Much like the private sector, this'll all depend on where you work. I worked for the DOE at Argonne National Laboratories and had quite the opposite experience-- most of the guys that I primarily worked with were VERY intelligent people, and I had my own office. Now in the private sector I'm in a cubicle with multiple idiots. Here's my summary:
Public: -Better job security, but not that great. -Medical benefits are just as good as privae. -Salary may not be great, but they'll find other ways to pay you-- conferences often take place in places like Hawaii, and they'll usually pay for spouses and children for more days than just the conference. Tax breaks too. -Getting funding for a project is about as easy and painless as a home root canal kit. -Bureaucracy, bureaucracy, bureaucracy!!! Mulitple layers of multiple bosses... All who can't help you, but they can tell you who can.
No shit, huh? I did the traveling-fencing-team thing in college, and those long night drives cramped into the school vans were possibly the best part! I've been to many other colleges, seen more of the country than I thought I would, and went to Canada when we had a tournament in Detroit because most of us were under the legal drinking age here. Stuck in a converted Astrovan with 5 rows of benches with no room for you feet 'cause the equipment is randomly stuffed under the seats elicits the best, most honest conversations, makes friendships REAL fast, and is also the perfect opportunity for a little hanky-panky in the back row under a blanket.
I agree with what everyone around me is saying-- these college club/team trips are a great social opportunity, and adding such a grave distraction like a Playstation will ruin that whole opportunity for your son. Like others have said, if he can't go that long without playing videogames (ESPECIALLY with 20 of his closest friends around him) then trying to figure out how to make a portable gaming system is the LEAST of his problems.
Hazaa!! $#@! "Virtual Swordfighting". Go find you local SCA group and do ACTUAL SWORDFIGHTING. It may not be live steel, but it's a helluva lot cheaper than either live steel or buying one of these Virtual Swordfighting rigs, and it's largely international so there's always more people to fight nearby.
Yes, this article is without merit. There are plenty of construction sets, they exist within games. Neverwinter Nights and Morrowinds are AWESOME in their capabilities to make adventures. Quake III also comes to mind-- yes, modmaking requires programming, but map making doesn't.
The reason they don't make any "stand alone construction sets" anymore? Well, for one, the name "___ Construction Set" just isn't cool enough for mainstream consumer. But the biggest reason is money. If you can make a standalone NWN game, the people you distribute it to don't have to buy the original game. Game companies don't want that. They're in business to make money.
I'm surprised no ones ever thought (or atleast mass-produced) of the idea of a dual head laptop, 'cept instead of trying to make it a "traditional" laptop, replace the KEYBOARD with a screen, and have them both touch sensitive PDA-style... On screen keyboards, both a TouchPad style mousing and touch-screen style, totally custom configurable.. mmmm...
Interesting the article mentioned DataPlay... The big controversy was they were implementing all sorts of RIAA-friendlyness right into the format... It wasn't really that much of an improved technology, just another attempt to sshlt on consumers and shove DRM down our throats. Being that this is Philips, not Sony or some RIAA lapdog, I'd wager to say they were less concerned with protecting their money^H^H^H^H^Hartists' rights, and more concerned with making a good, reliable format that consumers and the computer industry will actually want to use.
They're gonna be sued just like Big Tobacco. They're targetting kids, which is already a questionable strategy (why ICQ makes you admit you are older than 13), and they are being disingenuous.
Yeah, the spammbot would probably (or could probably) filter abuse... But why not auto-generate an email to abuse@spammers.isp.com and send the appropriate logs that prove the use?
- DO NOT hide anything. Hiding links in sliding menus, popups, listboxes, etc just makes a site harder to navigate. Speaking of links, don't have a separate page for each little piece of information-- users don't want to click through a ton of pages just to get to what they want.
- NO popups, NO popunders, NO clickthroughs. If you must have ads, banners at the top or along the side of the page are the most friendly way of doing this... I'd like to see research to see if popups get more people than banners 'cause I know when I see a popup I close it RIGHT away instead of just glancing over it. Oh yeah, if your pages have more ads percentage wise than content, you're doing something wrong.
- Finally (my personal biggest gripe) is DO NOT OPEN NEW WINDOWS when I click on a link. EVER. Not when I'm going to a new section of your site, and certainly not when I click on a link away from your site. If I wanted to open a new window to follow the link, I would have myself.
