The "Unix Philosophy" is the philosophy behind Unix-like O/S'es LIKE LINUX. It's a design philosophy, NOT a marketing one, or even an economic one. Vastly oversimplifying,
1. Don't create huge monolithic programs if you can help it. Create small, elegant programs that each do one specific thing well. Use a scripting language to pipe them together, amplifying their usefulness.
2. Because you want to be able to pipe small programs together to aggregate their usefulness, avoid "captive user interfaces", i.e. interactivity. Lean towards writing software that is comfortable running in batch, on a pipe, in a script. Use command line arguments.
3. Don't reinvent the wheel. If there's already a tool that does what you want to do, use it. If you need to extend its functionality, script it with another tool or tools.
4. Lean towards command line programming, because then everything you've got can be scripted, run in crontab, run in batch, etc. The command line is your friend.
5. Everything is a file. This lets you interact with hardware directly, in your software.
6. Store data as flat text whenever possible, so that down the road, if you want to use it with another program, you'll be able to. This also lets you sift through your data using grep and awk.
7. Use text streams whenever you can, for similar reasons to #6. Got a socket? Pass flat text, not binary. Unless you really MUST pass binary.
I've probably left a whole lot out, but this is the basic gist of it. It's why Linux, Unix, and the *BSDs are so much more useful than Windows.
You kidding? With all the time we'll save, we'll be able to address the REAL problem facing geeks today: GETTING LAID! Why, I bet with all the research we'll have time for, we'll be getting laid once a year -- or more!!! W00t!
Before, many of us Americans were thinking, "Boy, if they keep creating these new DMCA-type laws, we're going to have to move to Europe to be free." But, since Europe is working to eliminate the dread spectre of freedom, the temptation isn't going to be there, and we can all relax. I'm glad THAT weight is off my shoulders! Phew...
Hey! Waitaminnit! I just thought of something! I bet those Europeans are putting DMCA's in place to prevent us from moving over there! "Ha, ha!" they're saying, "You steenking Americans get no DMCA relief HERE! Tek ZAT you silly Yankee Kniiiggggets!"
True, true... And, her bush was visible in a few other parts of the movie, like when Michael Douglas was doing the peeping tom thing in her back yard and she dropped her lacy nightgown thing. But, I think the thing was, it was visible at a distance, and not so up close and personal. I think maybe a little too much detail was revealed, you know? Then again, I only read it in an article, who knows what the whole backstory was. I know this: most video versions released had her bush very heavily airbrushed so you couldn't see more than a vague, brown amorphous suggestion of beaver. Then, later, they came out with a "director's cut" kinda DVD which promised an unaltered version -- so in a way, it almost used that shot as a selling point. Maybe it's a case of their setting up an artificial demand for the movie based on an eyeful you're supposed to feel you're not supposed to get -- like artificial naughtiness.
Well, yeah, but if we don't have anything really in common, I'll end up asking a question, hear a long answer that doesn't interest me in the slightest, and then, to be polite, I'll have to feign interest and I'll feel like a big fat phony. It just wouldn't work for me.
You know, among people like me, I have no problem whatsoever maintaining conversations. Here at work, among other programmers, I hold my own without difficulty. And, we don't talk about programming, but rather about a zillion other interesting things -- about the guy who renovated an old Nike missle site and built a bungalo in it, for instance, or about how old cell phone towers are being sold for like, ten grand upstate. We talk about ideas for starting companies, ideas for building weird geek toys (like a midget railgun, etc), and about bizarre people we've known (like the roommate I had in college who tied himself to an outdoor twelve foot crucifix in the middle of the night, screaming "Call 911, I'm dying for your sins!!!" while surrounded by sleeping baptists in the dormitories around him -- we almost got lynched, and barely got back to our room alive). I talk; I just don't talk much to people I don't have anything in common with.
I dunno; I guess I'm antisocial, except around geeks.
Ok, you got me there. But, really, I can't see the allure of professional sports. It seems so pointless. "Grab the ball, run that way really fast, until someone slams into you and breaks your spine!" Yeah, suuuuure. Thanks, I'll be over here with my chessboard, a latte, and a box of oreos.
I'd be comfortable with surrogacy. But, and this is a sad thing, most mainstream couples would treat a man who wanted to be a single father as if there was something wrong with him. Most people can't accept the idea of a person who doesn't need to be part of a couple, you know? They feel it attacks their whole philosophy, and they try to "fix" you. I can't tell you how many times the married guys here at work have busted my balls ("you need a woman", "why don't you date?", "I'm gonna help you learn how to meet girls", etc). They just don't get the idea that maybe, I don't want to date.
I figure, cloning is a perfect solution to my problem. If they ever figure it out, that is...
You're taking the approach that there's something wrong with me, that I'm somehow damaged and need to be fixed, and that the road to my salvation goes through the self-help book aisle at Border's Books. I'm sorry, but I really disagree. There's nothing whatsoever wrong with me.
I'm one of those people who have considered the company of other people and found it lacking. Most people seem to me to be pretty petty, shallow, selfish and more than a little stupid. I tolerate them but I don't seek them out. I know myself fairly well, and I know what I need: plenty of time alone, away from distractions and weird interpersonal stuff, with some occasional human contact from someone I respect. Think of me as a big, human shaped cat, and you'll understand me much better.
