i PLAy CS so i can B a REOL special counter terrorism guy
Okay seriously, games like CS are pretty far from the real thing. Obviously, some games like realistic flight simulators are so good at teaching people a skill that they are really used in the really really real world to teach people skills before they are allowed to get into the cockpit of a real 747. Of course other simulations, like Silent Service, are so far from the real thing that if you were to ever get into a real sub after playing it you'd probably be killed or thrown in the brig for being incompitent.
In general, I think video game skills help a lot in any job where quick thinking, quick reflexes, and good hand-eye coordination are required. Driving, for example. Or operating any kind of vehicle, really. One area where they DON'T help is any task which involves physical endurance. CS doesn't prepare you at ALL for the realities of getting shot at and having to shoot back. The next time you're playing and FPS and someone says "IF THIS WERE IN REAL LIFE I'D BEAT YOU EASILY", challenge them to a paintball match, and they'll quickly learn that war is hell and in real conflicts some people get fucking killed dead, and they never come back. It's pretty scary when someone nails your paintball mask right inbetween the eyes, and you take it off and look at that splatter of paint, and think "If that was a real bullet, my head would be splattered all over the ground behind me. Think about THAT next time you play GTA in sniper mode...
When Mario falls down a hole, who cares, because unless you suck you know the infinite life tricks on world 1 level 2, world 2 fortress, and world 3 level whatever with lockatoo. In REAL life there is only ONE chance. You fuck it up just ONCE, game over man.
When Together.Net fired me many years ago for being late to my crappy tech support job once too often, the first indication I had was that I couldn't log into the network when I came into work. All of my accounts where disabled. So I saw my manager and was like
"There's some kind of a problem with my network account" and he was like
"Yeah, we sort of need to have a little meeting..."
The day went downhill from there.
After 3 more years of doing $8/hr ISP tech support, the remaning sheep received nice severance packages when Together.Net was bought out. I'd gone to college and gotten a bachelors degree. I think in the long run, getting fired was a good thing.
Thats a good damn idea! The graphics performance on my Axim is ghetto. PokeNES is almost unplayable. Legend of Zelda works okay but SMB3? Forget it, way to choppy. Even at 400MHz. It's too bad really, PocketPCs could very easily be a high-end mobile gaming platform, they just need better controls and better graphics performance.
What kind of a dumb question is this? Maybe I should RTFA but the premise boggles my mind. Maybe I'm jaded because I spend so much time in front of a computer with a full time internet connection, but FWIW the Internet is MY FRIEND! I need to look something up, GOOGLE! I need to buy something, FROOGLE/PRICEWATCH/ETC! I need to talk to people EMAIL/IM/IRC/ECHOLINK! I mean, WTF? If it wasn't for greedy nearsighted corporations and governments we could already have broadband in everybodies home and not have to fuck around with archaic technology like telephones and fax machines and phone books and magazines and newspapers. Or music CDs and DVDs. All that shit could be consolidated into one resource conserving blinky blinky brain box and a phat internet connection. But NOOOOOO we've got to lobby congress to BAN FILE SHARING AND WEB SITE COPYING! AND GOD FORBID YOU SHOULD MAKE A PHONE CALL WITHOUT PAYING THE PHONE COMPANY SOMETHING FOR IT!!!! HURRRR INTERNET BAD!! NAPSTER BAD!!!! DURRRR!!!!
Good point, I (and most other gamers) have run into this problem before. On the other hand, it SHOULD be easy to BUILD a chording keyboard, if you have the skillz.
speaking of rodents, did you know that rabbits aren't rodents? I learned that just this summer. I always thought they were, but it turns out that their in their own Pika family, completely unrelated to rodents, although clearly quite similar. It's funny how two disparate species can evolve into almost the same animal,
Remember in The Guide, how the Golgafrinchams banished all of their payphone sanitizers (and hair dressers, etc) to the primitive earth? And then all of the remaining Golgafrinchams dies of a virulent disease spread through dirty payphones? Yeah...
It was decided that three large Arcs were to be built which would carry the whole population across the galaxy to find a new planet for them to colonise. In the 'A Arc' would go all the leaders, the brilliant scientists, the great thinkers and clever politicians, in the 'C Arc' would go all the doers, the builders and fabricators, the people who made things. The 'B Arc' would therefore carry all the middlemen such as telephone sanitisers and management consultants.
