Still, My point is this. Take for instance a movie recently in theaters. We'll Say "Kung Fu Panda" How is it any different that Jack Black gets paid millions of dollars to speak into a microphone, which then translates to an animated panda, or this guy who speaks into a similar microphone, which is then translated to Niko Bellic? I don't see a difference, except for the fact that JB is already famous (and thus stated in the previous response) That simply fact makes a huge difference. Fame draws attention. Jack Black has fans. You've got an instant audience for your movie.
Now if your argument is that famous actors get paid far too much, then I agree, but apparently that's how the movie market works. That's not how the computer game market works, however. An A-list actor on your credits may help draw a few doubters across the line, but it won't make the game an instant hit. And this guy (what's his name again?) isn't an A-list actor. He was completely unknown. This is his big break where he gets to prove how good an voice actor he is. On his next job, he can afford to demand more money. But if he complains about his pay for this job, then he's a stupid idiot.
And yes, he could have asked for more. (Stupid on his part knowing that the GTA series is one of the best sellers of all time.) No, not stupid. If he'd asked for more, someone else would have gotten this big break and he'd still be a nobody. His talent did not make or break this game. Sure, it adds something, and if his voice acting really is that good, then he may be able to demand more for his next job, but demanding A-list pay when you're a nobody is just plain stupid.
Aside from that, I think that the guy did a fantastic job of voice acting, and should get a bonus. maybe a free copy of the game that stiffed him. I hope he did get a free copy, but he wasn't stiffed. He got a big break that few aspiring actors ever get, and he should be thankful for it.
4) Y'know, IT work is not the only job that requires expertise and skill. In fact, I've met a lot of dumb IT people. Really dumb. But the dumber they are, the smarter they seem to think they are. It's just a job, dude. We all have them. You couldn't do mine and I couldn't do yours. That's why we have jobs!
True, but then, so is acting. That's a job too. Why would a voice actor be more deserving of royalties than the people writing the script, the AI, the 3D models, etc? Just like good actors are rare, so are good programmers.
Perhaps programmers should get unionised too and demand a bit more recognition for their work.
.. you meant "me, for example" when you said "many of the world's finest software developers":) No, I'm still stuck using Java 1.4, I'm afraid. I'm looking for a cool Ruby job, though, so let me know if you've got anything.
Seriously, knowing Java and using Java are two different things. Java is like a prechewed, canned Filet Mignon - sure it's nutritious, but it *is* crap nonetheless compared to the real thing. No, Java is perfectly fine for what it's intended for. And for applications, it's certainly a lot better than C++, and for big web applications, it's better than PHP and VB. Java was a gigantic step forward 10 years ago, but now it got stuck in the overly complicated enterprise web service stuff.
Perhaps it's time for another step forward. It's been 10 years, after all.
I've been saying this since at least '95, "Why can't games be bootable?" Because then I lose my OS, so I can't switch to other applications during the game.
Rebooting just to play a game is unacceptable to me.
I'd say that the fact that the Qualifying Requirements include:
1. You know the Java 5 programming language.
pretty much guarantees that none of "the world's finest software developers" will be involved in this competition. Not at all. Many of the world's finest software developers do know Java 5, and recognised it as a sign to move on to things like Ruby and Python.
"The Mythical Man Month" points out that adding people to a project often/usually slows it down.
Ergo, the fastest projects have nobody working on them. It's true! In fact, it reminds me of another quote: Every program can be reduced by at least one statement, and contains at least one bug.
Ergo, every program can be reduced to one statement that doesn't work.
If the database is very interesting than you are putting your self a risk by giving unrestricted access to the database. A client could easily download the entire database and make their own. This creates the risk of duplicate data as well as giving the database to potential competitors if a client was to defect. But if it's the client's own data that's in the database, shouldn't they be free to move that data to a competitor when the OP's company is unable or unwilling to give the client exactly what it needs?
This is one of the big selling points of open source: "If you don't like us, you're always free to go to our competitors."
How much more open then five years under the GPL can I be.
There are many forms of openness, and publicity is one of them.
Yes I want someone to share the project, but employ and reimburse? I think you miss the point. I want to find ways of finding people who would want to join in.
And the best way to get people to join in is to pay them for it. There are plenty of commercial open source projects. Now I can imagine you can't afford to hire anyone, and you may only be doing this as a hobby too, but are you really planning to do the support for a university for free? Perhaps you can sell them support, and use that money to get more people on board. Selling support works very well for open source projects, as there often are a lot of potential users interested in good support.
In fact, getting to the point where someone else can do what only I can do is a rather important goal for me at the moment...
It shouldn't just be an important goal for you, it should be the first priority of everybody who can do something nobody else can do. At least if it's a skill that's actually being used on some project. It'd be a shame if a promising project was cancelled because the single expert got run over.
