Re:Gout WAS:What about the dangers?
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Hackers On Atkins
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· Score: 1
To make your gout go away a lot faster (and I mean a LOT) try this, which worked for me:
1. Eat a lot of whole cherries, blackberries, blueberries, basically any kind of dark red berry. Cherries seem to work best.
2. Drink a LOT, I mean quarts a day, of cranberry juice. It helps a lot.
3. Keep your ankle elevated during the day. The lower your ankle is, the more it'll swell up and hurt. If you can keep it up high, like on the armrest of the couch, with you laying on the couch, that'll help.
4. My doctor suggested getting a towel, soaking it in hot water, and wrapping it around my foot. The warmth seems to make it hurt a lot less. Make it as warm as you can stand it.
5. While you're trying to get rid of gout, don't eat ANY protein, including plant sources like beans. Load up on carbs, specifically low-calorie vegetables like green beans. But don't eat cauliflower, which is high in purines, and stay away from strawberries, they're supposed to have a negative effect.
6. Don't drink alchohol, whatever you do! It takes water out of your blood, which concentrates the uric acid and makes your gout worse. Possibly a lot worse.
7. A good way to see whether you're drinking enough water is, is your urine clear? The darker your urine is, the less hydrated you are. This is an old Marine Corps trick, used to ward off heat stroke, but it applies here too. You want to try and keep your urine as clear as possible while you're recuperating, so drink water and juice until you think you're going to burst. Think of it as flushing out your system.
Yes to both. I drank a LOT of water, I mean, I drink a lot of water anyway, atkins or no, because I think it's more refreshing than just about anything else, but I drank a lot under Atkins. And, yes, I do take my vitamins.
If you're susceptible to gout, you'll get gout NOT because you're not drinking enough water, and NOT because you don't take your vitamins, but because your body doesn't dispose of uric acid quickly enough and protein breaks down into uric acid in the blood, at which point it collects in the large joints of your feet as uric acid crystals.
If you fish down through the Atkins FAQ's, and you find the guy who asked about gout (specifically I think he asked about Allopurinol, which is one treatment for gout) the Atkins people specifically tell him NOT to do Atkins. "It's not for everyone" they say.
I think it's in extremely poor taste for you to defend your favorite diet by blaming ME for my attack of gout. But, this being slashdot, such things are to be expected.
Thanks for the tip! I hadn't heard about this, glad I didn't find out the hard way!;)
Re:What about the dangers?
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Hackers On Atkins
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Here's something plenty of people probably haven't heard about: GOUT.
I went on Atkins, and was totally successful. I lost thirty pounds, and dropped a couple of pants sizes. I was totally happy. So far so good, right?
So one morning, out of the clear blue sky, I woke up in scarlet, hot-as-fire pain. My left big toe's joint swelled up and turned shiny and red, and it felt as though a metal spike had been pounded straight through the joint. Within a week I couldn't walk without a cane. I immediately stopped eating meat entirely, and started eating lots of cranberries, cherries, cranberry, cherry and grape juice, and loading up on carbs. Even with all that, and some NSAID horse-pills my doctor gave me, it took FOUR WEEKS for my foot to go back to normal. It was absolutely fucking horrible.
Gout is caused when an individual is sensitive to purines, i.e. he/she doesn't eliminate uric acid from his/her blood fast enough. A normal diet won't generally cause a gout attack, but Atkins is protein-rich, and protein is high in purines, which get turned into uric acid in the blood. So you're loading up on protein, and your body is building up the amount of uric acid in your blood, and before too long (maybe a few weeks) uric acid crystals start building up in the large joints of your feet. Which HURTS like NOTHING you have EVER EXPERIENCED.
Atkins is great for most people. BUT, if you're susceptible to gout, boy, oh boy are you in for it. And, there's no way to tell whether you are or aren't until you have an attack. It's only like about 1% of people who suffer this, but you should know it's possible before you start the diet.
Actually, I've gone to their site and looked a little more thoroughly. It looks like the standalone installer for the 10.2.8 update is dated Oct. 3rd, so it seems as though you're right. So, I'm eating crow. Sorry; thought I was pointing you to something useful.
As far as the AC's go who were, in true cowardly fashion, extremely rude and nasty to me, I don't let that sort of thing bother me. If a person doesn't have the balls to post from his own account, he's not worth listening to, which is why A/Cs are under my threshold. I only open them up when I'm extremely bored (like tonight).