In fact, here's one of my pet theories (pardon the pun):
There are two kinds of people, dog people and cat people. Now, this is true in the sense that there are people who prefer dogs and people who prefer cats, but it is also true in the sense that there are people whose personalities are like that of dogs, and others who are more like cats.
An extrovert is a dog; a true introvert is a cat. A fake introvert is a dog who thinks he is a cat, ha ha.
Ok, consider this: an extrovert NEEDS to be part of a pack. He NEEDS to be surrounded by other people, and if he doesn't get that, he chews up the couch (i.e. he goes stir crazy and causes some kind of trouble). An introvert, on the other hand, just wants to be left alone. He wants to be able to lay on the radiator, unmolested, and sun himself without any disturbances. If he's disturbed, he might just scratch you, or at least hiss and take off. Sooner or later, the cat wants a pet and will hang around you for a little while, but before too long he'll disappear again. The dog, on the other hand, will pester you continuously all day long, until you finally retreat into your study and try to ignore him scratching and whining at the door.
Two different personalities, two different approaches to life. But just as you wouldn't try and make a cat into a dog, you shouldn't try and make an introvert into an extrovert. You should accept each as-is and not make assumptions about what should be done about them.
Having said all that, I do appreciate the attempt -- it was nice of you.:)
The mail order bride idea isn't so hot... What I can see happening is, I get a mail-order bride, then one day while I'm working on a graphics engine or something, she meets the extroverted cable guy and bam, I'm divorced. Nah... If I'm lonely, I'll buy some goldfish.;)
Well, on the one hand, you have a point in that at work, at least, most of the people I talk to are involved in what I'm doing, so the conversations are purposeful. I do have non-purposeful conversations at work, but that's because there are people at work who share my outside interests (games, anime, etc). Outside of work I don't know anyone (outside of my family, that is) who shares my interests, so I generally don't have conversations with anyone.
On the other hand, you seem to consider conversations with other people to be networking opportunities. I'm somewhat uncomfortable about that attitude; I wouldn't personally want to use other people as a network -- if I don't want to hang out with someone, or find them interesting, I'd rather not talk to them at all. If I had some kind of ulterior motive, like networking, I'd feel phony. Is this what you meant?
I read once that the director had told her that the way he was doing the lighting, her gorgeous (damn! gorgeous!) private parts would be concealed by shadow. She didn't find out that they *weren't* concealed by shadow until the first time she saw the whole movie as a single piece, which obviously would have been while sitting with the rest of the cast -- quite humiliating, I'd imagine. I felt kinda bad for her.
She's one of my favorite actresses; so smart, sexy, and obviously strong-willed! Yum!
Re:Its only painful due to experiience.
on
The Introvert Advantage
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· Score: 5, Interesting
How utterly true.
I was tortured and abused throughout my childhood by most of the other kids, and in my twenties when I went back to college (after a stint in the Marine Corps to toughen up and not get picked on anymore) I was older than the other kids and an outsider for a whole new set of reasons. Most of my life, all I wanted was to be left alone with my books, and I had to put up with all kinds of garbage from almost everyone. It wasn't until I was thirty years old and moved upstate, taking a government job (where most of the people are older and more settled) that I finally found a group of people (fellow programmers, of course) who just accepted me as-is, with a minimum of hassle. Of course, they're all pretty introverted too, so it all works out. I've got a nice, quiet working environment with really cool, quiet, hands-off coworkers, and I'm finally happy after all these years.
Outside of work, of course, I'm a hermit.
Because, after all, what would I do around most people? Look at it from my perspective:
I:...don't watch much television, because it's stupid, boring, and annoying, and the commercials drive me crazy. I like anime, so the pay channels sometimes attract me, and I like movies, so the movie channels aren't bad, but usually I prefer something a little more active, like a good game....don't pay any attention to professional sports because, really, what's so interesting about gigantic musclebound thugs slamming into one another? Or scratching their nuts and throwing a ball around? It's BORING. Maybe if a kickboxing match was on, I dunno. I always kinda respected those guys, they were tough as nails. But, they don't put that stuff on much anymore....don't pay any attention to right-wing nutcases like uber-republican Rush Limbaugh. Once you get past the initial humorous part ("did he just say that? He's kidding, right?") you realize he's serious and it just seems sad....don't care whether I get laid or not, or whether I'm surrounded by people, because I can amuse myself most of the time with a book or a video game. Or, my BSD laptop and some coding.
So, what the heck would I talk about with people? All their favorite conversational topics are non-starters with me (sex, right-wing politics, sports, television). I talk about my work and their eyes glaze over. I mention anime and they give me this "yeah, ok, great" look. As if their sitcoms were adult fare... We have nothing in common.
I figure, if I don't find a similarly antisocial girl who has the same interests by the time I'm 40, I'm just not going to reproduce. Maybe one day I'll clone myself, just for the techie bragging rights, but probably not.;)
(Scene: a really crummy run-down bungalo in an even more run-down neighborhood in Salt Lake City. Our favorite psychodwarf has just returned home after a long stint in Federal Pound Me In The Ass prison. He gingerly limps up to his new home, pulls on the doorknob, and the door falls on him.)
PD: "OW! Fuck, what next???"
(climbs out from under the door, dusts himself off, goes inside the house. Flips through phone book, calls carpenter.)
PD: "Hi, is this John's carpentry service? You do doors, right? Yeah... Yeah... Mine just fell off. Fell off, you know, I pulled the doorknob and it... Yeah, 111 someRoadSomewhere, downtown. Thanks, see you in a half hour.
