There's a lot of other products that will pull mp3s from your computer and play them on your stereo in the living room. Most come with remotes! Here's a big-ass list.
Why assume that it's an aberrant or erroneous state?
Why do you assume that the default conscious state of the organism accurately reflects reality? Our senses clearly have a limited range in which they operate - for example, the ear can generally perceive roughly 20Hz - 20Khz and no more. Psychologists have done a great deal of experiments on the human mind, and the general consensus is that it is poorly implemented. The brain is incapable of processing the huge amount of data at hand. In order to deal with that, it has developed numerous shortcuts, some learned, some genetic. A great many people walk around with completely ludicrous perceptions of reality that don't stand up to logical analysis in the least, and these are the sober people. Unless you believe that your brain is a perfect perceiving machine, you must agree that your perception of reality is flawed.
That's not to say that all alternate realities are superior, but since a superior perception of reality is by definition in a set that contains all realities other than the current one, rationally, a drug-induced perception could indeed be a superior one.
An example of flaws in the perception of reality: The human mind is inclined towards something psychologists call confirmation bias, which is "a type of selective thinking whereby one tends to notice and to look for what confirms one's beliefs, and to ignore, not look for, or undervalue the relevance of what contradicts one's beliefs." When undergoing a psychedelic hallucination where a completely non-sensical world is completely convincing, it casts into doubt the reality that we experience at all times, possibly causing us to rethink some of our beliefs.
Aside from that, psychedelics greatly enhance your ability to visualize concepts. Visualization is an important part of getting a firm grip on concepts when learning, for example, physics or math. Certain psychedelics bring about an increase in focus and concentration, another obviously useful learning tool.
A quick survey of the psychedelic experience reveals that its certainly rational and within the realm of possibility to seriously consider alternate realities.
Maybe its the poor production that is distracting me, but I wasn't terribly impressed. For one thing, it felt like a mish-mash of variables with no coherent voice. There was a great deal of tension between the frenetic drums, which were recorded in the small space, and the more sedate piano which was recorded in a large space. Flipping back and forth between them is a great effect that is nearly unused, and unfortunately detracts from the plaintive vocals.
This is a pretty interesting way of generating tension, but funnily enough, it was an unintended side-effect of the exercise. In my mind, the value of this program is that it encourages the composer to step outside his or her usual constraints in the hopes of stumbling across something new. I believe that good art can only be created by adhering to one's own inner vision and taking a poll to write a song seems destined for failure. It seems to externalize the purpose of creating, turning it from personal expression into pleasing music critics. I suppose there are financial benefits to all of this, but from an art perspective, what's the point?
ASP.NET adds its own javascript event handlers to buttons, dynamically generated links and probably some other things I'm not aware of, although its easy to prevent ASP.NET from inserting javascript into the page by setting ClientTarget="downlevel" in the @Page directive.
Microsoft's form validation works very well 80% of the time. For the remaining 20%, if your requirements go beyond the standard controls, you can write a CustomValidator where you can define both client-side and server-side logic to handle it. For me, the main drawback to using the standard validation controls is that it relies on some ridiculously non-standard HTML, which sucks if you were hoping to generate standards-compliant HTML. I've heard that when ASP.NET 2.0 comes out, it will produce standards compliant HTML. It's also fairly easy to extend BaseValidatorClass and create your own validation controls completely independent of Microsoft's.
One thing that I find interesting about.NET documentation is that the community provides tutorials which are extremely basic, almost to the point of being completely useless if you aren't writing a hello world application and anything that isn't easily explained in a sentence is glossed over completely. I think this due to the fact that the tutorial writers have very little real world experience, so for example, there are lots of tutorials along the lines of "Here's how to do something extremely basic with Control X" or "A bunch of things that could be done with Control Y." To access any real useful information, you need to subscribe to MSDN.
Whereas the in the open source community, the documentation tends to be more along the lines of "HOWTO do some specific task" and assumes that the reader is probably familiar with a handful of programming languages and is intimately familiar with the workings of a unix system.
This is exactly the kind of misunderstanding that causes UI design to be swept under the rug by most open source projects. UI design is not a matter of pretty icons - its about avoiding creating software that actively discourages people from using it.
Sun is grasping onto Java like a sailor in a wild storm
Are you saying that Sun is grasping on to Java like a sailor grasps on to wild storms? I don't think that's possible to grasp on to a storm...
Oh wait I see! You're saying that in wild storms, sailors grasp on to Java, because sailors appreciate a programming language with built-in garbage collection, you know, to guard against leaks! Last thing you want in one of those wild storms is a leak. I got it now..
