I don't know, I thought that experimentation was pretty much the _basis_ for alchemy.
Much of what we perceive wrong with it, is because back then they didn't have our model. Now we know a lot about mollecules, electrons, their orbits, all kinds of forces, etc. You know what happens when you mix two substances.
They didn't, back then. We're talking between hundreds and thousands of years before even the raisin pie model of the atom. (Which itself wasn't anywhere near right.)
They only saw that you mix solution A with solution B, and instead of a mixture of them, you get the totally different solution C. Or sometimes it blows up in your face.
Why? Who knows? Maybe the atoms of A and B change into atoms of C?
And when you start with a supposition like that, it no longer looks that ridiculous to ask "well, then, what are the A and B to mix so that C=gold?" In fact, it's a pretty scientific thing to ask.
All that mystical stuff was grasping in the dark for a model that worked. They didn't have ours. They had one which was largely false, but still marginally better than none whatsoever.
"There is this curve where when you learn how to program and write a few small projects you extrapolate from that experience and believe that large projects must be the same."
Good to see I'm not the only one who's noticed this. People write some 10 line BASIC program, and then can't understand why writing an 100,000 line one is a much bigger problem. (And that's not even the biggest of projects.)
You don't even need to go into uncharted waters: if you tried writing an 100,000 line as the same kind of unstructured mess, you'd end up with a nightmare to debug and/or maintain anyway. The size alone, and the fact that you're essentially looking at it through a keyhole of 25 (or 50 or 100) lines at a time makes it a fundamentally different kind of problem than that 10 line BASIC exercise.
And it's not only MBA types. Most programmers (and I mean actual programmers) come out the college without ever having had to maintain anything _near_ the scale of actual projects. And some of the flamewars (e.g., about how any kind of structure or strong typing sucks) are nothing but proof that someone never was in a large project, but is extrapolating out of their ass anyway.
Either way, IMHO that's only one of the problem types. The ones I've had trouble with include, but are not limited to:
1. The extrapolating type you've just described.
2. The "form before function" type. If it's easy to drag and drop some buttons in a form editor, surely any monkey can put the code together in no time. I mean, phbt, programming is easy. It was dropping those buttons that was the real problem.
3. The living proof that "just a little knowledge can be dangerous."
E.g., someone who doesn't really understand XML, but just heard that it's good. Dunno for what. Probably for everything. 'Cause SUN said so. So next thing you know, everything _must_ happen in XML. Even calls inside the program have their parameters passed as XML, and every method starts by parsing its arguments out of XML. (Not a joke: I know at least one project based on that idea.) Or since XSLT is all the rage too, let's have business logic and workflow control in XSLT. (Again, sadly not a joke.)
E.g., the PHB (or even programmer) who bought some book about patterns or best practices on Amazon, didn't really understand it, but now everything must use every single one of those. If every single of your objects doesn't also involve a singleton, which gives you a factory, which gives you an object registered with a manager, etc, it's coming out of your pay. (Again, not a joke: one PHB actually went through a phase where everyone was required to write endless reports about which patterns they used. And would get berated if they didn't use enough. No matter for what.)
4. The invisible man. Now much as I'm weary of over-management, the worst situation so far was basically not being managed at all. Everyone just go code something, and, hey, you can go talk to the others (and other teams) personally if you need something from them.
Actually, Microsoft or Google are proof of what he was saying. They're not companies who hired burger-flippers off the street, but companies who hired smart people with an education.
At least for Google we had a recent article right here on Slashdot: they have a very high number of well paid Ph.Ds. Quite the contrary of what your average clueless PHB or beancounter does in the name of efficiency.
Microsoft makes money by selling PHBs the illusion of "buy our patented snake oil, and you can make quality software fast with any burger flipper turned VB.NET developper." But suspiciously enough that is _not_ who Microsoft employs.
Yes, you may rant and rave about how much Microsoft's software sucks, or how it misses deadlines too. But guess what? Most other companies software sucks twice as hard, and costs more too.
