I know that it isn't always the smoothest, but Facebook is PHP, and is pretty fricken huge.
Sort of. According to what an employee told me last week, lots of the core services are written in other languages, and then PHP is the glue that queries those services and builds the page itself. They then have found that that really isn't fast enough for what they want, so they've written their own compiler (Hip Hop), which compiles PHP down to C++ which can then be compiled by G++.
So yeah, facebook uses it. But not exactly like you'd expect.
So, it seems this place is the thread to ask -- I absolutely love the nub mouse/trackpoing/whatever, but I also absolutely love a big huge rounded ergonomic keyboard. Has anyone found an ergonomic shaped keyboard that has a trackpoint-style mouse nub?
I did always hate the "drift" issue that I had with trackpads (even in thinkpads from 2 years ago).
Most of the time, if you just leave it alone when the drift starts, it will auto-recenter and correct itself. Generally it's only when you keep messing with it that the drift continues. (I've gone through a number of thinkpads for years now, and never had one where the drift wouldn't auto-correct itself if you left it alone for a minute or so).
Like the AC that also replied to you said, Amazon and GameStop had (may still have?) promotions where they give you a beta key if you preorder the game. That's how a lot of us got in.
StarCraft/BroodWar are supported through WINE with Blizzard's tolerance on BattleNet.
Really? Because the wineHQ database and my personal experience would disagree...the game plays fine in single-player mode on wine, but battle.net doesn't work. I had better luck installing a windows 98 vm and running it in that. Of course, you have to have a windows 98 license laying around, but once I did that, it worked great for me.
Although I do expect to get defeated repeatedly by people who had months of training in the beta already.
The nice thing is, due to the way they have the "leagues" set up, you play 5 placement matches, then after that, you primarily compete against people of your own skill level. So if you suck, you'll also play against people that suck.
The idea being that you actually have fun NOT get defeated repeatedly. So far, from my experience, it works quite well.
..The market idea really could work, except that it requires a people who are both more noble and have a far stronger backbone than our general population...
Hey, that's funny - same goes for communism. And major religions, achieving world peace, ending hunger and poverty..
Although interestingly enough, that's the entire point of Christianity, which is often missed (by Christians and non-Christians alike). That people are corrupt, incapable of becoming completely non-selfish, incapable of achieving world peace and ending hunger and poverty. Yeah, Christians would love to achieve world peace, but the very principles of the core of the religion will show that it's not possible.
I'd like to see you get through Contra without a Konami code first.
Seriously? Contra was actually a relatively easy game, even without the cheat code. A halfway decent player should be able to beat the game without dying once, with a little bit of practice.
The 30 lives just made everyone lazy and not careful, so people didn't tend to get good at it.
Of course, your question is a lot like asking: "I play Starcraft, but want to switch to console gaming. What RTS should I try?"...sure, there are some mediocre answers and pathetic attempts, but trying to find an alternative to one of the best games of a genre on a platform that generally doesn't cater to that genre means you will be disappointed.
Nope, the reason they don't go after the counterfeiters at flea markets is because that's not the "threat" to them...(how many people do you know that buy fake cds at flea markets)...kids downloading songs off bittorrent is. The price of legal downloads has very little to do with it...yes there are a few people out there that make choices of pirate vs buy based on price/value/etc, but for most, it's "free vs pay?" and free always wins. (yes, you can argue that YOU would just buy instead of pirate if it was just cheap enough, for whatever magical value of "cheap enough" you've defined, but if so you are either a minority or a liar)
So they go after kids who download, and shoot for as big a penalty as possible. Not because they themselves even believe that the penalty is correct, but because they are trying to scare other people away from downloading. If people think "wow, my life will be ruined if I get caught" then the RIAA believes just maybe less people will illegally download.
Now I'm not saying it's right, but it's at least reasonably logical.
Google, being the power house that it is, could easily build the apps and operability that Twitter has.
Oh please, no - the apps and all that crap are why I ditched twitter and facebook and the rest. No more freaking retarded data mining nuisance apps!
Who modded this up? The apps he's talking about are client applications that interface with the twitter service. Not the stupid facebook games that you're referring to.
I can't make them talk about what I want to talk about, and they won't teach me how to talk about what they want to talk about. So how do I become no longer desocialized so that I don't have to use the service that is the subject of the article?
Avoids the flex problem, is always charged up, is a lot cheaper to buy and free to run, and as a bonus I get exercise when I cut the lawn! (OK, OK, my *girlfriend* gets exercise when *she* cuts the lawn because I can't be bothered, but the principle's the same!)
I dunno, I had one of these. The reason I got rid of it and got a powered mower: 1. The blade was only about 1/2 as wide as the cutting area of a powered mower. This meant the yard took about twice as many trips to cut.