I'm sorry, I have to call into question your claim to seminary training.
You must surely be aware that the question of whether Jesus fully supported the literal interpretation of the Mosaic Law is wide open, and there is no consensus amongst theologians.
One verse that often comes up is: "Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil." Some would say that this is evidence that Jesus was a supporter of the Law, but on the other hand, maybe he was saying, "A lot of people are saying that I'm destroying the law, but even though it seems that way, I'm really fulfilling it with a higher law, i.e. love your neighbor and love God."
Considering that Jesus prevented the stoning of an adulterer, told the Samaritan woman at the well that it is unnecessary for her to worship God at the Jerusalem temple and incensed the religious authorities by defying them, an act that would ultimately lead to his death, there's a good deal of evidence in the New Testament to suggest that Jesus did not in fact support the literal interpretation of the Law - why would he offer two new laws if he did?
Additional, its clear in Acts 10 that God instructed Peter to ignore the Jewish nutrition guidelines, and Paul abolished the practice of circumcision for Gentile converts - both of them were at odds with Jewish Law.
Granted, you may not believe this interpretation, but you say:
"...you'll see that the Bible is wrong. Now, since Jesus held the Bible to be absolute truth, he was wrong as well..."
As I said, you with your seminary training must know that this statement is very much an open question. It seems like you believe that the Bible is inaccurate, and its certainly possible that Jesus agreed with you. Why not accept this interpretation?
I believe you have no seminary training at all - Someone who read the Bible in Greek and Hebrew would certainly be able to provide a more sophisticated analysis of the issue. I've read the Old Testament once and the New Testament twice only in English, and I can do better than that!
Its not that I think you are wrong, but if you are really the scholar that you claim to be, I expect more. Your posts reek of post-Catholic school angst. If you really want to disprove the Bible, there is lots of informative and well-reasoned literature. I suggest you avail yourself of them.
The whole concept of saving files (including the word itself) is counter-intuitive to most people. If you know that the computer makes a temporary copy of the file and then wants to copy the new file over the old one, then the word makes sense. You've made changes to a different file. But the average user doesn't realize this, nor should they. They think that what they see on the screen is the file. When I edit a file, any fool looking at the screen can see that the changes have been made.
Why would the computer ask you to do something you have already done? Intuitively, the screen represents the current state of the file, so if I wish to stop working on a document, it implies that I'm satisfied with its contents. If I create a new file, add some data and then try to close the document, at that point the software should intervene and ask me to pick a name for the file.
I could see a person accustomed to using the word 'save' in the phrase "I'm not sure I really need this any more, should I throw it away? No, I'll save it, just in case..." to interpret the save prompt in the same way, i.e. I've decided to discard the changes I'm making, but maybe I'll save them in case I want to make a permanent change later, more like a recycle bin.
My suggestion is get rid of 'save' altogether, and replace it with something like 'Confirm your changes', and a big green check mark in place of the floppy disk. Why bother the user with an icon representing the mechanics of the operation?
I'm sure the submitter feels vastly superior to the author of the article, but is it really necessary to add smug and possibly sexist comments such as, "Awww, she almost gets it. (...and she was sooo close, too!)" I think that's uncalled for.
Humans have always been dependent on each other. That's part of the reason we've been so successful in the first place. As for your wheat analogy, maybe that's a new evolutionary strategy - evolve a delicious taste, and humans will reproduce you all over the planet. Wheat has an advantage over less tasty grasses that we genetically engineer it for evolutionary success. You say dependency, I say symbiosis.
Furthermore, its a poor use of resources to insist that everyone be directly responsible for providing food for themselves. A lot of research wouldn't get done if it weren't for the government paying for it. Who knows what sort of amazing capacities you have when you are too busy worrying about where your next meal is coming from or working at a mind-numbing job? That's the principle behind financial aid.
But, I have to agree with another poster on this thread who said that evolutionary model is a poor fit when applied to the capitalist system.
I guess that depends on your interpretation of nice. Some would say that the world is not a nice place because we are not a nice country. The military defends our economic interests - if you believe those economic interests are always righteous and moral, then working for the military is moral. If you believe that the use of the military is mostly moral with the occasional screw up, then it would still probably be OK to work for the military.
But if you believe that history shows a greedy human race with the blood of innocents on our hands, that in spite of the politicians' cries of "Its a Shiny New Post-WWII, Post-Cold War World and we all really want World Peace," we continue to be greedy and war-mongering and that modern use of the military continues to be used in exactly the same way it has been used for the last several millenia, then the morality of working for the military is, at best, ambiguous.
