The company I work for is in New Zealand. One of our products was made nicely internationalizable. To test it out, we made a translation file for our friendly neighbours across the Tasman. If you entered the wrong password, you would get
"Streuth mate, looks like you've entered a dodgy password."
And so forth. All throughout the application. Needless to say, we never removed it. Then a sales guy did a demo to an Australian customer:-) heh.
I think evolution should tell you that the answer is 'both'.
At multiple levels, evolution selects the best behaviour. In this context best means that which will maximize the species' chances of survival. For humans, an agressive behaviour does give them a likely advantage, because if the opposite were true we wouldn't have the behaviour.
You can probably analyze this in terms of a kind of tragedy of the commons. All species would be better off if we could co-operate, but there is considerable advantage to those that are more agressive. Consequently all become more aggressive.
It should be noted that at other levels cooperation is beneficial. Humans have a symbiotic relationship with many forms of bacteria in our guts. Furthermore with our family cooperating provides a clear benefit... hence our tendency to trust and not be aggressive towards our family members.
Depends a lot on how you count output, whether at PPP or not.
For example, it takes just as much energy to cook a meal in China as it does anywhere else. However, that meal only has a value 1/4th as much (or whatever) if you simply trade exchange rates.
Seriously... how do you set the time on one of them?
Re:He doesn't know what he's talking about
on
A Gamer's Manifesto
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· Score: 1
AI is not something you just polish up like "we want darker storyline."
AI" as 99.99% of laymen seem to call it is merely an elaborate hack. I could directly script a line of actions and with a relatively small number of branch points most people will think "wow! that's a smart AI
Yep nasty. I fly gliders and that's pretty important for us... we spend a lot of time flying pretty close to stall speed. We do this because you can turn more tightly when you go slow, which is important when you are in a thermal and the strong core is a lot more powerful than the weak outsides.
The first glider I flew was a Puchatek, which is something of a trainer with very large hi-lift hi-drag wings, and a very big dihedreal. It's very hard to spin it, and has a habit of recovering itself. The higher performance gliders are not nearly so forgiving.
Interestingly one of the problems with large parabolic surfaces is keeping them parabolic under the influence of gravity. When you tip your telescope to a different angle, you get different stresses in different places which causes a deformation, and loss of perfection. I would have thought that this deformation could be calibrated for and corrected in software, but people spend big bucks to make it perfect so I guess not.
The heart of all this conflict really boils down to one issue: performance. SWT vs. Swing. Java developers have been debating SWT vs. Swing since the release of these two IDEs. More specifically, the debate has been about using SWT or Swing on Linux platforms.
One of the arguments against SWT is simply this: it's not part of the Java specification. SWT proponents argue that the responsiveness of a native application can outperform any pure Java implementation. Who is right? That is still up in the air, but it does seem that performance issues have at the very least leveled out, leaving the ultimate determination up to the other features of the IDEs
That's completely wrong. People like SWT not so much for the performance but for the fact that it acts like a native application. You get sub-pixel rendering on LCDs, and so forth whereas Swing is constantly playing catchup.
That Swing is part of the J2SE is a non-benefit. I'm using the IDE, not waging some holy war or caring about how it's implemented. I can't see how as an IDE user I would be happier with Swing because it is part of the J2SE.
Again, I am not talking about accidental resubmission. I am talking about displaying incorrect data. The results of a GET that are no longer valid.
Sure, going back should take you back but only if the server has said that it's OK. You're forgetting that in most circumstances the no-cache headers should not be set and loading from the cache is OK. But to suggest that the browser should ignore the server that sends a header 'never cache this page, you must always load it from the server' is just silly.
There are plenty of cases that this can cause critical errors. Web based medical software, for one. This is relevant since I do QA for a medical software company and I can't release something that can show invalid data.
You've always got to remember that Doom 3 is more about showcasing the engine rather than producing the best program. Licensing that sucker is what really makes them money, not Doom 3 sales.
I'm not talking about actions such as POST that alter the state of the server.
I am talking about GETs that view the state of the server. Once that state is changed, redisplaying that out-of-sync state is not acceptable.
