. The graphics are mid 90's, the gameplay is terrible.
Then there's Black&White which won best PC game of the year from several places is nearly impossible to control, and while cute, has little real gameplay.
On the other hand, there's Gothic, a German import, which was great, and if it wasn't best game of the year, it was far better than the two mention above, yet it got terrible reviews by the rags.
Its infuriating because I went out and bought those games on the reviewer say-so, and would never have even looked at Gothic had I found the others so bad I needed anything for a fix.
I think the article really only touches the surface of the problem. Many of the rags are completely in the pocket of Sierra and EA its clear. Another problem is that they rate games before their release, based on beta copies. Thus there is absolutely no way they can honestly rate the games because they only get through the intro, which in fact is nearly always good in the big name games.
Also, I have seen obvious ballot stuffers and fake raters on the web sites, even the 'honest' ones. The game companies (one starting with M comes to mind) clearly stuff the votes with gushing reviews that pretty much quote their own marketing hype, and never say anything specific about the game. For example, go find the first-day reviews which mention no load screnes for Dungeon Siege. No gamer would ever rate that as a priority in the game, especially after the first game..obvious stuffing.
I used to believe in the whole idea of grammar. Until I went into Speech research and learned more about language. One of the big breakthroughs in speech recognition was when they went to hidden markov models for language. This language modelling technique is now used on all modern recogniziers is statistical in nature, not grammatical [rule based]. Grammatical models are never flexible or robust enough to represent true spoken speech.
The fact is that English is an organic language, and has organic properties. It grows. It changes. It has fuzzy boundaries. We must expect language constructions to change with time--it has been changing all along! All the rules and regulations you learned about grammar are generally context senstive, and do not hold up in all contexts, most notably, spoken speech. The rules of grammar are artificial, really imposed by publishers as a standard, but they do not actually reflect the full spectrum of the language.
The most advanced toiled I've ever seen was in Monte Carlo several years ago. It was completely robotic. It had something like a carwash hooked up to it, and commodes on a rotating table. After each flush, it would rotate out the toilet and pressure wash the previous one. They really pamper the high rollers I tell ya!
The thing described here is not unbreakable. The random bit generator could be co-opted. The polynomial function could be guessed or even deduced.