We've had our support outsourced to corporate HQ. In the past I could walk into the office of the IT guy (singular), and ask him to help me. Small problems would get fixed in a matter of minutes, and large ones in a few days at most (but usually much quicker).
Now I have to open a ticket, which they've promised to respond to within four hours. And indeed, an automated mailing system sends me a response email in about 30s. And *then* I have to wait three weeks for anything to happen (today a ticket was closed that I opened over three weeks ago).
This has neither improved my mood, nor my ability to do my job (I'm a programmer, I need all those silly things I request to do my work!).
My point: the IT professional will still exist and still be solving problems, but he won't give a flying crap about YOUR problems. A local guy will focus on your local issues. An external person who might be in another country, and work for another company, will not feel *any* urgency to solve anything for you.
These things don't show up with 4-hour warning. If you look carefully, you can see them coming years, even decades in advance. That gives us a reasonable amount of time to deflect it (which could be as easy as painting one half of it white!).
Only $30 million to look for planet-destroying rocks from outer space? Is that really all it takes to saveguard our species and world from such threats? If so, why aren't there half a dozen of these things already scanning the heavens every second of the day?
Agreed. Great book, taught me a lot about designing better interface. Although subjective, it has been noted by my colleagues that I do considerably better interfaces since reading it.
You want to combine this with a projected keyboard (http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/input/8193/). And possibly a wiimote-based multitouch interface instead of a mouse. Add a bit of cackling and you'll look like a mad wizard!
You know what, I think the 21st century has arrived at last!
The grand parent was talking about putting his swap partition on the solid state device. Swap partitions do not get saved across reboots. So thanks for stating the bleedingly obvious, but my question remains: what is the point of having a solid state device for swap space if you can simply buy enough RAM in the first place?
Why not just buy enough RAM? It is cheaper than using a solid-state disk, and if all you use it for is swap anyway it really doesn't matter if it volatile or not...
- presumption of being a criminal: get your fingerprints taken at the border, get inspected by idiots in the name of security every hour, get to take your bloody *shoes* off whenever you want to board a plane. Get real. None of that stuff stops terrorism. It does however, stop *tourism*.
- no protection by the law: as a foreigner you are not protected by any american laws. The constitution doesn't apply to you. The authorities can do with you whatever they want, for any reason they feel like. You could be sitting on a beach one moment and being beaten up in Guantanamo Bay the next, and noone would care.
- lawsuits. Get involved in any kind of accident, and american lawyers will bleed you dry. You might not even be able to go back to your own country.
Is any of this true? Well, it really doesn't matter now does it? As long as people like me perceive these risks to be true we won't visit. And there plenty of other places in the world to go to.
Things get even more interesting if you are arabic-looking, or if you have done anything that american law does not approve of (even if it was legal in the country where the act was committed!). In either case, the risk of going to the US increases considerably.
I'd love to support my local bookstore, but they *really* have to do better than this to compete. For years we were told that because of the strong dollar, import books were simply expensive. Now that the dollar is weak they don't use the excuse anymore, but we still pay through the nose for books.
I have the same experience with old, single-sided 3.5" disk (that's 360KB per disk). I guess the quality of manufacturing for the first set of disks was higher (later disks had cheaper processes that resulted in worse-quality disk), and possibly the lower data density might help as well.
So all my MSX stuff is still there, but the Amiga stuff is pretty much all gone... Sad.
Well, like I said I don't speak lisp, but the code seems to suggest that 'true' is being redefined for this specific test. But I'm probably just misunderstanding the syntax, the bit that says '(define true (x y) (x))'. I should learn lisp, one of these days, I just never seem to get around to it...
And I strongly disagree that readability can be equated with syntactic sugar. The ability to write syntactically shorter statements with the same meaning == greater expressive power == the ability to write more complex software in less time with higher reliability. That's not syntactic sugar, that's a measurable benefit. Alternatively, I'm willing to argue that every higher-level language is syntactic sugar compared to just typing raw hexcodes;-)
And how is ((> 3 2) (lambda () 5) (lambda () 4)) better than (if (> 3 2) 5 4), especially considering that you are apparently changing the meaning of true and false to something that is only extremely locally true? (disclaimer: ((lisp) ((not) (me)) () (speak))). This is a serious question, btw: is there really some advantage to doing this the difficult way?
