How does one go about doing that? Oh, you answer that on step 4 - you simply "Do hourly contract work when you need money, and relax when you don't". Man, I must have been left off the memo indicating that contract work could be had for anyone who asked for it and there's actually a time when money is not needed.
Anyway, paying off debts and lowering consumption is good advice, though hardly ground breaking. The rest is classic oversimplification syndrome.
Though I don't have any numbers, I believe there are more fantasy authors active today and as a result of this increased competition, the top end of the fantasy genre is better than the top end of the sci-fi genre (on average). I remember growing up reading Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, Shannara, Eddings, etc and I just don't remember seeing the equivalent types of books for sci-fi. Sci-fi seemed to slow down after the Assimov/Herbert eras(of course there are the Orson Scott Cards who are the exception, but they are exceptions).
BTW, I'm not holding these up as great pieces of literature, but they are fun guilty-pleasures that are many people's entry point to fantasy and also illustrate the higher proliferation of fantasy.
Re:Lies, statistics, and analysts
on
Java vs .NET
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· Score: 1
"Java's big failing, IMHO, is Swing. It is too big and too clunky, Java is crying out for a stripped down GUI library that is part of the API spec that will be as easy to work wit"
I get the feeling that this is one of those things that people say that morphs into "The Truth" in the collective conciousness ( sorta like "Ellen Degeres has talent").
The Real Truth is that Swing is an incredibly powerful GUI that allows one to do create powerful, useful, applications that are impossible in other toolkits due to the great flexibility of the API and the Java language. And you can do this stuff FAST.
Is Swing appropriate for all things. No. For example, if you're making shrinkwrapped software and are competing against an established competitor with a nice interface, Swing is probably not the API of choice.
But the good news is that Swing appropriate for tons of other apps, including internal custom applications, applications in which you need to get to market something that works well (though not necessarily totally polished) and FIRST. And the fact of the matter is that Swing is great even for many shrinkwrapped apps (if not most).
Anyway, enough rambling. I'm taking down my soapbox for the day.:)
Remember Planet of the Apes musical on Simpsons?
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LOTR The Musical!
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· Score: -1, Redundant
Is Troy McClure available? He'd be perfect for the LotR version.
"Frodo Baggins, Frodo Baggins!
Frodo Baggins, Frodo Baggins!
Frodo Baggins, Frodo Baggins!
Oh Fro-do Baggins, Frodo Baggins!"
*Gandalf starts breakdancing*
Download the song through this site.:)
"
A company decided to stop offering for free software that competes with one of its most expensive products. Nothing to see here. Move along."
My translation went more along the lines of: In other news, Sun is still utterly clueless about how to save itself.
Though I guess that could be considered old news.
No. The point of any game is to sell. The fact of the matter is that C&C's gameplay, while cool when it was new, has been superseded and nearly perfected by Blizzard. So in order for a RTS game to sell, this is the bar they have to meet.
I for one hope it meets this bar, as it would be cool to have some other top level options in the RTS area.
While I would definitely agree that Swing is slower than native Windows and Unix widgets, they are often plenty fast enough. While I'm not questioning your java programming ability per se, but I've found that oftentimes, slow Swing applications can be attributed to lack of skill/deep understanding of Java as to limitations of running within a virtual machine. You can make very complicated applications with Swing, and while those applications will probably be memory hogs, they are very responsive if they are implemented well. Just look at Netbeans as an example. Check out Swing Sightings on Sun's website for yet more examples.
ABSOLUTELY BUY A HOUSE! Stop renting as soon as you can afford to! When you rent, you're just paying down someone else's mortgage. Get your own, build your own equity, ben an owner. Houses are a safe investment, relatively speaking. Get a modest house that you can pay off fairly quickly, and put your money to work for you, rather than your landlord.
This is somewhat of a myth. Buying a house does not always save you money over renting and may not give you any financial advantages at all. A lot depends on how much you pay in rent vs how much you pay in mortgage vs how long you plan to stay in the house. Generally it's a good idea, but it's not something that you can take for granted.
I wouldn't say the poster's advice is absolutely terrible. He wasn't advocating moving to Montana after 10 years of saving $1000/month and I don't think he was advocating absolutely not marrying anyone.