While Microsoft does have buffer overflow exploits, other companies had those _and_ a bunch of bugs or broken design decisions of their own. Or shipped downright broken and non-functional software, just to keep a badly planned deadline.
Among the closed source world, Microsoft actually does an outstanding job. So, you know, maybe hiring smart people actually does something for them.
Riight. Yet another case of "well, it worked for _me_, so surely everyone has the _exact_ _same_ hardware and software config."
Well, here's some clue for you. Here's verbatim what happened when installing SuSE 9.0 at home. (At that time, it was the latest and greatest distro.)
Installer detects stuff all wrong.
E.g., my Audigy 2 card isn't really supported unless I download and compile the latest ALSA. Which, in turn, makes 1 or 2 other apps no longer work, because they expect a different version of the ALSA libs. Ooookaaay.
Also, the sound is now muted by default. Not a big issue for me, nor unexpected, since I've been through the same ALSA-muted-by-default crap ever since I first tried ALSA in 2000 or so. But plain idiotic to expect Joe Average to not panic. He just sees that he gets no sound.
(Just for a lark, I tried plugging an old Plantronics USB headset in the USB port, instead of the Audigy 2. Worked in Windows like a charm, after all. Bit too noisy, but works. Linux seemed to be at a total loss about using it. There probably must be some way to get it to work, but nothing that looked like an obvious 5 minute exercise to me. I suppose even less so to Joe Average.)
After installation, X does _not_ work, because the 9800 XT is not among the supplied drivers. Hrm. Fine, I'll just download them with lynx then. (In Windows I would have just popped in the supplied driver CD, but still, downloading is something one does in Windows too.) Except the only way to install them is via the command prompt, and answering some questions. Which Joe Average would have trouble even understanding. (E.g., wth is a gart module, and how should I know which one to use.)
If I had a choice, I'd take Windows's defaulting to 640x480 VGA and having graphical installers for everything.
For some reason, even after following the instructions, X defaults to having no 3D acceleration at all. It all goes through Mesa, and even some screensavers are slower than a dead snail. Trying to play some emulated PSX games in the Linux version of ePSXe, nets me literally single digit frames-per-sec. On a rig which, at that moment, had the fastest gaming CPU _and_ the fastest video card money could buy. (And bearing in mind that Playstation games aren't exactly Doom3. They're very low polycount.)
Again, not something you'd expect Joe Sixpack to instinctively diagnose on his own. He just sees "linux is slow."
Thankfully, the network and the DSL modem is configured and running right. The network printer isn't.
To its credit, it does come with plenty of firewalling possibilities, and even offers to configure it for me. Too bad it's so f***in primitive, that it makes Zone Alarm look like Star Trek technology. (Hint: there's more to security than blocking ports by number.)
The desktop works, too bad half the applications are badly configured for it. E.g., running Midnight Commander in plain linux prompt (ctrl+alt+f2), xterm, konsole and the gnome terminal, yields wildly different results.
Etc, etc, etc.
And if that still sounds like something that Joe Average should be overjoyed with, someday I'll tell you about my installing the 64 bit version of Gentoo. Hint: almost no drivers at all, so it only worked in VESA framebuffer mode. Which was so slow that downloads were slowed down by the painting of the progress bar. Also about 90% of the apps (including OpenOffice) could not be simply emerged as it is, because they weren't ready for 64 bits.
Yep, that's gotta be something to recommend to Joe Average instead of waiting for the 64 bit Windows XP.
"Pop ups? Lets try out this Mozilla Browser instead shall we?"
Ah, right, thanks for giving the perfect example of how Mozilla is broken and not ready for Joe Average.
Ever tried to actually open a valid on-click pop-up before the page has finished loading? (E.g., links to other sites are commonly opening in a new window on most forums. It _is_ a valid pop-up I do _not_ want to block.) E.g., one of the ad servers is overloaded, and the page doesn't count as loaded for 5 minutes straight. It happens every day.