And then I'm carelessly skipping over 3 > 2 ? 5 : 4, which is of course the *correct* solution;-)
That'll probably be changed around with 10.1 and the next generation of graphics cards.
Ohh, it will all be much better in the next version! What an unusual and surprising statement! We've never heard anything quite like it from Microsoft before!
As I recall, up until now it was "Vista will be much better when SP1 comes out". Well, that disappointment is pretty much out of the way now, so we need something new... Ah yes, "Vista will be much better when DX10.1 comes out"! Great! Just a few more months and magically, everything that they couldn't quite make work with five years of development plus another year for the service pack, will be ok!
And it will be even more interesting when the next Windows-after-Vista comes out. By then Microsoft will change its direction so quickly that many industry observers will break their necks trying to keep up. They will admit to all of Vista's shortcomings, but don't worry, the *new* Windows will fix all of that.
I've had a lot of trouble making win2k work with SATA devices. The install CD won't recognize them and trying to load a driver from floppy usually causes the system to lock up or crash. Is there anything I can do about this? Or have I just been unlucky in this regard?
I posted a similar comment before, but I'll say it again: this won't change *anything*. There will always be an excuse to stick with Microsoft, making it "better" than the open source alternative in at least some way (it could be vendor support, training costs, exact compatibility with Microsoft Office, or just about anything else). And the weasels that are in charge of our computers will stick with the warm, fuzzy glow they get from using only Microsoft software.
I applaud this initiative, but after dealing with these people for a long time I find it hard to believe anything good will come of it.
The Netherlands that I know happily eats from Microsoft's hand, and is positively terrified to leave its safe, well-known, familiar, warm embrace. Choosing the Microsoft solution is always the correct one; choosing something else has to be justified, and the justification can always be buried with the magic phrase "but it is not the standard."
And even if it passes, there will surely be some cop-out clause like "proprietary alternatives are allowed if better suited". And everything will remain as it was. Go read http://www.tweakers.net/ if you don't believe me, those are the people who will largely be in charge of implementing such a directive. And they will fight it tooth and nail.
Sorry for being a bit slow today, but what in particular causes problems with that combination of factors? And what would he consider to be "heavyweight OO design"?
Pair programming is one guy who's bored out of his skull staring out the window and occasionally muttering about simple typing mistakes, while the other guy is a walking time bomb with ever-rising blood pressure who will at some point explode into a frenzy of violence that will leave blood splattered against the ceiling.
For example, the guys from the colombine massacre were into pair programming and were in fact pair programming on that fatal day. Lee Harvey Oswald had spent the day pair programming before he shot Kennedy. And 9/11? That's right, 10 teams of pair programmers!
But you are right, in that you cannot fully appreciate it until you try it. Who knows, you could be the next unabomber!
Although most of her work is far anime, TV and movies, she has done some outstanding game tracks as well. And I consider her to be the best composer alive, bar none.
The only reason we are supposed to hate it, I think, is because it was presented as "the spiritual successor to System Shock 2" and it isn't. Instead it is just another mindless shooter where you have far too much firepower and not enough enemies.
SS2 had a rather intelligent RPG-like system for skills and upgrades. Depending on how you approach it, the game changes pretty dramatically. Bioshock? Sure, you have some (far more limited) ways of upgrading, but the game doesn't change if you choose a different path - especially because you can change your choice of upgrades at any time.
SS2 has equipment and a limit on how much you can carry, requiring the occasional bit of careful thought on how to proceed. Bioshock has no such thing.
SS2 made you look around carefully, searching the environment for clues and equipment. Some of it was genuinely hard to reach. Bioshock has a bloody big arrow floating over your head at all times, and whatever equipment you might need is always found nearby.