I don't think that geeks are by nature introverted; they do tend to be one-dimensional, however. I think that geeks use the excuse of "I'm an introvert" to explain their behavior. My point is that geeks are anything but introverted within their own communities and with like-minded people.
This doesn't mean your are introverted, it means you are insecure. Its true that internet communication lacks certain qualities of real communication, it may be fair to characterize it as inferior to real face-to-face communication, but nonetheless, a true introvert does not seek out even crude communication with others, regardless of whether such a person loves Star Wars or not.
Perhaps you misunderstood me, but my point is that geeks should not hide behind the introversion excuse to explain their limited social skills.
I think the theory that natural introverts have their energy drained by being around people is more than a little suspect. Anyone with poor social skills is going to find themselves stressed out and drained when they find themselves in social situations. That doesn't make you a genetic introvert.
If someone is truly an introvert, they wouldn't be so concerned that society values extroverts more than introverts. After all, you just want to be left alone, why do you care what other people think?
The truth is that the geek population is no more introverted than the mainstream population. Take a look around you, friends! The internet was made by geeks for geeks to have social interaction.
Think of all the communication media that are available to and used daily by geeks: Email, web pages, bulletin boards, blogs, IM programs, IRC. Whatever your geeky interest is, D&D, Buffy, Anime, kernel hacking, EverQuest, ham radio, case modding, there's a million web sites, forums, IRC channels, clans and LAN parties that geeks enthusiastic members and participants. This veritable galaxy of communication and social options doesn't seem to be the work of an introverted group of people.
On the contrary, I'd say that geeks are more extroverted and social than the regular population!
OK, maybe you don't hate all people, maybe you hate just THOSE people - non-geeks, the average boring American who enjoys sitcoms and American Idol and little else. That doesn't make you an introvert, it makes you a snob. Which is OK, because those people really are boring.
One thing you notice about sub-cultures is uniformity: They act the same, they dress the same, they share common political views, read the same books, listen to the same music, etc. This is definitely true of the geek subculture at large. The stereotype of the unwashed, greasy-haired geek exists for a reason. The majority (say 75%) of people who are part of a subculture are there in large part for social acceptance, and the reasons are often because social acceptance could not be found in mainstream society for one reason or another.
Probably one of the most facile explanations I've ever heard. Most young people listen to music to give them a sense of identity - art has nothing to do with it at all. Even the teenagers that do listen to classical music are usually doing it so they can identify themselves as smarter and more cultured than the average person.
People who aren't music critics generally don't care one way or another about the artistic merit. If an artist is expressing something vaguely meaningful, and the music reasonably pleasing to the listener, that's all it really takes. No-one really considers the "artists" to be creating much in the way or art, except for maybe the artists themselves. The fans don't, the critics don't and the music execs sure don't.
So why are we wasting time pretending that artists like the Backstreet Boys should be held to any kind of standards of originality or artistry? To prove that we are cool and awesome, and probably should get laid a lot more often because we don't listen to that dreck that they play on the radio? So we come full circle; people listen to music to identify themselves in some way. That we're hard-rockin' metal heads or part of the International Sisterhood of Britney or simply that we're really much smarter than everyone else.
Unless its my job to judge the market, predict the best time to release a product AND allocate sufficient resources to ensure that, I wouldn't necessarily prefer to put option 1 on my resume.
An ordinary developer, however, usually doesn't make those sorts of decisions, and a sensible hiring manager would know that. If a product fails because of market conditions, its no reflection on the developers at all.
This is part of Sun's new goal to evangelize Java by simplifying it, and bringing in the VB and PHP programmers. With the emphasis on JSTL and using tag libraries instead of mixing code and HTML, they are going one step further than PHP and hoping to encourage people with only HTML experience.
Unfortunately, this move might kill PHP as a serious development platform. If Java handles all the heavy lifting, will PHP will be relegated to basically writing out HTML tags? This gives PHP programmers access to a vast and robust enterprise-quality set of libraries, as well as 3rd party libraries like Jakarta Commons. The quality of the PHP libraries just isn't where it needs to be in order to support real enterprise-class applications.
