Ah, but can you beat your friends? To the other guys, if I remember correctly, you could map some of the cross combinations elsewhere, and it was doable to hit the others, but it was rather easy to accidently hit A in there. It worked, but it wasn't as smooth as dreamcast.
Absolutely. First party games showed just how great of a controller that thing was. Now, when I try to play something like Soul Calibur on it, where hitting two buttons at the same time is a must, things got tricky. But again, that was largely a porting issue. The game was designed for Dreamcast / PS2 style controllers.
One problem that India is having right now is too much of a boom in techieville. The explosive growth causes a situation where most developers with 4-6 years of experience are promoted to managerial type positions.
This makes it so that in many companies there really aren't any truly senior developers with 10+ years of professional coding experience who can really teach the new guys well and draw upon a depth of experience to make sound architectural choices.
As their industry matures, this problem should slowly dissapate.
Ah, but these are subscription services. The last day I played Diablo II was when I died somewhere and couldn't retrieve my gear - it was wierd situation.
I was moving towards being tired of that game and I sure wasn't going to put the kind of effort needed to recover in.
You wouldn't want to see that happen to your revenue stream would you? Significant penalties to character stats could accompany death though and still keep the game attractive.
Interesting, and I suspect to a large degree true.
However, from a world view where if you die, your gone, it's over - there's nothing bad in it for you. You just hurt your loved ones by dying.
From a religous (particularly christian) perspective, there's risk involved, particularly for someone who has may have just spilt blood. Plus there is the whole 'Thou shalt not kill' issue and a lack of time to ask for forgiveness. I'm sure theologens have decided that it isn't an issue, but it migh make me tentative.
While I think you're right, I don't think you're describing rational behavior from either camp.
Oh come on Slashdot, you're giving this guy high marks for commenting that 'devoutly and unquestioningly religous' or 'boy/girl scouts' are 'exactly the kinds of people we want getting shot ' and killed?
Terrible.
We do want patriotic people in the armed forces. But we need people who are bright, can understand local politics and react intelligently to the nasty tactical issues urban combat involves.
It'd be interesting to see how that would change if we actually paid people in proportion to what they're worth.
If a very skilled senior developer is 10x more productive and preventing serious design flaws, are we willing to start paying entry level guys 30K and that super-star 300K?
People want mid-level guys because a decent percentage of fresh kids are next to worthless for six months. I was pretty much in that category when I started.
I need to critique my own post a bit once I read the article. The article is actually more reasonable the n the post. Yeah, lots of programmers are getting into the business side as well. That's probably a good thing for the programmers, the businesses and the software produced.
Our problem is not lack of jobs, it's lack of qualified people. I've been in touch with folks in cleveland, chicago and denver and nobody can hire talented folks fast enough to keep up with growing demand \ businesses. It aint quite the late 90s, but demand is up folks.
Looks like we agree more than we disagree. The pledge should be changed and the french law is overly oppressive.
Our biggest point of disagreement is that I think there's a significant difference between firm government rules being oppressive and government permissiveness of situations where social pressures turn oppressive.
I'll throw out my background now that we've hit something off an impass. I grew up in the US as an athiest and become a Christian as an adult. As a kid, I wasn't disturbed by the pledge or the merry christmas / happy hanukkah signs in my schools.
That said, my family sorta observed both. Perhaps being raised in a family where the hanukkah prayers were recited when I knew that neither of my parents were religious, made me content to say 'under God' in the pledge without putting much weight in it. Of course, like many elementary school students, I also thought the nation was invisible. Frankly, I think parents care far more about the pledge than their children.
My schools never really had many moments of silence except occassionally after tradgedies. We were not encouraged to pray, although I understand that does happy elsewhere. So perhaps I can't speak to that as well as others.
Prayer groups would meet at the flag before school in the morning. That's the kind of behavior I like most. Completely unsanctioned by the school, but it was not interferred with and the students participating could advertise that activity just like any other group.
Even with a masters degree, sonsider yourself a student for at least a year or two after you get out of school. Even if you have every ability to be a senior programmer (I doubt it) you don't want to be one. The absolute most important thing you want from a job is to have people around you who are willing and able to teach.