I'm sorry, you're wrong. I patched from 10.2.4 to 10.2.8 last night, about 4:30AM. Better check the Apple site again (go through their support site, look for the combo patch, don't go through third parties).
And, they installed perfectly, with no troubles. Although I did think it odd that I had to reboot a couple of times. I always thought that was just a Microsoft thing. Can't complain though; Mac OS/X boots FAST. I'd say about a minute, maybe less. So you don't really notice it that much...
(An A/C posted some really good info -- DUDE, you're missing out on some great karma, log back in! Let us mod you up!).
Here's a snippet of what he said, a particularly useful breakdown of Japanese usage:
"Japanese use:
Hiragana - A Phonetic alphabet used to create any word within the Japanese Language. Katakana - A Phonetic alphabet used to create Foreign (Non-Japanese words) Kanji - Chinese Characters used with Japanese pronounciation. If you can read Chinese, you can read Kanji.
Generally, most texts will use Hiragana and Kanji."
Thanks for the info, A/C. Very interesting. This is the best thread on Slashdot I've seen in a long time.
What's the difference between hiragana and katakana? Are they used for different purposes? I've heard that so many characters are used in Japanese newspapers that hardly anyone can read the entire paper -- some sections are specialized. Is this true? How does it work?
Sorry to pick everyone's brain in this thread, but opportunities like this don't come up every day. You could find it on the web, but hearing it from someone in the know, with their perspective, is SO much more interesting.
Thanks; that's really cool. I'll check out the wiki. Also, it's kind of impressive that King Sejong had the foresight to develop a strong national written language; it strikes me as somewhat like President Kennedy deciding we needed to develop a space program capable of a moon shot -- a comprehensive attempt to create something unprecedented and important for his country. Especially considering that all human knowledge is passed on via written language, the move to develop a comprehensive, flexible language would be an amazing starting point for a country serious about scholarship.
You have a point there... But think how funny the hammer throw would be! And, the whooshing sound the person would make while flying through the air! It's just so promising.
Another interesting thing is, why cut it off at 1950, the point at which American technology really took off? It would seem that Murray suffers from the same Europhilia plagueing high society. Perhaps this book was written like an undergraduate paper: decide what you want to prove, then prove it, choosing your sources to back up your thesis.
Think about it: Murray, who wants to see Europe as the center of civilization, would practically HAVE to cut off at 1950. Accepting later data would show that the Americans, Chinese and Japanese have basically eaten Europe's lunch as far as high technology goes, which would undermine the whole worldview his book is trying to support. So, he picks a convenient cut-off point and ignores the most significant fifty years in world history.
Ah, but the problem there is, no one knows who invented farming. We know that it happened, and we know approximately when, but that's about it. Kinda puts a dent in Murray's "influential people" method...
I know this is a little off-topic, but you've got my curiosity up. How does Hangul work? What I mean is this: Written English is composed of 26 letters which can be formed into sounds, which in turn can be used to represent any word that can be spoken (and most sounds that can be uttered). Because of this structure, anyone familiar with the basic concept of the language and with the roots of words can read just about anything and get the gist of it, which is what makes English so effective. Is Hangul similar? How does it work?
I heard that the Japanese use two types of written text, one with 6000 ideograms which each represent an individual concept, and one with a few hundred ideograms which represent parts of words (closer to what English does). Is Hangul like one of these?
I'm curious, honestly. You said Hangul was a very scientific and elegant language; this is interesting.
Give them the bonus; they'll love you for it.
on
Christmas Bonuses?
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· Score: 1
It's common practice in the skilled trades to give a worker a few thousand dollars at Christmastime, provided he did a good job all year. It makes the worker happy, it cements his loyalty, and it starts the new year on a positive note. Some organizations give programmers bonuses as well, which seems to have the same happy effect.
I haven't been lucky enough to work for such an organization, and hearing about the bonuses they award always depresses me. I don't begrudge them their good fortune, and I congradulate the organizations for caring about their workers (you don't see enough of that these days) but still -- I wish I worked for one! But I can't really complain, at least I have job security (I work in government) and a roof over my head, which seems to be about all most programmers can hope for.
Kudos for caring about your staff, you're a rare item: an honest (and honorable) boss. Give them the 1500. They'll love you for it, and show you a loyalty other companies can only DREAM of. Don't listen to all the PHB's on this board advising you to be cheap. They're wrong and you're right. You're on the side of the angels, man. Keep to that high road...