The CEO of Zend claims that PHP is simply better than JSP for web development. That's completely wrong. PHP is sucessful for only one reason: Its simple. If PHP wants to get into the enterprise game, its going to end up sacrificing much of what made it good in the first place. PHP's core principles are fundamentally at odds with standard enterprise practices, since its main advantage is as a quick and dirty solution. It seems like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole, and probably driven mostly by Zend trying to create revenue rather than a grassroots movement amongst PHP developers - the general consensus seems to be "Why do we need this?"
Re:Kiss and say goodbye to Java language!!
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PHP 5 Beta 1
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The definitive source of JSP and servlet information is found here. If you want the exact definition of what a servlet container is, this is where to look.
To put it simply, a servlet container runs java objects that extend the abstract HttpServlet class. At the heart of it, the servlet container will provide you with a HttpRequest, containing the session and any objects stored in it, cookies, request headers, etc., and HttpResponse, which contains a PrintWriter that you can use to output whatever you want. Servlet containers also do things like user authentication and application management. There's quite a lot of configurable options for this stuff.
With J2EE being all the rage these days, there's a lot of inertia behind writing MVC web apps. Writing apps in JSP has nearly the same maintenance hassles as writing them in PHP. Instead of writing a JSP/PHP page that checks that a user is logged in and creates connections to a database, the idea is for JSP to deal with presentation and servlets and java beans to manage the database connections and "business" of the web application.
So... take a look around. I strongly suggest checking out the Struts Framework. And this IDE's not bad. And this tool is pretty fun. I mean, I use it...
This is exactly what I thought when I first read the story. If you are 35, you have at least 7 to 10 years of experience. You shouldn't be applying for positions that someone with 2-4 years of experience is applying for. You should be sharing your experience with other less experienced workers, not keeping it all for yourself. From a company's perspective, your ability to lead others and make them more productive is the primary value of all that experience.
Being able to produce better quality code is great, but you are rather useless if you don't want to share that knowledge with anyone else.
I think a lot of graphics artists-- both commercial and semi-pro-- are using png quite a bit in house
I find that hard to believe and I used to be a commercial graphic designer. If you are using Illustrator or Photoshop, converting to PNG removes all the layers, vector information and editable text layers, while providing no additional benefits.
Sending drafts and samples to clients suffers from the same IE compatibility issues discussed elsewhere, and a lot of the time, JPGs are used because degrading the image quality is what you want to prevent your work from being stolen. Corbis do this with all their stock photography.
Flash is the current standard for vector graphics on the web, and I don't see that changing any time soon. I don't see that SVG has much to offer the graphic designer that Flash and Illustrator doesn't already do. You have to admit that the average/.ers preference for SVG over Flash is mostly due to ideology rather than usefulness or practicality, something that your average graphic designer has no interest in at all.
I used to be just like these guys... 5 hours a day, 8 hours a day on the weekends. I stopped because I was becoming one-dimensional - your whole life revolves around playing games. I quit because I realized I was wasting my life away in front of a computer monitor, producing nothing. Its not as bad as being addicted to TV, but its really close.
Its similar to my main objection to sports. The vast majority of professional atheletes produce nothing of value. The things they gain are only valuable in a very narrow world. Sporting achievements are really very much like Everquest money. Sports are popular because people are satisfied with living a vicarious life rather than a real one. Soap operas, reality TV, sports and computer games have one thing in common: they provide a simulation of accomplishment and excitement. Many people become addicted to the simulation.
Why do these sorts of discussion always seem more like self-congratulatory exercises? Like clockwork, people start posting thoughts of how deep and meaningful their lives are. Its amazing how quickly making beer or chopping wood becomes a mystical experience, thirst for knowledge, truth, freedom and the American Way! The rest of world just doesn't get it!
Its exactly this kind of self-important blathering that no healthy individual needs. It seems to me that many extremely bright and intelligent people are also emotionally stunted. Time and time again, I am reminded how important it is to be well-rounded, mostly by observing how many geeks sacrifice large parts of their lives for one obsession or another, justifying it with the same self-validating rhetoric we see here. All I see here are comments about how smart we are, how creative, how worthwhile our lives are. The only reason you would need a pep talk like this is if inside, you really didn't believe it yourself.
I've become convinced that the geek community is rife with emotionally-damaged and socially maladjusted people who hide behind their obsessions. Not everyone of course, if the shoe fits, but maybe this is something that we should be talking about rather than patting ourselves on the back.
I'm of the opinion that Apple should suck it up and accept the current state of affairs. There's no technical reason to change it. Anyone with the skills to go through Apple's source is likely to be well aware of the FreeBSD connection, and even if they do get offended, they wouldn't blame Apple.
