I think that when people accuse academics of using confusing terms and concepts, the issue is actually more with the listener than the lecturer.
Much like when a speaker is giving a lecture on Comdex you wouldn't expect him to explain email, internet, or describe what exactly java,.net and terms like that mean, you can't expect Umberto Ecco when talking at an event geared mostly towards literature historians to cross the interdisciplinary divide and clean up his speech for the techies.
Think of this "The more clearly you can state a complex idea, the better the author." next time you are trying to explain issues in mozilla cross-platform development to a person with little or no training in that field. Sometimes it's just not possible, most often it's not really worth the effort. In order to get something out of some academic discussions, one needs a foundation to participate.
There's something called Musik (don't have a link). Also, zinf (formerly known as freeamp, I believe) sorts things according to id3 tags. None of these are quite as polished and functional as iTunes looks, but they're steps in the right direction.
Ok, I don't know if I'm feeding the trolls here, it's mostly the misquoted sig that got me.
It's "Would you like to see Britannia rule again, my friend? All you have to do is follow the worms." Mr fucking Phloydphreak.
As for the other portion of this spiteful comment, it's news for nerds, and the nerds' interests are not limited to iPods, linux running on vibrators and mozilla 1.4.1 beta releases. So, if you no like, you no read. Simple!
I think our gracious lawyer friends are too smart to do something like that. They're lawyers enough to know not to put their opinion on this lair of seething resentment that is slashdot. Being a reader does not neccessitate being a contributor, since any opinion they state could be taken as the opinion of the DoJ, which would get them in a load of trouble.
I'm sure they get a good chuckle out of all the clueless IANAL posts, tho.
I am pretty sure that if there were kick-backs and payoffs involved to a decisive degree, Microsoft would've won this one. Surely SuSE can't offer a better bribe than Microsoft? Regardless, I think this is a very political decision, meant to bolster german morale through a choice of a german company. Still, the great thing is that linux has matured to the point that it is a viable alternative.
This is only if you find it neccessary to record lectures, just as a suggestion: you can get one of those Sony minidiscs (higher models + microphone), set the compression high (4X) and use that for recording your lectures. Haven't tried it myself, but it's a thought. It should be able to fit a lot more time than the tapes, so you won't have to get up to change the tape in those 4 hour lectures. Not to mention that you can put your mp3s on these things.
The car manufacturers are responsible for the quality of their product. If my air bags spontaneously pop into my face without any reason, snapping my neck and making me paraplegic, you bet Hyundai's gonna have a lawsuit on their hands! And I am pretty sure that they will lose. Marketing substandard products for uses that could result in bodily harm or death from product malfunction should be illegal. This is why we have standards.
That said, I don't think that OS should be uncrashable to get to my computer. I lost my biochem lab (2 nights worth of work) to a MS Office glitch, but I don't think I should be able to sue microsoft for that. It's just that if a company claims their software is good enough to run air traffic control systems on, they better be ready to answer a few questions when BSOD causes a mid-air collision.
I think it's all pretty much to be expected. I mean, during the boom years, ppl were plopping money on gold-lined swimming pools and lamborghinis. This might be what's to be expected of anyone that came into more money then they knew what to do with. Still, some of them were nerds who grew up gobbling Clarke, Niven and Asimov, which probably caused them to think, while watching a space shuttle launch: "hmmm... I could afford that, too!"
So, five years later, their secret projects are going public, cuz they finally have something that resembles a proper plan.
That, and the fact that NASA's recent stumbles provide a fertile ground for a private, less bueraucratic space-oriented enterprises.
Phah, any movie about current gamer culture would for sure be dealing with the negative aspects.
Bet you there's gonna be a movie about kids shooting up the white house under influence of subliminal messages slipped into the latest counterstrike patch by the islamic fundamentalist terrorist group. Or a Julia Roberts flick where a single mother seeks justice after her overweight, socially outcast teenage son has a strong seizure following 35 straight hours of UT2003. Or, horror of horrors, Sean Penn as an everquest addict, trying to regain custody of his kid that was taken by his wife when she left in disgus with his habit, using other everquesters he knows online.
And all that can't be worse than PG Doom or PacMan. What the fuck is live-action PacMan?!?!
There has been a lot of pressure on valve to get their act together and put out a linux client. On the forums and the newsgroups, Valve was made aware that there is a large group of users who would be willing to plop down money for a native linux version.
I am not sure if anyone actually has done a survey, formed a test audience and projected the fucking sales. That's what it takes to get a game ported? Funny, I never saw anyone gathering data to give Bioware for NWN, or for porting of UT2003. Yet they realised that their games would do well if they ran on linux and catered to non-windows users.