I consider much of my first year out of school to have been a waste. Sure, I was given my own (important) projects and learned three languages I hadn't used before. That's great. But as some of my projects progressed it started to become apparent to me that while I could make this stuff happen and my boss was happy, I just didn't know my shit enough and needed mentoring. I wasn't getting that at that job and so I bailed out and found work elsewhere.
Where I ended up was perfect. My first month or two was kinda miserable as I learned that not only did I need mentoring, I was way behind where I thought I was. But I learned a lot and had every line of code I wrote reviewed and critiqued. On my first solo project there, I ended up rewriting the thing about three times. You learn a lot from that.
Your goal is to find a teacher who will appreciate the talents you've picked up in your masters program. I've been doing a lot of consulting and been in a number of companies. My heartfelt recommendation is that you get into a small company where the people are passionate.
Look man, I'm not defending the French on this one, but they aren't comming into people's houses and shooting them for praying or sending them to re-education camps.
On the pledge front, I'm with you. They should go back to the pre WWII pledge. Most schools do permit students not to say the pledge if it violates their beliefs. Most french schools, as I understand it, do not allow you to wear your religious symbols if not doing so violates your religious belifies. That's a significant difference.
And may I say it, the moment of silence debate is stupid. Let a moment of silence be a moment of silence. Taking a few seconds to reflect is worthwhile. We ask kids to sit quietly while the teacher is talking every day. It's not oppressive to ask kids to sit quietly while the teacher is not talking.
We tell people what the must and must not do all the time. These are laws and rules. Most of these keep society moving along with a reasonable amount of order. From time to time laws and rules threaten liberty, that is the time we need to object.
It's not quite forced secularization. One could still go to a religious school. However, they are so concerned about my freedom from anyone displaying a religion I disagree with, that they are attacking the religious. It's sad and an example for the United States of what not to do.
Freedom from religion is what is going on in France, and it directly impacts freedom of religion. For instance, you have laws prohibiting muslims from wearing head-scarfs, jews wearing yamulkas, and Christians wearing large crosses in public schools. Mind you, these are students, not teachers.
The ACLU isn't going that far, and I respect them enough to believe that they won't. They are starting to be aggressive enough with the seperation of church and state that they are inching towards freedom from religion though. That needs to be watched carefully.
As you mentioned, it should be perfectly ok for people to bang on your door and try to convert you.
When the some city is forced to take down a Merry Christmas sign it put up, people start getting nervous that we are being so aggressive in the seperation that we might start being abusive.
It frequently takes a long time for selection to shift a population in purely positive ways. However, in cases of extreme pressure (like the author suggests faced these jews) traits will emerge more quickly but often carry negative side effects. The presense of these negative genetic traits in this population is either a case of strong selection or Founder's syndrome (too small a population causes problems - see thouroughbred horses).
The classic example in human evolution is in Malaria infested regions. Malaria is only 5000 years old or so, but in areas where Malaria has been present their is high rate of sicle cell anemia. Why? Because having one copy of the gene provides some protection against the disease. Any protection against the disease is strongly selected for dispite a grave negative consequence tagging along.
Absent medicine, one would figure that eventually evolution would find a better approach eventually, but that might take a longer time than the relatively quick adoption of the sicle cell trait.
Imagine you're writing software in a hypothetical "write once, run anywhere" language where the "run anywhere" part is sketchy. If you do development on Windows, you might want to have a virtual linux machine setup so you can pop that up and test over there - which is exactly what I'm taking a break from to come read slashdot.
On the other hand, running windows in linux is nicer if only for memory management purposes.
They either have to cut off the supply to everyone or to noone. The global marketplace is too efficient to cut off one customer. Plus, you'd need a cartel to arrange that and I think oil has just about the only half-decent cartel.
Slashdot Mirror
Ah, but can you beat your friends? To the other guys, if I remember correctly, you could map some of the cross combinations elsewhere, and it was doable to hit the others, but it was rather easy to accidently hit A in there. It worked, but it wasn't as smooth as dreamcast.
Absolutely. First party games showed just how great of a controller that thing was. Now, when I try to play something like Soul Calibur on it, where hitting two buttons at the same time is a must, things got tricky. But again, that was largely a porting issue. The game was designed for Dreamcast / PS2 style controllers.