Nope, you can't, can you? Mozilla thinks it's an unwanted popup even though I explicitly clicked on that link.
Why? Because someone was retarded enough to take the quick-hack road there. Instead of actually tracking whether the user clicked or not, it just checks whether it opened after the page is fully loaded. Talk about an idiotic half-baked hack.
It's been like that for _years_, and noone bothers fixing it.
And that's just one example of stuff that's broken in Mozilla.
Just, you know, something to keep in mind before going on rants about how MS is the only one who has bugs. At least MS tries fixing them. Others keep their bugs for years, and pretend that their lack of viruses is some proof of perfection. As opposed to the more realistic: noone will bother writing viruses for a POS that has only 1% of the market.
I'm a programmer, and most of the time I use 2 fingers and the thumbs for shift/ctrl/alt/space. Decently fast, but nowhere near professional typist speeds.Works like a charm anyway.
You know why? Because programming is primarily about design, not about typing.
Anyone who either hires clueless morons off the street as programmers because "it's just typing", shouldn't be in a position to hire. Anyone who brags about their typing speed in vi, or at typing interminable command line pipes to find the definition of some function, is an outdated relic.
A lot of the mindless clerical tasks are nowadays taken by the IDE.
E.g., I don't need to type complex grep pipes to find what parameters does Wally's MyClass.myFunction() take. I only need to hit ctrl+space in Eclipse. Or for that matter, what methods does MyClass have anyway. It'll give me both the parameters _and_ the javadoc documentation.
Or if I want to jump into the source of a given class or method, I don't need to type endless paths at the command prompt. Either ctrl+click or F3 will open the relevant file and take me straight there.
A lot of the common patterns (e.g., writing whole wrapper, facade or factory classes) you no longer need to type either. Either they're available directly in the IDE, or utilities like xdoclet will generate them for you.
So what's left? The design part. The actual solving the problem. Taking one big problem defined in the specs, and breaking it down in smaller and smaller interlocking parts, until you end up with an actual working program.
And then comes the debugging.
Basically whether you type 30 WPM or 100 WPM, you're _not_ going to constantly churn 30 * 60 * 8 = 14400 or 100 * 60 * 8 = 48000 words worth of working program per day. Because the biggest use of your time wasn't the typing.
And when you compare the productivity of two programmers, their typing speed will likely be the least important factor there. The guy who programs 10 times faster isn't typing 300 WPM, but is faster at solving and debugging the actual problem. The Wally who spends 2 years on a small module and it's still unfinished and buggy, well, wasn't a slow typist, but just stupid and lazy.
And that was always so. Typing was always a mean, not a goal.
So basically all I'm trying to say is: taking a typing course might save you a bit of frustration now and then ("grr! I didn't mean to type sprinft there!"), but won't make you a much more productive programmer than you already were.
"But really, what self-respecting Army would pass on a soldier because he spent too much time practicing his BFG9000 skills"
Ah, forget the BFG. There's more military stuff in these games.
1. Rocket and grenade jumps. If you don't shoot rockets at your own feet, you're a wuss and will get 0wn3d.
2. Bunny hopping. Forget that lame myth about taking cover and laying suppression fire. And only crouch or go prone when you aim. Real Men (TM) bunny-hop their way across the battlefield.
3. For that matter, suppression fire never works. Only headshots work. If you don't have a good headshot lined up, better not shoot at all.
4. Only sniper rifles win battles. Any automatic weapon has such a horrible spread, that it's useless beyond 50 ft. Even in 3 round bursts. (E.g., forget about using a LSW at the effective range the US army claims. It can't hit the broad side of a barn at a tenth of that range in any "realistic" game.)
5. Which is just as well, since moving around is just begging to get hit. The way to win a battle is to camp in a dark place with a sniper rifle. Bunny-hop your way to a good camping place ASAP, and stay put there until the battle ends.
6. No battle ever was won by artillery or tanks. And forget about air support: it's just a bunch of n00bs who camp the airstrip, but none of them can actually fly. They'll just crash back into the ground in 5 seconds flat anyway.
