Lotus is the most hienous piece of crap ever to infect a computer. It's worse than Windows for pure evil factor.
I coded to their C API and found it to be a horrible mess. The API exposes all kinds of stupid artifacts of the internal database and file storage architecture. The API forces all clients, including their own client and server code to be a twisted mess.
The Java API is an order of magnitude better, but it is layered on top of the C API, so it is simply hiding the horror show underneath.
Lotus should be shot in the head. The best thing they could do is start over. They pretend to support standards, but the database and APIs force all kinds of conversions that end up mutilating the "standard" content. Case in point - I sent a simple HTML file to a colleage from Mozilla. The mess that came out of Lotus looked nothing like my original file.
Sorry, but chances are you will be 0wn3d by just about every FPS player out there. Your best bet is to develop a thick skin (ego) and keep playing.
I run a Quake 3 server (lovedump.net) and have been playing for years. There are lots of players who simply kick my ass, despite my years of experience. You just have to get used to it. The repeated spankings are worth tolerating for those rare moments when you find an equal player.
As far as cheating, I think it is over-rated, much like software piracy. There are cheaters out there, but the top players can usually beat them, so they tend to crawl away rather quickly. If I were to guess, based on the experience running my server, I would say only 1% of the players out there are cheaters.
Although I can see why TA: Kingdoms didn't make the list, I never understood why it was so badly received by the gamer community. Of all the RTS games I ever played, this one ranks top on my list. It was incredibly fun. There were many interface improvements over TA (which says a lot) and I found the fantasy theme to give us much more interesting and distinguishable units. One thing I disliked about TA was how hard it was to visually identify specific units.
As I recall, the biggest complaint was that most people's computers could not cope with the steep requirements of the game. Most of this was resolved within the same year of the game's release.
Agreed. Kohan: Ahriman's Gift was a truly evolutionary game for me. It really made all the other RTS games seem like micromanagement clickfests. I still agree with TA being a top game - I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Does anyone recommend phones with PDA features, or are you better off keeping the PDA separate?
My wife wants a PDA and asked my advice. I'm thinking a combo phone/PDA may be good for her because she can barely remember to bring her head along when she leaves the house. Carrying two electronic devices may be too much. As far as PDA features, she doesn't need anything fancy. She just needs calendar and address features.
You've forgotten one basic premise... Geeks have no friends (/.ers don't count). Hence they have no need for a phone. As far as game and camera features, forget about it. They already have the gameboy advance, and a 22 megapixel SLR camera.
No kidding. I don't know if we can solve the worlds problems, but I sure am sick and tired of the marketing culture we have devolved into. If I hear one more cellphone ad, I think I'm going to explode. How many "fuck off and die minutes" does your cell phone have?
Sadly, it is nothing new, as evidenced by this quote from Mark Twain: Civilization is the limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessitites.
Ok, where's my babelfish when I need it? What a cryptic pyle of Olde English!
Re:Another day, another batch of applications
on
Joel Rants About Resumes
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Ummm. This all would imply that you have friends. Isn't that contrary to pale, locked-in-a-basement, geek coder?
Seriously though, I took my Dad's advice early on and it has helped me immensely: "Don't burn your bridges." No matter how much you think someone is an a-hole or a moron, be careful what you say to them, you might bump into them at your next job interview.
Give me a break! Quit yer whining! The guy creates one of the greatest geek sites on planet Earth and you bitch him out because his question took up one paragraph on the front page for one day! Sheesh! Go away.
I just picked up a SmartDisk Firelite 40GB portable drive. It is USB 2.0/1.1. The best thing is - no power cables required! They provide a power connector just in case, because some USB 1.1 connections don't push out enough power. The drive is about the size of a PDA with a brushed aluminum shell. I'm lovin' it. They sell FireWire versions too.
This will probably get modded as flamebait, but here goes...
Why is it that everyone rips up Microsoft for being a monopoly, yet in the same breath praises Apple? As I see it, Apple is an even bigger monopoly, since they control the hardware, as well as the software. Also, they are way over-priced. It seems like OS-X is more like the OS for the rich.
I'm a well-paid software engineer, but I can't stomach paying so much for their gear. I am no fan of Microsoft. I just am baffled by the apparent double-standard. Any Apple fans care to comment?
I think this is a pretty good analysis. The very fact that it is non-partisan is a blessing. As a Java web app developer, I notice that if I take a subset of the graph for int and I/O operations, Java is quite competitive (#1 for the sum of those two metrics) with the other platforms. The trig stuff seems to really skew the results.
I have one of these puppies! The parent post is right - the cooling / noise ratio is great. It won't beat out the highest performing coolers, but you won't go deaf. At reasonable overclock speeds it is still whisper quiet. It also looks really cool through a case window. I have a blue led tucked in behind it to give the translucent plastic cage some glowage.