Patents are intended to give people a couple decade monopoly on clever inventions. Nothing terribly new here.
One problem that India is having right now is too much of a boom in techieville. The explosive growth causes a situation where most developers with 4-6 years of experience are promoted to managerial type positions.
This makes it so that in many companies there really aren't any truly senior developers with 10+ years of professional coding experience who can really teach the new guys well and draw upon a depth of experience to make sound architectural choices.
As their industry matures, this problem should slowly dissapate.
Ah, but these are subscription services. The last day I played Diablo II was when I died somewhere and couldn't retrieve my gear - it was wierd situation.
I was moving towards being tired of that game and I sure wasn't going to put the kind of effort needed to recover in.
You wouldn't want to see that happen to your revenue stream would you? Significant penalties to character stats could accompany death though and still keep the game attractive.
Patriotism or a way out of a dead-end town.
Interesting, and I suspect to a large degree true.
However, from a world view where if you die, your gone, it's over - there's nothing bad in it for you. You just hurt your loved ones by dying.
From a religous (particularly christian) perspective, there's risk involved, particularly for someone who has may have just spilt blood. Plus there is the whole 'Thou shalt not kill' issue and a lack of time to ask for forgiveness. I'm sure theologens have decided that it isn't an issue, but it migh make me tentative.
While I think you're right, I don't think you're describing rational behavior from either camp.
I am an engineer and democrat. Nah, I just didn't think I had to quote everything to make my point.
Oh come on Slashdot, you're giving this guy high marks for commenting that 'devoutly and unquestioningly religous' or 'boy/girl scouts' are 'exactly the kinds of people we want getting shot ' and killed?
Terrible.
We do want patriotic people in the armed forces. But we need people who are bright, can understand local politics and react intelligently to the nasty tactical issues urban combat involves.
Yeah, that might be Vegas, but Denver will only hit 100 once or twice a year. Summers and winters are reasonably mild.
Um, Denver? Seriously, that area is one of the most desireable locations in the country. Can't go wrong with 300 days of sunshine a year.
Cleveland, yeah, I'm with you there. Elsewhere in this thread we have people on the coasts saying the same thing.
It'd be interesting to see how that would change if we actually paid people in proportion to what they're worth.
If a very skilled senior developer is 10x more productive and preventing serious design flaws, are we willing to start paying entry level guys 30K and that super-star 300K?
People want mid-level guys because a decent percentage of fresh kids are next to worthless for six months. I was pretty much in that category when I started.
My company has no HR department, neither does the company of my source in denver.
I need to critique my own post a bit once I read the article. The article is actually more reasonable the n the post. Yeah, lots of programmers are getting into the business side as well. That's probably a good thing for the programmers, the businesses and the software produced.
Our problem is not lack of jobs, it's lack of qualified people. I've been in touch with folks in cleveland, chicago and denver and nobody can hire talented folks fast enough to keep up with growing demand \ businesses. It aint quite the late 90s, but demand is up folks.
Looks like we agree more than we disagree. The pledge should be changed and the french law is overly oppressive.
Our biggest point of disagreement is that I think there's a significant difference between firm government rules being oppressive and government permissiveness of situations where social pressures turn oppressive.
I'll throw out my background now that we've hit something off an impass. I grew up in the US as an athiest and become a Christian as an adult. As a kid, I wasn't disturbed by the pledge or the merry christmas / happy hanukkah signs in my schools.
That said, my family sorta observed both. Perhaps being raised in a family where the hanukkah prayers were recited when I knew that neither of my parents were religious, made me content to say 'under God' in the pledge without putting much weight in it. Of course, like many elementary school students, I also thought the nation was invisible. Frankly, I think parents care far more about the pledge than their children.
My schools never really had many moments of silence except occassionally after tradgedies. We were not encouraged to pray, although I understand that does happy elsewhere. So perhaps I can't speak to that as well as others.
Prayer groups would meet at the flag before school in the morning. That's the kind of behavior I like most. Completely unsanctioned by the school, but it was not interferred with and the students participating could advertise that activity just like any other group.