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I want a robotic nymphomaniac. I want her to look like Milla Jovovich. I want her to talk like a New Yorker. I want her to curse like a truck driver. And, I want her to have an aggressive "bodyguard mode" in which she goes absolutely POSTAL if anyone messes with her or me. Her signature move would be grabbing an enemy by the ankles, swinging him around in a hyperkinetic hammer throw, and going for distance! "Wow, honey, I think you cleared a hundred meters with that one, he almost made it to the river. You would have had much better distance if he hadn't have hit that billboard..."
Actually, that's happened to me! My work PC two years ago had IBM drives in it. Both crapped out on the same day, and I was basically fucked. I had been backing up my work to the second drive (DOH!). Since then, I've been extremely fanatic about keeping a zip disk handy, bringing my backups home, and burning CDs every time I get up to 500MB of backup folders... Yeesh! Nothing like losing six weeks of work to inspire you to back that stuff up!
About retailer's quality listings, no one pays attention to those. However, let's take anime for example. If you find an anime for sale at, say, Amazon, you'll be able to read what other people who like anime had to say about the show you're considering. Some will like it, some will hate it, but you'll be hearing the opinions of people who've seen the show. And, because they knew of it and bought it, chances are they're anime nuts just like you, so the reviews are probably pretty solid.
I find the user reviews pretty targeted. Maybe I tend to lean towards niche items, and thus the reviews are from people in the same niche, but so far I've found the reviews useful. I haven't seen TOO much peanut gallery stuff. YMMV, though. I'm not exactly looking for the Oprah list or anything (my tastes are pretty weird) so most of my stuff is niche.
While I absolutely hate the idea of a canon, I think it might be interesting to have a sort of "history of gaming" document tracing how games have improved over the years. Which games introduced which features, etc, with comparisons and screen captures.
It could be done as a historical record, sort of a history paper dealing with the game industry. It would only have to be done once, really; collecting the info and putting it online, then letting gamers offer corrections and suggestions.
This wouldn't be a canon, or a "must read" list, but rather a living historical document charting the game industry. Could be kinda cool.
Get two external, USB2.0 hard drive enclosures. Get two hard drives equal in capacity to your old one, and put them in the enclosures (actually, you can use just one enclosure and store the hard drives in padded plastic shipping bags when you're not using them). Periodically clone your hard drive to both of the external drives, and set the external drives in a safe place. I think it would be extremely surprising if all three drives were to fail at once. In fact, it would be shocking.
Anyway, this is pretty cheap. Check out tigerdirect.com for some prices, they sell all this kinda stuff. I think the whole thing would only run a few hundred bucks at most.
Look, the reason the man on the street says "Dickens" is because he's thinking "19th century? Who the fuck knows? Wait, wasn't a Christmas Carol written back then? Who wrote that... Ah! Charles Dickens!". Then he tells you "Dickens", you get a warm fuzzy, and you go away without embarassing him. Some of them might say Melville, although I think he lived into this century (didn't he? I can't remember). Whatever. They're going to say whatever occurs to them, which they think won't make them look stupid. BECAUSE they know that assholes like you, who go walking up to strangers and ask stupid assed questions like "who's your favorite 19th century author" are really just trying to make a horses ass out of them. What you're REALLY going for is, "ha ha, look how funny the dumb people on the street are" and the man on the street totally understands this about you, having watched Jay Leno do it for years. They'll go with a safe choice, and you'll go away. GET IT? Because that's how the "man on the street" thing works.
Ditto for "Shakespeare". That's what they think you're expecting, so they hand you that and you go away without giving them a hard time. They might not have read Shakespeare since high school, they might find him somewhat less than interesting, and they might think Hemingway beats Shakespeare hands down. Or Steven King, or Arthur C. Clarke. But they aren't going to stand around in the cold and discuss it with some weirdo, so they say the expected thing and they get on with their lives.
Boy, you don't know much about the "man on the street", do you? Too busy being a literary snob, I'd guess.
Inverse snobbery, my ass. You want me to can it? Tough. People in Hell want icewater.
By the way: You know why the opposition to the canon comes from within academia? Because most people TOTALLY IGNORE THE WHOLE DAMN THING! Who the fuck cares what a bunch of stuffy old professor types think? Yeah, I'm going to read what THEY say I should -- suuuuure. Maybe if I'm having trouble sleeping!