PS's aren't as loud as they used to be. There are quite a few modern Power Supplies with variable speed fans controlled by temperature sensors to regulate the speed. Antec has a wide selection. There are also case fans with temperature sensors to dynamically adjust RPMs. Those are nice for the low-end kiddy systems that aren't o/c'ed. For my power rig, I have a knob rack in a 5.25" drive bay to tweak all my fans (except the PS).
Your comment about the moving the case is valid, but your options are often limited because you need access to CD/DVD drives, USB ports, etc.
I disagree. This is amazing similar to the problem in the 90's with Unix Workstation vendors. I was working at the HP/Apollo workstation division. We spent so much time worrying about Sun, SGI, DEC, and IBM, that we had very little time to worry about MS. Furthermore, each Unix flavor was different, making it hard to get a unified market. Although it was not perpetrated by the evil empire, they benefited from the babelonian Unix market.
IMHO, unless all Linux distros band together, MS will most certainly continue to win.
RedHat has had the greatest hope of a unified Linux market, but they seem to be slowing down. They pissed me off when they dropped their low-cost support for the casual users. I am actively seeking an alternate distro to replace my my RH 7.2 server. up2date was the greatest. I am sad to see it go.
WinXP is smokin' fast at bootup. For the first time I can remember, it appears Microsoft actually addressed performance issues. XP is significantly faster than Win2K in several areas, such as bootup, and network interface switching.
I ran a head-to-head test with WinXP against RedHat 9 and XP won on bootup. This was on identical hardware. It isn't a perfect comparison, since RedHat loads more daemons, but I was quite surprised.
I've been boycotting XP because of the licence. After taking it for a test drive at work, I was suitably impressed. I'm not a Microsoft fan - in fact, I usually have something to gripe about them every day. However, XP is the lesser of all Windows evils, except for the draconian license policy. I run XP Pro. Does MS really think I'm going to pay $800 to license my 4 systems at home? Yeah, right!
I'm not sure unions are a good solution. For a short time, they have a benefit. Eventually, they become a burden to both employers and the workers they purport to protect. Much like other forms of forced equality and entitlements, unions seems to bring out the worst attributes of humanity - in this case greed and laziness.
I just read this article about a Ford spinoff that is struggling to survive. One of the big issues is the inheritance of Ford's over-priced UAW workers.
As Agent Smith says, "It is inevitable." Jobs will move globally.
Slashdot Mirror
There are lies, damn lies, and statistics.
Lotus is the most hienous piece of crap ever to infect a computer. It's worse than Windows for pure evil factor.
I coded to their C API and found it to be a horrible mess. The API exposes all kinds of stupid artifacts of the internal database and file storage architecture. The API forces all clients, including their own client and server code to be a twisted mess.
The Java API is an order of magnitude better, but it is layered on top of the C API, so it is simply hiding the horror show underneath.
Lotus should be shot in the head. The best thing they could do is start over. They pretend to support standards, but the database and APIs force all kinds of conversions that end up mutilating the "standard" content. Case in point - I sent a simple HTML file to a colleage from Mozilla. The mess that came out of Lotus looked nothing like my original file.
Sorry, but chances are you will be 0wn3d by just about every FPS player out there. Your best bet is to develop a thick skin (ego) and keep playing.
I run a Quake 3 server (lovedump.net) and have been playing for years. There are lots of players who simply kick my ass, despite my years of experience. You just have to get used to it. The repeated spankings are worth tolerating for those rare moments when you find an equal player.
As far as cheating, I think it is over-rated, much like software piracy. There are cheaters out there, but the top players can usually beat them, so they tend to crawl away rather quickly. If I were to guess, based on the experience running my server, I would say only 1% of the players out there are cheaters.
Although I can see why TA: Kingdoms didn't make the list, I never understood why it was so badly received by the gamer community. Of all the RTS games I ever played, this one ranks top on my list. It was incredibly fun. There were many interface improvements over TA (which says a lot) and I found the fantasy theme to give us much more interesting and distinguishable units. One thing I disliked about TA was how hard it was to visually identify specific units.
As I recall, the biggest complaint was that most people's computers could not cope with the steep requirements of the game. Most of this was resolved within the same year of the game's release.
Agreed. Kohan: Ahriman's Gift was a truly evolutionary game for me. It really made all the other RTS games seem like micromanagement clickfests. I still agree with TA being a top game - I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Does anyone recommend phones with PDA features, or are you better off keeping the PDA separate?
My wife wants a PDA and asked my advice. I'm thinking a combo phone/PDA may be good for her because she can barely remember to bring her head along when she leaves the house. Carrying two electronic devices may be too much. As far as PDA features, she doesn't need anything fancy. She just needs calendar and address features.
You've forgotten one basic premise... Geeks have no friends (/.ers don't count). Hence they have no need for a phone. As far as game and camera features, forget about it. They already have the gameboy advance, and a 22 megapixel SLR camera.
No kidding. I don't know if we can solve the worlds problems, but I sure am sick and tired of the marketing culture we have devolved into. If I hear one more cellphone ad, I think I'm going to explode. How many "fuck off and die minutes" does your cell phone have?
Sadly, it is nothing new, as evidenced by this quote from Mark Twain: Civilization is the limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessitites.