POST handling in browsers now is nasty, but acceptable in the circumstances. Most people work around that nastiness by issuing a redirect to a resource that the browser will GET as the result of a POST.
Back/Forward Cache: Yes! Yes! Yes! This brings Firefox one step closer to the way I feel caching should be done. Back/forward should always pull pages from the cache (ignoring meta expire), and clicking links should always load the page from the server.
While this may at first glance seem like a good idea, the browser absolutely must respect no-cache headers.
A trivial example is if you go to an online bookshop say, and you order a book. If you hit the 'back' button, you may get very confused if you start to see out of date information 'huh? It says that I haven't ordered this book yet, but I did'.
Then extend this further to more critical areas that web applications are getting used for these days. Bringing up medical information, for one. Say you order a drug through a web interface, and then hit back to go to the summary screen of all the meds the patient is currently taking, to print it out for your ward rounds. In this case showing the incorrect cached data is very very bad indeed.
What the hell? Do you work for Microsoft or something?
Look, I'm not filing a proper defect report and I don't know how I got documents into that position and frankly I don't care enough about the product to do that. All I can tell you is that I did get them into that situation using only options though Word and now word chokes on it. When I use Normal view the problem goes away, but Word never defaults to that view so I never use it.
I do know how styles work in Word. I just wished they worked consistently. I always have the styles pane open and use that to select styles. I have several styles which are undeletable. Some of them the delete option is disabled for an unknown reason, but for others it's enabled but does nothing when you click on it. I'm sure there is some kind of determinism behind it's behaviour but I'm buggered if I can find it.
Favourite problem last month: Word complained about the spelling of the word 'Introduction'. Couldn't work out why, it was correct. Turns out the dictionary changed halfway through the word, between the t and the r. However the hell that happened, I don't know. Problem would go away if Word would default to my Locale setting for things like dictionaries, paper size (no I don't want Letter again, thanks).
Favourite problem the previous month: Printing.
Printed 6 copies of a document using the print dialog. Word does so dutifilly, telling me it has printed all 35 pages. WTF??? how does 35 go into 6? It simply decided not to print the last page. Word told me 35, not the printer.
Previous time I printed 6 copies of a document (actually a few sections) with an odd number of pages. Word actually thought it was a good idea to start the first page of the second copy on the back of the piece paper that had the last page of the first copy. Go figure. Had to go reprint the first pages so I could attach them.
I used print selection because I couldn't work out what the print number page range system keyed off... the section's page number or the document page number (don't worry, I worked it out now, and use p1s2-p20s2 now), and my document came out without all the lower case e, a, d, t and n characters. They were all blank. Everything else printed fine. WTF??????
Oh, and I do work in QA.
I do hate Word. I really do. And I'm not making that up. Sorry. I fixed the document with the repaginate-every-time-you-scroll by opening it in Open Office and saving it again, HAHA. Now our company is moving entirely to Open Office. Even though it isn't as mature as Word, I happily use it just because it isn't Word.
As for awkward, what exactly do you mean? For myself and nearly 400 million others, Office is perfectly normal. Style handling is considerably better in 2003, and the overall suite feels polished and clean.
Having spent about a week working with a Document in Word 2003, I call bullshit.
Word screws with the styles something chronic. It creates styles on the fly, it has all sorts of styles 'select all 2 instances' which does nothing, and the style can't be deleted. My favourite feature is to randomly remove the numbering from my Heading 1..n styles, with no apparent way to get it back.
Combine that with its general unstableness... crashing on average once every few days when editing a document 'Word has detected that a table has become corrupt. I'm now going to crash in a smouldering heap instead of letting you fix it up'.
Then try to have a footer on every page. Then make one page landscape. Depending on your document, one of several things will happen:
Srolling the document causes a repagination. Unusable.
The footer on all the landscape pages flashes with a frequency of about 1 second between the width needed for portrait and the width needed for landscape. Don't touch the keyboard, just sit back and watch Word cry
It works fine. I've seen this behaviour once, far less often than the other two.