2. It took about twice as much effort to push as a regular mower. This would be ok, except combined with #1, meant a LOT more effort.
3. The manual one worked fine when the grass was dry and relatively short. If the grass got longer (when I was on vacation) or was slightly damp, it wouldn't work well. It also wouldn't properly cut many weeds. Dandelions, in particular, would just have their heads removed, leaving the tall stalk.
I loved the idea, but in practice, the noise, mess, and expense of a powered mower was absolutely worth it for me.
(Bringing this almost back to topic, I want a crank-powered laptop!)
If I could mod after commenting I would, because I totally agree. TopCod3r was the best thing that ever happened to the site. It blows my mind that Alex would ban him.
The day Alex announced this was the day I finally stopped reading the DailyWTF. It's gotten worse and worse over the past few years, with stories that were so embellished that you stop caring. The fun part about the site was laughing at real IT blunders. But Alex and his creative writing team overdid the writing to the point where the stories were often incredibly far from the real fact (the original submitters would often explain the "real" story in the comments". This might be bearable if their writing wasn't so awful. But often they interchange important character names, have horribly confusing grammatical constructs, and generally just make a mess out of the stories.
Then to top it off, Alex shows up occasionally and comes up with nonsense like this instead of posting another story.
I'm done. Yes, it was amusing for awhile, but I'm moving on.
Interestingly, I often appreciate the overcompressed music, even though I agree that it's generally a bad thing.
Why? Because I mostly listen to music in my car. I want to be able to hear the quiet parts over the engine noise without the loud parts blasting me away. The compression, even though it's obnoxious most of the time, helps deal with that. I have a few albums that AREN'T over-compressed (a few classical music cds, some older classic rock, etc), and I rarely listen to them in the car because I have to keep fiddling with the volume knob to hear everything at an acceptable level.
Maybe it would be better if music was sold uncompressed, and car stereos just had really good compressors?;-)
I agree with this. I don't know about the many people posting here, but my family are not morons. I explain how to avoid getting viruses, and how to use a computer responsibly. They listen. How hard is that? If they refuse to listen, refuse to help.
I still get tech support questions, but they are things like: "How do I convert a jpg to a tiff?" and "How do I do xyz in word?" Sure, I could get a mac or install Ubuntu for them, but I'd have the same level of support to deal with as I do now.
Why is this disturbing? Pouring peroxide in your ear bubbles like crazy (and feels rather nice), and supposedly helps remove built-up ear wax. But some sources say it does more harm (drying and/or irritating the ear) than good.
Either way, it's about as disturbing as asking whether I can put a Q-tip in my ear.
Most tickets are a tax. Plain and simple. Even the tickets that aren't a tax (like legitimate fines for building code violations, parking in front of a hydrant, etc) are unwelcome charges. I hate wasting money as much as the next person. Paying a ticket is a waste of money (you are giving an entity money, without getting any benefit), no matter what the context, even if you deserved it.
Whatever. Tickets are a punishment used as a negative incentive to keep people obeying traffic laws, which in turn makes it safer to drive. If you drive safely and within the confines of the law, you won't get a ticket. Waste of money? Maybe for the punished individual, but the benefit is not to you, it's to the rest of society, who will hopefully have safer roads as a result.
I wish they'd give out more tickets...there are still too many morons who think it's acceptable to drive 100 mph on the highway, endangering us all because they think that they are the exception to the rule and can safely handle their car at that speed, since they haven't gotten into a serious accident YET.
The Mac user experience is vastly different than XP and Vista. So much so, that people who switched are not going back to MS anytime soon.
I tried switching. I bought a mac. And I don't like it. (For many reasons, which I won't whine about here). That very different user experience just didn't work for me. So just this week I'm selling my mac and switching to a machine running Windows 7. I like it better than OS X.
Not that most people are like me (and I know one example proves nothing), but I'm the counter-example to your claim, who is happy to switch back.
(Of course, also in consideration is that windows 7 actually runs quite well NOT on new top-of-the-line hardware. I'm running it on a netbook and it's chugging along quite happily.)
Slashdot Mirror
I know that it isn't always the smoothest, but Facebook is PHP, and is pretty fricken huge.
Sort of. According to what an employee told me last week, lots of the core services are written in other languages, and then PHP is the glue that queries those services and builds the page itself. They then have found that that really isn't fast enough for what they want, so they've written their own compiler (Hip Hop), which compiles PHP down to C++ which can then be compiled by G++.
So yeah, facebook uses it. But not exactly like you'd expect.
So, it seems this place is the thread to ask -- I absolutely love the nub mouse/trackpoing/whatever, but I also absolutely love a big huge rounded ergonomic keyboard. Has anyone found an ergonomic shaped keyboard that has a trackpoint-style mouse nub?