(Overcourse it'd be a tragedy for anyone to get run over, but why should his project become a casualty too?)
I'd rather chat with friends and peers in person than over PGP. But would you want to fly 8 hours every time you want to ask them something? My friends really like email for that sort of thing.
This is exactly why smart people have invented the cryptophone. Well, it won't help against passive listening devices near the speaker, but it's very easy to take it with you to a place you think is safe.
(By the way, one of the guys behind the cryptophone is Dutch hacker Rop gonggrijp, founder of a Dutch hacker magazine in the '80s, founder of the first Dutch ISP, organiser of international hacker cons, and currently activist against voting machines. Sounds like the kind of guy Slashdotters will like.)
Somehow I'm getting the impression that you've got no idea what you're talking about. Do you use examples from astrology to attack astronomy? Economy to attack ecology?
Psychology does try really hard to be a serious science. Its only real problem is its tendency to attract people who are really bad at math. That doesn't make it pseudoscience, that makes it a science with a lots of bad scientists.
I had to look someone in the eye and say 'guilty', and probably ruin their life, and it was really *really* hard. It's a lot easier if the defendant is a self-righteous, arrogant bastard like Hans Reiser, and that's pretty much what's wrong with the jury system.
The average desktop user does not want to be required to use google to figure something out. User want thing to work and work easily. That was the whole point of the article, dumbass. Yet the average user uses google even to find websites of which they know the name (like youtube.com). Seriously. People type "youtube" or "yahoo" in google.
Mandriva ships with flash installed. Ubuntu comes with only OSS stuff, but back in the 6.06 Dapper Drake days, there was a popular package called Automatix that installed anything else you thought you might need, including flash.
I think it would help Ubuntu a lot if after installation it offered to install/run Automatix or a similar tool (with a warning that it's not OSS and not supported by Ubuntu, but that a lot of people like it anyway).
No, it doesn't. I fact, it is a already a huge advantage that she did not have to install Ubuntu (Note: It's not that installing Windows is easier, From what I hear, installing Windows is quite a lot harder. Installing Ubuntu works somewhat like this: put CD in drive, boot, click on what the PC tells you to click, type where it tells you too type, done.
My wife wants me to install Ubuntu on her laptop (she doesn't have any experience with it, but she's sick and tired of Windows). Perhaps I should let her install it, and post our experience here?
There's some truth in what both of you have to say really. Being yourself and getting the girl are just not going to happen if your life mainly consists of sitting in your basement playing video games.
It's important to know the difference between being yourself and doing what you always do. It's important to be yourself in the sense that putting up an act or pretending to be something you're not is never going to work. But if you always sit in a basement playing games, then yes, you should try to get out more. You're not going to meet girls by not meeting girls. And the chances of that one new girl you meet per month being Ms. Right are pretty small.
That said, searching for dates is really only good for finding one thing--dates. You may get laid or meet the girl of your dreams, but you're mostly going to spend money on dinners, drinks and movies for somebody's company for a few hours.
Not true. Dates can lead to relationships, and many relationships started with dating. But you're right that not everybody who is interested in dating is also interested in a relationship. Don't waste your time on dating someone who isn't interested in relationships. But how do you discover if he/she is interested in something more? Sometimes it's obvious (it's an explicit option on many online dating services), but you can also ask how he/she sees his/her life in 5 or 10 years. If the answer includes a relationship, marriage or kids, the option of a serious relationship is clearly present. If you are a serious option, well, that's another question.
If you're looking for that serious, long term relationship though, well, you shouldn't actually be looking for it. People who are looking hard for relationships tend to be the last ones who should be in a relationship as they're often needy, insecure and desperate.
Again, not true. Yes, many people who are desperate for a relationship are not ready for it, and should really be working to get their own life in order, but there are also a lot of people who are comfortable and secure in their own life, and not at all desperate for a relationship, but still very much interested and indeed actively looking. Especially if they're over 30 and do hope to have kids in this lifetime.
Beyond changing significant, alterable aspects of yourself (like not bathing or generally being disgusting), the key is not to stop being yourself, but rather to improve yourself such that other people can find you "being yourself" more interesting.
Exactly! Be yourself, but improve who you are. Be clean, polite and charming, but be your own kind of clean, polite and charming. Be your best, be be you.
One easy way to do that is to undertake some new hobbies or activities where there will be the kind of people you'd like to end up in a relationship with around.
Again excellent advice! Meeting new people is a surprisingly effective way to meet new people.
I'm getting a bit tired of this. First ISO is bought by microsoft, now a copyright forum by the RIAA. Do the big corporations already have the entire world in their pockets?
when we have internet that is as fast as cpu response times Unlikely. Even hard drives are faster than routing a ping from London to Tokyo and back. But in optimal circumstances, the internet is already faster than '70s tape reels, so internet is catching up with storage speeds.