I am not claiming that Valve has been sucking on the tit of the evil empire, but it's funny that they never bothered to give the groveling linux users what they wanted. Even the wine version met with some difficulties at the time of, I think, CS 1.3, where Valve's anti-cheating methods completely cut off anyone not running windows. To their credit, later versions and their anti-cheating tweaks were addressed quickly, but that month or so caused quite a bit of consternation.
Errr... yes, my point is that Valve _did_ refuse to release a HL linux port. I don't think it was because of their MS-allegiance or any sort of direct background influence, they were just lazy and so no reason to spend the $$$. I doubt that this will change with HL2, but c'est la vie. CS + wine gets my fix just fine.
I think the really interesting times are still ahead of us in the IT/management relationships. When enough IT people get older and wiser, those that are not pidgeonholed in the basement, coding Cobol or something will rise through the ranks and enter management. This, in theory, should do wonders for productivity of IT departments and project teams.
The call shouldn't really be to try to introduce management to IT, and teach them how to treat the elusive, photosensitive and moody critter that the techs are, but to drag the techies out of their cages and have them apply their intellects to make broader decisions than those involved in coding. While these books are neccessary for the interim time, I think that techies would do well by grabbing some management/economics textbooks, and waiting for the management to retire and open spots for them.
more than 3408 hours of classroom time for a PhD? Damn, boy, you must be attending some whack-ass university. And the poster said nothing if his projected earnings were pre-tax or not. The gist was that everquest is a time sink which drags young, and not-so-young, susceptible lives into decrepitude and social (RL) exile.
*sniff* *sniff*
methinks I detect an evercrack-head here... kinda touchy about this, eh?;)
Attacking your own civilians does not make you a war criminal, you cockmonger. It's when you attack another country and don't abide by the rules of international warfare and human rights. Like denying imprisoned combatants red cross help and holding them incommunicado in Cuba, even without declaring war properly.
This is what scares me the most. Not that Saddam is getting ousted, he should've been by UN a long time ago. It's the fact that it is done by a nation comprised of people who can't spell for shit and have the foggiest of understanding of what the hell they are doing in the world, and why they are doing it.
Now, if I was a wee muslim lad, watching Baghdad burn on CNN, I'd grow up admiring americans for their love of liberty, democracy, sovereignty and human rights. Sure.
"This is a marathon, not a sprint," EA Chairman and CEO Larry Probst told Wall Street analysts during a conference call last week.
"What the subscription level is after six or eight weeks is not important," he said. "It's what happens after 18 months."
And that's very true. Also in the article, people are reminded that Everquest and UO took a loong time, a lot of tinkering by the creators and an enormous and varied user base to get to where they are now; persistent cash cows.
Seriously, EA would be crazy to have honestly expected their millions of subscribers at first. I think this is just a case of a marketing ploy causing a media frenzy that eventually outran its creators.
Actually, I think I _would_ pay more for a cleaner product. This is exactly the point.
So far, most environmentalist action was to protest and push for bans on this and that. That's all nice and dandy, helpful for the environment, no doubt. However, all this is pointless, since it turns into an arms race between hemp-shirted sandal-wearing dreads-sporting 20-somethings that grow out of this and become CEOs in their poppa's companies and the industry, with no serious input from the average joe.
If the middle classes could see the true cost of their standard, and at the same time offered an alternative which is not as harmful, I'd think that some of the consumers would opt for a more environmentally-conscious variation. In my area, they're beginning to offer more expensive wind-generated electricity, and I am more than eager to sign up. This is the sort of things that the industrialized world needs to do, allow consumers to vote with their vallets and give them a chance to show that environmentally-sound practices can be financially sound endeavours.
On the other hand, there should be some enforced standards, so that not every factory can claim to be environmentally friendly and charge extra...
I think if a starflight-like game is what you're after, the best place to look is Star Control 2. Source has been opened, so there's some versions that run on modern machines being worked on right now. Check sc2.sourceforge.net. MOO is more of a strategy game, no plot to speak off (at least in the first two).
Well, as much as complete lack of these checkpoints for genetic integrity would lead to a low survival, my point is that lack of a few of them can lead to some quite nasty behaviour. I'd compare this to the way a few of these genes knocked out in human cells can lead to cancers with drug resistance, secretion of angiogenetic factors and all sorts of nasty things that cells implement to survive individually, yet ultimately kill the host.