Microsoft Word is to word processing as Novell was to networking before Microsoft came along. Everyone hates it, but there's nothing else you can use, and the company that has created it is convinced that people like it. As soon as something simpler comes along, people will ditch Word as soon as they can.
I hate Word. I really do. Buggy, slow and unintuitive.
Currently they use static analysis to decide on popular websites - who is linking to who.
This information will give them dynamic data on who is actually browsing which websites. This will improve search quality, and make it even harder to googlebomb. It's great for us that won't install the Accelerator!
They don't assume that. Of course it's not the best operating system for everybody. If you're happy with your Linux or BSD setup, then good on you.
I simply get very frustrated with Windows and Linux and find the interfaces get in my way, even though I have learned the workarounds (how many times do you have to press shift before hitting delete in windows?)
Slashdot Mirror
"Streuth mate, looks like you've entered a dodgy password."
And so forth. All throughout the application. Needless to say, we never removed it. Then a sales guy did a demo to an Australian customer :-) heh.
IIS 6. Compare that to Apache. I think you may be surprised.
I think the both of you should stop reading Slashdot while at work and get back to selling your games ;-)
10 points says you can't remember who was in your 3rd form year at Wellington College.
At multiple levels, evolution selects the best behaviour. In this context best means that which will maximize the species' chances of survival. For humans, an agressive behaviour does give them a likely advantage, because if the opposite were true we wouldn't have the behaviour.
You can probably analyze this in terms of a kind of tragedy of the commons. All species would be better off if we could co-operate, but there is considerable advantage to those that are more agressive. Consequently all become more aggressive.
It should be noted that at other levels cooperation is beneficial. Humans have a symbiotic relationship with many forms of bacteria in our guts. Furthermore with our family cooperating provides a clear benefit... hence our tendency to trust and not be aggressive towards our family members.
For example, it takes just as much energy to cook a meal in China as it does anywhere else. However, that meal only has a value 1/4th as much (or whatever) if you simply trade exchange rates.
Seriously... how do you set the time on one of them?
AI" as 99.99% of laymen seem to call it is merely an elaborate hack. I could directly script a line of actions and with a relatively small number of branch points most people will think "wow! that's a smart AI
Great, you solved your own problem.
The first glider I flew was a Puchatek, which is something of a trainer with very large hi-lift hi-drag wings, and a very big dihedreal. It's very hard to spin it, and has a habit of recovering itself. The higher performance gliders are not nearly so forgiving.
Fun times!
Interestingly one of the problems with large parabolic surfaces is keeping them parabolic under the influence of gravity. When you tip your telescope to a different angle, you get different stresses in different places which causes a deformation, and loss of perfection. I would have thought that this deformation could be calibrated for and corrected in software, but people spend big bucks to make it perfect so I guess not.
Could your post be any whiter?
The heart of all this conflict really boils down to one issue: performance. SWT vs. Swing. Java developers have been debating SWT vs. Swing since the release of these two IDEs. More specifically, the debate has been about using SWT or Swing on Linux platforms.
One of the arguments against SWT is simply this: it's not part of the Java specification. SWT proponents argue that the responsiveness of a native application can outperform any pure Java implementation. Who is right? That is still up in the air, but it does seem that performance issues have at the very least leveled out, leaving the ultimate determination up to the other features of the IDEs
That's completely wrong. People like SWT not so much for the performance but for the fact that it acts like a native application. You get sub-pixel rendering on LCDs, and so forth whereas Swing is constantly playing catchup.
That Swing is part of the J2SE is a non-benefit. I'm using the IDE, not waging some holy war or caring about how it's implemented. I can't see how as an IDE user I would be happier with Swing because it is part of the J2SE.
Take a look at Concerto. Yes, I work for this company.
Sure, going back should take you back but only if the server has said that it's OK. You're forgetting that in most circumstances the no-cache headers should not be set and loading from the cache is OK. But to suggest that the browser should ignore the server that sends a header 'never cache this page, you must always load it from the server' is just silly.
There are plenty of cases that this can cause critical errors. Web based medical software, for one. This is relevant since I do QA for a medical software company and I can't release something that can show invalid data.