Statistics like this only serve to amaze and astound pointy haired boss types. Oh my God! They shriek. Do we REALLY??? Meanwhile, the world keeps turning, we all keep getting up in the morning, and I keep wishing I could get laid. Just once. I mean, REALLY!
Seriously, though, I bet the breakdown is something like this:
1. Most of the "information" is probably composed of music and film. We all know how much bandwidth and disk space music and film take up. Here's another thing: different sites might have different copies of a film, so there's probably a lot of duplication. Not to mention the zillion copies of any given song that are being passed around. I really don't think of this stuff as "information". It's more "entertainment" than anything else. Some of it may be interesting for archival purposes (news footage, for instance) but the news companies already do this. THIS AIN'T A PROBLEM, FOLKS.
2. Another large chunk of the "information" they're kvetching about is probably (almost certainly) composed of transitory messages like emailed messages and IM. This stuff was never meant to be hoarded. And it doesn't matter. It's used, it disappears, that's it.
3. Yet another large chunk of this "info" is probably control messages passed around the web as internal controls (ICMP, etc). Again, this stuff is transitory, like emailed memos. Who cares?
4. Getting into the "real stuff", you have all the ecommerce going on. But each company handles its own backup and storage. This is not a societal problem, this is an individual problem. Companies can deal with their own information storage problems. If they design their applications well, they won't have to store so much. But this isn't even that serious a problem there; it's just part of doing business.
5. Then you have informational web sites, and personal sites, and blogs, etc. They come and go -- they always have. Everything interesting gets cached or mirrored anyway. This isn't much of a problem either.
6. Finally, you have real paper documents, like those used by the bank and the government. Ok, some of this might add up. But they've got procedures in place (and they've had them for hundreds of years) to deal with this. Digital technology is actually making this easier, not harder, so that's a good thing, right?
Overall, who cares how much information is generated? It's a useless statistic, like the tonnage of toilet paper people use annually. It might work as filler for, say, a "Ripley's Believe it or Not" strip in the sunday paper, but that's about it. Who cares? If someone started screaming "OH MY GOD, do you know how many TONS of TOILET PAPER America uses in a single YEAR??? IT'S A CRISIS!" wouldn't you slap that person? I would. Unless she was a hot chick (see paragraph 1).
I HAVE checked out the medium. But I don't see why I should open myself up to all the aggravation of having spammers, flamers, trolls, and etc freely roaming around my website, messing with me at will. You're assuming all the kids will play nice. That's a bad assumption.
Also, don't talk to me about old and new mediums. What you're doing isn't new; you're trying to use your blog as a usenet group. Result: you get all the hassles of a usenet group. I think it's a rotten idea.
Another thing: where do you find the time to do all that stuff? Don't you have a job? Don't you sleep and eat? Jesus.
And, no, I'm not like your mother. Not even a little bit. There's a big difference between thinking an idea is stupid and not understanding it.
Well... I don't mean that ALL of the books in a canon would by definition be boring. That would be a little silly, wouldn't it? You take things really literally. Ok, I take back the loathing of tweedy types. I take back the comment that all your books are boring. However, I still think that if a canon is used as a measure of someone's literacy, then it's simply a bludgeon of snobbery and is of no practical use. Furthermore, even if a canon is NOT used as a bludgeon of snobbery (even though you KNOW it WILL be used that way, just because some people will realize it CAN be) a canon is still a matter of opinion. Who decides what goes in the canon? How does one judge literary merit? Some of these questions were explored in the last article link in this story. No matter how diligent you are in adding things to a canon, you aren't going to get everything that deserves to be in it. At some point the entire effort becomes futile. SO, I think the whole idea is hogwash.
I might get behind a categorized list of all books, with quality ratings, but then, Amazon beat me to it, right? And Borders, and Barnes and Noble...
Anyway, I've got nothing against a "greatest of" list of videogames, but I am vehemently against the creation of a "canon". I think that when it comes to games, a canon will give non-gamers the false impression that they can write a great game just by studying what made money in the past. I think it'll lead to mountains of totally derivative, boring, corporate drivel. I like the non-canon way things are built now. Someone has a great idea, they say "fuck everyone, I'm going to do this my way" and as a result, you get a new and interesting game that's weird and different. Canons, and all other forms of orthodoxy, are unhealthy.
PS: I do have friends who are new to video games. I suggest games to them all the time. It's still not a canon, though.