While it is true that most of these mutations will be lethal within a generation or two, they kill off only the weak cells. The ones with survival-promoting mutations will strive and become the prominent strains. In other words, while there's small chance that one of these little critters will actually survive, it cannot be excluded. The fact that the environment is highly hostile to them means that evolutionary pressures will be higher, but high mutations would allow it to deal with it.
Of course, since there's not going to be too much genetic material in these cells, there won't be too much room for proper adaptive mutations, which is why my comment should be taken with a grain of salt.
The problem of generating overpopulation and things is not even close to being relevant. Potential uses of organisms that this research will eventually allow us to produce would actually reduce the strain put on resources and the environment that a large human population will produce. Engineered organisms wouldn't be consumers, they would be slave labour for humans. As the article says, they could be used to biotransform toxins emanating from large manufacturing plants.
That said, if these things ever get out of the lab before our knowledge about genetics is complete, we are screwed. Nature has put into DNA many checks and switches to prevent rampant mutations, which the humans will not bother to put in, or won't be aware of. Organism loose, mutating at will, and you got yourself a killer strain of urinary infection-causing organisms. I say that if the people around the lab start pissing blood, we gotta have a nuke ready to wipe out the area. It's the only way to be sure.:)
Actually, I think the reference was to the US F117 Nighthawk that got shot down in Yugoslavia in 1999. It was taken down by far inferior technology, with far lesser cost.
Just a reminder, all this glittering tech is crap unless flown by skilled pilots with sound strategic commands from the base.
People should remember that this is just a prototype, and all weaponry announcements are pre-conflict posturing or a deterrant. In this case, both.
Hopefully they'll put as much effort as they have oriented with NWN into getting a linux port out. Star Wars, linux client and a RPG combination would be a wet dream of all the cubicle dwellers with yoda and imperial walker figurines around their desks. It's nice to see a canadian company carrying the torch of linux gaming, as long as they don't get too disheartened by the snags they encountered with NWN.
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I think that when people accuse academics of using confusing terms and concepts, the issue is actually more with the listener than the lecturer.
.net and terms like that mean, you can't expect Umberto Ecco when talking at an event geared mostly towards literature historians to cross the interdisciplinary divide and clean up his speech for the techies.
Much like when a speaker is giving a lecture on Comdex you wouldn't expect him to explain email, internet, or describe what exactly java,
Think of this "The more clearly you can state a complex idea, the better the author." next time you are trying to explain issues in mozilla cross-platform development to a person with little or no training in that field. Sometimes it's just not possible, most often it's not really worth the effort. In order to get something out of some academic discussions, one needs a foundation to participate.
It's good you know a little german, now you can add to it a little american history. :)
Ich bin ein Berliner!
There's something called Musik (don't have a link). Also, zinf (formerly known as freeamp, I believe) sorts things according to id3 tags. None of these are quite as polished and functional as iTunes looks, but they're steps in the right direction.
Ok, I don't know if I'm feeding the trolls here, it's mostly the misquoted sig that got me.
It's "Would you like to see Britannia rule again, my friend? All you have to do is follow the worms." Mr fucking Phloydphreak.
As for the other portion of this spiteful comment, it's news for nerds, and the nerds' interests are not limited to iPods, linux running on vibrators and mozilla 1.4.1 beta releases. So, if you no like, you no read. Simple!
I think our gracious lawyer friends are too smart to do something like that. They're lawyers enough to know not to put their opinion on this lair of seething resentment that is slashdot. Being a reader does not neccessitate being a contributor, since any opinion they state could be taken as the opinion of the DoJ, which would get them in a load of trouble.
I'm sure they get a good chuckle out of all the clueless IANAL posts, tho.
I am pretty sure that if there were kick-backs and payoffs involved to a decisive degree, Microsoft would've won this one. Surely SuSE can't offer a better bribe than Microsoft? Regardless, I think this is a very political decision, meant to bolster german morale through a choice of a german company. Still, the great thing is that linux has matured to the point that it is a viable alternative.
This is only if you find it neccessary to record lectures, just as a suggestion: you can get one of those Sony minidiscs (higher models + microphone), set the compression high (4X) and use that for recording your lectures. Haven't tried it myself, but it's a thought. It should be able to fit a lot more time than the tapes, so you won't have to get up to change the tape in those 4 hour lectures. Not to mention that you can put your mp3s on these things.
The car manufacturers are responsible for the quality of their product. If my air bags spontaneously pop into my face without any reason, snapping my neck and making me paraplegic, you bet Hyundai's gonna have a lawsuit on their hands! And I am pretty sure that they will lose. Marketing substandard products for uses that could result in bodily harm or death from product malfunction should be illegal. This is why we have standards.