I did always hate the "drift" issue that I had with trackpads (even in thinkpads from 2 years ago).
Most of the time, if you just leave it alone when the drift starts, it will auto-recenter and correct itself. Generally it's only when you keep messing with it that the drift continues. (I've gone through a number of thinkpads for years now, and never had one where the drift wouldn't auto-correct itself if you left it alone for a minute or so).
Like the AC that also replied to you said, Amazon and GameStop had (may still have?) promotions where they give you a beta key if you preorder the game. That's how a lot of us got in.
StarCraft/BroodWar are supported through WINE with Blizzard's tolerance on BattleNet.
Really? Because the wineHQ database and my personal experience would disagree...the game plays fine in single-player mode on wine, but battle.net doesn't work. I had better luck installing a windows 98 vm and running it in that. Of course, you have to have a windows 98 license laying around, but once I did that, it worked great for me.
Although I do expect to get defeated repeatedly by people who had months of training in the beta already.
The nice thing is, due to the way they have the "leagues" set up, you play 5 placement matches, then after that, you primarily compete against people of your own skill level. So if you suck, you'll also play against people that suck.
The idea being that you actually have fun NOT get defeated repeatedly. So far, from my experience, it works quite well.
Where's my mod points when I need them? Great response.
..The market idea really could work, except that it requires a people who are both more noble and have a far stronger backbone than our general population...
Hey, that's funny - same goes for communism. And major religions, achieving world peace, ending hunger and poverty..
Although interestingly enough, that's the entire point of Christianity, which is often missed (by Christians and non-Christians alike). That people are corrupt, incapable of becoming completely non-selfish, incapable of achieving world peace and ending hunger and poverty. Yeah, Christians would love to achieve world peace, but the very principles of the core of the religion will show that it's not possible.
I'd like to see you get through Contra without a Konami code first.
Seriously? Contra was actually a relatively easy game, even without the cheat code. A halfway decent player should be able to beat the game without dying once, with a little bit of practice.
The 30 lives just made everyone lazy and not careful, so people didn't tend to get good at it.
I play Smash Bros. but want to switch to PC gaming. What platform fighting game should I try? (SFIV != platform.)
Super Mario War
Liero
Of course, your question is a lot like asking:
"I play Starcraft, but want to switch to console gaming. What RTS should I try?"...sure, there are some mediocre answers and pathetic attempts, but trying to find an alternative to one of the best games of a genre on a platform that generally doesn't cater to that genre means you will be disappointed.
Other than emulators can anyone point me to a homebrew game for ds, iPhone or psp that doesn't suck or is a port?
Shameless self-promotion here, but my action-adventure game Anguna, while a bit short, doesn't, in my opinion, suck. It's available for DS and GBA.
Other decent DS homebrew includes:
Twin Isles
A touch of war
Crocodingus in Cube Island
Tales of Dagur
Of course, none of these are commercial quality, but they're fun.
Why in the world was the parent marked as a troll? You might not agree with this guy, but this certainly isn't a troll...
Where's my bucket of mod points when I need them?
Nope, the reason they don't go after the counterfeiters at flea markets is because that's not the "threat" to them...(how many people do you know that buy fake cds at flea markets)...kids downloading songs off bittorrent is. The price of legal downloads has very little to do with it...yes there are a few people out there that make choices of pirate vs buy based on price/value/etc, but for most, it's "free vs pay?" and free always wins. (yes, you can argue that YOU would just buy instead of pirate if it was just cheap enough, for whatever magical value of "cheap enough" you've defined, but if so you are either a minority or a liar)
So they go after kids who download, and shoot for as big a penalty as possible. Not because they themselves even believe that the penalty is correct, but because they are trying to scare other people away from downloading. If people think "wow, my life will be ruined if I get caught" then the RIAA believes just maybe less people will illegally download.
Now I'm not saying it's right, but it's at least reasonably logical.
Google, being the power house that it is, could easily build the apps and operability that Twitter has.
Oh please, no - the apps and all that crap are why I ditched twitter and facebook and the rest. No more freaking retarded data mining nuisance apps!
Who modded this up? The apps he's talking about are client applications that interface with the twitter service. Not the stupid facebook games that you're referring to.
I can't make them talk about what I want to talk about, and they won't teach me how to talk about what they want to talk about. So how do I become no longer desocialized so that I don't have to use the service that is the subject of the article?
Practice.
Avoids the flex problem, is always charged up, is a lot cheaper to buy and free to run, and as a bonus I get exercise when I cut the lawn! (OK, OK, my *girlfriend* gets exercise when *she* cuts the lawn because I can't be bothered, but the principle's the same!)
