Anyone who's interested should have a look at this big blurb about irony. It discusses the philosophical roots and modern usage, and takes the mandatory swipe at Alanis.
Plenty of people thinking they will put out some form of mega-collector's set after the final (extended) movie comes out.
I recently read an interview with some of the crew in an audio nerd magazine (either Audio Technology or Sound On Sound), and they let slip that there was going to be a boxed set, including a new special feature thingy about the audio production techniques used in LoTR.
Most languages seem to use . to cat strings, but I suppose Java needed that operator more elsewhere:)
Personally, I don't mind using -> to invoke a method. It gets around the overloading problem and doesn't seem like that much extra typing when you consider that most of the stock classes and methods have incredibly long names. Which leads me to my pet peeve, the encouragement of one letter variable names, leading to bizarre stuff like:
PortKnocker p = new PortKnocker();
p.knockOnSomePorts();
I guess that's what everyone hopes to do, make a living off their favourite hobby.
Aye. And it can be done, providing there's enough demand for it and the hobby isn't too expensive to pursue. I started programming as a hobbyist, and because my hobby was cheap (a low end PC and the odd O'Reilly book) I was able to survive as a freelancer and develop my skills until I was good enough to get a regular coding job. (It helped that the job market was in better shape then).
My other hobby, DJing, has more in common with your Magic experience. It's very expensive, as you need to buy a lot of records (cards of varying 'commonality') and there's no clear path to becoming a pro. You can play with friends and win competitions, but it won't get you far. There's room for a lot more pro DJs, and some of the pros are well paid, but I imagine less than 10% of the folks with pro skills ever break even.
I think he's probably just hyping the anti-shock benefits of GB cartridges vs the discs that will be used in the Playstation portable. Good question, though -- the GB is pretty much shockproof by default (excepting perhaps the screen).
Can someone point me to some decent Gamecube titles? The only two I've found that I really enjoyed are Metroid Prime and the new Zelda.
Try these:
Pikmin -- bizarre real time gardening game from Miyamoto, plays like a cross between Lemmings and Command & Conquer
Animal Crossing -- strangely addictive animal village simulator, a bit like Harvest Moon or the town scenes in a good console RPG
Viewtiful Joe -- side scrolling cel-shaded beat 'em up, with bullet time effects
Sonic Mega Collection -- 7 old 16-bit sonic games, plus vector scanned manuals and art
If you liked Metroid and Zelda (which in my opinion are both games based around exploration of interesting worlds), I suggest you start with Pikmin and Animal Crossing.
According to this comment the plus pad is patented or otherwise protected IP. This seems like a credible assertion when you look at the PSX and X-Box controllers. So I imagine any PC gamepads with a plus pad will be cheaply made by the sort of folks who ignore patents (i.e. you're not going to see a plus pad on a Logitech controller any time soon).
One possible benefit: reducing competition to browsers that licence their technology. Personally I don't think this will happen any time soon, as Eolas hasn't gone the SCO style licencing route. In future, though, Eolas or the patent may change hands. If Microsoft (for example) ended up owning Eolas or the patent, you can bet they'd use it against Mozilla.
I've always thought the system proposed by (Kim Stanley Robinson) in the Mars Trilogy books was kinda neat
Robinson didn't come up with the idea, but borrowed it (affectionately) from Philip K Dick's novel Martian Time-Slip. KSR actually wrote his doctoral thesis on PK Dick, by the way.
Perl is best suited for text-munging (e.g. logging, parsing), web stuff, and as glue code to make other things interoperate. It's got some lovely stuff like foreach and proper regexps that is missing from other languages. Perl also offers you a lot of flexibility in how you approach different tasks.
The downsides of Perl are a tacked on object model, and perhaps so much flexibility that reading other people's code can be difficult at times.
Some advice:
use strict;
if you're used to strong typing, and use -w on your shebang line to get verbose error messages (i.e. start your scripts with #!usr/bin/perl -w)
The basic turntable hasn't changed (in terms of motor, pitch range, platter speed etc), but the new model, the MkIII, has a couple of useful improvements. The power switch is now recessed, so that you can no longer accidentally turn off the power with a fumbled scratch. The pitch control in the new model is no longer indented at 0, which makes it a lot easier to mix tracks that only have a slight difference in tempo (previously, fine pitch adjustments around 0 would sometimes cause the pitch slider to drop back into the indentation and revert to 0). Also, the new model has a lead weight that can be attached to the headshell (so the that the needle jumps less when scratching, tho' the increased weight tends to shave slivers of vinyl off the record and wear it out quickly). Finally, the MkIII now has a button for quartz timing for the platter roation, at all pitches (the MkII only has quartz lock at 0 pitch).
