What the hell was Jean-Luc anyways? His family was all from France, and he had a french name, but a very heavy british accent.
Did, at some time in the future, the UK finally conquer france and purge the earth of their "culture"? I mean, not that it would be hard, you could easily take France over before their army found a safe place to sit down their purses.
I mean, even native americans survived Star Trek times, like captain Tatanka from Voyager.
Maybe they just had more indepth knowledge of Linux, or more likely, maybe BSD wasnt such a viable alternative in the mid 90s. He says that linux had a PowerPC port already (though it needed lots of "sprucing up"), I dont think BSD had one until Apple came along.
IMO I prefer the BSD license. It has a more academic flavor to it. Learn from the code, use it, borrow it, no strings attached. GPL comes with a catch, it's kind of like your 5th grade math teacher teaching you to do division "on one condition".
But the whole movement seems to be moving towards the GPL, and whole litany of problems the license brings. It'll be interesting to watch the future legal status of the GPL, this SCO thing is just the tip of the iceberg.
Re:I thought we already knew this?
on
Open Source at TiVo
·
· Score: -1, Troll
WiFiPoDVo!
I like every overpriced piece of hardware that is either a) running some kind of Free as in whoopty do software (tivo), or b) made by Apple (iPod), c) works better on paper than real life (wifi)
Ideally WiFiPoDVo would record only the first 25 minutes of a half hour show (or better yet - the wrong time on the wrong channel!), be produced by Apple, and run the HURD. It will cost upwards of 600 dollars and match my purse.
Hooray!
Re:Just how "careful" are they?
on
Open Source at TiVo
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
One disgruntled ex-employee as a whistleblower could screw with the whole company. It's easier just to let people have the source.
Espescially in TiVos case. It's not like you can realistically build your own TiVo anyways. The embedded software is an extremely minor component of the system as a whole.
Businesses arent as evil and corrupt in general as some would have you believe. They're run by people, in the end.
I thought we already knew this?
on
Open Source at TiVo
·
· Score: -1, Flamebait
Anyhow, I love iPods.
And Tivo. If they made a tivo+iPod I would buy three of them.
A lot of hiring manages out there didn't go to ivy leagues either. So they don't have to be told that the rubber stamp on the diploma doesnt make you a better employee.
Lately I've been thrust into interviewing positions. I interviewed one guy from MIT, figuring "he must not suck". But he was fresh out of school and came off like a complete asshole, and the job was way beneath him, but he'd do me the favour of considering it.. Like the whole world owed him something. Whatever..
I also talked to a DeVry student, who came off like someone who wanted to do something with his life, and was willing to work his ass off for it.
In the end, neither of them got hired, and one or two anecdotal examples dont mean much, I dont paint everyone with the same brush.
My point is, we pretty much looked past the "education" section on the resume's, we knew our headhunter wasnt going to pass along a bunch of incompetents to us. We were looking for a hard worker who was willing and able to fit into a small company to help it grow.
The only people who think that ivy league means you're a better person overall are other ivy leaguers.
I know that Harvard modelled it's new (when it was new) medical school after McMaster University.
At least, thats what the McMaster recruiter told me. Recruiters told me all kinds of silly shit though.
Cool thing is about the Canadian system is the universitys court and fight over the academically inclined students, the focus seems to be on grades (and scholarship dollars) rather than over jocks and filling the stadium. Cool, I suppose, because I wasnt a jock. Though I had athlete friends who were offered scholarships to go to college stateside (mostly for hockey since americans suck at hockey).
They are ruining our right to privacy and have bought off corrupt politicians and death to all the capitalist dogs who.. Oh quick, another special edition release of LOTR! WHERES MAH CHECKBOOK.
Who buys a movie they've seen anyways, that's something I've never understood.
Maybe I'm just jaded by Lucases new and improved Star Wars trilogy. Superimposing a couple of fancy spaceships in the background didnt improve anything.