SS2 has some of the most brilliant level design I've ever seen. Places were really *places*, some were scary, some were dangerous, some were safe, some had resources you needed. Bioshock has a lot of scenery, but its all just a backdrop to continuous, unrelenting combat. At some point, despite its magnificence, it just blurs out. And is this supposed to a city or a single long corridor?
SS2 has an engaging story. Bioshock - well, opinions will differ. I was not really all that impressed, with its presentation at least, as it seemed rather confusingly put together. The revelations that Atlas is really Fontaine (a character I honestly thought was just one of many off-screen businessmen living in the city, with no special significance in the story), that you are Ryans son (why was that necessary, really? Did it add anything? Was I supposed to care about him now?), and that you were programmed to do Atlas' bidding, all of these came across as extremely deus ex machina - and that's not a good thing. And why would I start outside the city? Who was supposed to be fooled by this? Ryan distrusts you from the very start, and if you are programmed anyway why not start by walking out of the programming chamber instead of almost getting killed in a plane wreck, of all things?
But of course you can look at it from another side as well: it is not a bad shooter, it has some beautiful scenery, and I did enjoy making my way through. In that sense I'm happy with it. But "spiritual successor to SS2"? Give me a break, what an incredible disappointment...
I have a question: shouldn't the fines for those "further acts of copyright infringement" be paid by the actual people that committed those act, instead of this defendant? As it is she is now being punished for stuff she didn't do.
Slashdot Mirror
We've had our support outsourced to corporate HQ. In the past I could walk into the office of the IT guy (singular), and ask him to help me. Small problems would get fixed in a matter of minutes, and large ones in a few days at most (but usually much quicker).
Now I have to open a ticket, which they've promised to respond to within four hours. And indeed, an automated mailing system sends me a response email in about 30s. And *then* I have to wait three weeks for anything to happen (today a ticket was closed that I opened over three weeks ago).
This has neither improved my mood, nor my ability to do my job (I'm a programmer, I need all those silly things I request to do my work!).
My point: the IT professional will still exist and still be solving problems, but he won't give a flying crap about YOUR problems. A local guy will focus on your local issues. An external person who might be in another country, and work for another company, will not feel *any* urgency to solve anything for you.
These things don't show up with 4-hour warning. If you look carefully, you can see them coming years, even decades in advance. That gives us a reasonable amount of time to deflect it (which could be as easy as painting one half of it white!).
Only $30 million to look for planet-destroying rocks from outer space? Is that really all it takes to saveguard our species and world from such threats? If so, why aren't there half a dozen of these things already scanning the heavens every second of the day?
Gee, *humans*...
After all, this is a magnificent opportunity to build the greatest list of porn links the world has ever seen!
Agreed. Great book, taught me a lot about designing better interface. Although subjective, it has been noted by my colleagues that I do considerably better interfaces since reading it.
You want to combine this with a projected keyboard (http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/input/8193/). And possibly a wiimote-based multitouch interface instead of a mouse. Add a bit of cackling and you'll look like a mad wizard!
You know what, I think the 21st century has arrived at last!
The Spanish inquisition?
The grand parent was talking about putting his swap partition on the solid state device. Swap partitions do not get saved across reboots. So thanks for stating the bleedingly obvious, but my question remains: what is the point of having a solid state device for swap space if you can simply buy enough RAM in the first place?
Why not just buy enough RAM? It is cheaper than using a solid-state disk, and if all you use it for is swap anyway it really doesn't matter if it volatile or not...
"Intergrated"? Didn't they even bother to run this through a spelling checker? Talk about professional...
If I had that much space in my house I don't think I would park my car in the middle of what is clearly a working area...
The reason people don't want to visit the US:
- presumption of being a criminal: get your fingerprints taken at the border, get inspected by idiots in the name of security every hour, get to take your bloody *shoes* off whenever you want to board a plane. Get real. None of that stuff stops terrorism. It does however, stop *tourism*.
- no protection by the law: as a foreigner you are not protected by any american laws. The constitution doesn't apply to you. The authorities can do with you whatever they want, for any reason they feel like. You could be sitting on a beach one moment and being beaten up in Guantanamo Bay the next, and noone would care.