Apple can profit from the labors of the FreeBSD folks, that's cool, I'm in favor of that, but I draw the line when Apple decides it wants to interfere with the FreeBSD culture.
I also find it slighly hypocritical that Apple wants to change a little-known and hardly-used identifier after publically code-naming one of their projects "Butthead Astronomer" in honor of Carl Sagan. Also, as someone on the newsgroup mentioned:
The Boolean variable "STUPID" [in Apple Pascal I]
--documented as STUdent Programmer ID-- was set TRUE by default, as shipped
by Apple Computer.
AFAIK, this is not a new idea. For example, DirectTV prints all sensitive information regarding their super-secret encryption of their signal on specially colored paper. What Microsoft is doing is kind of an extension of that same idea. I think its a good idea.
Slashdot Mirror
There's a lot of other products that will pull mp3s from your computer and play them on your stereo in the living room. Most come with remotes! Here's a big-ass list.
Why do you assume that the default conscious state of the organism accurately reflects reality? Our senses clearly have a limited range in which they operate - for example, the ear can generally perceive roughly 20Hz - 20Khz and no more. Psychologists have done a great deal of experiments on the human mind, and the general consensus is that it is poorly implemented. The brain is incapable of processing the huge amount of data at hand. In order to deal with that, it has developed numerous shortcuts, some learned, some genetic. A great many people walk around with completely ludicrous perceptions of reality that don't stand up to logical analysis in the least, and these are the sober people. Unless you believe that your brain is a perfect perceiving machine, you must agree that your perception of reality is flawed.
That's not to say that all alternate realities are superior, but since a superior perception of reality is by definition in a set that contains all realities other than the current one, rationally, a drug-induced perception could indeed be a superior one.
An example of flaws in the perception of reality: The human mind is inclined towards something psychologists call confirmation bias, which is "a type of selective thinking whereby one tends to notice and to look for what confirms one's beliefs, and to ignore, not look for, or undervalue the relevance of what contradicts one's beliefs." When undergoing a psychedelic hallucination where a completely non-sensical world is completely convincing, it casts into doubt the reality that we experience at all times, possibly causing us to rethink some of our beliefs.
Aside from that, psychedelics greatly enhance your ability to visualize concepts. Visualization is an important part of getting a firm grip on concepts when learning, for example, physics or math. Certain psychedelics bring about an increase in focus and concentration, another obviously useful learning tool.
A quick survey of the psychedelic experience reveals that its certainly rational and within the realm of possibility to seriously consider alternate realities.
Maybe its the poor production that is distracting me, but I wasn't terribly impressed. For one thing, it felt like a mish-mash of variables with no coherent voice. There was a great deal of tension between the frenetic drums, which were recorded in the small space, and the more sedate piano which was recorded in a large space. Flipping back and forth between them is a great effect that is nearly unused, and unfortunately detracts from the plaintive vocals.
This is a pretty interesting way of generating tension, but funnily enough, it was an unintended side-effect of the exercise. In my mind, the value of this program is that it encourages the composer to step outside his or her usual constraints in the hopes of stumbling across something new. I believe that good art can only be created by adhering to one's own inner vision and taking a poll to write a song seems destined for failure. It seems to externalize the purpose of creating, turning it from personal expression into pleasing music critics. I suppose there are financial benefits to all of this, but from an art perspective, what's the point?
ASP.NET adds its own javascript event handlers to buttons, dynamically generated links and probably some other things I'm not aware of, although its easy to prevent ASP.NET from inserting javascript into the page by setting ClientTarget="downlevel" in the @Page directive. Microsoft's form validation works very well 80% of the time. For the remaining 20%, if your requirements go beyond the standard controls, you can write a CustomValidator where you can define both client-side and server-side logic to handle it. For me, the main drawback to using the standard validation controls is that it relies on some ridiculously non-standard HTML, which sucks if you were hoping to generate standards-compliant HTML. I've heard that when ASP.NET 2.0 comes out, it will produce standards compliant HTML. It's also fairly easy to extend BaseValidatorClass and create your own validation controls completely independent of Microsoft's.
One thing that I find interesting about .NET documentation is that the community provides tutorials which are extremely basic, almost to the point of being completely useless if you aren't writing a hello world application and anything that isn't easily explained in a sentence is glossed over completely. I think this due to the fact that the tutorial writers have very little real world experience, so for example, there are lots of tutorials along the lines of "Here's how to do something extremely basic with Control X" or "A bunch of things that could be done with Control Y." To access any real useful information, you need to subscribe to MSDN.