For good examples of the most friendly webdesign, go look at the big ones: yahoo, slashdot, lycos, etc. They've got a LOT of traffic, so they must be doing SOMETHING right.
You're telling me "3. dns sux"!!! Christ! Half the time I can't get to the servers I wanna get to. "Server Not Found" is the response I get a lot from their shit ass server. Hell, I can't even get to this article right now 'cause they're dns server doesn't know the domain. The other day I couldn't get to cia.gov. CIA.GOV!!! What a crock of shit service. Good thing I'm moving in 2 months to an area where I can get dsl... not that it'll be much better, but atleast I won't have to deal with AT&T anymore.
M$ DRM already cracked... What's really funny is there's not much media available that takes full advantage of this medium for it to make a lick of a difference.
Thus continueth the cycle:
1. A few people pirate software/music.
2. Corperations get pissed at piracy.
3. Corperation spends millions on development of an anti-piracy scheme.
4. Corperation has to raise prices to compensate.
5. Scheme gets cracked within DAYS of release.
6. More people pirate because prices are higher.
7. Goto 1.
Microsoft's idea of making their products more secure is making it harder to copy... Seriously, if they'd spend as much time worrying about actual security as they do preventing and prosecuting piracy, it'd be more secure than Fort Knox.
Microsoft vulnerabilities (aka "innovations") are responsible for every worm/virus we've seen in the past few months: Code Red, Code Blue, SirCam, Apost, and Nimda. Why aren't they under any fire from the media, watchdog groups, or the general public?!?
NERO is the worst piece of crap I've ever played. It's wannabe swordfighting combined with wannabe roleplaying, and it does neither effectively. Those pansies couldn't use a sword to save their lives. You want real sword fighting without some twink throwing bags-of-sand-that-are-supposed-to-be-spells at you? Try the SCA or one of the other many great sword fighting or rapier deuling groups in this world. Pussy gnome.
In other words, they want the very people who they're trying to protect against to DO THEIR DIRTY WORK!? Hahahahaha!!!
A NOTE TO ANY SELF-RESPECTING PROGRAMMER THINKING OF DOING THIS FOR THE $10k: You do realize that the winner of this "contest" is really only going to get $3k-$4k thanks to taxes?
If the Open Source community is really as smart and resourceful as they think they are, they'd develop some innovative (*SCOFF*) way of using the net, patent the idea, and push it hardcore on distributers... And either not license it to M$, or charge and restrict them BIGTIME so they can use it and not E&E it.
Well Netscape's lame for some reason.... You can highlight a selection, go to File->Print, and the radio button for "Print Selection" instead of the whole document is SHADED OUT! How stupid. IE can... Opera can... But Netscape shows you the operation is there and then tells you that you can't use it. It's like the "End Task" button on 98's task manager. It's there, but it really doesn't do what it's supposed to.
Yeah, but which is gonna raise a red flag at the NSA faster: A message encrypted with patterns similar to those used in the latest greatest encryption, or a letter from Bob about how his mommy didn't love him enough?
I think the moral of the whole story should be: if you develop a protocol for cross-platform use, write a license agreement with a GPL-like clause stating that all modifications to the protocol cannot be considered "trade secrets" and must be unconditionally published.
Microsoft gets ahold of it, saying "We're going to embrace this revolutionary technology in our next version of Windoz", and all the sudden, it's not the same API that it once was. Portability is once again broken.
Why won't AMD and Intel stop with this stupid mHz wars and actually worry about quality? We say what happens to Intel when they rush a product (Pentium I's)... Lets hope AMD isn't prone to the same mistakes. But seriously, now that the race-to-the-gigahertz is over, PLEASE, AMD-- Start concentrating on developing that powerhouse chip of yours: Get a chipset out that uses DDR-SDRAM. Develop a chipset that takes advantage of Athlon's ability to have the 64 processor SMP that you hypes so much when the chip was first announced. Make a chipset that's worth a damn and don't rely on VIA to cover up your crappy chipset.
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Much like the private sector, this'll all depend on where you work. I worked for the DOE at Argonne National Laboratories and had quite the opposite experience-- most of the guys that I primarily worked with were VERY intelligent people, and I had my own office. Now in the private sector I'm in a cubicle with multiple idiots. Here's my summary:
Public:
-Better job security, but not that great.