A bunch of computer generated shit and special effects, nothing that will enhance or enrich the plot or add anything meaningful to the movie. At least thats how it usually goes.
I'd say it applies to any aspect popular culture. It inspires endless pontificating about nothing in general for no reason other than to boost the authors ego.
They see themselves as though they were critics of great literature or rennaisance art, when their job is to tell me if the latest Tetris has an online mode or not.
Sports is the funniest though, when you ask someone as dumb as a rock about his life philosophies. Every once in a while they get a real genious like John Rocker, or more recently,
I cant remember his name, but he said his favorite fantasy was "to have a three way with a mother and her twin daughters". A definate math whiz.
"Journalists" take themselves too seriously as far as their writing skills. By far, most magazines and newspapers are written at a 5th grade comprehension level. If they werent, the target audience would be too narrow. The exception is usually highly specialized stuff like medical journals written for doctors.
Game journalism has to be even lower than that, since 5th graders make up a part of the target audience. So they're written at an even lower level. My 2nd grader reads game magazines.
Make that 600+. So many I havent even played them all. I'm a big shot.
I write very short one or two sentence paragraphs.
It makes it look really dramatic.
You know, to highlight my string of earth-shattering insights.
Ok I been waiting for a chance to gripe about this
on
On Videogame Journalism
·
· Score: -1, Offtopic
Heres what pisses me off with modern games, and someone tell me when this started:
Manditory "training" missions at the start of the game. You know, you go into some empty room while your annoying sidekick/boss/trainer tells you inane bullshit like "Press A to jump!", "Push the joystick to move", or my favorite "If you run, you will move faster!" as if you never could have figured it out for yourself?
I remember figuring out special moves and combos in Street Fighter II back in the olden days, without a "training mode". Half of the fun back then was figuring stuff out as I went. Oh hey, if I jump while rolling, I go super far!
A training mission might make sense on something with a really complicated control layout, like a mechwarrior game where every button on the keyboard does something else. Even then, if I'm confused I'll read the manual. But if you cant figure out which button makes Spyro jump, then perhaps video games aren't your thing.
And thats how I feel about it. I do, however, love iPods and would vote iPod for governor if I was californian.
Game journalism is people who cant write, interviewing people who cant talk, for an audience that cant read.
(He was talking about rock journalism but I think it applies here)
There's no "game journalism" as I see it. Just text ads. I'm more likely to cruise various posting forums to see what the peanut gallery thinks about a game I'm interested in than to read a "professional review" from.
And even then I tend to disagree with what's said most of the time. In fact, I think Metal Gear Solid, Halo, GTA3 and other popular titles are boring, yet I played Jak and Daxter for 8 hours solid until I'd 100% finished it. It entertained me, Halo didnt.
So my answer? They're fucking games, just go play what you like and have fun and quit worrying about what other people think, only candy asses do that.
Slashdot Mirror
What the hell was Jean-Luc anyways? His family was all from France, and he had a french name, but a very heavy british accent.
Did, at some time in the future, the UK finally conquer france and purge the earth of their "culture"? I mean, not that it would be hard, you could easily take France over before their army found a safe place to sit down their purses.
I mean, even native americans survived Star Trek times, like captain Tatanka from Voyager.
Seriously now, what's the story there?
You aren't a little girl or an old lady are you? You may throw like one, but that doesnt mean anything.
Thank you for your time.
Sincerly,
Juan Valdez
I want a game I can just pick up and play.
Because I don't have much free time to play a game.
This doesnt mean difficult to me, a game can have a simple control scheme and style of play but still be extremely challenging.
I just never went in for the type of thing where every key does something different and blah blah, like Mechwarrior and such.
But, I think doom/quake/rtcw are boring and old and I dont find them fun.
Maybe they just had more indepth knowledge of Linux, or more likely, maybe BSD wasnt such a viable alternative in the mid 90s. He says that linux had a PowerPC port already (though it needed lots of "sprucing up"), I dont think BSD had one until Apple came along.
