"The beauty of religion, and why it can persist in the face of reason, and even seduce intelligent people like Larry Wall, is that the parameters of every definition are endlessly malleable...."
Or perhaps it is you, an otherwise intelligent person, who is being seduced into thinking that religion is fundamentally false.
No, that couldn't be it. Obviously, you're much too smart for that. After all, you've implied as much yourself.:)
You're confusing the platform independence of Java (write once, run anywhere) with the platform independence of.NET ( which is more like write once in any language, call anywhere in any language). This is a result of people not really understanding what.NET is.
Even in Java, if you were to call MFC components, you'd lose portability. Same things go for application written with GTK, Motiff, or whatever.
For interesting things, motivation isn't a factor. But for the most part, we are coding uninteresting things, even when we're coding stuff we want to code. Sounds like a conflicting statment, but it's true.
I don't know about other people, but for me, I become very demotivated when I think about large boring projects with many boring moving parts. So I have to force myself to sit down and hack away at the boring moving parts in a "brainless" manner.(note: When I say "hack away", I mean the thought process of designing solutions to later be implemented, not the actual process of coding itself) Sometimes I get into the zone, other times I don't. Regardless, progress is being made either way, even if it means I'm designing and discarding bad ideas.
While I appreciate much of what you say, at the same time, getting rid of that menial stuff can have a negative effect. What made Starcraft as good as it was the the skill required to micromanage. If micromanagement in that game wasn't what it was, then the bar to greatness would have been set way lower.
Also often when grunts finish doing work, most RTS games (these days) allow you to make him go do something else. I also like Battle Realm's approach in that it gives you a visual cue to let you know that one of your peons is slacking off with nothing to do.
So I guess there has to be balance between micromanagement and pressing start and letting the computer play the whole game by itself. It can be a tough line to find.
"Like in the U.S., this tax is collected and given directly to the record industry, a governmental subsidy for no apparent societal benefit."
How is this different from say, they way the US is taxing steel imports and farm product imports or the way Japan taxes automotive and electronic imports? Often, these taxes are used to subsidize the aforementioned industries too (especially, the farm industry).
I think this particular (potential) tax/subsidy strikes a nerve merely because it is something that falls within the collective radars of people who post here, NOT because it's something drastically different from things government has done in the past. The "societal benefit" is that it's protecting jobs of the people who work in that industry in that country.
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"The beauty of religion, and why it can persist in the face of reason, and even seduce intelligent people like Larry Wall, is that the parameters of every definition are endlessly malleable...."
:)
Or perhaps it is you, an otherwise intelligent person, who is being seduced into thinking that religion is fundamentally false.
No, that couldn't be it. Obviously, you're much too smart for that. After all, you've implied as much yourself.
You're confusing the platform independence of Java (write once, run anywhere) with the platform independence of .NET ( which is more like write once in any language, call anywhere in any language). This is a result of people not really understanding what .NET is.
Even in Java, if you were to call MFC components, you'd lose portability. Same things go for application written with GTK, Motiff, or whatever.
For interesting things, motivation isn't a factor. But for the most part, we are coding uninteresting things, even when we're coding stuff we want to code. Sounds like a conflicting statment, but it's true.
I don't know about other people, but for me, I become very demotivated when I think about large boring projects with many boring moving parts. So I have to force myself to sit down and hack away at the boring moving parts in a "brainless" manner.(note: When I say "hack away", I mean the thought process of designing solutions to later be implemented, not the actual process of coding itself) Sometimes I get into the zone, other times I don't. Regardless, progress is being made either way, even if it means I'm designing and discarding bad ideas.
You don't mind if I shamelessly lift this phrase from you, do you? Thanks. :)
While I appreciate much of what you say, at the same time, getting rid of that menial stuff can have a negative effect. What made Starcraft as good as it was the the skill required to micromanage. If micromanagement in that game wasn't what it was, then the bar to greatness would have been set way lower.
Also often when grunts finish doing work, most RTS games (these days) allow you to make him go do something else. I also like Battle Realm's approach in that it gives you a visual cue to let you know that one of your peons is slacking off with nothing to do.
So I guess there has to be balance between micromanagement and pressing start and letting the computer play the whole game by itself. It can be a tough line to find.
"Like in the U.S., this tax is collected and given directly to the record industry, a governmental subsidy for no apparent societal benefit."
How is this different from say, they way the US is taxing steel imports and farm product imports or the way Japan taxes automotive and electronic imports? Often, these taxes are used to subsidize the aforementioned industries too (especially, the farm industry).
I think this particular (potential) tax/subsidy strikes a nerve merely because it is something that falls within the collective radars of people who post here, NOT because it's something drastically different from things government has done in the past. The "societal benefit" is that it's protecting jobs of the people who work in that industry in that country.