Whereas the in the open source community, the documentation tends to be more along the lines of "HOWTO do some specific task" and assumes that the reader is probably familiar with a handful of programming languages and is intimately familiar with the workings of a unix system.
This is exactly the kind of misunderstanding that causes UI design to be swept under the rug by most open source projects. UI design is not a matter of pretty icons - its about avoiding creating software that actively discourages people from using it.
Are you saying that Sun is grasping on to Java like a sailor grasps on to wild storms? I don't think that's possible to grasp on to a storm...
Oh wait I see! You're saying that in wild storms, sailors grasp on to Java, because sailors appreciate a programming language with built-in garbage collection, you know, to guard against leaks! Last thing you want in one of those wild storms is a leak. I got it now..
I'm sorry, I have to call into question your claim to seminary training.
You must surely be aware that the question of whether Jesus fully supported the literal interpretation of the Mosaic Law is wide open, and there is no consensus amongst theologians.
One verse that often comes up is: "Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil." Some would say that this is evidence that Jesus was a supporter of the Law, but on the other hand, maybe he was saying, "A lot of people are saying that I'm destroying the law, but even though it seems that way, I'm really fulfilling it with a higher law, i.e. love your neighbor and love God."
Considering that Jesus prevented the stoning of an adulterer, told the Samaritan woman at the well that it is unnecessary for her to worship God at the Jerusalem temple and incensed the religious authorities by defying them, an act that would ultimately lead to his death, there's a good deal of evidence in the New Testament to suggest that Jesus did not in fact support the literal interpretation of the Law - why would he offer two new laws if he did?
Additional, its clear in Acts 10 that God instructed Peter to ignore the Jewish nutrition guidelines, and Paul abolished the practice of circumcision for Gentile converts - both of them were at odds with Jewish Law.
Granted, you may not believe this interpretation, but you say:
"...you'll see that the Bible is wrong. Now, since Jesus held the Bible to be absolute truth, he was wrong as well..."
As I said, you with your seminary training must know that this statement is very much an open question. It seems like you believe that the Bible is inaccurate, and its certainly possible that Jesus agreed with you. Why not accept this interpretation?
I believe you have no seminary training at all - Someone who read the Bible in Greek and Hebrew would certainly be able to provide a more sophisticated analysis of the issue. I've read the Old Testament once and the New Testament twice only in English, and I can do better than that!
Its not that I think you are wrong, but if you are really the scholar that you claim to be, I expect more. Your posts reek of post-Catholic school angst. If you really want to disprove the Bible, there is lots of informative and well-reasoned literature. I suggest you avail yourself of them.
The whole concept of saving files (including the word itself) is counter-intuitive to most people. If you know that the computer makes a temporary copy of the file and then wants to copy the new file over the old one, then the word makes sense. You've made changes to a different file. But the average user doesn't realize this, nor should they. They think that what they see on the screen is the file. When I edit a file, any fool looking at the screen can see that the changes have been made. Why would the computer ask you to do something you have already done? Intuitively, the screen represents the current state of the file, so if I wish to stop working on a document, it implies that I'm satisfied with its contents. If I create a new file, add some data and then try to close the document, at that point the software should intervene and ask me to pick a name for the file.
I could see a person accustomed to using the word 'save' in the phrase "I'm not sure I really need this any more, should I throw it away? No, I'll save it, just in case..." to interpret the save prompt in the same way, i.e. I've decided to discard the changes I'm making, but maybe I'll save them in case I want to make a permanent change later, more like a recycle bin.
My suggestion is get rid of 'save' altogether, and replace it with something like 'Confirm your changes', and a big green check mark in place of the floppy disk. Why bother the user with an icon representing the mechanics of the operation?
I'm sure the submitter feels vastly superior to the author of the article, but is it really necessary to add smug and possibly sexist comments such as, "Awww, she almost gets it. (...and she was sooo close, too!)" I think that's uncalled for.
Humans have always been dependent on each other. That's part of the reason we've been so successful in the first place. As for your wheat analogy, maybe that's a new evolutionary strategy - evolve a delicious taste, and humans will reproduce you all over the planet. Wheat has an advantage over less tasty grasses that we genetically engineer it for evolutionary success. You say dependency, I say symbiosis.
Furthermore, its a poor use of resources to insist that everyone be directly responsible for providing food for themselves. A lot of research wouldn't get done if it weren't for the government paying for it. Who knows what sort of amazing capacities you have when you are too busy worrying about where your next meal is coming from or working at a mind-numbing job? That's the principle behind financial aid.