Great post. You are absolutely on point about Rodenberry holding back TNG and Berman being the inspirational source for TNG best years. Many fans either forget this or never knew it to begin with.
I disagree about Enterprise and Voyager sucking though. Both are/were better than 90% of the schlock on TV. Enterprise hasn't quite found its stride yet, but I wouldn't say it's truly bad TV. There are some really interesting story arcs going on there.
Voyager was actually fairly watchable after season 1 I though. Unfortunately, most people had tuned out by then AND it was on UPN. I still catch reruns late night sometimes and find myself enjoying the show. Or maybe I was just that starved for Star Trek (pre Enterprise, remember)...:)
And you're on point about the timing of the movie release as being the cause for its failure. Hmm, lets see - lets release it between Harry Potter and The Two Towers. Utterly brilliant guys, geeze. If he honestly thought that Star Trek would do well next to competition like that (somehow I doubt he truly believed this), he is more out-of-touch than even his most mean-spirited critics say he is.
"Do what you love" is a tad too simplistic and I've always had a problem when given this kind of advice. If I followed this advice to the letter, I'd be on the couch watching NFL Sunday Ticket 8 hours a day.
As the review points out, most people don't have a huge inspirational impetus to go one way or the other. In other words, they don't inherently "love" to do anything (or at least, nothing you can spend a lifetime doing). At best they have a glimmer in a general direction.
Maybe I'm getting nitpicky in my old age, but this article seems to confuse several things. It often confuses free/retail with open-source/closed-source (often open source = free and close = retail, but not always.). And wrapped around all that is his confusion with GPL vs commercial customer licenses. Take the following quote for example:
Look at Scandinavia. Go to MySQL and Trolltech. Check their licensing pages and consider: They are both open and closed. They offer products for free and they sell them, just as Microsoft does. This is called dual licensing [the cathedral in the bazaar]. What's more, it works.
Does that seem a tad simplistic to anyone else? MySQL AB offers MySQL and that's it. Their money maker is both open and closed, and both free and retail(I suppose the same is true of Trolltech, but I know nothing about it so I won't comment on it). However, with MS the situation is much murkier though the author tries to paint a pretty picture. Sure they offer some stuff for free and a couple of their things are open sourced, but drawing a direct comparison between them and MySQL AB seems...strained to me. The only way such a comparison could be drawn would be if MS offered both open-source and free versions of their OS and/or Office Suites (ie, their money makers). Lumping them in with MySQL AB just because they give away their XML parser or a browser doesn't quite cut it.
Think in positive terms: Open Source business such as MySQL and Trolltech may kill the so-called piracy problem.
Maybe. But I think it's more likely that it shifts the focus to a different kind of pirate. In addition to all the guys grabbing software for free off of Napster, there are the businesses using more licenses for software than they claim and it's this group of pirates that will probably be seen as a problem.
GPL plays an important part in an innovative licensing strategy that fits varied needs. If some valuable users prefer freedom, you can give it to them.
He must mean free as in "with strings attached".;)
Anyway, while I think open source and free software has its place, I've yet to be convinced that it can be provided unilaterally in all areas (ie provided in such a way that business can maintain the same or greater profit levels as they'd have if the product was closed and/or retail )...however, the author of this article comes just short of claiming this (but I know he was thinking it, dammit!), so I won't criticize him on something he didn't write. However it's only a matter of time before an article gets posted which says this, so I'll keep my flame thrower handy.:)
That's a great sentiment, but I don't think it's that easy for most people. The article makes a point of saying that most people don't get an epiphany as to what it is they truly love. They get a slight whisper and that's all. How do you find that thing you truly love to do? We might be good at and like many things, but that's different from being prassionate about it and getting satisfaction on a deep level. Did you manage to find the thing that you truly love?
"Why does this sound to me like "Observational selection" that Carl Sagan listed in his Baloney detection kit [skeptics.com.au] ? What about those who got rejected and did not exactly shake up the world later in their life ?
"
An interesting question and one that is addressed by the article...you did read the article, didn't you?:)To quote
"In many cases, they found that applicants who were rejected by brand-name schools did as well in later life as those who were accepted. The researchers began to wonder whether students' sense of themselves made admissions committees' opinions less important....The notion deserved further study, they decided. In the meantime, they gave it a label. "
So there is no "observational baloney" going on here and the researchers are making an honest effort to look at the issue.