Anyway, the plan involved the building of the B Arc first. All the 'middle' people were rounded up and sent off to find a new home, oblivious to the fact that the A and C Arcs would never be built.
It's ironic that the planet Golgafrincham suffered a virulent and ultimately fatal virus a few years later. It was transmitted by dirty telephones.
One thing I forgot to mention, it seems like it should be a trivial software issue to turn an ordinary keyboard into a chording keyboard. Somebody has to have done it already, and if not, you just found yourself a good open source project:)
Chording keyboards have been around for a long time. I remember reading about one called "The Bat" in Macworld many years ago. The idea is that you use one hand on a limited number of keys, and you press multiple keys simultaniously to generate the various letters. It sounds strange, but most people actually learn to use them pretty quickly. Also, most people never manage chord quite as fast as they can type. But you can still go pretty fast (50, 60wpm). Most of them have one key for each finger, although I've seen some with more. Anyway a quick google search http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie =UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=chording+keyboard turns up plenty of links.
It takes more than your address and birthday to commit a serious case of identity theft... But if it really concerns you, I would just get a PO box. It's what all the rest of us do, unless we just don't care. Afterall I give my mailing address to people all the time. It's on my business cards. So basicly A) you're paranoid and probably a little egotistical to think that anybody cares what your address is, B) if it really bothers you, get a PO box, C) if it really really bothers you, don't be a ham, D) if it REALLY REALLY REALLY bothers you AND you really want to be a ham, then you can file a petition for a rulemaking with the FCC, which they will be required to make public and accept comments on it. Then they will probably throw it out, but nevertheless they will have to at least consider your position.
OK, lets just say this bullshit somehow manages to grow wings and fly... IANAL but couldn't RedHat file a class action lawsuit on behalf of the open source community and allow you and me and everybody to sign on?
I rather dislike it when people blame the tool they can't use
Okay, try this: go to the dollar store, buy a cheap Chinese toolset, then try to rebuild your engine with it and see how far you get. Good fucking luck. Having the right and proper tools is critical to getting the job done correctly and efficiently. Nobody uses functional programming, and there are reasons why, face the facts.
The two fattest people I've ever known are also the two most gluttonous eaters I've ever known. They'd pile more cafeteria shitfood onto their trays then anybody I've ever seen. The fatter you are the higher your base metabolic rate and the more you need to eat to sustain your girth. Not every fatty in the country can blame their problems on thyroids.
Yeah, I've never dropped an engine off an engine stand before... Mechanics don't drop cars of lifts very often. Then again people probably don't take random bolts out of the lifts at night to fool the mechanics. I bet it was done intentionally by a rival satellite team.
It absolutely is NOT fueled up. Satellites are use hypergolic (self igniting) fuels that are pretty much the most dangerous chemicals on earth, after plutonium. Here are some pictures of them fueling up Amsat Oscar 40 (ironic to think that while these pictures were being taken, any one of these people could have saved it from blowing up by just opening the damn valve or whatever) http://www.amsat-dl.org/launch/ Note the protective gear and the emergency escape chutes in the fuel depot... Yeah. The fueling up is pretty much the last thing that happens before the bird gets loaded on a rocket.
Hyper kids play a lot of video games. You can't really blame the video games, any more than you could blame the food. The food doesn't cause obesity, the overreating does. Video games don't cause ADD but playing them too damn much could very well contribute to it. Then again maybe video games don't contribute at all to ADD, maybe ADD makes you play video games. it's nice that they've found a link but they've failed to establish cause and effect.
Alright, procedural programming is obviously here to stay. There's a reason the Linux kernel is written in C. There are a lot of very nice things about OOP. The Java API is really is a good example of what wondeful things a well thought out class library can do for a language. But FUNCTIONAL programming, *homer shudder*. I've programmed in a couple of dozen languages, ranging from assembly, C and it's other procedural relatives, FORTH (which is pleasently unlike any other language), and I'm sorry to say, ML. ML is a highly functional language, and IMO THE most useless language ever. The only other language that even comes close is TCL. ML breaks every convention in ways that aren't even logical. ~ is the unary negation operator, for example, although I dunno of you can even really call it an operator in ML. It's not that it was particularly hard to learn, it's just that it sucked. The creators tout it as less error prone, more efficient, etc. Yeah everybody says that about their language. Trying to write simple programs in ML was like pulling teath. Give me FORTH any day over that crap heap. FORTH rules. Moore 4eva.