Tom's Hardware. I believe he used to be a doctor.
Ok, where's my babelfish when I need it? What a cryptic pyle of Olde English!
Ummm. This all would imply that you have friends. Isn't that contrary to pale, locked-in-a-basement, geek coder?
Seriously though, I took my Dad's advice early on and it has helped me immensely: "Don't burn your bridges." No matter how much you think someone is an a-hole or a moron, be careful what you say to them, you might bump into them at your next job interview.
Give me a break! Quit yer whining! The guy creates one of the greatest geek sites on planet Earth and you bitch him out because his question took up one paragraph on the front page for one day! Sheesh! Go away.
My wife HATES computer games, but she really enjoys playing the Rollercoaster Tycoon series.
A long time ago, she enjoyed playing the adventure games - King's Quest, etc.
I just picked up a SmartDisk Firelite 40GB portable drive. It is USB 2.0/1.1. The best thing is - no power cables required! They provide a power connector just in case, because some USB 1.1 connections don't push out enough power. The drive is about the size of a PDA with a brushed aluminum shell. I'm lovin' it. They sell FireWire versions too.
This will probably get modded as flamebait, but here goes...
Why is it that everyone rips up Microsoft for being a monopoly, yet in the same breath praises Apple? As I see it, Apple is an even bigger monopoly, since they control the hardware, as well as the software. Also, they are way over-priced. It seems like OS-X is more like the OS for the rich.
I'm a well-paid software engineer, but I can't stomach paying so much for their gear. I am no fan of Microsoft. I just am baffled by the apparent double-standard. Any Apple fans care to comment?
I think this is a pretty good analysis. The very fact that it is non-partisan is a blessing. As a Java web app developer, I notice that if I take a subset of the graph for int and I/O operations, Java is quite competitive (#1 for the sum of those two metrics) with the other platforms. The trig stuff seems to really skew the results.
I have one of these puppies! The parent post is right - the cooling / noise ratio is great. It won't beat out the highest performing coolers, but you won't go deaf. At reasonable overclock speeds it is still whisper quiet. It also looks really cool through a case window. I have a blue led tucked in behind it to give the translucent plastic cage some glowage.
PS's aren't as loud as they used to be. There are quite a few modern Power Supplies with variable speed fans controlled by temperature sensors to regulate the speed. Antec has a wide selection. There are also case fans with temperature sensors to dynamically adjust RPMs. Those are nice for the low-end kiddy systems that aren't o/c'ed. For my power rig, I have a knob rack in a 5.25" drive bay to tweak all my fans (except the PS).
Your comment about the moving the case is valid, but your options are often limited because you need access to CD/DVD drives, USB ports, etc.
I disagree. This is amazing similar to the problem in the 90's with Unix Workstation vendors. I was working at the HP/Apollo workstation division. We spent so much time worrying about Sun, SGI, DEC, and IBM, that we had very little time to worry about MS. Furthermore, each Unix flavor was different, making it hard to get a unified market. Although it was not perpetrated by the evil empire, they benefited from the babelonian Unix market.
IMHO, unless all Linux distros band together, MS will most certainly continue to win.
RedHat has had the greatest hope of a unified Linux market, but they seem to be slowing down. They pissed me off when they dropped their low-cost support for the casual users. I am actively seeking an alternate distro to replace my my RH 7.2 server. up2date was the greatest. I am sad to see it go.
I would reply, but I'm too busy chasing down a driver problem on my wife's Win2K box.
WinXP is smokin' fast at bootup. For the first time I can remember, it appears Microsoft actually addressed performance issues. XP is significantly faster than Win2K in several areas, such as bootup, and network interface switching.
I ran a head-to-head test with WinXP against RedHat 9 and XP won on bootup. This was on identical hardware. It isn't a perfect comparison, since RedHat loads more daemons, but I was quite surprised.
I've been boycotting XP because of the licence. After taking it for a test drive at work, I was suitably impressed. I'm not a Microsoft fan - in fact, I usually have something to gripe about them every day. However, XP is the lesser of all Windows evils, except for the draconian license policy. I run XP Pro. Does MS really think I'm going to pay $800 to license my 4 systems at home? Yeah, right!
Don't you know? XML is the solution to EVERYTHING!
I'm not sure unions are a good solution. For a short time, they have a benefit. Eventually, they become a burden to both employers and the workers they purport to protect. Much like other forms of forced equality and entitlements, unions seems to bring out the worst attributes of humanity - in this case greed and laziness.
I just read this article about a Ford spinoff that is struggling to survive. One of the big issues is the inheritance of Ford's over-priced UAW workers.
As Agent Smith says, "It is inevitable." Jobs will move globally.
Let's just get those RFID tags injected into our necks and get this over with. It is inevitable.
A stoning! There's going to be a stoning tonight! (said in shrill tones)
Are there any women here?
No, no, no. (said in gruff tones)
This guy should be stoned, then drawn and quartered, keelhauled, and tarred and feathered... In no particular order.