7. Reload often. In fact, reload after each shot, if you have a chance.
8. Vehicles are a mixed bag. They are either indestructible, in which case the only way to stop them is to headshot the people using them. Or they can be destroyed with a pistol or SMG too. It just takes longer. Be sure to ask in advance what kind of vehicles you'll be facing.
9. Memorize the layout of the map. Especially where the medkits, weapon and armour spawn points are. When under fire, run (or better yet: bunny-hop) to the nearest medkit spawn point. Only n00bs get killed because they don't know where the nearest medkit spawn point is.
10. For that matter, always stay armoured and buffed. A good kevlar vest can stop even a.50 BMG rifle round. So whenever you're not camping, run around between the armour and quad damage spawn points. Remember: not only you'll be protected yourself, you're also denying the enemy the oportunity to pick those armour points for himself.
11. Enemies always make loud noises when they run. Army boots must have cast iron soles, or something. With a good pair of headphones or a good 7.1 setup you can know in advance where everyone is on the map. Even in the middle of a machinegun fight.
12. Rifles and such tend to clip through walls and doors. Always be on the lookout for gun barrels and such sticking out of concrete walls. It means someone's on the other side. That may be your only forewarning.
13. If all else fails, don't sweat death too much. You'll just respawn and go at it again. Worst that can happen is that you have to wait a whole 2 minutes until the current round ends.
14. Just because you're dead, it doesn't mean you can't still help your team. If the game allows you to move around in "ghost mode", grab Team Speak or the phone and tell your team members where the enemies are.
15. Anyone who's too good at it, is probably cheating. In fact, I bet the USA used aimbots and wall-hacks in Iraq. If you scream and curse loud enough about it, you can get them banned by the admin. Beats actually trying to shoot them.
16. If your team is losing, switch teams. It's not your fault that they're a bunch of unskilled n00bs, and you don't want their incompetence to look bad on your score. Always join the winning team.
"Hon", even ancient Cirrus Logic cards from '94 had font acceleration. Blit acceleration is pretty much standard ever since ancient Tseng Labs cards from '90-'91.
_Also_, if you have a TNT2 card, it's gonna probably be PCI, because and AGP 2x card will likely won't even work with a modern mobo. So your 80 bit tricks go through a 32 bit 33 MHz PCI bus. Instead of letting the card do it over a 128 bit bus, and much higher clocked too. And having to get background data out of the graphics card, combine it, and write it back through that slow bus. Gained any speed? Hell, no.
_Also_, as has been pointed out, there is no "88 bit" in a PC. The float registers are 80 bit, not 88, and still go through a 64 bit bus anyway.
Believing the "88 bit" stupidity alone already tells me you're completely clueless. The rest of the message just confirms it.
So, sure, go ahead and buy your "88 bit kernel." Buy logging rights in Sahara, while you're at it. While we're at it, care to buy a +3 Talisman of Crash Protection? Just glue it to the computer and it'll never crash or get a virus. Honest;)
God knows noone went bankrupt by UNDERestimating people's intelligence, and such posts are just proof.
"I daresay the odds are that I have calculated far more error bars than you have."
And yet you're unable to comprehend why training people to do that is a _good_ thing...
"I don't give a flip about the theory of how many degrees might be in a circle within experimental error. I'm just trying to get the damn missle designed, plane/bridge/road/building built, etc."
Yes, and you'd rather have it calculated by someone who fudged results, or by someone who knew how to calculate an error margin?
How often did you have to calculate something where you already knew the result in advance? Probably exactly zero times.
It's not about the number of degrees in a circle, it's about learning a damn skill. Yes, you learn it on something simple and known in advance. By definition, even. But then you get to apply that skill on something which _isn't_ known in advance.
Like how much fuel to put in that missile. If they knew that already, they wouldn't need you.