Hey sometimes I like to shoot cans in my backyard!
Everybody wants to blame something else for their poor behavior. Their parents, their video games, their DNA. Who the fuck cares why you did it? Does it even matter? You try to kill people, you go directly to jail, do not pass go. Learn from your (stupid-ass dumb-shit tard-fuck) mistake, and when you get out, try not to make the same mistake again.
Linux "kernel development" is a pretty broad term. It can mean anything from mucking with the lowest of the low level junk to writing simple device drivers from existing templates, which mostly amounts to filling in some blanks.
Getting paid to develop low level kernel functions is probably the hardest thing to do. Partly because it's just very challanging programing. In fact a lot of it is less programing and more mathematics. If you haven't taken a class in Discrete Mathematics and done well, it's probably not for you. You may still be able to handle low level hardware interface issues, but forget about coming up with any brilliant new VM algorithms. It's also hard to get a job doing that because companies know that very few people on Earth can do it consistently well. Also, most companies don't see a direct benefit from it and therefor don't care since they can't see past their nose. They don't care that Linux will have 0(1) scheduling in two years if it doesn't increase sales tomorrow. This type of kernel development is typically bleeding edge and reserved for super-geniouses with a vision.
The easier way to get into kernel programming is probably driver development. There are a lot of companies that design computer hardware, and (hopefully) they'd all like to have Linux drivers for their products. Drivers are relatively easy to develop (once you know how), they all have a lot in common and there's a pretty good body of driver source code you can work from, and a large body of theory available in text books and whatnot. Writing everyday drivers typically isn't bleeding edge work and can be performed by your average sub-genious.
Either way, getting a job in the computer industry is hard right now. It never hurts to apply for jobs, but your odds of actually getting one will be a whole hell of a lot better if you have some kind of programming portfolio you can use to show off your stuff. Companies will be a lot more likely to hire a tried and true kernel programmer than a wet-behind-the-ears newb. So I recomend you get friendly with some of the kernel maintaners, reverse engineer some hardware, or pick a piece of the kernel and just do some work on it. Produce something good and then you can show it off when you get interviewed. You can't buy that kind of credential.
Ban DHMO! Dihydrogen Monoxide (DHMO) is a colorless and odorless chemical compound. Each year, Dihydrogen Monoxide is a known causative component in many thousands of deaths and is a major contributor to millions upon millions of dollars in damage to property and the environment.
Slashdot Mirror
i PLAy CS so i can B a REOL special counter terrorism guy
Okay seriously, games like CS are pretty far from the real thing. Obviously, some games like realistic flight simulators are so good at teaching people a skill that they are really used in the really really real world to teach people skills before they are allowed to get into the cockpit of a real 747. Of course other simulations, like Silent Service, are so far from the real thing that if you were to ever get into a real sub after playing it you'd probably be killed or thrown in the brig for being incompitent.
In general, I think video game skills help a lot in any job where quick thinking, quick reflexes, and good hand-eye coordination are required. Driving, for example. Or operating any kind of vehicle, really. One area where they DON'T help is any task which involves physical endurance. CS doesn't prepare you at ALL for the realities of getting shot at and having to shoot back. The next time you're playing and FPS and someone says "IF THIS WERE IN REAL LIFE I'D BEAT YOU EASILY", challenge them to a paintball match, and they'll quickly learn that war is hell and in real conflicts some people get fucking killed dead, and they never come back. It's pretty scary when someone nails your paintball mask right inbetween the eyes, and you take it off and look at that splatter of paint, and think "If that was a real bullet, my head would be splattered all over the ground behind me. Think about THAT next time you play GTA in sniper mode...
When Mario falls down a hole, who cares, because unless you suck you know the infinite life tricks on world 1 level 2, world 2 fortress, and world 3 level whatever with lockatoo. In REAL life there is only ONE chance. You fuck it up just ONCE, game over man.
When Together.Net fired me many years ago for being late to my crappy tech support job once too often, the first indication I had was that I couldn't log into the network when I came into work. All of my accounts where disabled. So I saw my manager and was like
"There's some kind of a problem with my network account" and he was like
"Yeah, we sort of need to have a little meeting..."
The day went downhill from there.
After 3 more years of doing $8/hr ISP tech support, the remaning sheep received nice severance packages when Together.Net was bought out. I'd gone to college and gotten a bachelors degree. I think in the long run, getting fired was a good thing.
without Ron Popiel! Thats how you can tell.
