How about because it is there and we are here, and if we don't find a way off this rock before we turn it into a smoldering pile of nuclear waste our species isn't going to leave behind much of a legacy.
Before we spent a trillion dollars (conservatively, probably would be more) on colonizing an inhospitable planet, I'd like to see some evidence that getting off earth is the best way to preserve the human species. Couldn't that money be more profitably spent eliminating the rationale for war on Earth?
I'm sure some folks will say that it's impossible, but if it's so hard to eliminate war on earth, what makes you think it's going to be any better on Mars? The only difference is that the conditions will be infinitely harsher, making war more of a necessity than it is on Earth. If we are really concerned about survival, let's make the deserts bloom, reverse the destruction of the landscape, etc here on Earth... all infinitely easier than colonizing Mars.
If, on the other hand, you want to colonize Mars because it's cool, well yeah, no one is says it isn't cool, but then be up front about it.
I was a bit surprised (well, no, I was VERY surprised) to see the release of EQ2 in the list. Here you've got a list of companies closing down, sweatshop companies, legal actions... and the successful release of a new online game.
All of the reviews I've seen of EQ2 vs. WoW have basically said the same thing: "they are both good games, WoW has lower requirements and is quicker to get into, EQ2 has better graphics". I started playing EQ2 and am also trying out a free month of WoW, and I'd have to say that assessment is pretty accurate.
Adding EQ2 to the "lows" list is just an individual bias thing, which pretty much throws the whole list into doubt for me.
Whoa, now there's a crisis! That's a reason to get rid of all the ratings systems... you might have to wait a week or two to get the latest game that you'll probably play 15 minutes and decide is a pile of junk.
This may be apocryphal, but I heard that if you pissed off the GMs in EQ enough, they could lock your character in a padded cell for a week. And that was a week of GAME time, not real time.
It might also lead to people being able to read, write, and speak to each other. It's true that there's a balance between innovation and sterility in language. But let's not confuse "variations in language" with "2 lazy 2 bother larning reding or writin".
IM is great for some things, but I'm pretty sure it also contributes to the incredibly short attention span of some of the folks that I have to work with remotely. I've found I have to send email that's only one sentence long, because if I ask two questions in one email it's guaranteed the second one won't be read, much less answered.
I suspect that one of the issues is that they are holding 2 or 3 conversations at once, while reading email, and thus don't have much ability to concentrate on any one thing.
Not "yeah, I ran it lots of times and it didn't crash," but "I ran it 100,000 times with 100,000 different inputs, all random, and it didn't crash, but while it was running I also sat down and mathematically proved the code is correct."
In our work we have to use a component supplied by what is essentially a parent company. One high level developer/manager is very proud of the fact that he runs tests with random input. The component often still has serious, basic problems when we get it. I'm not convinced that random input testing does much to find bugs.
The article I saw a few days ago described working conditions that were truly abysmal... something like 12 hour days, 7 days ago. No one does good work under such conditions. I don't think it would harm productivity AT ALL to require "normal" working hours. Maybe then management would have to think about what they were doing, instead of just whipping the slaves harder.
On the Darthmouth time sharing system, the "what" command displayed various bits and pieces of information. Don't remember much about it, but probably stuff like current time.
One time I typed "what 2+2" and got back "4". Then I tried other numbers and also got "4". Finally looked at the source code and saw that whenever it saw an arithmetic expression, it printed 4. The line had a comment: "joke".
You aren't a security expert, are you? Now, your first lesson in computer security is, write this a hundred times: *crashing* on malicious code is *GOOD*, while *running* malicious code is *BAD*.
It's true that *catching* bad input and deliberately aborting (hopefully with a somewhat reasonable error message) is good. According to the article, that's not what's going on... the browsers are NOT checking input, e.g. scanning into uninitialized buffer areas because they aren't finding an expected end marker, or a length is incorrect. So parent is exactly right... that kind of "buffer overrun" bug is exactly what can be exploited.
I suggest you go to countries that really don't have democracy before you start complaining about the US. You know, the ones where the "president" wins 99.9% of the vote or is elected "president for life".
That's why the best way to lose weight is : high protein low sugar diet and weight lifting
Guess I'm a counter-example. I was the classic "fat-boy" as a kid. My lifestyle gradually changed and I lost some weight, but the big change was when I started living with friends who did a lot of cardio exercise. We'd run 8-10 miles at lunch and play 2 hours of ultimate frisbee after work. The weight dropped dramatically, even though I was eating like a horse.
I've weightlifted occasionally to try to get some upper body strength, but I've never heard of weightlifting as a weight-loss technique. Fat -> muscle, sure, but you aren't going to lose weight.