Slashdot Mirror
To make your gout go away a lot faster (and I mean a LOT) try this, which worked for me:
1. Eat a lot of whole cherries, blackberries, blueberries, basically any kind of dark red berry. Cherries seem to work best.
2. Drink a LOT, I mean quarts a day, of cranberry juice. It helps a lot.
3. Keep your ankle elevated during the day. The lower your ankle is, the more it'll swell up and hurt. If you can keep it up high, like on the armrest of the couch, with you laying on the couch, that'll help.
4. My doctor suggested getting a towel, soaking it in hot water, and wrapping it around my foot. The warmth seems to make it hurt a lot less. Make it as warm as you can stand it.
5. While you're trying to get rid of gout, don't eat ANY protein, including plant sources like beans. Load up on carbs, specifically low-calorie vegetables like green beans. But don't eat cauliflower, which is high in purines, and stay away from strawberries, they're supposed to have a negative effect.
6. Don't drink alchohol, whatever you do! It takes water out of your blood, which concentrates the uric acid and makes your gout worse. Possibly a lot worse.
7. A good way to see whether you're drinking enough water is, is your urine clear? The darker your urine is, the less hydrated you are. This is an old Marine Corps trick, used to ward off heat stroke, but it applies here too. You want to try and keep your urine as clear as possible while you're recuperating, so drink water and juice until you think you're going to burst. Think of it as flushing out your system.
I hope you feel better. Gout sucks!
-Phil
Yes to both. I drank a LOT of water, I mean, I drink a lot of water anyway, atkins or no, because I think it's more refreshing than just about anything else, but I drank a lot under Atkins. And, yes, I do take my vitamins.
If you're susceptible to gout, you'll get gout NOT because you're not drinking enough water, and NOT because you don't take your vitamins, but because your body doesn't dispose of uric acid quickly enough and protein breaks down into uric acid in the blood, at which point it collects in the large joints of your feet as uric acid crystals.
If you fish down through the Atkins FAQ's, and you find the guy who asked about gout (specifically I think he asked about Allopurinol, which is one treatment for gout) the Atkins people specifically tell him NOT to do Atkins. "It's not for everyone" they say.
I think it's in extremely poor taste for you to defend your favorite diet by blaming ME for my attack of gout. But, this being slashdot, such things are to be expected.
Thanks for the tip! I hadn't heard about this, glad I didn't find out the hard way! ;)
Here's something plenty of people probably haven't heard about: GOUT.
I went on Atkins, and was totally successful. I lost thirty pounds, and dropped a couple of pants sizes. I was totally happy. So far so good, right?
So one morning, out of the clear blue sky, I woke up in scarlet, hot-as-fire pain. My left big toe's joint swelled up and turned shiny and red, and it felt as though a metal spike had been pounded straight through the joint. Within a week I couldn't walk without a cane. I immediately stopped eating meat entirely, and started eating lots of cranberries, cherries, cranberry, cherry and grape juice, and loading up on carbs. Even with all that, and some NSAID horse-pills my doctor gave me, it took FOUR WEEKS for my foot to go back to normal. It was absolutely fucking horrible.
Gout is caused when an individual is sensitive to purines, i.e. he/she doesn't eliminate uric acid from his/her blood fast enough. A normal diet won't generally cause a gout attack, but Atkins is protein-rich, and protein is high in purines, which get turned into uric acid in the blood. So you're loading up on protein, and your body is building up the amount of uric acid in your blood, and before too long (maybe a few weeks) uric acid crystals start building up in the large joints of your feet. Which HURTS like NOTHING you have EVER EXPERIENCED.
Atkins is great for most people. BUT, if you're susceptible to gout, boy, oh boy are you in for it. And, there's no way to tell whether you are or aren't until you have an attack. It's only like about 1% of people who suffer this, but you should know it's possible before you start the diet.
Actually, I've gone to their site and looked a little more thoroughly. It looks like the standalone installer for the 10.2.8 update is dated Oct. 3rd, so it seems as though you're right. So, I'm eating crow. Sorry; thought I was pointing you to something useful.
As far as the AC's go who were, in true cowardly fashion, extremely rude and nasty to me, I don't let that sort of thing bother me. If a person doesn't have the balls to post from his own account, he's not worth listening to, which is why A/Cs are under my threshold. I only open them up when I'm extremely bored (like tonight).