(half an hour later)
John the carpenter: "Hi, howyadoin? I'm here to fix the door... Wait a minnit... You look kinda familiar.
PD: "No, I don't. Honest."
JC: "No, I'm sure about it. Hang on, I'll get it, gimme a minute..."
PD: (backing up) "No, that's ok, really, I'm sure we don't know each other..."
JC: "Holy SHIT! You're that fuckwad!"
POUND POUND POUND
(half an hour later)
PD: "Hello, police? I want to report an assault. Yeah... Yes, Exactly. It was a carpenter. Ok, I'll see you in a few minutes."
(a few minutes later)
Cop #1: "Hi, you must be Mr... Hey, wait a minute. Didn't I read about you online?"
PD: "No, that must have been someone else."
Cop #2: "No, Joey, I think you're right, he DOES look like that guy." (pulls out nightstick)
Cop #1: "Yeah, you're HIM!" (whips out pepper spray and handcuffs)
No, not at all! Most midgets are sane, and would NEVER walk into a biker bar and suggest that leather is gay chic. I'm advocating cruelty to SCO-like psychotic midgets. Well-adjusted, sane midgets deserve MUCH more friendly receptions.
Besides, bikers are a fun crowd. If a normal, friendly midget were to walk into a biker bar, the worst thing he'd probably have to deal with is a hangover.
That's cool -- it's amazing just how many people SCO have inspired to hate them! If they don't make enough money from their stock to live their lives out without working, they're really going to be screwed. Who would ever hire them? They're universally despised.
What I love about your post is, even bikers have heard about all this, which backs up my thought that the SCO staff are going to be universal pariahs forever. Think about it: for the rest of Darl's life, every time he walks into a bar, restaurant, store, etc, every person who's seen his cheesy headshot photo in one of the SCO articles will be suckerpunching him without warning. "Hey, Darl! Catch! (WHACK!)" The guy won't even be able to leave his house... I sure wouldn't want to be him...
OOh! Imagine the day he gets a flat and has to use the payphone in a rough bar! "Um... Hi, folks, can I use your phone, I'm Darl Mc(WHACK! WHACK! WHACK!)"
I wasn't trying to stereotype cops... I was trying to point out that at least some, perhaps a significant number, do abuse their positions. And, they do cover each other's butts. In NYC, they used to have a name for it (it slips my mind right now) and the basic idea was, cops who rat out other cops commit career suicide -- they can forget about promotions and such (and possibly find themselves a pariah among all the other cops, who they depend on for their lives when the shit hits the fan).
That's what I'm saying. Stereotype? Or commonly-known characteristic? What cop is going to snitch on another cop? Gimme a break.
Yeah, no kidding... What is WRONG with these people? Do they not see the beating they're going to get for all this? People aren't going to be satisfied with putting them out of business... Anyone with SCO on their resume is going to end up being a pariah for LIFE.
I think of this as a sort of tragicomedy:
Scene: A really rough biker bar. Crowd: About two dozen gigantic, violent, biker types. Some are playing pool, a couple are fistfighting in the back room, one or two others are throwing foot-long bowie knives at a dartboard.
Wham! The swinging door opens, hitting one biker's girlfriend on the shoulder. A midget in a three-piece suit scampers in.
Midget: "Hey, all you bikers! Look at all that leather! You suck! Don't you know you guys are a gay fetish???
The music stops with a scratching record sound. About twenty heads swivel around and stare at the midget. He scampers over to a chair, climbs up on it with little huffing and puffing sounds, and gets up on the bar. He starts kicking over everyone's drinks.
Midget: "Damnit, I invented leather clothes! All you weird gay fuckers owe me some MONEY! Pay up or I'm going to kick all your asses, then I'm going to fuck all your ugly, trailer-park bitches! You're going to have a bunch of little midget kids in nine months, you pansies!"
Biker #1: "Hey, guys -- it's kinda hard to tell, because I just dropped a tab of windowpane, but... Am I tripping, or is there a weird little fucking midget yelling at me?"
Bartender: "Yep, There's a weird little midget. Don't get any blood on my bar, ok? I just resurfaced it..."
Biker #2: "Not to worry, Danny boy, We'll take the little scamp outside and have a chat with him. Mind if we borrow your pony bat?"
Bartender: "Nah, here ya go. Mind the nail there, it's rusty."
Bikers #3, #4, #5, #6 (holding the squirming midget by his arms and legs): "Ok, you mouthy little fuck, it's time to go..."
Midget: "MMmpth takth thith gagth out of my moupth! You phuckerth are gonna getth itth!"
Biker #1: "Hey, you wanna ball gag? That dirty bar rag ain't gonna shut him up fer long..."
(outside) WHOMP POUND BANG BANG STOMP CRASH CRUSH
You have to wonder what is going through their MINDS! I mean, really. Don't most creatures have at least SOME sense of self-preservation???
On the one hand, anything that helps law enforcement officers track down and lock up criminal types is a Good Thing, and anything that helps them identify something dangerous in progress is also Good.
BUT,
On the other hand, there are a wide range of different kinds of cops, and at least half of them aren't the sort of people who should BE cops. They're like the dickhead who used to cruise around my neighborhood on the fourth of july, "confiscating" everyone's fireworks and bringing them home to his own kids, or the cop who keeps a "drop gun" handy in case he fucks up and shoots the wrong person, or the cops who you hear about from time to time, who shake down hookers and drug dealers for their own piece of the pie (pardon the pun).