It's like teaching people maths. It starts with 1+1=2. The point isn't that someday you'll have an ivory tower job trying to disprove "1+1=2", but that some day you'll use maths on more useful stuff. Again: it's learning a _skill_.
"The educational system needs to turn out informed, employable people.[...]Trained, intelligent people coming from a public education system can only be an aberration that quickly gets remedied."
Oh please... I enjoy a good whine as much as you do, but this one is a stupid whine. The point isn't to churn out people who don't know the 360 degrees definition, it's churning out people who've learned _both_ that _and_ how to conduct an experiment.
It's about teaching them a _skill_. Any idiot can regurgitate trivia. Having a scientific skill is a more valuable thing. And that's what they're trying to teach them there.
So I stand by what I've said: if you can't see why that's more useful than just memorizing trivia and fudging results, that _is_ a failure of education.
The funny thing about any modern video card (as in, made in or after 1994) is that it has hardware acceleration for a lot of things. Including font rendering, blitting bitmaps, etc.
It also tends to have stuff like 8 to 16 pipelines. (Think: 8 to 16 pixels moved at the same time, for a total of 256 to 512 bits moved at a time.) It also sucks data through a much wider pipe than the CPU, has faster RAM, and has a metric buttload of cache.
Each pipeline is also hardware optimized for its job, and _much_ faster than _any_ software loop.
So I'll just laugh at people who think their silly data move tricks are going to outperform a 9800XT's hardware acceleration. No, really, it's so idiotic, it's downright hillarious.
That's one of the major problems with programming: writing some silly optimization that doesn't even work, is for a lot of people more fun than actually doing the job. They just have to do some idiocy like using an Exception for flow control, or using float registers instead of the damn GPU.
And the more speed they _lose_ in the process (not unusual to see a 10x to 100x speed _drop_), tbe more they're convinced they've gained 300%. They haven't actually measured it (in which case they'd see it's actually _lost_ speed), but they just "know" it.
They're so l33t that everything they touch turns gold, after all. No point in actually measuring, when you already know it's got to be faster.
And God knows there's no shortage of them infatuated enough to post their "cool tricks" on some web site, or make a l33t "windows accelerator" utility out of it.
I've seen this problem in all its glory on my brief tenure as a builder on a LP Mud.
_Everyone_ wanted to code some cool uber-complex function. Noone wanted to just sit down and write room or NPC descriptions.
Getting a new _small_ town into the game took 2-3 years, with more team just for that town than some other MUDs have for the whole game.
Even coding new functions for the game degenerated into uber-complex designs that were no fun for the user either.
E.g., at one point they wanted to add ranged combat. You'd think that given the already existing limits of text mode, they'd do something simple and easy to to use. E.g., "shoot north at peter" to shoot at a player called Peter in the room to the north. Right?
Naah. The way they did it, it involved writing a whole novel to a get the game to track Peter, aim at Peter, prepare shooting at Peter, etc. By that time Peter would already be long gone out of your line of sight.
It was also a byzantine piece of code that wanted to track stuff noone even thought about in a text-based game. Such as the actual size of each room. (E.g., is it a small kitchen or a 1 km long piece of road described there?) Or the exact angles between them. (On the drawn map is that room directly west or sorta west-by-north-west?) Or visibility and cover. (Do we say something about trees in the rooms in between?)
The monster not only ran for ever to code, it wasn't fun to test either. No player wanted to track all those trivia himself, in a text-based game, just to shoot a stupid crossbow at someone.
E.g., at some point they wanted to have a crafts system. Me, I would have guessed "start easy, maybe change it later if you have time. Have a simple table of raw materials, tools, and outputs. It's quick to code, and easy on the player."
But, nah, it wasn't realistic and challenging for them. They wanted a complex system, tracking known designs, player-made alterations, intermediate steps and their timing (e.g., is the forge still hot after 5 minutes from using the bellows?), etc.
However, again, it degenerated in a monster project that AFAIK never even made it into beta-testing. Just as well, because again, I can't picture any player wanting to go through writing a whole novel for that and tracking all those details.
