Regarding a 'more intelligent' basis for story selection: we have moderators for comments... why not moderators for story submissions? Users can then decide what moderation threshold to view the front page at. Threshold 5 would be for "Linus has opened the 2.5 branch. Start submitting those 5MB patches!", 1 would be "Jon Katz rants about...", -1 would be "Did you hear about the latest MS IIS security hole?"
Taco and the other editors can still have a final say, they have the power to GodMod (that's an awful term, I ought to be modded way down for that) a submission to whatever they want. Tho a submission modded up or down by them ought to have a "This submission set to '1' by CmdrTaco" line.
If the "submission moderators" are relatively few in number, and are rotated in like comment moderators, we should get a bit more variety than we do now without losing the flavor that makes Slashdot unique.
(I'm a Star Wars fan. I loved the movies as a kid, and enjoy them today while recognizing their flaws. I didn't camp at box office lines, I don't go to theforce.net or starwars.com every week. But I do have some Star Wars Lego sets. Now you know a little about my viewpoint.)
It looks a little gloomier than EP I (as well it should, being the second act... wonder how Lucas is going to portray the third act, given how EP IV starts. My guess: lots of gloom and doom, but the last scene references Luke and Leia. Now I'm way off the subject, time to close this parenthetical.)
The city on stilts in the water looks interesting. The shot of the spaceport (on Naboo?) is beautiful. The opening shot of Amidala with the garden wall behind her is adorable. (So's she. But does anyone else think she has a somewhat vacuous expression in a lot of places -- both in EP I and this shot -- like she doesn't really believe she's in a 'space opera' movie or she just doesn't 'get it'?)
We see Anakin in a black outfit... gosh what a surprise there, not like Lucas would foreshadow anything. (Yeah, I'm being sarcastic. I realize you're not supposed to wonder who the bad guy is, but I sometimes resent having things shown/explained to me as though I were a five year old.)
Speaking of Anakin, looks like the young man playing him is doing pretty well. I slo-mo'd through the whole 20+ seconds and he seemed believable. No dialogue tho.... Still {rhetorical question alert}, can he do worse than Mark Hamill?
Obi Wan looks good in his beard... is that him captured in the blue field?
I'm hoping (perhaps unrealistically) that since we only saw one little bit of Jar Jar that he won't be a huge part of the movie... but it is just as likely that they haven't done many scenes with him yet. All that computer time... utterly wasted.... I can deal with goofball droids, and put up with cute fluffly Ewoks, but I'd rather see those computers spend CPU cycles on Fractint. At least the images are pretty!
New spaceships and atmospheric craft, new landscapes and settings, new people. It's amazing that Lucas is able to put together any continuity with everything that changes -- in the first three movies as well. But he does a good job of keeping the main plotlines moving along.
Nice to see that C3PO has his parts covered:).
Lucas has done some cool things with every episode. I look forward to seeing a full-length trailer.
If you look at the 'last update' date (view page info) you'll see that most of the pages haven't been updated in quite a while.
These guys are dreamers, I'd be surprised if they even have a mock-up. I was a member of ASI (the 'parent' organization from which TransOrbital was spun off), and they were an all-volunteer organization of dreamers who were big on talk and small on action.
Just wanted to say thanks to some of the informed discussion here. We moved at the beginning of July and I am still (!!) fighting the b*stards to get my DSL service properly working. Some of the info posted here will help me in my battle.
I live in Dallas BTW, home to SWBell. 'nuff said about that.
Good coding, development, and management practices are known. Know how to use them and apply them, and your project has a good chance of meeting its requirements.
Good developers are 5-10 times more productive than poor developers; good teams are 2-5 times more productive than poor teams. What makes such a great difference? It's not "native intelligence" or "talent" or "luck". It's knowing how to work effectively. Training.
The trouble is we're still in the dark ages of software development. Ignorance is the norm, and there seems to be an underlying assumption that we're stuck with death marches, cost/schedule overruns, and poor quality; and the idea that using good techniques and best practices is somehow more expensive. Until these assumptions are removed, software will continue to suck.