Surely it's not really a fair indication just because it's web presence is dropping? I could easily argue that Java is only so "popular" because more people are posting with problems they're having using the language and that C\C++ are only loosing ground because better information on using the language is already out there. I really doubt that's the case. Java has excellent online support, and has had so since its early days.
Personally I don't think a second place for C is anything to complain about, but if you want to explain why Java is bigger, that's easy: Java is the language of choice for web development, and there really is a lot of webdevelopment out there. That's where the growing market is.
C is becoming a niche language. It's the prime language for drivers, OSs, libraries and other low level technical stuff, but most programmers don't write their own drivers or libraries. They write applications, and preferably in a slightly higher-level language than C.
But C is still going surprisingly strong, considering its second place. And in its niche, it will probably survive for a very long time.
Lots of us (in enterprises at least) are realising (or rather, we are able to convince the project managers now) that webapps aren't the solution for everything, and that overall development time is often increased by the difficulties when developing in javascript / html. The reason webapps are so popular isn't because it solves a development problem (it doesn't, and indeed makes it even worse), but because it solves a distribution problem.
It's the headaches of supporting an aplication on 1000s of desktops that makes many companies choose web applications whenever possible.
Popular as in people using it, or popular as in lots of people writing about it?
The number of ajax frameworks has grown significantly over the last couple of years. Just about every modern web framework supports ajax nowadays, and with proper support, ajax is very easy to use in a website. If people don't talk about it so much, then it's most likely because it's becoming more transparantly integrated into their web frameworks. Using ajax used to be hard, now it's easy. That's the best explanation for the drop in ajax that I can think of.
Personally, I'm not convinced AJAX is that popular on the people-using-it count. It's a very useful technique for a particular niche, but it is only a niche.
What niche exactly? Just about any site with complex forms can benefit from ajax. You don't have to build the new Google Maps to justify using ajax.
Slashdot Mirror
Now if your argument is that famous actors get paid far too much, then I agree, but apparently that's how the movie market works. That's not how the computer game market works, however. An A-list actor on your credits may help draw a few doubters across the line, but it won't make the game an instant hit. And this guy (what's his name again?) isn't an A-list actor. He was completely unknown. This is his big break where he gets to prove how good an voice actor he is. On his next job, he can afford to demand more money. But if he complains about his pay for this job, then he's a stupid idiot. And yes, he could have asked for more. (Stupid on his part knowing that the GTA series is one of the best sellers of all time.) No, not stupid. If he'd asked for more, someone else would have gotten this big break and he'd still be a nobody. His talent did not make or break this game. Sure, it adds something, and if his voice acting really is that good, then he may be able to demand more for his next job, but demanding A-list pay when you're a nobody is just plain stupid. Aside from that, I think that the guy did a fantastic job of voice acting, and should get a bonus. maybe a free copy of the game that stiffed him. I hope he did get a free copy, but he wasn't stiffed. He got a big break that few aspiring actors ever get, and he should be thankful for it.
4) Y'know, IT work is not the only job that requires expertise and skill. In fact, I've met a lot of dumb IT people. Really dumb. But the dumber they are, the smarter they seem to think they are. It's just a job, dude. We all have them. You couldn't do mine and I couldn't do yours. That's why we have jobs!
True, but then, so is acting. That's a job too. Why would a voice actor be more deserving of royalties than the people writing the script, the AI, the 3D models, etc? Just like good actors are rare, so are good programmers.Perhaps programmers should get unionised too and demand a bit more recognition for their work.
.. you meant "me, for example" when you said "many of the world's finest software developers"Perhaps it's time for another step forward. It's been 10 years, after all.
Rebooting just to play a game is unacceptable to me.
pretty much guarantees that none of "the world's finest software developers" will be involved in this competition. Not at all. Many of the world's finest software developers do know Java 5, and recognised it as a sign to move on to things like Ruby and Python.
Ergo, the fastest projects have nobody working on them. It's true! In fact, it reminds me of another quote: Every program can be reduced by at least one statement, and contains at least one bug.
Ergo, every program can be reduced to one statement that doesn't work.
This is one of the big selling points of open source: "If you don't like us, you're always free to go to our competitors."
There are many forms of openness, and publicity is one of them.
Yes I want someone to share the project, but employ and reimburse? I think you miss the point. I want to find ways of finding people who would want to join in.And the best way to get people to join in is to pay them for it. There are plenty of commercial open source projects. Now I can imagine you can't afford to hire anyone, and you may only be doing this as a hobby too, but are you really planning to do the support for a university for free? Perhaps you can sell them support, and use that money to get more people on board. Selling support works very well for open source projects, as there often are a lot of potential users interested in good support.
It shouldn't just be an important goal for you, it should be the first priority of everybody who can do something nobody else can do. At least if it's a skill that's actually being used on some project. It'd be a shame if a promising project was cancelled because the single expert got run over.