... and this kind of article seems to ignore it. In fact, he's a prime example of the problem himself: doesn't actually have a game, he's just talking about some super-cool engine with remote debug logging and whatnot.
The problem is: Games aren't only about programming. Neither are other apps, for that matter.
Programming complicated algorithms is the fun part, and that's why every kid wants to show off his cool (non-structured, non-indented and generally buggy _and_ unmanageable) clever code. No offense you OSS types, but people who want to donate clever coding are a dime a dozen. That's _the_ easy part.
What's the hard and thankless part (and often leading to open conflict with the coders) is the content for a game (e.g., dialogue trees) and the usability for both games and apps. Those are not monkey jobs to be left for last, those are what makes or breaks the game or app.
The nice engine is good and fine, but without content, good design and usability, that engine is stillborn. It's not even dead: it never lived in the first place.
The users won't see the clever code to handle NPC moods and racial interactions, because there are no well designed NPCs to use it. The users won't see that clever code to interpolate normals around a statue, and make it look like a higher polygon count object, unless someone actually sits down and models a statue. And without usability and well designed gameplay, they will see even less, because they quickly leave a non-fun game. Etc.
Not these particular ones, but I've tried various such before. Every couple of weeks someone comes with some "clever" idea how they could mess with Windows to run faster or prevent crashes. Big names too: Norton, Quarterdeck, etc, all had various such programs at various points in time.
They invariably suck.
E.g., Norton's "crash prevention" was _causing_ and otherwise patched-to-date and spyware-free Windows 9.x system to crash randomly. It was horrible. Uninstalling it resulted in a much more stable Windows. (In as much as Windows 9.x can be described as "stable".)
E.g., Quarterdeck's memory compression technique actually severely lowered the RAM available to apps and caused _more_ paging. Paging to a compressed RAM-drive, sure, but it's nevertheless worse than no paging at all. (Zipping the paged data does take CPU cycles.)
In the case of freeware/shareware ones, it's sometimes obvious that those people actually have no fscking clue how Windows works, nor what does their interfering with it really do.
They also usually don't measure. Just like that fucktard at the office who uses exceptions as flow-control, they didn't even actually measure if their optimizations work: they just "know" that it works. It must be blazing fast because it's his code, and he's such a l33t über-hacker. Or he's read it in some l33t über-hacker's blog. (In practice, throwing an Exception in Java is the slowest operation possible, so that's an anti-optimization.)
E.g., every kid with a compiler first guesses: "RAM. Preciousss RAM. Gotta free more RAM." So they write some idiotic utility to force-swap everything but the current app to disc. Well, that's nice, except it's what Windows would have done anyway if needed. Every OS, including Windows, keeps some form of LRU evidence to swap unused pages to disc when a more used app needs the space.
But what happens when that app _is_ needed in RAM? E.g., it's some core DLL of Windows. E.g., it's the IM program in use. Well, it gets loaded right back. And that idiotic utility force-swaps it out again. And Windows loads it again. Repeat ad nauseam, just generating pointless disk activity.
Dunno if you even realize how experimental science works. The point of an experiment isn't to test your knowledge, but to actually measure, add and calculate whether you're within the expecting margin of error.
Generally the point is to try to _test_ the theory, and be prepared for it to be false. Not just to show that you know what the answer should be.
That's the difference between science and religion. If you know the sacred 360 and never dare show your lack of faith by measuring, that's religion. Science on the other hand is _based_ on searching for that experiment which disproves existing theories, or at least shows their limits.
E.g., at one point, everyone just "knew" that a cannonball 10 times heavier will fall 10 times faster. For thousands of years people were content to be cool by regurgitating the known result. Then someone actually measured, and it turns out it was false.
It was also "known" that if you drop something off the top of the mast on a moving ship, it will undoubtedly fall straight down and thus behind the ship. Again, for thousands of years everyone was cool with just knowing that. Turns out it was false too.
It was "known" that an object heavier than air can't possibly fly. Turns out it was false too.