That said, I don't think that OS should be uncrashable to get to my computer. I lost my biochem lab (2 nights worth of work) to a MS Office glitch, but I don't think I should be able to sue microsoft for that. It's just that if a company claims their software is good enough to run air traffic control systems on, they better be ready to answer a few questions when BSOD causes a mid-air collision.
I think it's all pretty much to be expected. I mean, during the boom years, ppl were plopping money on gold-lined swimming pools and lamborghinis. This might be what's to be expected of anyone that came into more money then they knew what to do with. Still, some of them were nerds who grew up gobbling Clarke, Niven and Asimov, which probably caused them to think, while watching a space shuttle launch: "hmmm... I could afford that, too!"
So, five years later, their secret projects are going public, cuz they finally have something that resembles a proper plan.
That, and the fact that NASA's recent stumbles provide a fertile ground for a private, less bueraucratic space-oriented enterprises.
...for unleashing Bjork on the world.
Phah, any movie about current gamer culture would for sure be dealing with the negative aspects.
Bet you there's gonna be a movie about kids shooting up the white house under influence of subliminal messages slipped into the latest counterstrike patch by the islamic fundamentalist terrorist group. Or a Julia Roberts flick where a single mother seeks justice after her overweight, socially outcast teenage son has a strong seizure following 35 straight hours of UT2003. Or, horror of horrors, Sean Penn as an everquest addict, trying to regain custody of his kid that was taken by his wife when she left in disgus with his habit, using other everquesters he knows online.
And all that can't be worse than PG Doom or PacMan. What the fuck is live-action PacMan?!?!
OK, condescending cockheads need replies...
There has been a lot of pressure on valve to get their act together and put out a linux client. On the forums and the newsgroups, Valve was made aware that there is a large group of users who would be willing to plop down money for a native linux version.
I am not sure if anyone actually has done a survey, formed a test audience and projected the fucking sales. That's what it takes to get a game ported? Funny, I never saw anyone gathering data to give Bioware for NWN, or for porting of UT2003. Yet they realised that their games would do well if they ran on linux and catered to non-windows users.
I am not claiming that Valve has been sucking on the tit of the evil empire, but it's funny that they never bothered to give the groveling linux users what they wanted. Even the wine version met with some difficulties at the time of, I think, CS 1.3, where Valve's anti-cheating methods completely cut off anyone not running windows. To their credit, later versions and their anti-cheating tweaks were addressed quickly, but that month or so caused quite a bit of consternation.
Errr... yes, my point is that Valve _did_ refuse to release a HL linux port. I don't think it was because of their MS-allegiance or any sort of direct background influence, they were just lazy and so no reason to spend the $$$. I doubt that this will change with HL2, but c'est la vie. CS + wine gets my fix just fine.
I think the really interesting times are still ahead of us in the IT/management relationships. When enough IT people get older and wiser, those that are not pidgeonholed in the basement, coding Cobol or something will rise through the ranks and enter management. This, in theory, should do wonders for productivity of IT departments and project teams.
The call shouldn't really be to try to introduce management to IT, and teach them how to treat the elusive, photosensitive and moody critter that the techs are, but to drag the techies out of their cages and have them apply their intellects to make broader decisions than those involved in coding. While these books are neccessary for the interim time, I think that techies would do well by grabbing some management/economics textbooks, and waiting for the management to retire and open spots for them.
whoa...
;)
more than 3408 hours of classroom time for a PhD? Damn, boy, you must be attending some whack-ass university. And the poster said nothing if his projected earnings were pre-tax or not. The gist was that everquest is a time sink which drags young, and not-so-young, susceptible lives into decrepitude and social (RL) exile.
*sniff* *sniff*
methinks I detect an evercrack-head here... kinda touchy about this, eh?
Attacking your own civilians does not make you a war criminal, you cockmonger. It's when you attack another country and don't abide by the rules of international warfare and human rights. Like denying imprisoned combatants red cross help and holding them incommunicado in Cuba, even without declaring war properly.
This is what scares me the most. Not that Saddam is getting ousted, he should've been by UN a long time ago. It's the fact that it is done by a nation comprised of people who can't spell for shit and have the foggiest of understanding of what the hell they are doing in the world, and why they are doing it.
Now, if I was a wee muslim lad, watching Baghdad burn on CNN, I'd grow up admiring americans for their love of liberty, democracy, sovereignty and human rights. Sure.