But, I have to agree with another poster on this thread who said that evolutionary model is a poor fit when applied to the capitalist system.
I guess that depends on your interpretation of nice. Some would say that the world is not a nice place because we are not a nice country. The military defends our economic interests - if you believe those economic interests are always righteous and moral, then working for the military is moral. If you believe that the use of the military is mostly moral with the occasional screw up, then it would still probably be OK to work for the military.
But if you believe that history shows a greedy human race with the blood of innocents on our hands, that in spite of the politicians' cries of "Its a Shiny New Post-WWII, Post-Cold War World and we all really want World Peace," we continue to be greedy and war-mongering and that modern use of the military continues to be used in exactly the same way it has been used for the last several millenia, then the morality of working for the military is, at best, ambiguous.
I don't think that geeks are by nature introverted; they do tend to be one-dimensional, however. I think that geeks use the excuse of "I'm an introvert" to explain their behavior. My point is that geeks are anything but introverted within their own communities and with like-minded people.
This doesn't mean your are introverted, it means you are insecure. Its true that internet communication lacks certain qualities of real communication, it may be fair to characterize it as inferior to real face-to-face communication, but nonetheless, a true introvert does not seek out even crude communication with others, regardless of whether such a person loves Star Wars or not.
Perhaps you misunderstood me, but my point is that geeks should not hide behind the introversion excuse to explain their limited social skills.
I think the theory that natural introverts have their energy drained by being around people is more than a little suspect. Anyone with poor social skills is going to find themselves stressed out and drained when they find themselves in social situations. That doesn't make you a genetic introvert.
If someone is truly an introvert, they wouldn't be so concerned that society values extroverts more than introverts. After all, you just want to be left alone, why do you care what other people think?
The truth is that the geek population is no more introverted than the mainstream population. Take a look around you, friends! The internet was made by geeks for geeks to have social interaction.
Think of all the communication media that are available to and used daily by geeks: Email, web pages, bulletin boards, blogs, IM programs, IRC. Whatever your geeky interest is, D&D, Buffy, Anime, kernel hacking, EverQuest, ham radio, case modding, there's a million web sites, forums, IRC channels, clans and LAN parties that geeks enthusiastic members and participants. This veritable galaxy of communication and social options doesn't seem to be the work of an introverted group of people.
On the contrary, I'd say that geeks are more extroverted and social than the regular population!
OK, maybe you don't hate all people, maybe you hate just THOSE people - non-geeks, the average boring American who enjoys sitcoms and American Idol and little else. That doesn't make you an introvert, it makes you a snob. Which is OK, because those people really are boring.
One thing you notice about sub-cultures is uniformity: They act the same, they dress the same, they share common political views, read the same books, listen to the same music, etc. This is definitely true of the geek subculture at large. The stereotype of the unwashed, greasy-haired geek exists for a reason. The majority (say 75%) of people who are part of a subculture are there in large part for social acceptance, and the reasons are often because social acceptance could not be found in mainstream society for one reason or another.
"...classical music is too musical..."
Probably one of the most facile explanations I've ever heard. Most young people listen to music to give them a sense of identity - art has nothing to do with it at all. Even the teenagers that do listen to classical music are usually doing it so they can identify themselves as smarter and more cultured than the average person.
People who aren't music critics generally don't care one way or another about the artistic merit. If an artist is expressing something vaguely meaningful, and the music reasonably pleasing to the listener, that's all it really takes. No-one really considers the "artists" to be creating much in the way or art, except for maybe the artists themselves. The fans don't, the critics don't and the music execs sure don't.
So why are we wasting time pretending that artists like the Backstreet Boys should be held to any kind of standards of originality or artistry? To prove that we are cool and awesome, and probably should get laid a lot more often because we don't listen to that dreck that they play on the radio? So we come full circle; people listen to music to identify themselves in some way. That we're hard-rockin' metal heads or part of the International Sisterhood of Britney or simply that we're really much smarter than everyone else.
An ordinary developer, however, usually doesn't make those sorts of decisions, and a sensible hiring manager would know that. If a product fails because of market conditions, its no reflection on the developers at all.
Unfortunately, this move might kill PHP as a serious development platform. If Java handles all the heavy lifting, will PHP will be relegated to basically writing out HTML tags? This gives PHP programmers access to a vast and robust enterprise-quality set of libraries, as well as 3rd party libraries like Jakarta Commons. The quality of the PHP libraries just isn't where it needs to be in order to support real enterprise-class applications.