Thats a good damn idea! The graphics performance on my Axim is ghetto. PokeNES is almost unplayable. Legend of Zelda works okay but SMB3? Forget it, way to choppy. Even at 400MHz. It's too bad really, PocketPCs could very easily be a high-end mobile gaming platform, they just need better controls and better graphics performance.
Remember those days? 'Nuff said.
What kind of a dumb question is this? Maybe I should RTFA but the premise boggles my mind. Maybe I'm jaded because I spend so much time in front of a computer with a full time internet connection, but FWIW the Internet is MY FRIEND! I need to look something up, GOOGLE! I need to buy something, FROOGLE/PRICEWATCH/ETC! I need to talk to people EMAIL/IM/IRC/ECHOLINK! I mean, WTF? If it wasn't for greedy nearsighted corporations and governments we could already have broadband in everybodies home and not have to fuck around with archaic technology like telephones and fax machines and phone books and magazines and newspapers. Or music CDs and DVDs. All that shit could be consolidated into one resource conserving blinky blinky brain box and a phat internet connection. But NOOOOOO we've got to lobby congress to BAN FILE SHARING AND WEB SITE COPYING! AND GOD FORBID YOU SHOULD MAKE A PHONE CALL WITHOUT PAYING THE PHONE COMPANY SOMETHING FOR IT!!!! HURRRR INTERNET BAD!! NAPSTER BAD!!!! DURRRR!!!!
Good point, I (and most other gamers) have run into this problem before. On the other hand, it SHOULD be easy to BUILD a chording keyboard, if you have the skillz.
speaking of rodents, did you know that rabbits aren't rodents? I learned that just this summer. I always thought they were, but it turns out that their in their own Pika family, completely unrelated to rodents, although clearly quite similar. It's funny how two disparate species can evolve into almost the same animal,
From SadGeezer:
One thing I forgot to mention, it seems like it should be a trivial software issue to turn an ordinary keyboard into a chording keyboard. Somebody has to have done it already, and if not, you just found yourself a good open source project :)
Chording keyboards have been around for a long time. I remember reading about one called "The Bat" in Macworld many years ago. The idea is that you use one hand on a limited number of keys, and you press multiple keys simultaniously to generate the various letters. It sounds strange, but most people actually learn to use them pretty quickly. Also, most people never manage chord quite as fast as they can type. But you can still go pretty fast (50, 60wpm). Most of them have one key for each finger, although I've seen some with more. Anyway a quick google search http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie =UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=chording+keyboard turns up plenty of links.
It takes more than your address and birthday to commit a serious case of identity theft... But if it really concerns you, I would just get a PO box. It's what all the rest of us do, unless we just don't care. Afterall I give my mailing address to people all the time. It's on my business cards. So basicly A) you're paranoid and probably a little egotistical to think that anybody cares what your address is, B) if it really bothers you, get a PO box, C) if it really really bothers you, don't be a ham, D) if it REALLY REALLY REALLY bothers you AND you really want to be a ham, then you can file a petition for a rulemaking with the FCC, which they will be required to make public and accept comments on it. Then they will probably throw it out, but nevertheless they will have to at least consider your position.
OK, lets just say this bullshit somehow manages to grow wings and fly... IANAL but couldn't RedHat file a class action lawsuit on behalf of the open source community and allow you and me and everybody to sign on?
and the triple-expanding spray foam
and the vice-grips
and the spork^H^H^H^H^H
This is a joke, not a troll, you silly Apple fascists.
Okay, try this: go to the dollar store, buy a cheap Chinese toolset, then try to rebuild your engine with it and see how far you get. Good fucking luck. Having the right and proper tools is critical to getting the job done correctly and efficiently. Nobody uses functional programming, and there are reasons why, face the facts.
The two fattest people I've ever known are also the two most gluttonous eaters I've ever known. They'd pile more cafeteria shitfood onto their trays then anybody I've ever seen. The fatter you are the higher your base metabolic rate and the more you need to eat to sustain your girth. Not every fatty in the country can blame their problems on thyroids.
Yeah, I've never dropped an engine off an engine stand before... Mechanics don't drop cars of lifts very often. Then again people probably don't take random bolts out of the lifts at night to fool the mechanics. I bet it was done intentionally by a rival satellite team.