I used to work for STB Systems, who were a fairly major video board manufacturer until they were bought by 3dfx. They made the 'MVP'. It came in two- and four-port versions, and you could put up to four in a system (meaning a single system could drive up to 16 monitors). We had Win31 and OS/2 drivers to support a virtual screen of 1xn, nx1, 2x2, and 4x4 configurations. This was back in the '92 timeframe....
The product is still available at http://www.stbstg.com/mvppro.htm (3dfx spun off the 'specialized technologies' to a new company, Enseo).
I too was one of the "geeks" in high school. It was bad enough knowing that my peers basically rejected me (one of the things most teenagers want is to fit in), but I had a certain amount of faith/hope that adults and society in general would treat me better. Being turned in and undergoing "evaluation" or "counseling" would simply have convinced me that society thought I was some sort of weird deviant, which I half-thought sometimes anyway. Knowing this would undoubtedly have pushed me over the edge. I doubt I'd have taken anyone other than myself out -- I've never been the violent type -- but I'm glad I'm around today, and I have friends and family who are glad I'm in their lives as well.
I'm both saddened and scared that the response to tragedies like Columbine is to change school policies to treat "different" kids like dangerous freaks. It appears that somewhere along the line we stopped expecting parents to do the hard work of raising their children. That is, spending lots of time with them, showing them that they are valued and respected, teaching them what it means to have good character, helping them grow into mature adults. For some reason, that doesn't seem to be valued by society anymore. (At least, not in public.)
Organizations like WAVE only make it easier for parents to let someone else do the work: "Well, if my kid has any real problems I'm sure the school will take care of it. He spends lots more time at school than home anyway, so they have a better chance than I do of seeing something. And the way things are at the office I just don't have a lot of time for anything."
The real solution IMO is to change our (visible) societal values to encourage parents to Do The Right Thing. The question is... how?
Part of my role was to argue that it would be good for customers, and therefore ultimately good for Microsoft, to build in certain features that would make Word or Outlook easier to use. In some organizations the most effective scheme of action might be: 1) persuade the boss that this feature is a good idea, and 2) have the boss tell someone to produce the feature. At Microsoft the process seems to be: 1) persuade your colleagues that a certain feature will be popular, and that it can be created, and 2) create it. If there is something you love or hate about Microsoft programs, don't thank or blame Bill Gates; some specific member of the Microsoft team decided to "own" that feature and include it in a program. There is even a person who created the "It looks like you're writing a letter" auto-annoyance feature in Word. I had to sign a separate confidentiality clause promising not to name him.
Have you ever wondered why a lot of MS software seems to be a great conglomeration of poorly-integrated features and functionality? Maybe this is why. There's nobody with a "vision" running the show, and as a result there's nobody to look at all the (proposed) features and figure out how to integrate and unify them. It's just a bundle of features, it's not a cohesive product. Sure, most things in Word are related to putting words on paper, and from a UI perspective there's a common look and feel, but some of it feels like this. For example, I count 17 items under the Insert menu in Word97, some of which are themselves submenus. Maybe this was done just for quicker access... but I think it's just as likely it was done little by little: feature teams realized they needed to be able to have a way to insert <their feature> into the document, and it just got added to the menu.
One of the reasons Linux is what it is today is because of Linus's overall vision and ability to apply that vision to the code. I imagine Linux would be a hugely bloated collection of features if everyone were able to hack on it and add whatever they wanted in whatever fashion they wanted to. Instead, Linus keeps a hand on the rudder and an eye to the seas in front.
I wonder what MS Office would look like if it had a Linus.
I have been called to jury duty twice and served both times, so I have a little experience with the process.
The last thing the court wants is a mistrial or a hung jury, as that is time-consuming, expensive, and unpopular with the public. (Plus the waste of time for the jury members (which granted is only a few days normally).) And in most cases there is a desire by all parties to see a fair trial.