The problem is, cops are people. And, like all people, some are good and some are bad. Some are REALLY bad. Put a tool like this in their hands, without sufficient top-down control (and you know, they're just going to give that lip service) and at least some of the cops entrusted with this will misuse it. Regularly. Perhaps often.
Another problem is, there's a real "us vs. them" mentality among cops, so even if one cop finds out another cop is, say, digging around in his ex-girlfriend's current boyfriend's records, it's unlikely anything will be done about it. Cops don't "rat" each other out, ok? They just don't. Do you really think a bunch of good old boys are going to keep an eye on each other? What'll really happen is, "Joe won't snitch on Bob for fucking with the guy who 'stole' Bob's girl, if Bob doesn't snitch on Joe for checking up on the hot babe who lives in his building". And, Joe and Bob will keep on misusing their power, as has happened throughout history.
I agree. I love FreeBSD -- it's the only O/S I've been able to successfully put on a particular older system I've got (it's a military-spec, practically indestructible laptop I got on Ebay). Isn't that a hoot? Nothing else would pick up the PCMCIA CD-Rom for the install; all the Linuxes I tried kept rebooting and losing the CD-Rom because of a quirk in my hardware. FreeBSD installed without a reboot during install, and works really well on that machine.
To be fair, I think I'll be able to get Slackware on it, too, because its install is similar to FreeBSDs in some ways, so I'm going to try that next. But FreeBSD really does work rather well. And, it runs fast on old hardware, surprisingly so.
Just my.02, don't flame me, I like Linux too, guys!
Pardon my adding a second reply, but I've just been over to SourceForge and my GOD, I can't BELIEVE how much Quake-related stuff is on there! I'm glad you caught me before I started reinventing this wheel... I figure you've saved me at least a year or two. I can't believe it. Carmack is a SAINT. What an incredible gift to the community! I mean, wow.
Dude.
This means I can start building my game this fall! This is so awesome! I mean, I'm totally set! I've got a pretty good storyline, too, this ought to be really cool.
Thank you, seriously, thank you very much for this tip. You've made my whole week.;)
(If and when I get this game rolling, you've got free licenses to game packs for life).
I knew Quake 1 was GPL; I didn't know Quake 2 was. That was an awesome game... Maybe I'll take a look at it as a source, it seems to run on just about everything. Thanks for the tip!
As far as my chapters, of course I'll give away a shareware demo! And, starter files for building worlds, besides. The way I'm thinking of it, I figure I'll do a few different kinds of basic rooms good for different kinds of areas, like indoor, outdoor, underwater, etc. A game developer would take that base and add features to it. I see the whole thing as a sort of 4GL for game development. I'd give away a set of starter meshes, too, for characters.
I think the really interesting part is I'm going to have to come up with some streamlined way of building cut scenes. Now, of course, you'd build cut scenes with the tool for your levels, right? But, once you got good at it, you could actually make small movies, machinima style, using the cutscene editor. If the editor got streamlined enough, it would be like a cut-and-paste movie creator, which I think would be kinda cool.
I'm definitely going to take a look at QuakeII, though. It might save me a hell of a lot of time. Thanks A LOT for the heads up. Now that I think of it, I seem to remember a patch for Quake that generated a third-person mode. I might be able to achieve a lot of my objectives using QuakeII as a starting point...
The thing about developing your own game is, you have the power to really try and make it perfect. You have real creative control, you know? You can take the high road if you want, or lean towards a humorous kind of bent, or just go completely deranged and do something freaky. It's cool. And, you don't have any creeps in suits leaning on you to make your character's tits bigger, or dumb down the dialog.
One bummer is, being only one guy, I won't be able to get anything to market in less than a year or two, and I can't afford too fast a computer, so my graphics will be targeted at lower-end machines, like, say, a 500Mhz Celeron. So, my game will *look* like an older game in a sense, and won't be as flash as the crop of games it would normally be competing against. But I don't think that's a bad thing. Let the big shops have the high end. I think there's room at the lower end for guys like me. Not everyone has a P-IV, right?
As far as my game goes, it'll be a third-person shooter with first person controls and modest but smooth graphics. I don't want to give away too much, but I think it'll really appeal to this crowd. It's very high-tech oriented. I figure, maybe, 2005 sometime. My business model is: I'm going to release the game engine itself, with development tools, open source for Linux, Windows, and FreeBSD so that anyone who is into this stuff can create their own game using the tools. I'm looking at using Crystal Space or Ogre as a base, and building my system as a game-engine layer on top of their graphics engine. So, if you want to play the game, you download a bundle with the game engine and a compatible build of one of the graphics engines, for free. But, then, you pay for the actual levels and mods. Every couple of months, I come out with a new set of levels and mods, which you can pick up for like, twenty bucks. You can't steal my *story*, because it's like a novel, right? But you can write your *own* story using my tools, and jump into the market right alongside me. Isn't that a neat idea? I figure, the more people create cool, weird little games, the more there are for me to play. That's GOT to be a Good Thing, right?
And, since I just posted it, and it's now in the public domain, it can't be patented (this post is a prior-art description of the concept, 8/1/2003 5:29PM).
Slashdot Mirror
That's NOT what he's talking about.
The "Unix Philosophy" is the philosophy behind Unix-like O/S'es LIKE LINUX. It's a design philosophy, NOT a marketing one, or even an economic one. Vastly oversimplifying,
1. Don't create huge monolithic programs if you can help it. Create small, elegant programs that each do one specific thing well. Use a scripting language to pipe them together, amplifying their usefulness.
