I just recently started playing WoW after avoiding it like the plague (as many others have done so and continue to do). I do have to agree in some aspects it's a matter of time vs. skill, but let me make a note there. I'd definitely take a hard working employee who's not quite as skillful over a lazy employee who is skillful. For a simple reason that I can trust the hardworking employee, when given a task, to do his best, spend lots of time working on it, devote his energy to it, etc. In the end, I'd trust the resutls more. The lazy employee, though he might have advantages in skill, I'd be worried if he tried a shortcut that ignored a problem or if he would not get the job done or was goofing off instead of working.
Second, WoW has BOTH aspects of things. I definitely think skill comes into play - particularly social interaction skills. I've played on my own for a while, and you really have to pay attention to how you organize your items/abilities/etc. to survive. At the higher levels of the game - this situation is MANDATORY. You can NOT get the best items in the game, nor operate decently at the higher levels without assistance. Just spending more time won't grant near as much when compared to someone with skill.
Let me explain. To get the best items in the game, you have to do Player vs. Player. You also need to do "Raids". Both systems require you to work with other people to complete the various tasks. The inability of a player to operate efficiently in a group or in a battle makes that player a liability. I've kicked several people from my group because they didn't know what they were doing and got the rest of us killed. Afterwards, I refused to have anything to do with such players. This issue becomes much MUCH more noticeable at higher levels where your chances of dying increase, and your dependency on other players increase.
SO, lots of time IS required, but so is lots of skill. Skill in working with other people effectively, skill in learning how to play the system, etc.
To summarize. Time > Skill is NOT alien to people who actually work for a living, and don't want to "just get by". You need Time && Skill. WoW can be initially played with lots of time, but eventually requires more skill than Time.
Here's a question though - I'm assuming that Panther has the same system requirements as Jagware? Not everyone has a G5;) to run Panther, and I'm wondering how backwards compatibile to like a G3 Panther will be. Even more, I wonder if a G3 running Panther will be slower or faster than Jagware.
I know the specs on the G5 are nice and pretty and all, but not everyone's going to get one, and as such the Panther release will be more important to a lot of people - it's just a question of how well it'll run. I have a few friends who were very worried when they saw the system requirements for iChatAV
My experience generally agrees. After looking at the neccessary code to write EJB's, setup and maintain the App server with it's extra resources, it was easier to develop "sorta" EJB objects that are just loaded elsewhere.
Example: Create a book database. Your "front end" is in html through servlets, with Book objects being the data pulled in. The Book data is pulled from "BookFactory" objects. The code to load the BookFactory is all that would need to change - the BookFactory itself could later be moved to the Application server if needed, and the BookFactory is what talks to the database to create and return the "Book" objects. With EJB's there might also be some work to do on the BookFactory, but not as much.
Keep in mind that keeping the code in a single VM can sometimes be much more beneficial than relying on network traffic to load objects and references, and as such only once the machine is unable to handle the load does an App server with load balancing support come into play. Start as small as needed, then buildup.
Either way, I vote for well managed color coordination, easy display of commonly used information, not a bandwidth hog, and relative content.
Keep in mind though - how good a site depends on the purpose of a site. It's all a matter of the design, intent, target audience, etc. What may seem like a bad design to some viewers may merely be a website targetted for an entirely different market or purpose. Look for example at news sites. They're horribly cluttered, but they do display at a glance all the most important news. Now, I do have to say news.goolge.com absolutely wins for clean, relavant, and intelligent content. But, it's not CREATING, it's merely caching the creation of other websites.
Apple has some links on booting and it seems they say such a thing is supported. Try contacting Apple for more info. You can also look at Apple netboot site for some more generic information (i.e. whitepaper PDF's).
Aside from that, from what I remember, you can do some openfirmware stuff where openfirmware will allow you to remotely boot off of a disk. This way, you could automate most of your install. The problem with all of this of course is the hardware you're using - automating this all means lots of scripting to figure out which drive, save, etc.
Regardless of any of the above, contacting Apple for a more direct contract on the install might be your best bet. Course, if you're cheap, you can always hire some students (i.e. get 3 hours of semester credit or whatever) to help do updates.
You can find a small discussion of the topic on the Missouri Linux Users group - See this for a sample and just look for the "More spam" subject messages.
There are a LOT of places though that don't set these records, and filtering out these sites will drop a LOT of emails that actually might be valid.
Have you looked at peanut linux or maybe slackware? They're usually really small distros. Another option is to search freshmeat. Just a quick search for linux floppy brought up several results for distros that run on one or two floppies.
The only trick is the more current versions of X often require a fair amount of space. You might also have to use a really old kernel (i.e. 2.2 series).
I noticed on some screen shots that they've got GVIM with GTK2+ support, and anti-aliased fonts. Anyone know where to get a copy of the code/patch/whatever for that? Is this part of the gnome release? Is this a patch that has yet to be released to the world?