The purpose of the selection process is not to pick the "right" people for the case; it's to make sure the wrong people aren't selected. The questions asked by the attorneys are geared towards weeding out people who are biased ("Would the defendant's race influence your opinion as to his innocence?", have too much emotional involvement ("Have you, or anyone in your immediate family, been the victim of a robbery?"), or are otherwise mentally/emotionally unfit to serve. After these people are eliminated, twelve of the remaining candidates are randomly selected. These twelve people will usually be "average" citizens who are going to do their best to make the right decision. It's a weighty responsibility, to sit in judgment of someone's life, and most people do treat it with the proper respect and attention.
I am a firm believer in the functionality of trial by jury. Yes, it can be twisted or bent -- but it's a lot more fair to the defendant than anything else I've seen.
I would strongly discourage you from writing your own. Developing an ORB is not easy.
Instead, I suggest you reevaluate your requirements and restrict yourself to a given list of platforms and languages. IMO, if you go with Java, C++, and CORBA as the standard ORB, you'll be able to get enough done that the rest won't matter.
There exist many excellent CORBA ORBs, some have already been mentioned. One that hasn't is Voyager, a product of http://www.objectspace.com. It's Java-based, and while it isn't specific to CORBA Voyager objects can look like CORBA, RMI, or DCOM objects to remote clients. The core ORB is free to download and use (with some restrictions), and if you need more you can step up to the Professional version (which does cost $$$, yes).
Disclaimer: I work for ObjectSpace. But I wouldn't if I thought Voyager sucked.:)
Tell the million+ people who use guns for self defense each year that they shouldn't have the right to protect themselves and their families.
Yes, guns can and are used by criminals; we all know that. What most people don't know -- because the media doesn't report it -- is guns are used at least as often for self defense, by normal people. Take away that, and only the criminals will have guns.
BTW, by "use" I don't mean fire. Most criminal and nearly all self-defense use of guns involves just showing the gun or aiming it at someone. (Which is nasty enough if you've ever been on the receiving end; but a whole lot different than being shot at.)
Finally, the vast majority of scientific research that's been done finds no significant value in gun control; indeed, there is considerable evidence to show that *higher* rates of gun ownership result in less crime.
Voyager is an ORB-and-more distributed computing toolkit for Java, and it lets you create an agent very simply. For example to turn any object into an agent and move it to another host, where it will execute some method:
Slashdot Mirror
Regarding a 'more intelligent' basis for story selection: we have moderators for comments... why not moderators for story submissions? Users can then decide what moderation threshold to view the front page at. Threshold 5 would be for "Linus has opened the 2.5 branch. Start submitting those 5MB patches!", 1 would be "Jon Katz rants about...", -1 would be "Did you hear about the latest MS IIS security hole?"
Taco and the other editors can still have a final say, they have the power to GodMod (that's an awful term, I ought to be modded way down for that) a submission to whatever they want. Tho a submission modded up or down by them ought to have a "This submission set to '1' by CmdrTaco" line.
If the "submission moderators" are relatively few in number, and are rotated in like comment moderators, we should get a bit more variety than we do now without losing the flavor that makes Slashdot unique.
(I'm a Star Wars fan. I loved the movies as a kid, and enjoy them today while recognizing their flaws. I didn't camp at box office lines, I don't go to theforce.net or starwars.com every week. But I do have some Star Wars Lego sets. Now you know a little about my viewpoint.)
:).
It looks a little gloomier than EP I (as well it should, being the second act... wonder how Lucas is going to portray the third act, given how EP IV starts. My guess: lots of gloom and doom, but the last scene references Luke and Leia. Now I'm way off the subject, time to close this parenthetical.)
The city on stilts in the water looks interesting. The shot of the spaceport (on Naboo?) is beautiful. The opening shot of Amidala with the garden wall behind her is adorable. (So's she. But does anyone else think she has a somewhat vacuous expression in a lot of places -- both in EP I and this shot -- like she doesn't really believe she's in a 'space opera' movie or she just doesn't 'get it'?)