2. Because you want to be able to pipe small programs together to aggregate their usefulness, avoid "captive user interfaces", i.e. interactivity. Lean towards writing software that is comfortable running in batch, on a pipe, in a script. Use command line arguments.
3. Don't reinvent the wheel. If there's already a tool that does what you want to do, use it. If you need to extend its functionality, script it with another tool or tools.
4. Lean towards command line programming, because then everything you've got can be scripted, run in crontab, run in batch, etc. The command line is your friend.
5. Everything is a file. This lets you interact with hardware directly, in your software.
6. Store data as flat text whenever possible, so that down the road, if you want to use it with another program, you'll be able to. This also lets you sift through your data using grep and awk.
7. Use text streams whenever you can, for similar reasons to #6. Got a socket? Pass flat text, not binary. Unless you really MUST pass binary.
I've probably left a whole lot out, but this is the basic gist of it. It's why Linux, Unix, and the *BSDs are so much more useful than Windows.
You kidding? With all the time we'll save, we'll be able to address the REAL problem facing geeks today: GETTING LAID! Why, I bet with all the research we'll have time for, we'll be getting laid once a year -- or more!!! W00t!
There's another way of looking at this:
Before, many of us Americans were thinking, "Boy, if they keep creating these new DMCA-type laws, we're going to have to move to Europe to be free." But, since Europe is working to eliminate the dread spectre of freedom, the temptation isn't going to be there, and we can all relax. I'm glad THAT weight is off my shoulders! Phew...
Hey! Waitaminnit! I just thought of something! I bet those Europeans are putting DMCA's in place to prevent us from moving over there! "Ha, ha!" they're saying, "You steenking Americans get no DMCA relief HERE! Tek ZAT you silly Yankee Kniiiggggets!"
True, true... And, her bush was visible in a few other parts of the movie, like when Michael Douglas was doing the peeping tom thing in her back yard and she dropped her lacy nightgown thing. But, I think the thing was, it was visible at a distance, and not so up close and personal. I think maybe a little too much detail was revealed, you know? Then again, I only read it in an article, who knows what the whole backstory was. I know this: most video versions released had her bush very heavily airbrushed so you couldn't see more than a vague, brown amorphous suggestion of beaver. Then, later, they came out with a "director's cut" kinda DVD which promised an unaltered version -- so in a way, it almost used that shot as a selling point. Maybe it's a case of their setting up an artificial demand for the movie based on an eyeful you're supposed to feel you're not supposed to get -- like artificial naughtiness.
Well, yeah, but if we don't have anything really in common, I'll end up asking a question, hear a long answer that doesn't interest me in the slightest, and then, to be polite, I'll have to feign interest and I'll feel like a big fat phony. It just wouldn't work for me.
You know, among people like me, I have no problem whatsoever maintaining conversations. Here at work, among other programmers, I hold my own without difficulty. And, we don't talk about programming, but rather about a zillion other interesting things -- about the guy who renovated an old Nike missle site and built a bungalo in it, for instance, or about how old cell phone towers are being sold for like, ten grand upstate. We talk about ideas for starting companies, ideas for building weird geek toys (like a midget railgun, etc), and about bizarre people we've known (like the roommate I had in college who tied himself to an outdoor twelve foot crucifix in the middle of the night, screaming "Call 911, I'm dying for your sins!!!" while surrounded by sleeping baptists in the dormitories around him -- we almost got lynched, and barely got back to our room alive). I talk; I just don't talk much to people I don't have anything in common with.
I dunno; I guess I'm antisocial, except around geeks.
Ok, you got me there. But, really, I can't see the allure of professional sports. It seems so pointless. "Grab the ball, run that way really fast, until someone slams into you and breaks your spine!" Yeah, suuuuure. Thanks, I'll be over here with my chessboard, a latte, and a box of oreos.
I'd be comfortable with surrogacy. But, and this is a sad thing, most mainstream couples would treat a man who wanted to be a single father as if there was something wrong with him. Most people can't accept the idea of a person who doesn't need to be part of a couple, you know? They feel it attacks their whole philosophy, and they try to "fix" you. I can't tell you how many times the married guys here at work have busted my balls ("you need a woman", "why don't you date?", "I'm gonna help you learn how to meet girls", etc). They just don't get the idea that maybe, I don't want to date.
I figure, cloning is a perfect solution to my problem. If they ever figure it out, that is...
You're taking the approach that there's something wrong with me, that I'm somehow damaged and need to be fixed, and that the road to my salvation goes through the self-help book aisle at Border's Books. I'm sorry, but I really disagree. There's nothing whatsoever wrong with me.
:)
I'm one of those people who have considered the company of other people and found it lacking. Most people seem to me to be pretty petty, shallow, selfish and more than a little stupid. I tolerate them but I don't seek them out. I know myself fairly well, and I know what I need: plenty of time alone, away from distractions and weird interpersonal stuff, with some occasional human contact from someone I respect. Think of me as a big, human shaped cat, and you'll understand me much better.
In fact, here's one of my pet theories (pardon the pun):
There are two kinds of people, dog people and cat people. Now, this is true in the sense that there are people who prefer dogs and people who prefer cats, but it is also true in the sense that there are people whose personalities are like that of dogs, and others who are more like cats.