I dunno, I had one of these. The reason I got rid of it and got a powered mower:
1. The blade was only about 1/2 as wide as the cutting area of a powered mower. This meant the yard took about twice as many trips to cut.
2. It took about twice as much effort to push as a regular mower. This would be ok, except combined with #1, meant a LOT more effort.
3. The manual one worked fine when the grass was dry and relatively short. If the grass got longer (when I was on vacation) or was slightly damp, it wouldn't work well. It also wouldn't properly cut many weeds. Dandelions, in particular, would just have their heads removed, leaving the tall stalk.
I loved the idea, but in practice, the noise, mess, and expense of a powered mower was absolutely worth it for me.
(Bringing this almost back to topic, I want a crank-powered laptop!)
If I could mod after commenting I would, because I totally agree. TopCod3r was the best thing that ever happened to the site. It blows my mind that Alex would ban him.
The day Alex announced this was the day I finally stopped reading the DailyWTF. It's gotten worse and worse over the past few years, with stories that were so embellished that you stop caring. The fun part about the site was laughing at real IT blunders. But Alex and his creative writing team overdid the writing to the point where the stories were often incredibly far from the real fact (the original submitters would often explain the "real" story in the comments". This might be bearable if their writing wasn't so awful. But often they interchange important character names, have horribly confusing grammatical constructs, and generally just make a mess out of the stories.
Then to top it off, Alex shows up occasionally and comes up with nonsense like this instead of posting another story.
I'm done. Yes, it was amusing for awhile, but I'm moving on.
Interestingly, I often appreciate the overcompressed music, even though I agree that it's generally a bad thing.
Why? Because I mostly listen to music in my car. I want to be able to hear the quiet parts over the engine noise without the loud parts blasting me away. The compression, even though it's obnoxious most of the time, helps deal with that. I have a few albums that AREN'T over-compressed (a few classical music cds, some older classic rock, etc), and I rarely listen to them in the car because I have to keep fiddling with the volume knob to hear everything at an acceptable level.
Maybe it would be better if music was sold uncompressed, and car stereos just had really good compressors? ;-)
to make a 1x1 square become 2x2 you have to quadruple it's resolution...
Making your 640x480 a whooping 2560x1920
Um, no. Check your math. To go from 1x1 to 2x2 you are doubling in each dimension, making 4 times as many pixels.
Going from 640x480 to 2560x1920, you are quadrupling in each dimension, making 16 times as many pixels.
I agree with this. I don't know about the many people posting here, but my family are not morons. I explain how to avoid getting viruses, and how to use a computer responsibly. They listen. How hard is that? If they refuse to listen, refuse to help.
I still get tech support questions, but they are things like: "How do I convert a jpg to a tiff?" and "How do I do xyz in word?" Sure, I could get a mac or install Ubuntu for them, but I'd have the same level of support to deal with as I do now.
Can you put peroxide in your ear?
Why is this disturbing? Pouring peroxide in your ear bubbles like crazy (and feels rather nice), and supposedly helps remove built-up ear wax. But some sources say it does more harm (drying and/or irritating the ear) than good.
Either way, it's about as disturbing as asking whether I can put a Q-tip in my ear.
Most tickets are a tax. Plain and simple. Even the tickets that aren't a tax (like legitimate fines for building code violations, parking in front of a hydrant, etc) are unwelcome charges. I hate wasting money as much as the next person. Paying a ticket is a waste of money (you are giving an entity money, without getting any benefit), no matter what the context, even if you deserved it.
Whatever. Tickets are a punishment used as a negative incentive to keep people obeying traffic laws, which in turn makes it safer to drive. If you drive safely and within the confines of the law, you won't get a ticket. Waste of money? Maybe for the punished individual, but the benefit is not to you, it's to the rest of society, who will hopefully have safer roads as a result.
I wish they'd give out more tickets...there are still too many morons who think it's acceptable to drive 100 mph on the highway, endangering us all because they think that they are the exception to the rule and can safely handle their car at that speed, since they haven't gotten into a serious accident YET.
Windows 7 needs 1 GB RAM and 16GB Disk.
Really? Cause I installed it just this week on an 8GB disk on my netbook. Had no problems whatsoever.
The Mac user experience is vastly different than XP and Vista. So much so, that people who switched are not going back to MS anytime soon.
I tried switching. I bought a mac. And I don't like it. (For many reasons, which I won't whine about here). That very different user experience just didn't work for me. So just this week I'm selling my mac and switching to a machine running Windows 7. I like it better than OS X.
Not that most people are like me (and I know one example proves nothing), but I'm the counter-example to your claim, who is happy to switch back.
(Of course, also in consideration is that windows 7 actually runs quite well NOT on new top-of-the-line hardware. I'm running it on a netbook and it's chugging along quite happily.)