-Medical benefits are just as good as privae.
-Salary may not be great, but they'll find other ways to pay you-- conferences often take place in places like Hawaii, and they'll usually pay for spouses and children for more days than just the conference. Tax breaks too.
-Getting funding for a project is about as easy and painless as a home root canal kit.
-Bureaucracy, bureaucracy, bureaucracy!!! Mulitple layers of multiple bosses... All who can't help you, but they can tell you who can.
All I got to say is the female saberists are crazy, randy animals! heheh...
No shit, huh? I did the traveling-fencing-team thing in college, and those long night drives cramped into the school vans were possibly the best part! I've been to many other colleges, seen more of the country than I thought I would, and went to Canada when we had a tournament in Detroit because most of us were under the legal drinking age here. Stuck in a converted Astrovan with 5 rows of benches with no room for you feet 'cause the equipment is randomly stuffed under the seats elicits the best, most honest conversations, makes friendships REAL fast, and is also the perfect opportunity for a little hanky-panky in the back row under a blanket.
I agree with what everyone around me is saying-- these college club/team trips are a great social opportunity, and adding such a grave distraction like a Playstation will ruin that whole opportunity for your son. Like others have said, if he can't go that long without playing videogames (ESPECIALLY with 20 of his closest friends around him) then trying to figure out how to make a portable gaming system is the LEAST of his problems.
Hazaa!! $#@! "Virtual Swordfighting". Go find you local SCA group and do ACTUAL SWORDFIGHTING. It may not be live steel, but it's a helluva lot cheaper than either live steel or buying one of these Virtual Swordfighting rigs, and it's largely international so there's always more people to fight nearby.
Yes, this article is without merit. There are plenty of construction sets, they exist within games. Neverwinter Nights and Morrowinds are AWESOME in their capabilities to make adventures. Quake III also comes to mind-- yes, modmaking requires programming, but map making doesn't.
The reason they don't make any "stand alone construction sets" anymore? Well, for one, the name "___ Construction Set" just isn't cool enough for mainstream consumer. But the biggest reason is money. If you can make a standalone NWN game, the people you distribute it to don't have to buy the original game. Game companies don't want that. They're in business to make money.
I'm surprised no ones ever thought (or atleast mass-produced) of the idea of a dual head laptop, 'cept instead of trying to make it a "traditional" laptop, replace the KEYBOARD with a screen, and have them both touch sensitive PDA-style... On screen keyboards, both a TouchPad style mousing and touch-screen style, totally custom configurable.. mmmm...
Interesting the article mentioned DataPlay... The big controversy was they were implementing all sorts of RIAA-friendlyness right into the format... It wasn't really that much of an improved technology, just another attempt to sshlt on consumers and shove DRM down our throats. Being that this is Philips, not Sony or some RIAA lapdog, I'd wager to say they were less concerned with protecting their money^H^H^H^H^Hartists' rights, and more concerned with making a good, reliable format that consumers and the computer industry will actually want to use.
They're gonna be sued just like Big Tobacco. They're targetting kids, which is already a questionable strategy (why ICQ makes you admit you are older than 13), and they are being disingenuous.
-d-
Yeah, the spammbot would probably (or could probably) filter abuse... But why not auto-generate an email to abuse@spammers.isp.com and send the appropriate logs that prove the use?
Another reason I use Opera.
- DO NOT hide anything. Hiding links in sliding menus, popups, listboxes, etc just makes a site harder to navigate. Speaking of links, don't have a separate page for each little piece of information-- users don't want to click through a ton of pages just to get to what they want.
- NO popups, NO popunders, NO clickthroughs. If you must have ads, banners at the top or along the side of the page are the most friendly way of doing this... I'd like to see research to see if popups get more people than banners 'cause I know when I see a popup I close it RIGHT away instead of just glancing over it. Oh yeah, if your pages have more ads percentage wise than content, you're doing something wrong.
- Finally (my personal biggest gripe) is DO NOT OPEN NEW WINDOWS when I click on a link. EVER. Not when I'm going to a new section of your site, and certainly not when I click on a link away from your site. If I wanted to open a new window to follow the link, I would have myself.
For good examples of the most friendly webdesign, go look at the big ones: yahoo, slashdot, lycos, etc. They've got a LOT of traffic, so they must be doing SOMETHING right.