An extrovert is a dog; a true introvert is a cat. A fake introvert is a dog who thinks he is a cat, ha ha.
Ok, consider this: an extrovert NEEDS to be part of a pack. He NEEDS to be surrounded by other people, and if he doesn't get that, he chews up the couch (i.e. he goes stir crazy and causes some kind of trouble). An introvert, on the other hand, just wants to be left alone. He wants to be able to lay on the radiator, unmolested, and sun himself without any disturbances. If he's disturbed, he might just scratch you, or at least hiss and take off. Sooner or later, the cat wants a pet and will hang around you for a little while, but before too long he'll disappear again. The dog, on the other hand, will pester you continuously all day long, until you finally retreat into your study and try to ignore him scratching and whining at the door.
Two different personalities, two different approaches to life. But just as you wouldn't try and make a cat into a dog, you shouldn't try and make an introvert into an extrovert. You should accept each as-is and not make assumptions about what should be done about them.
Having said all that, I do appreciate the attempt -- it was nice of you.
The mail order bride idea isn't so hot... What I can see happening is, I get a mail-order bride, then one day while I'm working on a graphics engine or something, she meets the extroverted cable guy and bam, I'm divorced. Nah... If I'm lonely, I'll buy some goldfish. ;)
Well, on the one hand, you have a point in that at work, at least, most of the people I talk to are involved in what I'm doing, so the conversations are purposeful. I do have non-purposeful conversations at work, but that's because there are people at work who share my outside interests (games, anime, etc). Outside of work I don't know anyone (outside of my family, that is) who shares my interests, so I generally don't have conversations with anyone.
On the other hand, you seem to consider conversations with other people to be networking opportunities. I'm somewhat uncomfortable about that attitude; I wouldn't personally want to use other people as a network -- if I don't want to hang out with someone, or find them interesting, I'd rather not talk to them at all. If I had some kind of ulterior motive, like networking, I'd feel phony. Is this what you meant?
I read once that the director had told her that the way he was doing the lighting, her gorgeous (damn! gorgeous!) private parts would be concealed by shadow. She didn't find out that they *weren't* concealed by shadow until the first time she saw the whole movie as a single piece, which obviously would have been while sitting with the rest of the cast -- quite humiliating, I'd imagine. I felt kinda bad for her.
She's one of my favorite actresses; so smart, sexy, and obviously strong-willed! Yum!
How utterly true.
...don't watch much television, because it's stupid, boring, and annoying, and the commercials drive me crazy. I like anime, so the pay channels sometimes attract me, and I like movies, so the movie channels aren't bad, but usually I prefer something a little more active, like a good game. ...don't pay any attention to professional sports because, really, what's so interesting about gigantic musclebound thugs slamming into one another? Or scratching their nuts and throwing a ball around? It's BORING. Maybe if a kickboxing match was on, I dunno. I always kinda respected those guys, they were tough as nails. But, they don't put that stuff on much anymore. ...don't pay any attention to right-wing nutcases like uber-republican Rush Limbaugh. Once you get past the initial humorous part ("did he just say that? He's kidding, right?") you realize he's serious and it just seems sad. ...don't care whether I get laid or not, or whether I'm surrounded by people, because I can amuse myself most of the time with a book or a video game. Or, my BSD laptop and some coding.
;)
I was tortured and abused throughout my childhood by most of the other kids, and in my twenties when I went back to college (after a stint in the Marine Corps to toughen up and not get picked on anymore) I was older than the other kids and an outsider for a whole new set of reasons. Most of my life, all I wanted was to be left alone with my books, and I had to put up with all kinds of garbage from almost everyone. It wasn't until I was thirty years old and moved upstate, taking a government job (where most of the people are older and more settled) that I finally found a group of people (fellow programmers, of course) who just accepted me as-is, with a minimum of hassle. Of course, they're all pretty introverted too, so it all works out. I've got a nice, quiet working environment with really cool, quiet, hands-off coworkers, and I'm finally happy after all these years.
Outside of work, of course, I'm a hermit.
Because, after all, what would I do around most people? Look at it from my perspective:
I:
So, what the heck would I talk about with people? All their favorite conversational topics are non-starters with me (sex, right-wing politics, sports, television). I talk about my work and their eyes glaze over. I mention anime and they give me this "yeah, ok, great" look. As if their sitcoms were adult fare... We have nothing in common.
I figure, if I don't find a similarly antisocial girl who has the same interests by the time I'm 40, I'm just not going to reproduce. Maybe one day I'll clone myself, just for the techie bragging rights, but probably not.
(Scene: a really crummy run-down bungalo in an even more run-down neighborhood in Salt Lake City. Our favorite psychodwarf has just returned home after a long stint in Federal Pound Me In The Ass prison. He gingerly limps up to his new home, pulls on the doorknob, and the door falls on him.)
PD: "OW! Fuck, what next???"
(climbs out from under the door, dusts himself off, goes inside the house. Flips through phone book, calls carpenter.)
PD: "Hi, is this John's carpentry service? You do doors, right? Yeah... Yeah... Mine just fell off. Fell off, you know, I pulled the doorknob and it... Yeah, 111 someRoadSomewhere, downtown. Thanks, see you in a half hour.
(half an hour later)
John the carpenter: "Hi, howyadoin? I'm here to fix the door... Wait a minnit... You look kinda familiar.
PD: "No, I don't. Honest."
JC: "No, I'm sure about it. Hang on, I'll get it, gimme a minute..."