Best that I can tell, she took the very same people that were responsible for COMPAQ's death spiral and put them into position to do exactly the same thing to HP.
It's weird, same thing happened to my company. We (and a bunch of our competitors) were bought out by a dot bomb that proceeded to loose somewhere in the vicinity of $150 million in 3 years. It was a pretty good trick, given they had bought a bunch of profitable companies.
Then the whole mess was bought out by another company that was supposed to be a smart, well-run organization... and they left the same people in charge of our division. How the hell can people have any sense at all and do that kind thing?
I recently had a cop DRAW HIS PISTOL ON ME because I didn't want to listen to his lecture about why he was blocking the road, and instead decided to turn my car around
You were lucky. Where I am (New Hampshire) some cops opened fire on a woman who they had stopped when she started driving again. They say she was driving at them to run them down, she claims she was leaving. Probably same sort of thing... cop talking to you, you fire up car, cop gets pissed / nervous. When cop talks, good idea to listen.
The only problem with the DUI laws is that they aren't tough enough. I can't count the number of times I've read in the paper about somebody being killed by some jerk who has already been arrested 5-10 times for DUI.
And how on earth did the parent post get modded "insightful"????
Except that maybe, just maybe, that id requirement, even if they used fake ids, provided some information as to who the terrorists were, making it possible after the fact to pick up more information and prevent future attacks?
If you aren't going to check ids, why bother checking luggage either? Surely having someone xray your luggage, force you to take off your shoes, etc, is a much bigger violation of privacy than simply knowing your name.
I don't know how much involvement MS actually had, but I believe both Dungeon Siege and Rise of Nations had the MS label on them, and both were well received.
C'mon, renege on the $500 bonus? How much do you think it's going to cost them? $10,000, $20,000? Against a movie cost of perhaps $50,000,000,000? If it prevents even a little piracy it's worth it to them.
Actually, I believe that only the core engine was 90% complete
I was reminded of a quote I saw a while back, to the effect that "coding is 90% complete for about 50% of the time". Which is not to say anything about the viability of Fallout 3 (I've never played any of the Fallout games) but just that I don't put much stock in such numbers.
And as you point out, the core engine is really just the start of the project.
Japan went to war in a misguided attempt to assure its own survival (on the terms it was willing to live with). If that isn't a "war for survival"... what is?
Well, by that definition Nazi Germany's attempt to conquer Europe was also a "war of survival". They also need lebensraum, oil, etc. That's a very broad definition of "survival".
Slashdot Mirror
Before we spent a trillion dollars (conservatively, probably would be more) on colonizing an inhospitable planet, I'd like to see some evidence that getting off earth is the best way to preserve the human species. Couldn't that money be more profitably spent eliminating the rationale for war on Earth?
I'm sure some folks will say that it's impossible, but if it's so hard to eliminate war on earth, what makes you think it's going to be any better on Mars? The only difference is that the conditions will be infinitely harsher, making war more of a necessity than it is on Earth. If we are really concerned about survival, let's make the deserts bloom, reverse the destruction of the landscape, etc here on Earth... all infinitely easier than colonizing Mars.
If, on the other hand, you want to colonize Mars because it's cool, well yeah, no one is says it isn't cool, but then be up front about it.
I was a bit surprised (well, no, I was VERY surprised) to see the release of EQ2 in the list. Here you've got a list of companies closing down, sweatshop companies, legal actions... and the successful release of a new online game.
All of the reviews I've seen of EQ2 vs. WoW have basically said the same thing: "they are both good games, WoW has lower requirements and is quicker to get into, EQ2 has better graphics". I started playing EQ2 and am also trying out a free month of WoW, and I'd have to say that assessment is pretty accurate.
Adding EQ2 to the "lows" list is just an individual bias thing, which pretty much throws the whole list into doubt for me.
Whoa, now there's a crisis! That's a reason to get rid of all the ratings systems... you might have to wait a week or two to get the latest game that you'll probably play 15 minutes and decide is a pile of junk.
This may be apocryphal, but I heard that if you pissed off the GMs in EQ enough, they could lock your character in a padded cell for a week. And that was a week of GAME time, not real time.
It might also lead to people being able to read, write, and speak to each other. It's true that there's a balance between innovation and sterility in language. But let's not confuse "variations in language" with "2 lazy 2 bother larning reding or writin".
IM is great for some things, but I'm pretty sure it also contributes to the incredibly short attention span of some of the folks that I have to work with remotely. I've found I have to send email that's only one sentence long, because if I ask two questions in one email it's guaranteed the second one won't be read, much less answered.