Etc.
Basically if everyone was your ideal of fudging the results to fit the existing theory, we'd still be living in caves and wearing stylish tiger-skin loincloths. Any progress that was made was made by people who weren't affraid to measure and get a 365 result. And know why 365 is ok for the precision class of their used instruments.
And it's also important from another point of view: sometimes you don't know the answer. Sometimes you don't get to measure a full circle. Sometimes you just get to add a long list of imprecisely measured numbers. And if you can actually calculate the expected margin of error, you may well be far more useful than the "educated" ignoramus who doesn't even think about that.
And if you're _still_ not able to comprehend why the 355-365 range is actually a more useful result than 360 there, and why learning to calculate that is fundamental to science _and_ computing... well, let's just say there's a failure of education for you.
I've worked with both Oracle and IBM's DB2. Both offer fixed precision numbers. Even all the single user databases I've used, dating at least all the way back to dBase 2 under CP/M, worked that way.
And all major languages offer libraries to read and process that as a decimal, not as float. At least in Java it's part of the standard library.
You know why? Because of the reason I've mentioned in the post you're answering to. Floating point maths errors. It's an issue known since the 60s.
I.e., I stand by what I've said. If in the program it's read by as a float, then the blame lies squarely with the clueless burger-flipper who's read that data into a float. Someone who didn't even bother learning either the standard database capabilities or the very core libraries of the language, but is paid as a programmer anyway.
"More power to him I say.[...] Expecting people 'not' to crack/compromise insecure systems, a daydream you're having"
Newsflash: the real world was not built on being 100 unbreakable and unpenetrable.
E.g., your front door would _not_ be unbreakable to someone determined to get past it with an axe. It's a known vulnerability, for the past few thousands of years, and noone's fixing it. Your windows are likely even more vulnerable.
E.g., locks can be picked. Locks with master keys allow for escalation of privileges by attacking one pin at a time. It's a known vulnerability too.
The way Real Life works isn't to waste manpower and money to make something 100% impenetrable. Real Life works by basically just setting up a big sign that says "you're not allowed past this point." And if you do, we'll throw your sorry ass in jail.
That's really all that your front door and lock are: a sign that other people are not allowed past that point. If someone actually does the effort to pick the lock or hack down the door, it's proof enough that they did get their hint to stay out and deliberately circumvented it. So we throw them in jail.
If someone entered your home, it's not the door manufacturer's fault, it's not the lock manufacturer's fault, it's simply the thief that's to blame. That's the one who deserves some fine time in a state prison.
That's the security model that the Real World society was built upon. It's not perfect, but it worked wonderfully so far.
And here's your free complimentary clue for the day: those Windows users' instinctive expectation of computer security is the same. They don't expect their computers to be an impenetrable fortress, since their RL home or car isn't either. They do expect that whoever breaks past the boundary of their home, car or computer be thrown into state jail.
Unrealistic expectation at the moment? Maybe. But not an _unreasonable_ one. As in: it's not unreasonable to throw the script kiddie or virus writer in jail anyway. Sure, we won't stop trying to make the apps more secure, but in the meantime we also throw the asshole in jail to deter other assholes.
And maybe it's time to give users what they ask for, instead of idiotically insisting that they addapt to what we feel like programming. Not even just in this aspect. The software industry is a fucking disaster in this aspect, and all this whining about "idiot users" and "idiot managers" is just proof of it.
Any other industry, they try to make things comfortable and obvious for the user. In the software industry we just call them idiots and have whole sites dedicated to whining about them.
"these are probably the same sort of people who blame doctors for letting someone die when they're forcecd to work 100 hour shifts with no budget, aging equipment and abusive people."
Talk about a retarded analogy...
No, if you want to compare those doctors to someone, the apt comparison is with the net admins who had to do overtime to remove worms. If you want to compare this particular cretin to someone, it's with someone who deliberately creates and releases a new strain on flu to make a profit out of the cure. (Remember the cretin made the virus to drum up his mom's business.)