Having said all that, if you want to be a club or radio DJ, I wouldn't recommend MkIIIs. 99% of clubs and radio stations have MkIIs installed, and if you've learnt on MkIIIs you'll have trouble coping with the MkIIs' foibles. On the other hand, if you're a mobile DJ, or a turntablist DJ for a band (i.e. you'll always be using your own gear rather than the venue's), go with the MkIIIs.
And don't get me started on dj'ing with cd's - something isn't quite right about that, the tactile feel of scratching just isn't there - and it nowhere nearly looks as cool.
And worse still, you can't see when the drop is coming up by looking at the grooves. The only real advantage that CDs have is that they weigh far less than vinyl, and that you can burn your own cheaply.
To me, the role of CDs in a DJ setup is as an economical replacement for dubplates (short run acetate records). If you're a DJ who produces music, you can burn a CD at home, then play your new creation in a club alongside your vinyl set. If the CD sounds good and the crowd responds well, you can get it pressed to vinyl. If not, it's back to the drawing board, and you're only out the cost of a single CDR.
Even if the train is electric, chances are that the electricity comes from coal or diesel generators <snip> Trains don't prevent pollution, they just move it somewhere else.
The environmental argument for this approach is similar to the argument for hydrogen / electric cars. If all the pollution is coming from power stations, you need only filter / regulate / maintain the power stations, rather than millions of internal combustion engines of varying age and quality. Also, power stations tend to be built some distance from cities while cars tend to congregate in cities, so city-dwelling humans experience less medical side effects when power and pollution are centralised.
Finally, centralised power gives you an easier upgrade path. When you get economical wind or solar or fusion or whatever, just replace your coal plants and all the electric trains and hyrdogen buses keep working without the need for individual upgrades.
As someone pointed out the other day, there was plenty of quality art available before copyright. Shakespeare and Mozart were happy to create art without it, and (AFIAK) made money from performance and patronage.
A middle ground would definitely be a good idea, though. I would be happy if copyright was limited to the lifetime of the artist, and/or non-transferable. An artist gets paid for their creations for their whole lifetime, but Brian Herbert and Disney have to come up with something original if they want to pass themselves off as artists.
At New York's Kennedy airport today, an individual, later discovered to
be a public school teacher, was arrested trying to board a flight while
in possession of a ruler, a protractor, a set square, and a calculator.
Attorney General John Ashcroft believes the man is a member of the
notorious al-gebra movement. He is being charged with carrying weapons
of math instruction. Al-gebra is a very fearsome cult, indeed. They
desire average solutions by means and extremes, and sometimes go off on
a tangent in a search of absolute value. They consist of quite shadowy
figures, with names like "x" and "y", and, although they are frequently
referred to as "unknowns", we know they really belong to a common
denominator and are part of the axis of medieval with coordinates in
every country.
As the great greek philanderer Isosceles used to say, there are 3 sides
to every angle, and if God had wanted us to have better weapons of math
instruction, He would have given us more fingers and toes. Therefore,
I'm extremely grateful that our government has given us a sine that it
is intent on protracting us from these math-dogs who are so willing to
disintegrate us with calculus disregard.
These statistic bastards love to inflict plane on every sphere of
influence. Under the circumferences, it's time we differentiated their
root, made our point, and drew the line. These weapons of math
instruction have the potential to decimal everything in their math on a
scalene never before seen unless we become exponents of a Higher Power
and begin to factor-in random facts of vertex.
As our Great Leader would say, "Read my ellipse".
Here is one principle he is uncertainty of---though they continue to
multiply, their days are numbered and the hypotenuse will tighten around
their necks.
------------
(Not my own work -- does anyone know know the source of this barrage of puns?)
Slashdot Mirror
Anyone who's interested should have a look at this big blurb about irony. It discusses the philosophical roots and modern usage, and takes the mandatory swipe at Alanis.
Plenty of people thinking they will put out some form of mega-collector's set after the final (extended) movie comes out.
I recently read an interview with some of the crew in an audio nerd magazine (either Audio Technology or Sound On Sound), and they let slip that there was going to be a boxed set, including a new special feature thingy about the audio production techniques used in LoTR.