IMO I prefer the BSD license. It has a more academic flavor to it. Learn from the code, use it, borrow it, no strings attached. GPL comes with a catch, it's kind of like your 5th grade math teacher teaching you to do division "on one condition".
But the whole movement seems to be moving towards the GPL, and whole litany of problems the license brings. It'll be interesting to watch the future legal status of the GPL, this SCO thing is just the tip of the iceberg.
WiFiPoDVo!
I like every overpriced piece of hardware that is either a) running some kind of Free as in whoopty do software (tivo), or b) made by Apple (iPod), c) works better on paper than real life (wifi)
Ideally WiFiPoDVo would record only the first 25 minutes of a half hour show (or better yet - the wrong time on the wrong channel!), be produced by Apple, and run the HURD. It will cost upwards of 600 dollars and match my purse.
Hooray!
One disgruntled ex-employee as a whistleblower could screw with the whole company. It's easier just to let people have the source.
Espescially in TiVos case. It's not like you can realistically build your own TiVo anyways. The embedded software is an extremely minor component of the system as a whole.
Businesses arent as evil and corrupt in general as some would have you believe. They're run by people, in the end.
Anyhow, I love iPods.
And Tivo. If they made a tivo+iPod I would buy three of them.
So mod me up up up if you love iPods and tivos!
And just look at Sun now!
A lot of hiring manages out there didn't go to ivy leagues either. So they don't have to be told that the rubber stamp on the diploma doesnt make you a better employee.
Lately I've been thrust into interviewing positions. I interviewed one guy from MIT, figuring "he must not suck". But he was fresh out of school and came off like a complete asshole, and the job was way beneath him, but he'd do me the favour of considering it.. Like the whole world owed him something. Whatever..
I also talked to a DeVry student, who came off like someone who wanted to do something with his life, and was willing to work his ass off for it.
In the end, neither of them got hired, and one or two anecdotal examples dont mean much, I dont paint everyone with the same brush.
My point is, we pretty much looked past the "education" section on the resume's, we knew our headhunter wasnt going to pass along a bunch of incompetents to us. We were looking for a hard worker who was willing and able to fit into a small company to help it grow.
The only people who think that ivy league means you're a better person overall are other ivy leaguers.
Probably because you keep trying to sell tribbles to Kirk.
Yeah I know that was Harcourt Mudd.
Yeah I know he wasnt Mudd in the tribble episode, but in the other less famous miner-wife episode.
It's ok, I like iPods. All is forgiven. Go Apple! Go iPod!
I know that Harvard modelled it's new (when it was new) medical school after McMaster University.
At least, thats what the McMaster recruiter told me. Recruiters told me all kinds of silly shit though.
Cool thing is about the Canadian system is the universitys court and fight over the academically inclined students, the focus seems to be on grades (and scholarship dollars) rather than over jocks and filling the stadium. Cool, I suppose, because I wasnt a jock. Though I had athlete friends who were offered scholarships to go to college stateside (mostly for hockey since americans suck at hockey).
Same story as usual. Expensive ivy league schools rated best in class!
Although this means nothing to me, I know most slashdot readers and editors will be looking at colleges in about 5 years or so.
Frankly, I've found that the real world puts much less esteem on who granted your degree than the schools themselves do.
Pretentious eggheads laugh at DeVry, employers dont. They usually care if you can do the job, and have appropriate hygeine.
Either that, or take over the ladies rooms as well (g)
It's not like anyone's going to be using it.
... LOTR Party?
*snicker*
Dude, forget the hobbits and the pizza and I'll come.
Most overheard comment at marathon showing:
"Someone walked in, and I couldn't go."
They are in one book! I bought it for my kid. It has the hobbit in it too, as a kind of a preface.
It's about three feet thick, and the most awkward reading experience you'll ever have. I'd rather have a nice set.
They are ruining our right to privacy and have bought off corrupt politicians and death to all the capitalist dogs who.. Oh quick, another special edition release of LOTR! WHERES MAH CHECKBOOK.