(Overcourse it'd be a tragedy for anyone to get run over, but why should his project become a casualty too?)
This is exactly why smart people have invented the cryptophone. Well, it won't help against passive listening devices near the speaker, but it's very easy to take it with you to a place you think is safe.
(By the way, one of the guys behind the cryptophone is Dutch hacker Rop gonggrijp, founder of a Dutch hacker magazine in the '80s, founder of the first Dutch ISP, organiser of international hacker cons, and currently activist against voting machines. Sounds like the kind of guy Slashdotters will like.)
Somehow I'm getting the impression that you've got no idea what you're talking about. Do you use examples from astrology to attack astronomy? Economy to attack ecology?
Psychology does try really hard to be a serious science. Its only real problem is its tendency to attract people who are really bad at math. That doesn't make it pseudoscience, that makes it a science with a lots of bad scientists.
I think it would help Ubuntu a lot if after installation it offered to install/run Automatix or a similar tool (with a warning that it's not OSS and not supported by Ubuntu, but that a lot of people like it anyway).
My wife wants me to install Ubuntu on her laptop (she doesn't have any experience with it, but she's sick and tired of Windows). Perhaps I should let her install it, and post our experience here?
There's some truth in what both of you have to say really. Being yourself and getting the girl are just not going to happen if your life mainly consists of sitting in your basement playing video games.
It's important to know the difference between being yourself and doing what you always do. It's important to be yourself in the sense that putting up an act or pretending to be something you're not is never going to work. But if you always sit in a basement playing games, then yes, you should try to get out more. You're not going to meet girls by not meeting girls. And the chances of that one new girl you meet per month being Ms. Right are pretty small.That said, searching for dates is really only good for finding one thing--dates. You may get laid or meet the girl of your dreams, but you're mostly going to spend money on dinners, drinks and movies for somebody's company for a few hours.
Not true. Dates can lead to relationships, and many relationships started with dating. But you're right that not everybody who is interested in dating is also interested in a relationship. Don't waste your time on dating someone who isn't interested in relationships. But how do you discover if he/she is interested in something more? Sometimes it's obvious (it's an explicit option on many online dating services), but you can also ask how he/she sees his/her life in 5 or 10 years. If the answer includes a relationship, marriage or kids, the option of a serious relationship is clearly present. If you are a serious option, well, that's another question.If you're looking for that serious, long term relationship though, well, you shouldn't actually be looking for it. People who are looking hard for relationships tend to be the last ones who should be in a relationship as they're often needy, insecure and desperate.
Again, not true. Yes, many people who are desperate for a relationship are not ready for it, and should really be working to get their own life in order, but there are also a lot of people who are comfortable and secure in their own life, and not at all desperate for a relationship, but still very much interested and indeed actively looking. Especially if they're over 30 and do hope to have kids in this lifetime.Beyond changing significant, alterable aspects of yourself (like not bathing or generally being disgusting), the key is not to stop being yourself, but rather to improve yourself such that other people can find you "being yourself" more interesting.
Exactly! Be yourself, but improve who you are. Be clean, polite and charming, but be your own kind of clean, polite and charming. Be your best, be be you.One easy way to do that is to undertake some new hobbies or activities where there will be the kind of people you'd like to end up in a relationship with around.
Again excellent advice! Meeting new people is a surprisingly effective way to meet new people.I'm getting a bit tired of this. First ISO is bought by microsoft, now a copyright forum by the RIAA. Do the big corporations already have the entire world in their pockets?
And how doo we get out of there?
Personally I don't think a second place for C is anything to complain about, but if you want to explain why Java is bigger, that's easy: Java is the language of choice for web development, and there really is a lot of webdevelopment out there.
That's where the growing market is.
C is becoming a niche language. It's the prime language for drivers, OSs, libraries and other low level technical stuff, but most programmers don't write their own drivers or libraries. They write applications, and preferably in a slightly higher-level language than C.
But C is still going surprisingly strong, considering its second place. And in its niche, it will probably survive for a very long time.
It's the headaches of supporting an aplication on 1000s of desktops that makes many companies choose web applications whenever possible.
Popular as in people using it, or popular as in lots of people writing about it?
The number of ajax frameworks has grown significantly over the last couple of years. Just about every modern web framework supports ajax nowadays, and with proper support, ajax is very easy to use in a website. If people don't talk about it so much, then it's most likely because it's becoming more transparantly integrated into their web frameworks. Using ajax used to be hard, now it's easy. That's the best explanation for the drop in ajax that I can think of.Personally, I'm not convinced AJAX is that popular on the people-using-it count. It's a very useful technique for a particular niche, but it is only a niche.
What niche exactly? Just about any site with complex forms can benefit from ajax. You don't have to build the new Google Maps to justify using ajax.