But I think the result will be one that many (probably most) of us who've graduated from college and have worked a while already realized. "Success"(by whatever definition you choose) is pretty much determined by your ability to figure out the road to success and your drive to do what it takes to achieve it.
Drive is important because that 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration cliche is actually true. The ability to figure out the road business is also very true, because it's this ability that will keep you from using all of the 99% persperation chasing your tail in an endless circle, while going nowhere.
Luck, who-you-know, etc are also important as well as the diploma. But if you have that drive and (just as importantly) the knowledge of what it takes to get there, along with the ability to keep the fires burning (hard to do at times), then you will achieve some level of success, even if you don't necessarily end up as Emporerer of Earth and Chief Photographic Reviewer for Playboy.
"I recommend not working. Why give most of your life to an unfeeling corporation ?
"
Then by implication, you recommend a life of pushing around a rusty shopping cart and picking up tin cans to supplement your meals down at the local church soup kitchen.;)
I understand the spirit of your post, but let's not get TOO ridiculous here. Money is important and most of us have to work for somebody to get it (unless we choose the tin can recylcing route, which itself is really just another form of work when you think about it). It's kind of hard to "have fun" and to experience your definition of the point of life when you're dead broke.
Hmmm, let me guess. You're one of those trust fund babies I hear about all the time, aren't you? Know this, I don't hate you. I'm insanely jealous of you.:)
"It seems to me that these companies might be wandinging into a bit of a legal gray area by trying to offer pay services based on spectrum that has been set aside for free public use...Of course, if the portion of the spectrum used by 802.11 a/b isn't specifically stamped "Non-Commercial Use Only", then I don't see how AT&T et al. can be stopped"
Exactly. Think "For Public Use" as in highways, not "For Public Use" as in national parks.
I think you have to take the comment you highlighted within context of the article I linked.
If you read the article, you'd see that getting the right balance of skills is where the university fails, not because they don't offer a degree in game programming. This is what I meant by the comment about universities failing to prepare students for the game industry. You wouldn't even have to offer a completely new degree. All that would have to be done would be to offer a degree specialization in video games under the Computer Science banner where the student is allowed to replace some classes he care nothing about with a couple classes focusing on his area of interest. This is already being done for other areas that are taken seriously(e.g. MIS,CIS, Computer "engineering", etc). What would be the big deal about adding one one for video games
"you have a very small number of people who can possibly make a living at it,"
Your skillset would be transferrable enough that finding some other programming job shouldn't be a huge issue. After all, you'd have a Computer Science degree (and all the fundamental skills gained by one), only you'd have a little more emphasis in the background one would need to make games.
"Video game creation also doesn't require as much specialized training as music"
That's just flat out wrong. There is a HUGE amount of specialized knowledge that needs be learned to make video games. In fact, there's more than one can reasonably expect a university to teach. However, giving someone the chance to learn how to develop with a console dev kit, or develop application extentions for industry standard software will help provide a little more focus for what they need to know. As anyone interested in video game development can tell you, getting the basic knowledge is one thing. But bringing it all together in a useful, balanced fashion is another. And when it comes to using the Internet as a tool to learn, separating the wheat from the chaffe(sp) can be time consuming in and of itself.
Looks like a potential X-Files ripoff...
on
Spielberg's Taken
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· Score: 1
International conspiracy. Alien abductions. Cover ups. Sure X-files didn't originate this stuff, but it did it the best (for about 5 seasons or so).
But I haven't seen it yet, so I won't prematurely bash it for unoriginality. At the same time, I can enjoy unoriginality as long as it's good unoriginiality...if that makes sense.:)
"I'd really like to know how many lines of code the submitter even wrote if he is naive enough to think that MS architects would design the perfect OS from the start."
Exactly. I don't think many people truly realize just how complex an undertaking managing and developing a 50 million line codebase really is (or if people actually appreciate how complex Windows really is). While I'm sure MS on occasion cuts some corners here and there in order to gain an advantage by bringing product to market faster, accusing them of ignoring security in such a wholesale manner is silly.