I'm sorry, you're wrong. I patched from 10.2.4 to 10.2.8 last night, about 4:30AM. Better check the Apple site again (go through their support site, look for the combo patch, don't go through third parties).
Thanks! Very informative!
And, they installed perfectly, with no troubles. Although I did think it odd that I had to reboot a couple of times. I always thought that was just a Microsoft thing. Can't complain though; Mac OS/X boots FAST. I'd say about a minute, maybe less. So you don't really notice it that much...
(An A/C posted some really good info -- DUDE, you're missing out on some great karma, log back in! Let us mod you up!).
Here's a snippet of what he said, a particularly useful breakdown of Japanese usage:
"Japanese use:
Hiragana - A Phonetic alphabet used to create any word within the Japanese Language.
Katakana - A Phonetic alphabet used to create Foreign (Non-Japanese words)
Kanji - Chinese Characters used with Japanese pronounciation. If you can read Chinese, you can read Kanji.
Generally, most texts will use Hiragana and Kanji."
Thanks for the info, A/C. Very interesting. This is the best thread on Slashdot I've seen in a long time.
What's the difference between hiragana and katakana? Are they used for different purposes? I've heard that so many characters are used in Japanese newspapers that hardly anyone can read the entire paper -- some sections are specialized. Is this true? How does it work?
Sorry to pick everyone's brain in this thread, but opportunities like this don't come up every day. You could find it on the web, but hearing it from someone in the know, with their perspective, is SO much more interesting.
Thanks; that's really cool. I'll check out the wiki. Also, it's kind of impressive that King Sejong had the foresight to develop a strong national written language; it strikes me as somewhat like President Kennedy deciding we needed to develop a space program capable of a moon shot -- a comprehensive attempt to create something unprecedented and important for his country. Especially considering that all human knowledge is passed on via written language, the move to develop a comprehensive, flexible language would be an amazing starting point for a country serious about scholarship.
Thanks! Very interesting!
You have a point there... But think how funny the hammer throw would be! And, the whooshing sound the person would make while flying through the air! It's just so promising.
Another interesting thing is, why cut it off at 1950, the point at which American technology really took off? It would seem that Murray suffers from the same Europhilia plagueing high society. Perhaps this book was written like an undergraduate paper: decide what you want to prove, then prove it, choosing your sources to back up your thesis.
Think about it: Murray, who wants to see Europe as the center of civilization, would practically HAVE to cut off at 1950. Accepting later data would show that the Americans, Chinese and Japanese have basically eaten Europe's lunch as far as high technology goes, which would undermine the whole worldview his book is trying to support. So, he picks a convenient cut-off point and ignores the most significant fifty years in world history.
Maybe he didn't think we'd notice?
Ah, but the problem there is, no one knows who invented farming. We know that it happened, and we know approximately when, but that's about it. Kinda puts a dent in Murray's "influential people" method...
I know this is a little off-topic, but you've got my curiosity up. How does Hangul work? What I mean is this: Written English is composed of 26 letters which can be formed into sounds, which in turn can be used to represent any word that can be spoken (and most sounds that can be uttered). Because of this structure, anyone familiar with the basic concept of the language and with the roots of words can read just about anything and get the gist of it, which is what makes English so effective. Is Hangul similar? How does it work?
I heard that the Japanese use two types of written text, one with 6000 ideograms which each represent an individual concept, and one with a few hundred ideograms which represent parts of words (closer to what English does). Is Hangul like one of these?
I'm curious, honestly. You said Hangul was a very scientific and elegant language; this is interesting.
It's common practice in the skilled trades to give a worker a few thousand dollars at Christmastime, provided he did a good job all year. It makes the worker happy, it cements his loyalty, and it starts the new year on a positive note. Some organizations give programmers bonuses as well, which seems to have the same happy effect.
I haven't been lucky enough to work for such an organization, and hearing about the bonuses they award always depresses me. I don't begrudge them their good fortune, and I congradulate the organizations for caring about their workers (you don't see enough of that these days) but still -- I wish I worked for one! But I can't really complain, at least I have job security (I work in government) and a roof over my head, which seems to be about all most programmers can hope for.
Kudos for caring about your staff, you're a rare item: an honest (and honorable) boss. Give them the 1500. They'll love you for it, and show you a loyalty other companies can only DREAM of. Don't listen to all the PHB's on this board advising you to be cheap. They're wrong and you're right. You're on the side of the angels, man. Keep to that high road...