Even with a masters degree, sonsider yourself a student for at least a year or two after you get out of school. Even if you have every ability to be a senior programmer (I doubt it) you don't want to be one. The absolute most important thing you want from a job is to have people around you who are willing and able to teach.
I consider much of my first year out of school to have been a waste. Sure, I was given my own (important) projects and learned three languages I hadn't used before. That's great. But as some of my projects progressed it started to become apparent to me that while I could make this stuff happen and my boss was happy, I just didn't know my shit enough and needed mentoring. I wasn't getting that at that job and so I bailed out and found work elsewhere.
Where I ended up was perfect. My first month or two was kinda miserable as I learned that not only did I need mentoring, I was way behind where I thought I was. But I learned a lot and had every line of code I wrote reviewed and critiqued. On my first solo project there, I ended up rewriting the thing about three times. You learn a lot from that.
Your goal is to find a teacher who will appreciate the talents you've picked up in your masters program. I've been doing a lot of consulting and been in a number of companies. My heartfelt recommendation is that you get into a small company where the people are passionate.
Look man, I'm not defending the French on this one, but they aren't comming into people's houses and shooting them for praying or sending them to re-education camps.
On the pledge front, I'm with you. They should go back to the pre WWII pledge. Most schools do permit students not to say the pledge if it violates their beliefs. Most french schools, as I understand it, do not allow you to wear your religious symbols if not doing so violates your religious belifies. That's a significant difference.
And may I say it, the moment of silence debate is stupid. Let a moment of silence be a moment of silence. Taking a few seconds to reflect is worthwhile. We ask kids to sit quietly while the teacher is talking every day. It's not oppressive to ask kids to sit quietly while the teacher is not talking.
We tell people what the must and must not do all the time. These are laws and rules. Most of these keep society moving along with a reasonable amount of order. From time to time laws and rules threaten liberty, that is the time we need to object.
It's not quite forced secularization. One could still go to a religious school. However, they are so concerned about my freedom from anyone displaying a religion I disagree with, that they are attacking the religious. It's sad and an example for the United States of what not to do.
Freedom from religion is what is going on in France, and it directly impacts freedom of religion. For instance, you have laws prohibiting muslims from wearing head-scarfs, jews wearing yamulkas, and Christians wearing large crosses in public schools. Mind you, these are students, not teachers.
The ACLU isn't going that far, and I respect them enough to believe that they won't. They are starting to be aggressive enough with the seperation of church and state that they are inching towards freedom from religion though. That needs to be watched carefully.
As you mentioned, it should be perfectly ok for people to bang on your door and try to convert you.
When the some city is forced to take down a Merry Christmas sign it put up, people start getting nervous that we are being so aggressive in the seperation that we might start being abusive.
Ah man, he made a clever joke and you had to explain it
NYT disagrees. Anyone have a decent source?
h tml
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/03/science/03gene.
It frequently takes a long time for selection to shift a population in purely positive ways. However, in cases of extreme pressure (like the author suggests faced these jews) traits will emerge more quickly but often carry negative side effects. The presense of these negative genetic traits in this population is either a case of strong selection or Founder's syndrome (too small a population causes problems - see thouroughbred horses).
The classic example in human evolution is in Malaria infested regions. Malaria is only 5000 years old or so, but in areas where Malaria has been present their is high rate of sicle cell anemia. Why? Because having one copy of the gene provides some protection against the disease. Any protection against the disease is strongly selected for dispite a grave negative consequence tagging along.
Absent medicine, one would figure that eventually evolution would find a better approach eventually, but that might take a longer time than the relatively quick adoption of the sicle cell trait.
Imagine you're writing software in a hypothetical "write once, run anywhere" language where the "run anywhere" part is sketchy. If you do development on Windows, you might want to have a virtual linux machine setup so you can pop that up and test over there - which is exactly what I'm taking a break from to come read slashdot.
On the other hand, running windows in linux is nicer if only for memory management purposes.
They either have to cut off the supply to everyone or to noone. The global marketplace is too efficient to cut off one customer. Plus, you'd need a cartel to arrange that and I think oil has just about the only half-decent cartel.