Most languages seem to use . to cat strings, but I suppose Java needed that operator more elsewhere :)
Personally, I don't mind using -> to invoke a method. It gets around the overloading problem and doesn't seem like that much extra typing when you consider that most of the stock classes and methods have incredibly long names. Which leads me to my pet peeve, the encouragement of one letter variable names, leading to bizarre stuff like:
PortKnocker p = new PortKnocker();
p.knockOnSomePorts();
I guess that's what everyone hopes to do, make a living off their favourite hobby.
Aye. And it can be done, providing there's enough demand for it and the hobby isn't too expensive to pursue. I started programming as a hobbyist, and because my hobby was cheap (a low end PC and the odd O'Reilly book) I was able to survive as a freelancer and develop my skills until I was good enough to get a regular coding job. (It helped that the job market was in better shape then).
My other hobby, DJing, has more in common with your Magic experience. It's very expensive, as you need to buy a lot of records (cards of varying 'commonality') and there's no clear path to becoming a pro. You can play with friends and win competitions, but it won't get you far. There's room for a lot more pro DJs, and some of the pros are well paid, but I imagine less than 10% of the folks with pro skills ever break even.
You've successfully fended off every half-arsed 'argument' in this thread : )
It's lunchtime here, so I go now to vegan yum cha.
Great post. Add FireWire and widescreen displays to that list.
why does the gameboy need anti-shock properties?
I think he's probably just hyping the anti-shock benefits of GB cartridges vs the discs that will be used in the Playstation portable. Good question, though -- the GB is pretty much shockproof by default (excepting perhaps the screen).
Try these:
- Pikmin -- bizarre real time gardening game from Miyamoto, plays like a cross between Lemmings and Command & Conquer
- Animal Crossing -- strangely addictive animal village simulator, a bit like Harvest Moon or the town scenes in a good console RPG
- Viewtiful Joe -- side scrolling cel-shaded beat 'em up, with bullet time effects
- Sonic Mega Collection -- 7 old 16-bit sonic games, plus vector scanned manuals and art
If you liked Metroid and Zelda (which in my opinion are both games based around exploration of interesting worlds), I suggest you start with Pikmin and Animal Crossing.Have a look at this Jack Chick tract where he exhorts us all to accept Cthulhu as our personal saviour. Heartwarming stuff.
According to this comment the plus pad is patented or otherwise protected IP. This seems like a credible assertion when you look at the PSX and X-Box controllers. So I imagine any PC gamepads with a plus pad will be cheaply made by the sort of folks who ignore patents (i.e. you're not going to see a plus pad on a Logitech controller any time soon).
One possible benefit: reducing competition to browsers that licence their technology. Personally I don't think this will happen any time soon, as Eolas hasn't gone the SCO style licencing route. In future, though, Eolas or the patent may change hands. If Microsoft (for example) ended up owning Eolas or the patent, you can bet they'd use it against Mozilla.
I've always thought the system proposed by (Kim Stanley Robinson) in the Mars Trilogy books was kinda neat
Robinson didn't come up with the idea, but borrowed it (affectionately) from Philip K Dick's novel Martian Time-Slip. KSR actually wrote his doctoral thesis on PK Dick, by the way.
You do know what the HD in 'Neuros HD', stands for, right? It's backlit too, by the way.
Another vintage title from Rockstar North, then known as DMA Design
So the makers of Lemmings then went on to make GTA? That's awesome.
My 0.02:
Perl is best suited for text-munging (e.g. logging, parsing), web stuff, and as glue code to make other things interoperate. It's got some lovely stuff like foreach and proper regexps that is missing from other languages. Perl also offers you a lot of flexibility in how you approach different tasks.
The downsides of Perl are a tacked on object model, and perhaps so much flexibility that reading other people's code can be difficult at times.
Some advice:
use strict;
if you're used to strong typing, and use -w on your shebang line to get verbose error messages (i.e. start your scripts with #!usr/bin/perl -w)
As much as I like Slashdot this place is definitely ultra liberal and has an agenda to go with that...
Is this the same Slashdot that modded you up +4 Insightful?
I wonder how many people modded this up or down without catching the reference.