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I want a robotic nymphomaniac. I want her to look like Milla Jovovich. I want her to talk like a New Yorker. I want her to curse like a truck driver. And, I want her to have an aggressive "bodyguard mode" in which she goes absolutely POSTAL if anyone messes with her or me. Her signature move would be grabbing an enemy by the ankles, swinging him around in a hyperkinetic hammer throw, and going for distance! "Wow, honey, I think you cleared a hundred meters with that one, he almost made it to the river. You would have had much better distance if he hadn't have hit that billboard..."
Actually, that's happened to me! My work PC two years ago had IBM drives in it. Both crapped out on the same day, and I was basically fucked. I had been backing up my work to the second drive (DOH!). Since then, I've been extremely fanatic about keeping a zip disk handy, bringing my backups home, and burning CDs every time I get up to 500MB of backup folders... Yeesh! Nothing like losing six weeks of work to inspire you to back that stuff up!
About retailer's quality listings, no one pays attention to those. However, let's take anime for example. If you find an anime for sale at, say, Amazon, you'll be able to read what other people who like anime had to say about the show you're considering. Some will like it, some will hate it, but you'll be hearing the opinions of people who've seen the show. And, because they knew of it and bought it, chances are they're anime nuts just like you, so the reviews are probably pretty solid.
I find the user reviews pretty targeted. Maybe I tend to lean towards niche items, and thus the reviews are from people in the same niche, but so far I've found the reviews useful. I haven't seen TOO much peanut gallery stuff. YMMV, though. I'm not exactly looking for the Oprah list or anything (my tastes are pretty weird) so most of my stuff is niche.
While I absolutely hate the idea of a canon, I think it might be interesting to have a sort of "history of gaming" document tracing how games have improved over the years. Which games introduced which features, etc, with comparisons and screen captures.
It could be done as a historical record, sort of a history paper dealing with the game industry. It would only have to be done once, really; collecting the info and putting it online, then letting gamers offer corrections and suggestions.
This wouldn't be a canon, or a "must read" list, but rather a living historical document charting the game industry. Could be kinda cool.
Get two external, USB2.0 hard drive enclosures. Get two hard drives equal in capacity to your old one, and put them in the enclosures (actually, you can use just one enclosure and store the hard drives in padded plastic shipping bags when you're not using them). Periodically clone your hard drive to both of the external drives, and set the external drives in a safe place. I think it would be extremely surprising if all three drives were to fail at once. In fact, it would be shocking.
Anyway, this is pretty cheap. Check out tigerdirect.com for some prices, they sell all this kinda stuff. I think the whole thing would only run a few hundred bucks at most.
So if I can it, will you eat it?
Look, the reason the man on the street says "Dickens" is because he's thinking "19th century? Who the fuck knows? Wait, wasn't a Christmas Carol written back then? Who wrote that... Ah! Charles Dickens!". Then he tells you "Dickens", you get a warm fuzzy, and you go away without embarassing him. Some of them might say Melville, although I think he lived into this century (didn't he? I can't remember). Whatever. They're going to say whatever occurs to them, which they think won't make them look stupid. BECAUSE they know that assholes like you, who go walking up to strangers and ask stupid assed questions like "who's your favorite 19th century author" are really just trying to make a horses ass out of them. What you're REALLY going for is, "ha ha, look how funny the dumb people on the street are" and the man on the street totally understands this about you, having watched Jay Leno do it for years. They'll go with a safe choice, and you'll go away. GET IT? Because that's how the "man on the street" thing works.
Ditto for "Shakespeare". That's what they think you're expecting, so they hand you that and you go away without giving them a hard time. They might not have read Shakespeare since high school, they might find him somewhat less than interesting, and they might think Hemingway beats Shakespeare hands down. Or Steven King, or Arthur C. Clarke. But they aren't going to stand around in the cold and discuss it with some weirdo, so they say the expected thing and they get on with their lives.
Boy, you don't know much about the "man on the street", do you? Too busy being a literary snob, I'd guess.
Inverse snobbery, my ass. You want me to can it? Tough. People in Hell want icewater.
By the way: You know why the opposition to the canon comes from within academia? Because most people TOTALLY IGNORE THE WHOLE DAMN THING! Who the fuck cares what a bunch of stuffy old professor types think? Yeah, I'm going to read what THEY say I should -- suuuuure. Maybe if I'm having trouble sleeping!
Now, go back to your books, literature-boy.