I think the "generalist" (not even sure I agree with that term) should tailor their CVs and cover letters for each employer and emphasize the parts of their skillsets that can help the employer today. That's not to say that you ignore your experience in other areas, but it is to say that your experience in other areas shouldn't be the focal point of your background presentation if they don't have relevance to the company you're interested in. Sending out one-size-fits-all resumes is a mistake, especially in the current economy.
I think if you're this anal about donating a couple of spare cycles of your CPU while it's not processing porn, they'd just as soon as you not bother helping out anyway.:)
Conclusion:
If you don't let Timmy get rid of excess agression by playing Street Fighter Epsilon 7, his chances of dragon punching his sister in the throat increases exponentially.
Capcom and Tecmo should really use quotes from this report in their upcoming advertising.;)
Slashdot Mirror
How does one go about doing that? Oh, you answer that on step 4 - you simply "Do hourly contract work when you need money, and relax when you don't". Man, I must have been left off the memo indicating that contract work could be had for anyone who asked for it and there's actually a time when money is not needed.
Anyway, paying off debts and lowering consumption is good advice, though hardly ground breaking. The rest is classic oversimplification syndrome.
Though I don't have any numbers, I believe there are more fantasy authors active today and as a result of this increased competition, the top end of the fantasy genre is better than the top end of the sci-fi genre (on average). I remember growing up reading Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, Shannara, Eddings, etc and I just don't remember seeing the equivalent types of books for sci-fi. Sci-fi seemed to slow down after the Assimov/Herbert eras(of course there are the Orson Scott Cards who are the exception, but they are exceptions).
BTW, I'm not holding these up as great pieces of literature, but they are fun guilty-pleasures that are many people's entry point to fantasy and also illustrate the higher proliferation of fantasy.
"Java's big failing, IMHO, is Swing. It is too big and too clunky, Java is crying out for a stripped down GUI library that is part of the API spec that will be as easy to work wit"
:)
I get the feeling that this is one of those things that people say that morphs into "The Truth" in the collective conciousness ( sorta like "Ellen Degeres has talent").
The Real Truth is that Swing is an incredibly powerful GUI that allows one to do create powerful, useful, applications that are impossible in other toolkits due to the great flexibility of the API and the Java language. And you can do this stuff FAST.
Is Swing appropriate for all things. No. For example, if you're making shrinkwrapped software and are competing against an established competitor with a nice interface, Swing is probably not the API of choice.
But the good news is that Swing appropriate for tons of other apps, including internal custom applications, applications in which you need to get to market something that works well (though not necessarily totally polished) and FIRST. And the fact of the matter is that Swing is great even for many shrinkwrapped apps (if not most).
Anyway, enough rambling. I'm taking down my soapbox for the day.
Is Troy McClure available? He'd be perfect for the LotR version. "Frodo Baggins, Frodo Baggins! Frodo Baggins, Frodo Baggins! Frodo Baggins, Frodo Baggins! Oh Fro-do Baggins, Frodo Baggins!" *Gandalf starts breakdancing* Download the song through this site. :)
Though I guess that could be considered old news.
Short, consice and on-the-money answer to all the people who throw out the "do it for the love of it argument". I wish I could mod you +5 right now.
No. The point of any game is to sell. The fact of the matter is that C&C's gameplay, while cool when it was new, has been superseded and nearly perfected by Blizzard. So in order for a RTS game to sell, this is the bar they have to meet.
I for one hope it meets this bar, as it would be cool to have some other top level options in the RTS area.
While I would definitely agree that Swing is slower than native Windows and Unix widgets, they are often plenty fast enough. While I'm not questioning your java programming ability per se, but I've found that oftentimes, slow Swing applications can be attributed to lack of skill/deep understanding of Java as to limitations of running within a virtual machine. You can make very complicated applications with Swing, and while those applications will probably be memory hogs, they are very responsive if they are implemented well. Just look at Netbeans as an example. Check out Swing Sightings on Sun's website for yet more examples.
ABSOLUTELY BUY A HOUSE! Stop renting as soon as you can afford to! When you rent, you're just paying down someone else's mortgage. Get your own, build your own equity, ben an owner. Houses are a safe investment, relatively speaking. Get a modest house that you can pay off fairly quickly, and put your money to work for you, rather than your landlord.