We've got an inhouse development team for database applications and we're totally dependent on Java. Part of this is it's really simple to develop an app that's very functional, fast. Libraries are easy to find (no stupid DLL annoyances), the API is very well documented, etc.
Swing right now has a few quirks, but works well for the most part. Drag & Drop is still a pain, but is doable. The best part though is the database support. That's easy to implement, powerful, can use JNDI, and allows you to tie a client application to a middle tear or backend easily.
LDAP support is also great, especially using Novell's LDAP drivers. Novell eDirectory has great java support, so does openldap, Oracle, DB2, etc.
I've worked on eDirectory, Oracle, and MySQL using java, with over 60,000 lines of code, 7 or 8 applications, etc. The big thing is doing development on linux, and then having it run on my powerbook or on the windows machines. That's VERY nice from a portablity and usability aspect. Java does some things really really really well, and I'd highly recommend looking more into client development.
Actual price of the higher end lower in config???
on
Dell Handhelds Released
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I was looking and I noticed something that I hope isn't just a wierd thing on Dell's site. When you click to configure the handheld, the price of the higher-end model is 329. Now, $329 - $50 should equal $279, which would be the actual price, NOT $299. So, the nice model is even cheaper than stated, or so it seems.
The other question would be backlighting. I've seen lots of color PDA's, but the problem is always backlighting. The Yopy for example has a nice display, runs Linux, but without backlighting it's hard to read. With backlighting, battery usage goes way up. Dell's site says something about "backlit powerbutton", but I see nothing about a backlit screen. However, either way I wonder how long the thing can continuously run, with or without backlighting. That's another thing missing from this site. Good on price, bad on details. I'll have to wait till a bit more information is out.
Last note - it's hard to compare these to the Compaq iPAQs. Though more expensive, the iPAQs are solid pieces of machine with a good history. It's unknown yet how these perform, and whether these have all the "features" that iPAQs have. This goes back to that backlit question.
I have several friends who are Journalists. In general, though they claim impartiality, I've found that most Journalists tend to be very biased with regards to anything upon which they are reporting. The question is how do these biases affect reporting of the technology sector?
We all hear stories of different reports being paid for by corporations such as Microsoft. How are many of the current stories, newspapers, and other printed (electronically printed or otherwise) stories affected by corporate sponsorship, biases, etc.? Which industries, points of view, or otherwise get promoted heavily with regards to importance due to these biases or sponsors? Is this a way to manipulate public viewpoints, in an arena which should be impartial?
What sources are doing this the most? Are there any sources that truly seem impartial in most of their judgements? It all comes back to who do we trust?
Currently, most of the industry relies on a silicon based technology, using optics to burn silicon wafers. What technology areas do you see the industry looking into, as well as what are areas the industry isn't looking into that it should? Add to this, what technologies are out there that in your opinion aren't looked at heavily enough? As a last part of this, where do you see most of the innovation. Is it in large corporations, such as IBM, or smaller corporations or startup companies?
Slashdot Mirror
I just recently started playing WoW after avoiding it like the plague (as many others have done so and continue to do). I do have to agree in some aspects it's a matter of time vs. skill, but let me make a note there. I'd definitely take a hard working employee who's not quite as skillful over a lazy employee who is skillful. For a simple reason that I can trust the hardworking employee, when given a task, to do his best, spend lots of time working on it, devote his energy to it, etc. In the end, I'd trust the resutls more. The lazy employee, though he might have advantages in skill, I'd be worried if he tried a shortcut that ignored a problem or if he would not get the job done or was goofing off instead of working.
Second, WoW has BOTH aspects of things. I definitely think skill comes into play - particularly social interaction skills. I've played on my own for a while, and you really have to pay attention to how you organize your items/abilities/etc. to survive. At the higher levels of the game - this situation is MANDATORY. You can NOT get the best items in the game, nor operate decently at the higher levels without assistance. Just spending more time won't grant near as much when compared to someone with skill.
Let me explain. To get the best items in the game, you have to do Player vs. Player. You also need to do "Raids". Both systems require you to work with other people to complete the various tasks. The inability of a player to operate efficiently in a group or in a battle makes that player a liability. I've kicked several people from my group because they didn't know what they were doing and got the rest of us killed. Afterwards, I refused to have anything to do with such players. This issue becomes much MUCH more noticeable at higher levels where your chances of dying increase, and your dependency on other players increase.
SO, lots of time IS required, but so is lots of skill. Skill in working with other people effectively, skill in learning how to play the system, etc.
To summarize. Time > Skill is NOT alien to people who actually work for a living, and don't want to "just get by". You need Time && Skill. WoW can be initially played with lots of time, but eventually requires more skill than Time.
I know the specs on the G5 are nice and pretty and all, but not everyone's going to get one, and as such the Panther release will be more important to a lot of people - it's just a question of how well it'll run. I have a few friends who were very worried when they saw the system requirements for iChatAV
Example: Create a book database. Your "front end" is in html through servlets, with Book objects being the data pulled in. The Book data is pulled from "BookFactory" objects. The code to load the BookFactory is all that would need to change - the BookFactory itself could later be moved to the Application server if needed, and the BookFactory is what talks to the database to create and return the "Book" objects. With EJB's there might also be some work to do on the BookFactory, but not as much.