- lawsuits. Get involved in any kind of accident, and american lawyers will bleed you dry. You might not even be able to go back to your own country.
Is any of this true? Well, it really doesn't matter now does it? As long as people like me perceive these risks to be true we won't visit. And there plenty of other places in the world to go to.
Things get even more interesting if you are arabic-looking, or if you have done anything that american law does not approve of (even if it was legal in the country where the act was committed!). In either case, the risk of going to the US increases considerably.
Do the math with me, will you? Let's say I want to buy the OpenGL Programming Guide. My local bookstore has it for 60 euro (http://www.selexyz.nl/pages/detail_v2/S1/10030001940805-2-10090000000010.aspx?showbreadcrumb=1, or I can order from Amazon for $50 (http://www.amazon.com/OpenGL-Programming-Guide-Official-Learning/dp/0321481003/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1198653310&sr=8-1). That's only 35 euro, or almost half what I pay at the local bookstore. Shipping cost is a bit harder to determine, but for me to travel by bike + train + fairly long walk to the above-mentioned bookstore will also cost me 11 euro, plus 3-4 hours. And these price differences are fairly normal for this type of book.
How about pockets, then? I can buy a single Harry Potter book in english for 17 euro, or in dutch for 20 euro (http://www.selexyz.nl/pages/search_v2/S2/SEARCHRESULTPRODUCTS.aspx). Or I can go to Amazon and buy six Harry Potter books for $34 (http://www.amazon.com/Harry-Potter-Paperback-Box-Books/dp/0439887453/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1198653687&sr=1-2). That's 24 euro - almost the price of a single book locally!
I'd love to support my local bookstore, but they *really* have to do better than this to compete. For years we were told that because of the strong dollar, import books were simply expensive. Now that the dollar is weak they don't use the excuse anymore, but we still pay through the nose for books.
I have the same experience with old, single-sided 3.5" disk (that's 360KB per disk). I guess the quality of manufacturing for the first set of disks was higher (later disks had cheaper processes that resulted in worse-quality disk), and possibly the lower data density might help as well.
So all my MSX stuff is still there, but the Amiga stuff is pretty much all gone... Sad.
Well, like I said I don't speak lisp, but the code seems to suggest that 'true' is being redefined for this specific test. But I'm probably just misunderstanding the syntax, the bit that says '(define true (x y) (x))'. I should learn lisp, one of these days, I just never seem to get around to it...
;-)
And I strongly disagree that readability can be equated with syntactic sugar. The ability to write syntactically shorter statements with the same meaning == greater expressive power == the ability to write more complex software in less time with higher reliability. That's not syntactic sugar, that's a measurable benefit. Alternatively, I'm willing to argue that every higher-level language is syntactic sugar compared to just typing raw hexcodes
And how is ((> 3 2) (lambda () 5) (lambda () 4)) better than (if (> 3 2) 5 4), especially considering that you are apparently changing the meaning of true and false to something that is only extremely locally true? (disclaimer: ((lisp) ((not) (me)) () (speak))). This is a serious question, btw: is there really some advantage to doing this the difficult way?
;-)
And then I'm carelessly skipping over 3 > 2 ? 5 : 4, which is of course the *correct* solution
As I recall, up until now it was "Vista will be much better when SP1 comes out". Well, that disappointment is pretty much out of the way now, so we need something new... Ah yes, "Vista will be much better when DX10.1 comes out"! Great! Just a few more months and magically, everything that they couldn't quite make work with five years of development plus another year for the service pack, will be ok!
And it will be even more interesting when the next Windows-after-Vista comes out. By then Microsoft will change its direction so quickly that many industry observers will break their necks trying to keep up. They will admit to all of Vista's shortcomings, but don't worry, the *new* Windows will fix all of that.
Well, it will once SP1 comes out...
I've had a lot of trouble making win2k work with SATA devices. The install CD won't recognize them and trying to load a driver from floppy usually causes the system to lock up or crash. Is there anything I can do about this? Or have I just been unlucky in this regard?