This is somewhat of a myth. Buying a house does not always save you money over renting and may not give you any financial advantages at all. A lot depends on how much you pay in rent vs how much you pay in mortgage vs how long you plan to stay in the house. Generally it's a good idea, but it's not something that you can take for granted.
I wouldn't say the poster's advice is absolutely terrible. He wasn't advocating moving to Montana after 10 years of saving $1000/month and I don't think he was advocating absolutely not marrying anyone.
Great post. You are absolutely on point about Rodenberry holding back TNG and Berman being the inspirational source for TNG best years. Many fans either forget this or never knew it to begin with.
:)
I disagree about Enterprise and Voyager sucking though. Both are/were better than 90% of the schlock on TV. Enterprise hasn't quite found its stride yet, but I wouldn't say it's truly bad TV. There are some really interesting story arcs going on there.
Voyager was actually fairly watchable after season 1 I though. Unfortunately, most people had tuned out by then AND it was on UPN. I still catch reruns late night sometimes and find myself enjoying the show. Or maybe I was just that starved for Star Trek (pre Enterprise, remember)...
And you're on point about the timing of the movie release as being the cause for its failure. Hmm, lets see - lets release it between Harry Potter and The Two Towers. Utterly brilliant guys, geeze. If he honestly thought that Star Trek would do well next to competition like that (somehow I doubt he truly believed this), he is more out-of-touch than even his most mean-spirited critics say he is.
"Do what you love" is a tad too simplistic and I've always had a problem when given this kind of advice. If I followed this advice to the letter, I'd be on the couch watching NFL Sunday Ticket 8 hours a day.
As the review points out, most people don't have a huge inspirational impetus to go one way or the other. In other words, they don't inherently "love" to do anything (or at least, nothing you can spend a lifetime doing). At best they have a glimmer in a general direction.
Does that seem a tad simplistic to anyone else? MySQL AB offers MySQL and that's it. Their money maker is both open and closed, and both free and retail(I suppose the same is true of Trolltech, but I know nothing about it so I won't comment on it). However, with MS the situation is much murkier though the author tries to paint a pretty picture. Sure they offer some stuff for free and a couple of their things are open sourced, but drawing a direct comparison between them and MySQL AB seems...strained to me. The only way such a comparison could be drawn would be if MS offered both open-source and free versions of their OS and/or Office Suites (ie, their money makers). Lumping them in with MySQL AB just because they give away their XML parser or a browser doesn't quite cut it.
Maybe. But I think it's more likely that it shifts the focus to a different kind of pirate. In addition to all the guys grabbing software for free off of Napster, there are the businesses using more licenses for software than they claim and it's this group of pirates that will probably be seen as a problem.
He must mean free as in "with strings attached".
Anyway, while I think open source and free software has its place, I've yet to be convinced that it can be provided unilaterally in all areas (ie provided in such a way that business can maintain the same or greater profit levels as they'd have if the product was closed and/or retail )...however, the author of this article comes just short of claiming this (but I know he was thinking it, dammit!), so I won't criticize him on something he didn't write. However it's only a matter of time before an article gets posted which says this, so I'll keep my flame thrower handy.
That's a great sentiment, but I don't think it's that easy for most people. The article makes a point of saying that most people don't get an epiphany as to what it is they truly love. They get a slight whisper and that's all. How do you find that thing you truly love to do? We might be good at and like many things, but that's different from being prassionate about it and getting satisfaction on a deep level. Did you manage to find the thing that you truly love?
An interesting question and one that is addressed by the article...you did read the article, didn't you?
So there is no "observational baloney" going on here and the researchers are making an honest effort to look at the issue.
But I think the result will be one that many (probably most) of us who've graduated from college and have worked a while already realized. "Success"(by whatever definition you choose) is pretty much determined by your ability to figure out the road to success and your drive to do what it takes to achieve it.
Drive is important because that 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration cliche is actually true. The ability to figure out the road business is also very true, because it's this ability that will keep you from using all of the 99% persperation chasing your tail in an endless circle, while going nowhere.
Luck, who-you-know, etc are also important as well as the diploma. But if you have that drive and (just as importantly) the knowledge of what it takes to get there, along with the ability to keep the fires burning (hard to do at times), then you will achieve some level of success, even if you don't necessarily end up as Emporerer of Earth and Chief Photographic Reviewer for Playboy.