-Desco-
You're telling me "3. dns sux"!!! Christ! Half the time I can't get to the servers I wanna get to. "Server Not Found" is the response I get a lot from their shit ass server. Hell, I can't even get to this article right now 'cause they're dns server doesn't know the domain. The other day I couldn't get to cia.gov. CIA.GOV!!! What a crock of shit service. Good thing I'm moving in 2 months to an area where I can get dsl... not that it'll be much better, but atleast I won't have to deal with AT&T anymore.
-Desco-
M$ DRM already cracked... What's really funny is there's not much media available that takes full advantage of this medium for it to make a lick of a difference.
Thus continueth the cycle:
1. A few people pirate software/music.
2. Corperations get pissed at piracy.
3. Corperation spends millions on development of an anti-piracy scheme.
4. Corperation has to raise prices to compensate.
5. Scheme gets cracked within DAYS of release.
6. More people pirate because prices are higher.
7. Goto 1.
Microsoft's idea of making their products more secure is making it harder to copy... Seriously, if they'd spend as much time worrying about actual security as they do preventing and prosecuting piracy, it'd be more secure than Fort Knox.
My component CD player/changer has a digital out going to the digital input on my amp. My sound card has digital input. More than 'nuff said.
Microsoft vulnerabilities (aka "innovations") are responsible for every worm/virus we've seen in the past few months: Code Red, Code Blue, SirCam, Apost, and Nimda. Why aren't they under any fire from the media, watchdog groups, or the general public?!?
NERO is the worst piece of crap I've ever played. It's wannabe swordfighting combined with wannabe roleplaying, and it does neither effectively. Those pansies couldn't use a sword to save their lives. You want real sword fighting without some twink throwing bags-of-sand-that-are-supposed-to-be-spells at you? Try the SCA or one of the other many great sword fighting or rapier deuling groups in this world. Pussy gnome.
In other words, they want the very people who they're trying to protect against to DO THEIR DIRTY WORK!? Hahahahaha!!!
A NOTE TO ANY SELF-RESPECTING PROGRAMMER THINKING OF DOING THIS FOR THE $10k: You do realize that the winner of this "contest" is really only going to get $3k-$4k thanks to taxes?
If the Open Source community is really as smart and resourceful as they think they are, they'd develop some innovative (*SCOFF*) way of using the net, patent the idea, and push it hardcore on distributers... And either not license it to M$, or charge and restrict them BIGTIME so they can use it and not E&E it.
-Desc0-
why is the microsoft-internet-explorer vs everyone-else's-browser error showing up? :
"called for protecting pristine roadless areas in our National Forests - including Alaska?s Tongass National Forest"
"George W. Bush?s Gift To Working Parents: Work Longer, Get Less In Retirement"
Well Netscape's lame for some reason.... You can highlight a selection, go to File->Print, and the radio button for "Print Selection" instead of the whole document is SHADED OUT! How stupid. IE can... Opera can... But Netscape shows you the operation is there and then tells you that you can't use it. It's like the "End Task" button on 98's task manager. It's there, but it really doesn't do what it's supposed to.
Yeah, but which is gonna raise a red flag at the NSA faster: A message encrypted with patterns similar to those used in the latest greatest encryption, or a letter from Bob about how his mommy didn't love him enough?
I think the moral of the whole story should be: if you develop a protocol for cross-platform use, write a license agreement with a GPL-like clause stating that all modifications to the protocol cannot be considered "trade secrets" and must be unconditionally published.
Microsoft gets ahold of it, saying "We're going to embrace this revolutionary technology in our next version of Windoz", and all the sudden, it's not the same API that it once was. Portability is once again broken.
Why won't AMD and Intel stop with this stupid mHz wars and actually worry about quality? We say what happens to Intel when they rush a product (Pentium I's)... Lets hope AMD isn't prone to the same mistakes. But seriously, now that the race-to-the-gigahertz is over, PLEASE, AMD-- Start concentrating on developing that powerhouse chip of yours: Get a chipset out that uses DDR-SDRAM. Develop a chipset that takes advantage of Athlon's ability to have the 64 processor SMP that you hypes so much when the chip was first announced. Make a chipset that's worth a damn and don't rely on VIA to cover up your crappy chipset.
Desco