Keep in mind that keeping the code in a single VM can sometimes be much more beneficial than relying on network traffic to load objects and references, and as such only once the machine is unable to handle the load does an App server with load balancing support come into play. Start as small as needed, then buildup.
Here's one that has some of the cleanest design and interface concepts, as well as low bandwidth support that I've seen: ccosas beanbagcentral site
The whole beanbagcentral.com website is really impressive.
Either way, I vote for well managed color coordination, easy display of commonly used information, not a bandwidth hog, and relative content.
Keep in mind though - how good a site depends on the purpose of a site. It's all a matter of the design, intent, target audience, etc. What may seem like a bad design to some viewers may merely be a website targetted for an entirely different market or purpose. Look for example at news sites. They're horribly cluttered, but they do display at a glance all the most important news. Now, I do have to say news.goolge.com absolutely wins for clean, relavant, and intelligent content. But, it's not CREATING, it's merely caching the creation of other websites.
Aside from that, from what I remember, you can do some openfirmware stuff where openfirmware will allow you to remotely boot off of a disk. This way, you could automate most of your install. The problem with all of this of course is the hardware you're using - automating this all means lots of scripting to figure out which drive, save, etc.
Regardless of any of the above, contacting Apple for a more direct contract on the install might be your best bet. Course, if you're cheap, you can always hire some students (i.e. get 3 hours of semester credit or whatever) to help do updates.
There are a LOT of places though that don't set these records, and filtering out these sites will drop a LOT of emails that actually might be valid.
Have you looked at peanut linux or maybe slackware? They're usually really small distros. Another option is to search freshmeat. Just a quick search for linux floppy brought up several results for distros that run on one or two floppies. The only trick is the more current versions of X often require a fair amount of space. You might also have to use a really old kernel (i.e. 2.2 series).
I noticed on some screen shots that they've got GVIM with GTK2+ support, and anti-aliased fonts. Anyone know where to get a copy of the code/patch/whatever for that? Is this part of the gnome release? Is this a patch that has yet to be released to the world?
We've got an inhouse development team for database applications and we're totally dependent on Java. Part of this is it's really simple to develop an app that's very functional, fast. Libraries are easy to find (no stupid DLL annoyances), the API is very well documented, etc.
Swing right now has a few quirks, but works well for the most part. Drag & Drop is still a pain, but is doable. The best part though is the database support. That's easy to implement, powerful, can use JNDI, and allows you to tie a client application to a middle tear or backend easily.
LDAP support is also great, especially using Novell's LDAP drivers. Novell eDirectory has great java support, so does openldap, Oracle, DB2, etc.
I've worked on eDirectory, Oracle, and MySQL using java, with over 60,000 lines of code, 7 or 8 applications, etc. The big thing is doing development on linux, and then having it run on my powerbook or on the windows machines. That's VERY nice from a portablity and usability aspect. Java does some things really really really well, and I'd highly recommend looking more into client development.
I was looking and I noticed something that I hope isn't just a wierd thing on Dell's site. When you click to configure the handheld, the price of the higher-end model is 329. Now, $329 - $50 should equal $279, which would be the actual price, NOT $299. So, the nice model is even cheaper than stated, or so it seems.
The other question would be backlighting. I've seen lots of color PDA's, but the problem is always backlighting. The Yopy for example has a nice display, runs Linux, but without backlighting it's hard to read. With backlighting, battery usage goes way up. Dell's site says something about "backlit powerbutton", but I see nothing about a backlit screen. However, either way I wonder how long the thing can continuously run, with or without backlighting. That's another thing missing from this site. Good on price, bad on details. I'll have to wait till a bit more information is out.
Last note - it's hard to compare these to the Compaq iPAQs. Though more expensive, the iPAQs are solid pieces of machine with a good history. It's unknown yet how these perform, and whether these have all the "features" that iPAQs have. This goes back to that backlit question.
We all hear stories of different reports being paid for by corporations such as Microsoft. How are many of the current stories, newspapers, and other printed (electronically printed or otherwise) stories affected by corporate sponsorship, biases, etc.? Which industries, points of view, or otherwise get promoted heavily with regards to importance due to these biases or sponsors? Is this a way to manipulate public viewpoints, in an arena which should be impartial?
What sources are doing this the most? Are there any sources that truly seem impartial in most of their judgements? It all comes back to who do we trust?
Currently, most of the industry relies on a silicon based technology, using optics to burn silicon wafers. What technology areas do you see the industry looking into, as well as what are areas the industry isn't looking into that it should? Add to this, what technologies are out there that in your opinion aren't looked at heavily enough? As a last part of this, where do you see most of the innovation. Is it in large corporations, such as IBM, or smaller corporations or startup companies?
This makes one wonder - should all patent laws be revised?