PD: (backing up) "No, that's ok, really, I'm sure we don't know each other..."
JC: "Holy SHIT! You're that fuckwad!"
POUND POUND POUND
(half an hour later)
PD: "Hello, police? I want to report an assault. Yeah... Yes, Exactly. It was a carpenter. Ok, I'll see you in a few minutes."
(a few minutes later)
Cop #1: "Hi, you must be Mr... Hey, wait a minute. Didn't I read about you online?"
PD: "No, that must have been someone else."
Cop #2: "No, Joey, I think you're right, he DOES look like that guy." (pulls out nightstick)
Cop #1: "Yeah, you're HIM!" (whips out pepper spray and handcuffs)
PD: (yelps and tries to flee)
SPRAY SPRAY POUND WHACK SMACK SPRAY!
And, so on...
An A/C said, "-1, Advocates cruelty to midgets"
No, not at all! Most midgets are sane, and would NEVER walk into a biker bar and suggest that leather is gay chic. I'm advocating cruelty to SCO-like psychotic midgets. Well-adjusted, sane midgets deserve MUCH more friendly receptions.
Besides, bikers are a fun crowd. If a normal, friendly midget were to walk into a biker bar, the worst thing he'd probably have to deal with is a hangover.
That's cool -- it's amazing just how many people SCO have inspired to hate them! If they don't make enough money from their stock to live their lives out without working, they're really going to be screwed. Who would ever hire them? They're universally despised.
What I love about your post is, even bikers have heard about all this, which backs up my thought that the SCO staff are going to be universal pariahs forever. Think about it: for the rest of Darl's life, every time he walks into a bar, restaurant, store, etc, every person who's seen his cheesy headshot photo in one of the SCO articles will be suckerpunching him without warning. "Hey, Darl! Catch! (WHACK!)" The guy won't even be able to leave his house... I sure wouldn't want to be him...
OOh! Imagine the day he gets a flat and has to use the payphone in a rough bar! "Um... Hi, folks, can I use your phone, I'm Darl Mc(WHACK! WHACK! WHACK!)"
We're the bikers, IBM is the bar owner.
I wasn't trying to stereotype cops... I was trying to point out that at least some, perhaps a significant number, do abuse their positions. And, they do cover each other's butts. In NYC, they used to have a name for it (it slips my mind right now) and the basic idea was, cops who rat out other cops commit career suicide -- they can forget about promotions and such (and possibly find themselves a pariah among all the other cops, who they depend on for their lives when the shit hits the fan).
That's what I'm saying. Stereotype? Or commonly-known characteristic? What cop is going to snitch on another cop? Gimme a break.
Please, go back and read the rest of my post. ;)
Yeah, no kidding... What is WRONG with these people? Do they not see the beating they're going to get for all this? People aren't going to be satisfied with putting them out of business... Anyone with SCO on their resume is going to end up being a pariah for LIFE.
I think of this as a sort of tragicomedy:
Scene: A really rough biker bar.
Crowd: About two dozen gigantic, violent, biker types. Some are playing pool, a couple are fistfighting in the back room, one or two others are throwing foot-long bowie knives at a dartboard.
Wham! The swinging door opens, hitting one biker's girlfriend on the shoulder. A midget in a three-piece suit scampers in.
Midget: "Hey, all you bikers! Look at all that leather! You suck! Don't you know you guys are a gay fetish???
The music stops with a scratching record sound. About twenty heads swivel around and stare at the midget. He scampers over to a chair, climbs up on it with little huffing and puffing sounds, and gets up on the bar. He starts kicking over everyone's drinks.
Midget: "Damnit, I invented leather clothes! All you weird gay fuckers owe me some MONEY! Pay up or I'm going to kick all your asses, then I'm going to fuck all your ugly, trailer-park bitches! You're going to have a bunch of little midget kids in nine months, you pansies!"
Biker #1: "Hey, guys -- it's kinda hard to tell, because I just dropped a tab of windowpane, but... Am I tripping, or is there a weird little fucking midget yelling at me?"
Bartender: "Yep, There's a weird little midget. Don't get any blood on my bar, ok? I just resurfaced it..."
Biker #2: "Not to worry, Danny boy, We'll take the little scamp outside and have a chat with him. Mind if we borrow your pony bat?"
Bartender: "Nah, here ya go. Mind the nail there, it's rusty."
Bikers #3, #4, #5, #6 (holding the squirming midget by his arms and legs): "Ok, you mouthy little fuck, it's time to go..."
Midget: "MMmpth takth thith gagth out of my moupth! You phuckerth are gonna getth itth!"
Biker #1: "Hey, you wanna ball gag? That dirty bar rag ain't gonna shut him up fer long..."
(outside) WHOMP POUND BANG BANG STOMP CRASH CRUSH
You have to wonder what is going through their MINDS! I mean, really. Don't most creatures have at least SOME sense of self-preservation???
On the one hand, anything that helps law enforcement officers track down and lock up criminal types is a Good Thing, and anything that helps them identify something dangerous in progress is also Good.
BUT,
On the other hand, there are a wide range of different kinds of cops, and at least half of them aren't the sort of people who should BE cops. They're like the dickhead who used to cruise around my neighborhood on the fourth of july, "confiscating" everyone's fireworks and bringing them home to his own kids, or the cop who keeps a "drop gun" handy in case he fucks up and shoots the wrong person, or the cops who you hear about from time to time, who shake down hookers and drug dealers for their own piece of the pie (pardon the pun).