It absolutely is NOT fueled up. Satellites are use hypergolic (self igniting) fuels that are pretty much the most dangerous chemicals on earth, after plutonium. Here are some pictures of them fueling up Amsat Oscar 40 (ironic to think that while these pictures were being taken, any one of these people could have saved it from blowing up by just opening the damn valve or whatever) http://www.amsat-dl.org/launch/ Note the protective gear and the emergency escape chutes in the fuel depot... Yeah. The fueling up is pretty much the last thing that happens before the bird gets loaded on a rocket.
Hyper kids play a lot of video games. You can't really blame the video games, any more than you could blame the food. The food doesn't cause obesity, the overreating does. Video games don't cause ADD but playing them too damn much could very well contribute to it. Then again maybe video games don't contribute at all to ADD, maybe ADD makes you play video games. it's nice that they've found a link but they've failed to establish cause and effect.
Alright, procedural programming is obviously here to stay. There's a reason the Linux kernel is written in C. There are a lot of very nice things about OOP. The Java API is really is a good example of what wondeful things a well thought out class library can do for a language. But FUNCTIONAL programming, *homer shudder*. I've programmed in a couple of dozen languages, ranging from assembly, C and it's other procedural relatives, FORTH (which is pleasently unlike any other language), and I'm sorry to say, ML. ML is a highly functional language, and IMO THE most useless language ever. The only other language that even comes close is TCL. ML breaks every convention in ways that aren't even logical. ~ is the unary negation operator, for example, although I dunno of you can even really call it an operator in ML. It's not that it was particularly hard to learn, it's just that it sucked. The creators tout it as less error prone, more efficient, etc. Yeah everybody says that about their language. Trying to write simple programs in ML was like pulling teath. Give me FORTH any day over that crap heap. FORTH rules. Moore 4eva.
Them fuckin cockswine at Apple blinky brain box company aint won VERMONT and aint GONNA anytime soon by the geezum consarnit geezum crow!!!!!!!
I'll run my F-250 (with the runnin boards, bedliner, shotgun rack, she's a sweet machine) right over there and show those longhairs a thing or two!
Hey sometimes I like to shoot cans in my backyard!
Everybody wants to blame something else for their poor behavior. Their parents, their video games, their DNA. Who the fuck cares why you did it? Does it even matter? You try to kill people, you go directly to jail, do not pass go. Learn from your (stupid-ass dumb-shit tard-fuck) mistake, and when you get out, try not to make the same mistake again.
Linux "kernel development" is a pretty broad term. It can mean anything from mucking with the lowest of the low level junk to writing simple device drivers from existing templates, which mostly amounts to filling in some blanks.
Getting paid to develop low level kernel functions is probably the hardest thing to do. Partly because it's just very challanging programing. In fact a lot of it is less programing and more mathematics. If you haven't taken a class in Discrete Mathematics and done well, it's probably not for you. You may still be able to handle low level hardware interface issues, but forget about coming up with any brilliant new VM algorithms. It's also hard to get a job doing that because companies know that very few people on Earth can do it consistently well. Also, most companies don't see a direct benefit from it and therefor don't care since they can't see past their nose. They don't care that Linux will have 0(1) scheduling in two years if it doesn't increase sales tomorrow. This type of kernel development is typically bleeding edge and reserved for super-geniouses with a vision.
The easier way to get into kernel programming is probably driver development. There are a lot of companies that design computer hardware, and (hopefully) they'd all like to have Linux drivers for their products. Drivers are relatively easy to develop (once you know how), they all have a lot in common and there's a pretty good body of driver source code you can work from, and a large body of theory available in text books and whatnot. Writing everyday drivers typically isn't bleeding edge work and can be performed by your average sub-genious.
Either way, getting a job in the computer industry is hard right now. It never hurts to apply for jobs, but your odds of actually getting one will be a whole hell of a lot better if you have some kind of programming portfolio you can use to show off your stuff. Companies will be a lot more likely to hire a tried and true kernel programmer than a wet-behind-the-ears newb. So I recomend you get friendly with some of the kernel maintaners, reverse engineer some hardware, or pick a piece of the kernel and just do some work on it. Produce something good and then you can show it off when you get interviewed. You can't buy that kind of credential.
Ban DHMO! Dihydrogen Monoxide (DHMO) is a colorless and odorless chemical compound. Each year, Dihydrogen Monoxide is a known causative component in many thousands of deaths and is a major contributor to millions upon millions of dollars in damage to property and the environment.