"I recommend not working. Why give most of your life to an unfeeling corporation ? " ;)
:)
Then by implication, you recommend a life of pushing around a rusty shopping cart and picking up tin cans to supplement your meals down at the local church soup kitchen.
I understand the spirit of your post, but let's not get TOO ridiculous here. Money is important and most of us have to work for somebody to get it (unless we choose the tin can recylcing route, which itself is really just another form of work when you think about it). It's kind of hard to "have fun" and to experience your definition of the point of life when you're dead broke.
Hmmm, let me guess. You're one of those trust fund babies I hear about all the time, aren't you? Know this, I don't hate you. I'm insanely jealous of you.
"It seems to me that these companies might be wandinging into a bit of a legal gray area by trying to offer pay services based on spectrum that has been set aside for free public use...Of course, if the portion of the spectrum used by 802.11 a/b isn't specifically stamped "Non-Commercial Use Only", then I don't see how AT&T et al. can be stopped"
Exactly. Think "For Public Use" as in highways, not "For Public Use" as in national parks.
Yeah I groaned when I saw this. Go ahead and lay it one me. I deserve it. :)
I think you have to take the comment you highlighted within context of the article I linked.
If you read the article, you'd see that getting the right balance of skills is where the university fails, not because they don't offer a degree in game programming. This is what I meant by the comment about universities failing to prepare students for the game industry. You wouldn't even have to offer a completely new degree. All that would have to be done would be to offer a degree specialization in video games under the Computer Science banner where the student is allowed to replace some classes he care nothing about with a couple classes focusing on his area of interest. This is already being done for other areas that are taken seriously(e.g. MIS,CIS, Computer "engineering", etc). What would be the big deal about adding one one for video games
"you have a very small number of people who can possibly make a living at it,"
Your skillset would be transferrable enough that finding some other programming job shouldn't be a huge issue. After all, you'd have a Computer Science degree (and all the fundamental skills gained by one), only you'd have a little more emphasis in the background one would need to make games.
"Video game creation also doesn't require as much specialized training as music"
That's just flat out wrong. There is a HUGE amount of specialized knowledge that needs be learned to make video games. In fact, there's more than one can reasonably expect a university to teach. However, giving someone the chance to learn how to develop with a console dev kit, or develop application extentions for industry standard software will help provide a little more focus for what they need to know. As anyone interested in video game development can tell you, getting the basic knowledge is one thing. But bringing it all together in a useful, balanced fashion is another. And when it comes to using the Internet as a tool to learn, separating the wheat from the chaffe(sp) can be time consuming in and of itself.
International conspiracy. Alien abductions. Cover ups. Sure X-files didn't originate this stuff, but it did it the best (for about 5 seasons or so).
:)
But I haven't seen it yet, so I won't prematurely bash it for unoriginality. At the same time, I can enjoy unoriginality as long as it's good unoriginiality...if that makes sense.
Quake physics is nothing like real life physics. ;)
"I'd really like to know how many lines of code the submitter even wrote if he is naive enough to think that MS architects would design the perfect OS from the start."
Exactly. I don't think many people truly realize just how complex an undertaking managing and developing a 50 million line codebase really is (or if people actually appreciate how complex Windows really is). While I'm sure MS on occasion cuts some corners here and there in order to gain an advantage by bringing product to market faster, accusing them of ignoring security in such a wholesale manner is silly.
I think the "generalist" (not even sure I agree with that term) should tailor their CVs and cover letters for each employer and emphasize the parts of their skillsets that can help the employer today. That's not to say that you ignore your experience in other areas, but it is to say that your experience in other areas shouldn't be the focal point of your background presentation if they don't have relevance to the company you're interested in. Sending out one-size-fits-all resumes is a mistake, especially in the current economy.
What is everyone getting so worked over? Remember the source. I think this letter passes for "nice" in Germany. :)
I think if you're this anal about donating a couple of spare cycles of your CPU while it's not processing porn, they'd just as soon as you not bother helping out anyway. :)
Conclusion: If you don't let Timmy get rid of excess agression by playing Street Fighter Epsilon 7, his chances of dragon punching his sister in the throat increases exponentially. Capcom and Tecmo should really use quotes from this report in their upcoming advertising. ;)