We see Anakin in a black outfit... gosh what a surprise there, not like Lucas would foreshadow anything. (Yeah, I'm being sarcastic. I realize you're not supposed to wonder who the bad guy is, but I sometimes resent having things shown/explained to me as though I were a five year old.)
Speaking of Anakin, looks like the young man playing him is doing pretty well. I slo-mo'd through the whole 20+ seconds and he seemed believable. No dialogue tho.... Still {rhetorical question alert}, can he do worse than Mark Hamill?
Obi Wan looks good in his beard... is that him captured in the blue field?
I'm hoping (perhaps unrealistically) that since we only saw one little bit of Jar Jar that he won't be a huge part of the movie... but it is just as likely that they haven't done many scenes with him yet. All that computer time... utterly wasted.... I can deal with goofball droids, and put up with cute fluffly Ewoks, but I'd rather see those computers spend CPU cycles on Fractint. At least the images are pretty!
New spaceships and atmospheric craft, new landscapes and settings, new people. It's amazing that Lucas is able to put together any continuity with everything that changes -- in the first three movies as well. But he does a good job of keeping the main plotlines moving along.
Nice to see that C3PO has his parts covered
Lucas has done some cool things with every episode. I look forward to seeing a full-length trailer.
If you look at the 'last update' date (view page info) you'll see that most of the pages haven't been updated in quite a while.
These guys are dreamers, I'd be surprised if they even have a mock-up. I was a member of ASI (the 'parent' organization from which TransOrbital was spun off), and they were an all-volunteer organization of dreamers who were big on talk and small on action.
Just wanted to say thanks to some of the informed discussion here. We moved at the beginning of July and I am still (!!) fighting the b*stards to get my DSL service properly working. Some of the info posted here will help me in my battle.
I live in Dallas BTW, home to SWBell. 'nuff said about that.
Good coding, development, and management practices are known. Know how to use them and apply them, and your project has a good chance of meeting its requirements.
Good developers are 5-10 times more productive than poor developers; good teams are 2-5 times more productive than poor teams. What makes such a great difference? It's not "native intelligence" or "talent" or "luck". It's knowing how to work effectively. Training.
The trouble is we're still in the dark ages of software development. Ignorance is the norm, and there seems to be an underlying assumption that we're stuck with death marches, cost/schedule overruns, and poor quality; and the idea that using good techniques and best practices is somehow more expensive. Until these assumptions are removed, software will continue to suck.
The product is still available at http://www.stbstg.com/mvppro.htm (3dfx spun off the 'specialized technologies' to a new company, Enseo).
I too was one of the "geeks" in high school. It was bad enough knowing that my peers basically rejected me (one of the things most teenagers want is to fit in), but I had a certain amount of faith/hope that adults and society in general would treat me better. Being turned in and undergoing "evaluation" or "counseling" would simply have convinced me that society thought I was some sort of weird deviant, which I half-thought sometimes anyway. Knowing this would undoubtedly have pushed me over the edge. I doubt I'd have taken anyone other than myself out -- I've never been the violent type -- but I'm glad I'm around today, and I have friends and family who are glad I'm in their lives as well.
I'm both saddened and scared that the response to tragedies like Columbine is to change school policies to treat "different" kids like dangerous freaks. It appears that somewhere along the line we stopped expecting parents to do the hard work of raising their children. That is, spending lots of time with them, showing them that they are valued and respected, teaching them what it means to have good character, helping them grow into mature adults. For some reason, that doesn't seem to be valued by society anymore. (At least, not in public.)
Organizations like WAVE only make it easier for parents to let someone else do the work: "Well, if my kid has any real problems I'm sure the school will take care of it. He spends lots more time at school than home anyway, so they have a better chance than I do of seeing something. And the way things are at the office I just don't have a lot of time for anything."