The CEO of Zend claims that PHP is simply better than JSP for web development. That's completely wrong. PHP is sucessful for only one reason: Its simple. If PHP wants to get into the enterprise game, its going to end up sacrificing much of what made it good in the first place. PHP's core principles are fundamentally at odds with standard enterprise practices, since its main advantage is as a quick and dirty solution. It seems like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole, and probably driven mostly by Zend trying to create revenue rather than a grassroots movement amongst PHP developers - the general consensus seems to be "Why do we need this?"
To put it simply, a servlet container runs java objects that extend the abstract HttpServlet class. At the heart of it, the servlet container will provide you with a HttpRequest, containing the session and any objects stored in it, cookies, request headers, etc., and HttpResponse, which contains a PrintWriter that you can use to output whatever you want. Servlet containers also do things like user authentication and application management. There's quite a lot of configurable options for this stuff.
With J2EE being all the rage these days, there's a lot of inertia behind writing MVC web apps. Writing apps in JSP has nearly the same maintenance hassles as writing them in PHP. Instead of writing a JSP/PHP page that checks that a user is logged in and creates connections to a database, the idea is for JSP to deal with presentation and servlets and java beans to manage the database connections and "business" of the web application.
Some of the cooler (newish) tools that people are using with servlets are XDoclets and object relation persistence
So... take a look around. I strongly suggest checking out the Struts Framework. And this IDE's not bad. And this tool is pretty fun. I mean, I use it...
Being able to produce better quality code is great, but you are rather useless if you don't want to share that knowledge with anyone else.
I find that hard to believe and I used to be a commercial graphic designer. If you are using Illustrator or Photoshop, converting to PNG removes all the layers, vector information and editable text layers, while providing no additional benefits.
Sending drafts and samples to clients suffers from the same IE compatibility issues discussed elsewhere, and a lot of the time, JPGs are used because degrading the image quality is what you want to prevent your work from being stolen. Corbis do this with all their stock photography.
Flash is the current standard for vector graphics on the web, and I don't see that changing any time soon. I don't see that SVG has much to offer the graphic designer that Flash and Illustrator doesn't already do. You have to admit that the average /.ers preference for SVG over Flash is mostly due to ideology rather than usefulness or practicality, something that your average graphic designer has no interest in at all.
Its similar to my main objection to sports. The vast majority of professional atheletes produce nothing of value. The things they gain are only valuable in a very narrow world. Sporting achievements are really very much like Everquest money. Sports are popular because people are satisfied with living a vicarious life rather than a real one. Soap operas, reality TV, sports and computer games have one thing in common: they provide a simulation of accomplishment and excitement. Many people become addicted to the simulation.
I want the real thing.
Why do these sorts of discussion always seem more like self-congratulatory exercises? Like clockwork, people start posting thoughts of how deep and meaningful their lives are. Its amazing how quickly making beer or chopping wood becomes a mystical experience, thirst for knowledge, truth, freedom and the American Way! The rest of world just doesn't get it!
Its exactly this kind of self-important blathering that no healthy individual needs. It seems to me that many extremely bright and intelligent people are also emotionally stunted. Time and time again, I am reminded how important it is to be well-rounded, mostly by observing how many geeks sacrifice large parts of their lives for one obsession or another, justifying it with the same self-validating rhetoric we see here. All I see here are comments about how smart we are, how creative, how worthwhile our lives are. The only reason you would need a pep talk like this is if inside, you really didn't believe it yourself.
I've become convinced that the geek community is rife with emotionally-damaged and socially maladjusted people who hide behind their obsessions. Not everyone of course, if the shoe fits, but maybe this is something that we should be talking about rather than patting ourselves on the back.
Apple can profit from the labors of the FreeBSD folks, that's cool, I'm in favor of that, but I draw the line when Apple decides it wants to interfere with the FreeBSD culture.
I also find it slighly hypocritical that Apple wants to change a little-known and hardly-used identifier after publically code-naming one of their projects "Butthead Astronomer" in honor of Carl Sagan. Also, as someone on the newsgroup mentioned: The Boolean variable "STUPID" [in Apple Pascal I] --documented as STUdent Programmer ID-- was set TRUE by default, as shipped by Apple Computer.
Lord Newby: My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for that reply. However, would he accept that...
AFAIK, this is not a new idea. For example, DirectTV prints all sensitive information regarding their super-secret encryption of their signal on specially colored paper. What Microsoft is doing is kind of an extension of that same idea. I think its a good idea.