You've always got to remember that Doom 3 is more about showcasing the engine rather than producing the best program. Licensing that sucker is what really makes them money, not Doom 3 sales.
#1 reason why Linux/Unix/MacOSX is better than your favourite operating system:
There are fewer people like you using them. No go back to your VB and your Word and be happy in your slum. Leave us alone that use something superior.
I am talking about GETs that view the state of the server. Once that state is changed, redisplaying that out-of-sync state is not acceptable.
POST handling in browsers now is nasty, but acceptable in the circumstances. Most people work around that nastiness by issuing a redirect to a resource that the browser will GET as the result of a POST.
While this may at first glance seem like a good idea, the browser absolutely must respect no-cache headers.
A trivial example is if you go to an online bookshop say, and you order a book. If you hit the 'back' button, you may get very confused if you start to see out of date information 'huh? It says that I haven't ordered this book yet, but I did'.
Then extend this further to more critical areas that web applications are getting used for these days. Bringing up medical information, for one. Say you order a drug through a web interface, and then hit back to go to the summary screen of all the meds the patient is currently taking, to print it out for your ward rounds. In this case showing the incorrect cached data is very very bad indeed.
Look, I'm not filing a proper defect report and I don't know how I got documents into that position and frankly I don't care enough about the product to do that. All I can tell you is that I did get them into that situation using only options though Word and now word chokes on it. When I use Normal view the problem goes away, but Word never defaults to that view so I never use it.
I do know how styles work in Word. I just wished they worked consistently. I always have the styles pane open and use that to select styles. I have several styles which are undeletable. Some of them the delete option is disabled for an unknown reason, but for others it's enabled but does nothing when you click on it. I'm sure there is some kind of determinism behind it's behaviour but I'm buggered if I can find it.
Favourite problem last month: Word complained about the spelling of the word 'Introduction'. Couldn't work out why, it was correct. Turns out the dictionary changed halfway through the word, between the t and the r. However the hell that happened, I don't know. Problem would go away if Word would default to my Locale setting for things like dictionaries, paper size (no I don't want Letter again, thanks).
Favourite problem the previous month: Printing.
Oh, and I do work in QA.
I do hate Word. I really do. And I'm not making that up. Sorry. I fixed the document with the repaginate-every-time-you-scroll by opening it in Open Office and saving it again, HAHA. Now our company is moving entirely to Open Office. Even though it isn't as mature as Word, I happily use it just because it isn't Word.
Having spent about a week working with a Document in Word 2003, I call bullshit.
Word screws with the styles something chronic. It creates styles on the fly, it has all sorts of styles 'select all 2 instances' which does nothing, and the style can't be deleted. My favourite feature is to randomly remove the numbering from my Heading 1..n styles, with no apparent way to get it back.
Combine that with its general unstableness... crashing on average once every few days when editing a document 'Word has detected that a table has become corrupt. I'm now going to crash in a smouldering heap instead of letting you fix it up'.
Then try to have a footer on every page. Then make one page landscape. Depending on your document, one of several things will happen:
- Srolling the document causes a repagination. Unusable.
- The footer on all the landscape pages flashes with a frequency of about 1 second between the width needed for portrait and the width needed for landscape. Don't touch the keyboard, just sit back and watch Word cry
- It works fine. I've seen this behaviour once, far less often than the other two.
Microsoft Word is to word processing as Novell was to networking before Microsoft came along. Everyone hates it, but there's nothing else you can use, and the company that has created it is convinced that people like it. As soon as something simpler comes along, people will ditch Word as soon as they can.I hate Word. I really do. Buggy, slow and unintuitive.
This information will give them dynamic data on who is actually browsing which websites. This will improve search quality, and make it even harder to googlebomb. It's great for us that won't install the Accelerator!
Belorussion, apparently.
I simply get very frustrated with Windows and Linux and find the interfaces get in my way, even though I have learned the workarounds (how many times do you have to press shift before hitting delete in windows?)
Cryillic characters are great for bypassing those automated systems. There's a Cryillic 'i', so you can say shit with impunity :-)