Bah, indeed! "runs in linux out of the box", my ass! By the same thinking, WC3 ran in linux out of the box.
And I was so hoping that someone was going to show NWN developers how it's done.
I guess, for proper linux-native gaming, I should look a few stories down, or here for screenshots and features. Sad, isn't it?
"This is a marathon, not a sprint," EA Chairman and CEO Larry Probst told Wall Street analysts during a conference call last week.
"What the subscription level is after six or eight weeks is not important," he said. "It's what happens after 18 months."
And that's very true. Also in the article, people are reminded that Everquest and UO took a loong time, a lot of tinkering by the creators and an enormous and varied user base to get to where they are now; persistent cash cows.
Seriously, EA would be crazy to have honestly expected their millions of subscribers at first. I think this is just a case of a marketing ploy causing a media frenzy that eventually outran its creators.
Actually, I think I _would_ pay more for a cleaner product. This is exactly the point.
So far, most environmentalist action was to protest and push for bans on this and that. That's all nice and dandy, helpful for the environment, no doubt. However, all this is pointless, since it turns into an arms race between hemp-shirted sandal-wearing dreads-sporting 20-somethings that grow out of this and become CEOs in their poppa's companies and the industry, with no serious input from the average joe.
If the middle classes could see the true cost of their standard, and at the same time offered an alternative which is not as harmful, I'd think that some of the consumers would opt for a more environmentally-conscious variation. In my area, they're beginning to offer more expensive wind-generated electricity, and I am more than eager to sign up. This is the sort of things that the industrialized world needs to do, allow consumers to vote with their vallets and give them a chance to show that environmentally-sound practices can be financially sound endeavours.
On the other hand, there should be some enforced standards, so that not every factory can claim to be environmentally friendly and charge extra...
I think if a starflight-like game is what you're after, the best place to look is Star Control 2. Source has been opened, so there's some versions that run on modern machines being worked on right now. Check sc2.sourceforge.net. MOO is more of a strategy game, no plot to speak off (at least in the first two).
Well, as much as complete lack of these checkpoints for genetic integrity would lead to a low survival, my point is that lack of a few of them can lead to some quite nasty behaviour. I'd compare this to the way a few of these genes knocked out in human cells can lead to cancers with drug resistance, secretion of angiogenetic factors and all sorts of nasty things that cells implement to survive individually, yet ultimately kill the host.
While it is true that most of these mutations will be lethal within a generation or two, they kill off only the weak cells. The ones with survival-promoting mutations will strive and become the prominent strains. In other words, while there's small chance that one of these little critters will actually survive, it cannot be excluded. The fact that the environment is highly hostile to them means that evolutionary pressures will be higher, but high mutations would allow it to deal with it.
Of course, since there's not going to be too much genetic material in these cells, there won't be too much room for proper adaptive mutations, which is why my comment should be taken with a grain of salt.
I agree! Apple has Ellen Feiss, linux people have Alan Cox and Richard Stallman, neither of whom are too appealing.
What we need to do is wait until Ellen's mac goes bleep, bleep and then shove a slackware cd into her hands. Then she can do commercials for linux.
The problem of generating overpopulation and things is not even close to being relevant. Potential uses of organisms that this research will eventually allow us to produce would actually reduce the strain put on resources and the environment that a large human population will produce. Engineered organisms wouldn't be consumers, they would be slave labour for humans. As the article says, they could be used to biotransform toxins emanating from large manufacturing plants.
:)
That said, if these things ever get out of the lab before our knowledge about genetics is complete, we are screwed. Nature has put into DNA many checks and switches to prevent rampant mutations, which the humans will not bother to put in, or won't be aware of. Organism loose, mutating at will, and you got yourself a killer strain of urinary infection-causing organisms. I say that if the people around the lab start pissing blood, we gotta have a nuke ready to wipe out the area. It's the only way to be sure.
Actually, I think the reference was to the US F117 Nighthawk that got shot down in Yugoslavia in 1999. It was taken down by far inferior technology, with far lesser cost.
Just a reminder, all this glittering tech is crap unless flown by skilled pilots with sound strategic commands from the base.
People should remember that this is just a prototype, and all weaponry announcements are pre-conflict posturing or a deterrant. In this case, both.
Hopefully they'll put as much effort as they have oriented with NWN into getting a linux port out. Star Wars, linux client and a RPG combination would be a wet dream of all the cubicle dwellers with yoda and imperial walker figurines around their desks. It's nice to see a canadian company carrying the torch of linux gaming, as long as they don't get too disheartened by the snags they encountered with NWN.