I suspect that one of the issues is that they are holding 2 or 3 conversations at once, while reading email, and thus don't have much ability to concentrate on any one thing.
In our work we have to use a component supplied by what is essentially a parent company. One high level developer/manager is very proud of the fact that he runs tests with random input. The component often still has serious, basic problems when we get it. I'm not convinced that random input testing does much to find bugs.
The article I saw a few days ago described working conditions that were truly abysmal... something like 12 hour days, 7 days ago. No one does good work under such conditions. I don't think it would harm productivity AT ALL to require "normal" working hours. Maybe then management would have to think about what they were doing, instead of just whipping the slaves harder.
On the Darthmouth time sharing system, the "what" command displayed various bits and pieces of information. Don't remember much about it, but probably stuff like current time.
One time I typed
"what 2+2"
and got back "4". Then I tried other numbers and also got "4". Finally looked at the source code and saw that whenever it saw an arithmetic expression, it printed 4. The line had a comment: "joke".
I assume you haven't heard that the Republican proposals to amend the Constitution so the Terminator can be president??
Of course, after Bush, The Terminator isn't looking so bad.
It's true that *catching* bad input and deliberately aborting (hopefully with a somewhat reasonable error message) is good. According to the article, that's not what's going on... the browsers are NOT checking input, e.g. scanning into uninitialized buffer areas because they aren't finding an expected end marker, or a length is incorrect. So parent is exactly right... that kind of "buffer overrun" bug is exactly what can be exploited.
I suggest you go to countries that really don't have democracy before you start complaining about the US. You know, the ones where the "president" wins 99.9% of the vote or is elected "president for life".
Guess I'm a counter-example. I was the classic "fat-boy" as a kid. My lifestyle gradually changed and I lost some weight, but the big change was when I started living with friends who did a lot of cardio exercise. We'd run 8-10 miles at lunch and play 2 hours of ultimate frisbee after work. The weight dropped dramatically, even though I was eating like a horse.
I've weightlifted occasionally to try to get some upper body strength, but I've never heard of weightlifting as a weight-loss technique. Fat -> muscle, sure, but you aren't going to lose weight.
It's weird, same thing happened to my company. We (and a bunch of our competitors) were bought out by a dot bomb that proceeded to loose somewhere in the vicinity of $150 million in 3 years. It was a pretty good trick, given they had bought a bunch of profitable companies.
Then the whole mess was bought out by another company that was supposed to be a smart, well-run organization... and they left the same people in charge of our division. How the hell can people have any sense at all and do that kind thing?
I ran DE2 on a 3 year old machine. It ran ok. Wasn't nearly as good as the original tho.
You were lucky. Where I am (New Hampshire) some cops opened fire on a woman who they had stopped when she started driving again. They say she was driving at them to run them down, she claims she was leaving. Probably same sort of thing... cop talking to you, you fire up car, cop gets pissed / nervous. When cop talks, good idea to listen.
Presumably your smoking in New Zealand doesn't harm anyone in the US... feel free to give yourself lung cancer.
The only problem with the DUI laws is that they aren't tough enough. I can't count the number of times I've read in the paper about somebody being killed by some jerk who has already been arrested 5-10 times for DUI.
And how on earth did the parent post get modded "insightful"????
Except that maybe, just maybe, that id requirement, even if they used fake ids, provided some information as to who the terrorists were, making it possible after the fact to pick up more information and prevent future attacks?
If you aren't going to check ids, why bother checking luggage either? Surely having someone xray your luggage, force you to take off your shoes, etc, is a much bigger violation of privacy than simply knowing your name.
This sounds an awful lot like "I'm right, therefore I'm right".
I don't know how much involvement MS actually had, but I believe both Dungeon Siege and Rise of Nations had the MS label on them, and both were well received.
C'mon, renege on the $500 bonus? How much do you think it's going to cost them? $10,000, $20,000? Against a movie cost of perhaps $50,000,000,000? If it prevents even a little piracy it's worth it to them.
I was reminded of a quote I saw a while back, to the effect that "coding is 90% complete for about 50% of the time". Which is not to say anything about the viability of Fallout 3 (I've never played any of the Fallout games) but just that I don't put much stock in such numbers.
And as you point out, the core engine is really just the start of the project.
He's talking about the average life of consoles. If you throw out the unsucessful ones, then sure, you get a deceptively higher average.
Well, by that definition Nazi Germany's attempt to conquer Europe was also a "war of survival". They also need lebensraum, oil, etc. That's a very broad definition of "survival".