The problem is, cops are people. And, like all people, some are good and some are bad. Some are REALLY bad. Put a tool like this in their hands, without sufficient top-down control (and you know, they're just going to give that lip service) and at least some of the cops entrusted with this will misuse it. Regularly. Perhaps often.
Another problem is, there's a real "us vs. them" mentality among cops, so even if one cop finds out another cop is, say, digging around in his ex-girlfriend's current boyfriend's records, it's unlikely anything will be done about it. Cops don't "rat" each other out, ok? They just don't. Do you really think a bunch of good old boys are going to keep an eye on each other? What'll really happen is, "Joe won't snitch on Bob for fucking with the guy who 'stole' Bob's girl, if Bob doesn't snitch on Joe for checking up on the hot babe who lives in his building". And, Joe and Bob will keep on misusing their power, as has happened throughout history.
For that reason, I'm against this utterly.
I agree. I love FreeBSD -- it's the only O/S I've been able to successfully put on a particular older system I've got (it's a military-spec, practically indestructible laptop I got on Ebay). Isn't that a hoot? Nothing else would pick up the PCMCIA CD-Rom for the install; all the Linuxes I tried kept rebooting and losing the CD-Rom because of a quirk in my hardware. FreeBSD installed without a reboot during install, and works really well on that machine.
.02, don't flame me, I like Linux too, guys!
To be fair, I think I'll be able to get Slackware on it, too, because its install is similar to FreeBSDs in some ways, so I'm going to try that next. But FreeBSD really does work rather well. And, it runs fast on old hardware, surprisingly so.
Just my
TheViffer said, "Cool! Looks like we all are going to have a copy of SCO source code in a year!"
Oh, GOD, I hope not... It's dirty, I don't want any part of it. I bet it smells like wet rat.
Pardon my adding a second reply, but I've just been over to SourceForge and my GOD, I can't BELIEVE how much Quake-related stuff is on there! I'm glad you caught me before I started reinventing this wheel... I figure you've saved me at least a year or two. I can't believe it. Carmack is a SAINT. What an incredible gift to the community! I mean, wow.
;)
Dude.
This means I can start building my game this fall! This is so awesome! I mean, I'm totally set! I've got a pretty good storyline, too, this ought to be really cool.
Thank you, seriously, thank you very much for this tip. You've made my whole week.
(If and when I get this game rolling, you've got free licenses to game packs for life).
I knew Quake 1 was GPL; I didn't know Quake 2 was. That was an awesome game... Maybe I'll take a look at it as a source, it seems to run on just about everything. Thanks for the tip!
As far as my chapters, of course I'll give away a shareware demo! And, starter files for building worlds, besides. The way I'm thinking of it, I figure I'll do a few different kinds of basic rooms good for different kinds of areas, like indoor, outdoor, underwater, etc. A game developer would take that base and add features to it. I see the whole thing as a sort of 4GL for game development. I'd give away a set of starter meshes, too, for characters.
I think the really interesting part is I'm going to have to come up with some streamlined way of building cut scenes. Now, of course, you'd build cut scenes with the tool for your levels, right? But, once you got good at it, you could actually make small movies, machinima style, using the cutscene editor. If the editor got streamlined enough, it would be like a cut-and-paste movie creator, which I think would be kinda cool.
I'm definitely going to take a look at QuakeII, though. It might save me a hell of a lot of time. Thanks A LOT for the heads up. Now that I think of it, I seem to remember a patch for Quake that generated a third-person mode. I might be able to achieve a lot of my objectives using QuakeII as a starting point...
Thanks!
The thing about developing your own game is, you have the power to really try and make it perfect. You have real creative control, you know? You can take the high road if you want, or lean towards a humorous kind of bent, or just go completely deranged and do something freaky. It's cool. And, you don't have any creeps in suits leaning on you to make your character's tits bigger, or dumb down the dialog.
One bummer is, being only one guy, I won't be able to get anything to market in less than a year or two, and I can't afford too fast a computer, so my graphics will be targeted at lower-end machines, like, say, a 500Mhz Celeron. So, my game will *look* like an older game in a sense, and won't be as flash as the crop of games it would normally be competing against. But I don't think that's a bad thing. Let the big shops have the high end. I think there's room at the lower end for guys like me. Not everyone has a P-IV, right?
As far as my game goes, it'll be a third-person shooter with first person controls and modest but smooth graphics. I don't want to give away too much, but I think it'll really appeal to this crowd. It's very high-tech oriented. I figure, maybe, 2005 sometime. My business model is: I'm going to release the game engine itself, with development tools, open source for Linux, Windows, and FreeBSD so that anyone who is into this stuff can create their own game using the tools. I'm looking at using Crystal Space or Ogre as a base, and building my system as a game-engine layer on top of their graphics engine. So, if you want to play the game, you download a bundle with the game engine and a compatible build of one of the graphics engines, for free. But, then, you pay for the actual levels and mods. Every couple of months, I come out with a new set of levels and mods, which you can pick up for like, twenty bucks. You can't steal my *story*, because it's like a novel, right? But you can write your *own* story using my tools, and jump into the market right alongside me. Isn't that a neat idea? I figure, the more people create cool, weird little games, the more there are for me to play. That's GOT to be a Good Thing, right?
And, since I just posted it, and it's now in the public domain, it can't be patented (this post is a prior-art description of the concept, 8/1/2003 5:29PM).