The basic turntable hasn't changed (in terms of motor, pitch range, platter speed etc), but the new model, the MkIII, has a couple of useful improvements. The power switch is now recessed, so that you can no longer accidentally turn off the power with a fumbled scratch. The pitch control in the new model is no longer indented at 0, which makes it a lot easier to mix tracks that only have a slight difference in tempo (previously, fine pitch adjustments around 0 would sometimes cause the pitch slider to drop back into the indentation and revert to 0). Also, the new model has a lead weight that can be attached to the headshell (so the that the needle jumps less when scratching, tho' the increased weight tends to shave slivers of vinyl off the record and wear it out quickly). Finally, the MkIII now has a button for quartz timing for the platter roation, at all pitches (the MkII only has quartz lock at 0 pitch).
Having said all that, if you want to be a club or radio DJ, I wouldn't recommend MkIIIs. 99% of clubs and radio stations have MkIIs installed, and if you've learnt on MkIIIs you'll have trouble coping with the MkIIs' foibles. On the other hand, if you're a mobile DJ, or a turntablist DJ for a band (i.e. you'll always be using your own gear rather than the venue's), go with the MkIIIs.
And don't get me started on dj'ing with cd's - something isn't quite right about that, the tactile feel of scratching just isn't there - and it nowhere nearly looks as cool.
And worse still, you can't see when the drop is coming up by looking at the grooves. The only real advantage that CDs have is that they weigh far less than vinyl, and that you can burn your own cheaply.
To me, the role of CDs in a DJ setup is as an economical replacement for dubplates (short run acetate records). If you're a DJ who produces music, you can burn a CD at home, then play your new creation in a club alongside your vinyl set. If the CD sounds good and the crowd responds well, you can get it pressed to vinyl. If not, it's back to the drawing board, and you're only out the cost of a single CDR.
Twenty-one point zero zero zero people sounds like a very small town to me.
Even if the train is electric, chances are that the electricity comes from coal or diesel generators <snip> Trains don't prevent pollution, they just move it somewhere else.
The environmental argument for this approach is similar to the argument for hydrogen / electric cars. If all the pollution is coming from power stations, you need only filter / regulate / maintain the power stations, rather than millions of internal combustion engines of varying age and quality. Also, power stations tend to be built some distance from cities while cars tend to congregate in cities, so city-dwelling humans experience less medical side effects when power and pollution are centralised.
Finally, centralised power gives you an easier upgrade path. When you get economical wind or solar or fusion or whatever, just replace your coal plants and all the electric trains and hyrdogen buses keep working without the need for individual upgrades.
As someone pointed out the other day, there was plenty of quality art available before copyright. Shakespeare and Mozart were happy to create art without it, and (AFIAK) made money from performance and patronage.
A middle ground would definitely be a good idea, though. I would be happy if copyright was limited to the lifetime of the artist, and/or non-transferable. An artist gets paid for their creations for their whole lifetime, but Brian Herbert and Disney have to come up with something original if they want to pass themselves off as artists.
P.S. Death to repost trolls.
At New York's Kennedy airport today, an individual, later discovered to be a public school teacher, was arrested trying to board a flight while in possession of a ruler, a protractor, a set square, and a calculator.
Attorney General John Ashcroft believes the man is a member of the notorious al-gebra movement. He is being charged with carrying weapons of math instruction. Al-gebra is a very fearsome cult, indeed. They desire average solutions by means and extremes, and sometimes go off on a tangent in a search of absolute value. They consist of quite shadowy figures, with names like "x" and "y", and, although they are frequently referred to as "unknowns", we know they really belong to a common denominator and are part of the axis of medieval with coordinates in every country.
As the great greek philanderer Isosceles used to say, there are 3 sides to every angle, and if God had wanted us to have better weapons of math instruction, He would have given us more fingers and toes. Therefore, I'm extremely grateful that our government has given us a sine that it is intent on protracting us from these math-dogs who are so willing to disintegrate us with calculus disregard.
These statistic bastards love to inflict plane on every sphere of influence. Under the circumferences, it's time we differentiated their root, made our point, and drew the line. These weapons of math instruction have the potential to decimal everything in their math on a scalene never before seen unless we become exponents of a Higher Power and begin to factor-in random facts of vertex.
As our Great Leader would say, "Read my ellipse".
Here is one principle he is uncertainty of---though they continue to multiply, their days are numbered and the hypotenuse will tighten around their necks.
------------
(Not my own work -- does anyone know know the source of this barrage of puns?)
It used to cost $255 to get Apple to replace the battery, but after this guy got the word out, Apple mysteriously dropped the price to $99. Or you could go for a third party battery for $45.