The real solution IMO is to change our (visible) societal values to encourage parents to Do The Right Thing. The question is... how?
Have you ever wondered why a lot of MS software seems to be a great conglomeration of poorly-integrated features and functionality? Maybe this is why. There's nobody with a "vision" running the show, and as a result there's nobody to look at all the (proposed) features and figure out how to integrate and unify them. It's just a bundle of features, it's not a cohesive product. Sure, most things in Word are related to putting words on paper, and from a UI perspective there's a common look and feel, but some of it feels like this. For example, I count 17 items under the Insert menu in Word97, some of which are themselves submenus. Maybe this was done just for quicker access... but I think it's just as likely it was done little by little: feature teams realized they needed to be able to have a way to insert <their feature> into the document, and it just got added to the menu.
One of the reasons Linux is what it is today is because of Linus's overall vision and ability to apply that vision to the code. I imagine Linux would be a hugely bloated collection of features if everyone were able to hack on it and add whatever they wanted in whatever fashion they wanted to. Instead, Linus keeps a hand on the rudder and an eye to the seas in front.
I wonder what MS Office would look like if it had a Linus.
The last thing the court wants is a mistrial or a hung jury, as that is time-consuming, expensive, and unpopular with the public. (Plus the waste of time for the jury members (which granted is only a few days normally).) And in most cases there is a desire by all parties to see a fair trial.
The purpose of the selection process is not to pick the "right" people for the case; it's to make sure the wrong people aren't selected. The questions asked by the attorneys are geared towards weeding out people who are biased ("Would the defendant's race influence your opinion as to his innocence?", have too much emotional involvement ("Have you, or anyone in your immediate family, been the victim of a robbery?"), or are otherwise mentally/emotionally unfit to serve. After these people are eliminated, twelve of the remaining candidates are randomly selected. These twelve people will usually be "average" citizens who are going to do their best to make the right decision. It's a weighty responsibility, to sit in judgment of someone's life, and most people do treat it with the proper respect and attention.
I am a firm believer in the functionality of trial by jury. Yes, it can be twisted or bent -- but it's a lot more fair to the defendant than anything else I've seen.
Instead, I suggest you reevaluate your requirements and restrict yourself to a given list of platforms and languages. IMO, if you go with Java, C++, and CORBA as the standard ORB, you'll be able to get enough done that the rest won't matter.
There exist many excellent CORBA ORBs, some have already been mentioned. One that hasn't is Voyager, a product of http://www.objectspace.com. It's Java-based, and while it isn't specific to CORBA Voyager objects can look like CORBA, RMI, or DCOM objects to remote clients. The core ORB is free to download and use (with some restrictions), and if you need more you can step up to the Professional version (which does cost $$$, yes).
Disclaimer: I work for ObjectSpace. But I wouldn't if I thought Voyager sucked. :)
Tell the million+ people who use guns for self defense each year that they shouldn't have the right to protect themselves and their families.
Yes, guns can and are used by criminals; we all know that. What most people don't know -- because the media doesn't report it -- is guns are used at least as often for self defense, by normal people. Take away that, and only the criminals will have guns.
BTW, by "use" I don't mean fire. Most criminal and nearly all self-defense use of guns involves just showing the gun or aiming it at someone. (Which is nasty enough if you've ever been on the receiving end; but a whole lot different than being shot at.)
Finally, the vast majority of scientific research that's been done finds no significant value in gun control; indeed, there is considerable evidence to show that *higher* rates of gun ownership result in less crime.
Voyager is an ORB-and-more distributed computing toolkit for Java, and it lets you create an agent very simply. For example to turn any object into an agent and move it to another host, where it will execute some method:
:).
Agent.of( myObject ).moveTo( remoteHost, method );
Voyager will move the agent to remoteHost and execute the given method upon arrival.
Voyager Core Technology is free to download/use. Check out http://www.objectspace.com for more.
And no, it doesn't come with source code, but it's still a cool product. And they don't pay me to say that