I posted a similar comment before, but I'll say it again: this won't change *anything*. There will always be an excuse to stick with Microsoft, making it "better" than the open source alternative in at least some way (it could be vendor support, training costs, exact compatibility with Microsoft Office, or just about anything else). And the weasels that are in charge of our computers will stick with the warm, fuzzy glow they get from using only Microsoft software.
I applaud this initiative, but after dealing with these people for a long time I find it hard to believe anything good will come of it.
The Netherlands that I know happily eats from Microsoft's hand, and is positively terrified to leave its safe, well-known, familiar, warm embrace. Choosing the Microsoft solution is always the correct one; choosing something else has to be justified, and the justification can always be buried with the magic phrase "but it is not the standard."
And even if it passes, there will surely be some cop-out clause like "proprietary alternatives are allowed if better suited". And everything will remain as it was. Go read http://www.tweakers.net/ if you don't believe me, those are the people who will largely be in charge of implementing such a directive. And they will fight it tooth and nail.
Sorry for being a bit slow today, but what in particular causes problems with that combination of factors? And what would he consider to be "heavyweight OO design"?
Pair programming is one guy who's bored out of his skull staring out the window and occasionally muttering about simple typing mistakes, while the other guy is a walking time bomb with ever-rising blood pressure who will at some point explode into a frenzy of violence that will leave blood splattered against the ceiling.
For example, the guys from the colombine massacre were into pair programming and were in fact pair programming on that fatal day. Lee Harvey Oswald had spent the day pair programming before he shot Kennedy. And 9/11? That's right, 10 teams of pair programmers!
But you are right, in that you cannot fully appreciate it until you try it. Who knows, you could be the next unabomber!
Although most of her work is far anime, TV and movies, she has done some outstanding game tracks as well. And I consider her to be the best composer alive, bar none.
The only reason we are supposed to hate it, I think, is because it was presented as "the spiritual successor to System Shock 2" and it isn't. Instead it is just another mindless shooter where you have far too much firepower and not enough enemies.
SS2 had a rather intelligent RPG-like system for skills and upgrades. Depending on how you approach it, the game changes pretty dramatically. Bioshock? Sure, you have some (far more limited) ways of upgrading, but the game doesn't change if you choose a different path - especially because you can change your choice of upgrades at any time.
SS2 has equipment and a limit on how much you can carry, requiring the occasional bit of careful thought on how to proceed. Bioshock has no such thing.
SS2 made you look around carefully, searching the environment for clues and equipment. Some of it was genuinely hard to reach. Bioshock has a bloody big arrow floating over your head at all times, and whatever equipment you might need is always found nearby.
SS2 has some of the most brilliant level design I've ever seen. Places were really *places*, some were scary, some were dangerous, some were safe, some had resources you needed. Bioshock has a lot of scenery, but its all just a backdrop to continuous, unrelenting combat. At some point, despite its magnificence, it just blurs out. And is this supposed to a city or a single long corridor?
SS2 has an engaging story. Bioshock - well, opinions will differ. I was not really all that impressed, with its presentation at least, as it seemed rather confusingly put together. The revelations that Atlas is really Fontaine (a character I honestly thought was just one of many off-screen businessmen living in the city, with no special significance in the story), that you are Ryans son (why was that necessary, really? Did it add anything? Was I supposed to care about him now?), and that you were programmed to do Atlas' bidding, all of these came across as extremely deus ex machina - and that's not a good thing. And why would I start outside the city? Who was supposed to be fooled by this? Ryan distrusts you from the very start, and if you are programmed anyway why not start by walking out of the programming chamber instead of almost getting killed in a plane wreck, of all things?
But of course you can look at it from another side as well: it is not a bad shooter, it has some beautiful scenery, and I did enjoy making my way through. In that sense I'm happy with it. But "spiritual successor to SS2"? Give me a break, what an incredible disappointment...
I have a question: shouldn't the fines for those "further acts of copyright infringement" be paid by the actual people that committed those act, instead of this defendant? As it is she is now being punished for stuff she didn't do.