Statistics like this only serve to amaze and astound pointy haired boss types. Oh my God! They shriek. Do we REALLY??? Meanwhile, the world keeps turning, we all keep getting up in the morning, and I keep wishing I could get laid. Just once. I mean, REALLY!
Seriously, though, I bet the breakdown is something like this:
1. Most of the "information" is probably composed of music and film. We all know how much bandwidth and disk space music and film take up. Here's another thing: different sites might have different copies of a film, so there's probably a lot of duplication. Not to mention the zillion copies of any given song that are being passed around. I really don't think of this stuff as "information". It's more "entertainment" than anything else. Some of it may be interesting for archival purposes (news footage, for instance) but the news companies already do this. THIS AIN'T A PROBLEM, FOLKS.
2. Another large chunk of the "information" they're kvetching about is probably (almost certainly) composed of transitory messages like emailed messages and IM. This stuff was never meant to be hoarded. And it doesn't matter. It's used, it disappears, that's it.
3. Yet another large chunk of this "info" is probably control messages passed around the web as internal controls (ICMP, etc). Again, this stuff is transitory, like emailed memos. Who cares?
4. Getting into the "real stuff", you have all the ecommerce going on. But each company handles its own backup and storage. This is not a societal problem, this is an individual problem. Companies can deal with their own information storage problems. If they design their applications well, they won't have to store so much. But this isn't even that serious a problem there; it's just part of doing business.
5. Then you have informational web sites, and personal sites, and blogs, etc. They come and go -- they always have. Everything interesting gets cached or mirrored anyway. This isn't much of a problem either.
6. Finally, you have real paper documents, like those used by the bank and the government. Ok, some of this might add up. But they've got procedures in place (and they've had them for hundreds of years) to deal with this. Digital technology is actually making this easier, not harder, so that's a good thing, right?
Overall, who cares how much information is generated? It's a useless statistic, like the tonnage of toilet paper people use annually. It might work as filler for, say, a "Ripley's Believe it or Not" strip in the sunday paper, but that's about it. Who cares? If someone started screaming "OH MY GOD, do you know how many TONS of TOILET PAPER America uses in a single YEAR??? IT'S A CRISIS!" wouldn't you slap that person? I would. Unless she was a hot chick (see paragraph 1).
I HAVE checked out the medium. But I don't see why I should open myself up to all the aggravation of having spammers, flamers, trolls, and etc freely roaming around my website, messing with me at will. You're assuming all the kids will play nice. That's a bad assumption.
Also, don't talk to me about old and new mediums. What you're doing isn't new; you're trying to use your blog as a usenet group. Result: you get all the hassles of a usenet group. I think it's a rotten idea.
Another thing: where do you find the time to do all that stuff? Don't you have a job? Don't you sleep and eat? Jesus.
And, no, I'm not like your mother. Not even a little bit. There's a big difference between thinking an idea is stupid and not understanding it.
Well... I don't mean that ALL of the books in a canon would by definition be boring. That would be a little silly, wouldn't it? You take things really literally. Ok, I take back the loathing of tweedy types. I take back the comment that all your books are boring. However, I still think that if a canon is used as a measure of someone's literacy, then it's simply a bludgeon of snobbery and is of no practical use. Furthermore, even if a canon is NOT used as a bludgeon of snobbery (even though you KNOW it WILL be used that way, just because some people will realize it CAN be) a canon is still a matter of opinion. Who decides what goes in the canon? How does one judge literary merit? Some of these questions were explored in the last article link in this story. No matter how diligent you are in adding things to a canon, you aren't going to get everything that deserves to be in it. At some point the entire effort becomes futile. SO, I think the whole idea is hogwash.
I might get behind a categorized list of all books, with quality ratings, but then, Amazon beat me to it, right? And Borders, and Barnes and Noble...
Anyway, I've got nothing against a "greatest of" list of videogames, but I am vehemently against the creation of a "canon". I think that when it comes to games, a canon will give non-gamers the false impression that they can write a great game just by studying what made money in the past. I think it'll lead to mountains of totally derivative, boring, corporate drivel. I like the non-canon way things are built now. Someone has a great idea, they say "fuck everyone, I'm going to do this my way" and as a result, you get a new and interesting game that's weird and different. Canons, and all other forms of orthodoxy, are unhealthy.
PS: I do have friends who are new to video games. I suggest games to them all the time. It's still not a canon, though.