Who buys a movie they've seen anyways, that's something I've never understood.
Such as?
Maybe I'm just jaded by Lucases new and improved Star Wars trilogy. Superimposing a couple of fancy spaceships in the background didnt improve anything.
A bunch of computer generated shit and special effects, nothing that will enhance or enrich the plot or add anything meaningful to the movie. At least thats how it usually goes.
Like the one about the constipated mathemetician who worked it out with a pencil?
---
Or the mathemetician, social worker, and engineer who were all tasked to prove or disprove the theorum "All odd numbers greater than 1 are prime".
The mathemetician wrote "3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is not prime. Theorum is false, QED"
The social worker wrote "1 is prime, 2 is prime, 3 is prime, 4 is prime, 5 is prime, 6 is prime....." and so on.
The engineer wrote "3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 (data error), 11 is prime, 13 is prime..."
---
Thats all the math jokes I know.
This article could have been written by Pythagorus, if he had just thought of the right angle.
Thats a brand new one i made up just now. It's not very good but this is only slashdot, not the evening at the fucking improv.
I'd say it applies to any aspect popular culture. It inspires endless pontificating about nothing in general for no reason other than to boost the authors ego.
They see themselves as though they were critics of great literature or rennaisance art, when their job is to tell me if the latest Tetris has an online mode or not.
Sports is the funniest though, when you ask someone as dumb as a rock about his life philosophies. Every once in a while they get a real genious like John Rocker, or more recently,
I cant remember his name, but he said his favorite fantasy was "to have a three way with a mother and her twin daughters". A definate math whiz.
I was reading that and wondering "So is Star Wars Galaxies any good or what?"
Listen, with a collection of over 600 games, he's obviously more qualified than anyone to explain the emotional make-up of our collective psyches.
"Journalists" take themselves too seriously as far as their writing skills. By far, most magazines and newspapers are written at a 5th grade comprehension level. If they werent, the target audience would be too narrow. The exception is usually highly specialized stuff like medical journals written for doctors.
Game journalism has to be even lower than that, since 5th graders make up a part of the target audience. So they're written at an even lower level. My 2nd grader reads game magazines.
I own 600 games.
Make that 600+. So many I havent even played them all. I'm a big shot.
I write very short one or two sentence paragraphs.
It makes it look really dramatic.
You know, to highlight my string of earth-shattering insights.
Heres what pisses me off with modern games, and someone tell me when this started:
Manditory "training" missions at the start of the game. You know, you go into some empty room while your annoying sidekick/boss/trainer tells you inane bullshit like "Press A to jump!", "Push the joystick to move", or my favorite "If you run, you will move faster!" as if you never could have figured it out for yourself?
I remember figuring out special moves and combos in Street Fighter II back in the olden days, without a "training mode". Half of the fun back then was figuring stuff out as I went. Oh hey, if I jump while rolling, I go super far!
A training mission might make sense on something with a really complicated control layout, like a mechwarrior game where every button on the keyboard does something else. Even then, if I'm confused I'll read the manual. But if you cant figure out which button makes Spyro jump, then perhaps video games aren't your thing.
And thats how I feel about it. I do, however, love iPods and would vote iPod for governor if I was californian.
To paraphrase Frank Zappa:
.
Game journalism is people who cant write, interviewing people who cant talk, for an audience that cant read.
(He was talking about rock journalism but I think it applies here)
There's no "game journalism" as I see it. Just text ads. I'm more likely to cruise various posting forums to see what the peanut gallery thinks about a game I'm interested in than to read a "professional review" from
And even then I tend to disagree with what's said most of the time. In fact, I think Metal Gear Solid, Halo, GTA3 and other popular titles are boring, yet I played Jak and Daxter for 8 hours solid until I'd 100% finished it. It entertained me, Halo didnt.
So my answer? They're fucking games, just go play what you like and have fun and quit worrying about what other people think, only candy asses do that.