Would I be angry at the doctors or sysadmins there? Nope. They worked hard to repair the damage.
Would I be angry at the cretin who deliberately set the virus loose (whether computer virus or new flu strain)? Damn right.
Or maybe not necessarily angry, but I'd want him roasted slowly at the stake anyway. Or if that's not an option, hey, put him behind bars for a couple of decades. Just to deterr other such vandals.
So here's the deal: get brain already. If you can't tell the difference between someone working to _repair_ the damage, and the vandal who deliberately _did_ the damage, you have a problem. You need professional help.
It's like not being to distinguish between the asshole who keyed your car, and the shop who repainted the car. It's like not being able to distinguish between the vandal who threw a brick through a window, and the people who worked to replace the glass sheets. It's that idiotic.
You're measuring angles with an analog device with at best 1 degree accuracy per angle. When adding such imprecise data, yes, the margin for error increases.
In fact, there are several lessons to learn from that. E.g.,:
1. Any experimental data which neatly falls _exactly_ on the theoretical curve, and adds up to _exactly_ the predicted number is most probably cheated.
I.e., had I been a teacher, I would have been a lot more suspicious of anyone who came with 360 there, than of someone whose angles added up to 355. The guy with 360 probably skipped the last angle and just subtracted the sum of the others from 360. Which is _not_ what was asked.
2. Be aware of the imprecision involved in any measurement. Be aware how they add up, subtract or multiply. Especially for anyone working in any experimental science. (E.g., physics.) Or with computers.
I.e., when that board calculated that, within the precision of the measuring device, it can be between 355 and 365, they did their homework. You didn't.
3. If you work with computers, be aware of the limitations of the data type you use.
E.g., if I see another clueless burger-flipper using 4 byte floats to hold money amounts in a database program, I'm gonna barf. Doubly so when then they start wondering why their final numbers are some 10,000$ off the mark.
4. As a corolary, never use == with floating point results. Not even with the most trivial calculations (e.g., that the sum of the individual rows equals what's in the totals field.) Do what scientists and that Board of Studies do: calculate the expected margin for error and use an interval.
Greedy people, they sure have. Very greedy even. Some even evil.
But people who'd die a slow painful death themselves for that greed? I really don't think so. I'll say that:
- No amount of money in the world can make every single pharamaceuticals executive rather die of cancer than search for a cure. When you're dead, all the money in the world is no longer of any use.
- No amount of money in the world can make all of them just watch their child or parents die a slow death, rather than search for a cure. Maybe one or two assholes, yeah. But all of them? No fscking way. Your average mother would probably rather die herself than watch her 5 year old in a casket.
People, even politicians, have been known to make 180 degree turns when their loved ones are in danger. See the recent swing in stem cell research policy in the USA, when it looked like it could save a few rich old people.
Some stuff turns around even a politician who got elected for bible-thumping and promising the exact opposite. So I'll go on a limb and say that if a cure is possible, something like this _will_ convince at least one doctor or pharma manager to search for it.
I'll also say that for most diseases you don't have anything to gain from _not_ making a cure. Contrary to the popular conspiracy theory you just can't milk them of money for ever.
E.g., someone with cancer typically dies within 3 years. Most even sooner. That's it. Whatever milking you're going to do, that's the deadline. You milk them of money, but then they die.
If you could make a treatment which costs a lot for 3 years, and then they're _cured_, you'd have a lot more money to gain. Until the patent expires, everyone would want to pay for 3 years and _live_, as opposed to pay for 3 years and _die_. You could make them pay a helluva lot more.
_Especially_ those "evil" greedy corporate types are very good at understanding that kind of logic. They're there to make money, and blimey, that's one cure which would bring in _tons_ of money.
E.g., diabetes was mentioned. Well, you know, insuline isn't protected by patents or anything, and everyone produces it. It's a _commodity_. It does't bring in that much money. If someone could make a pill that just cures diabetes, and get a 20 year monopoly on it (via patents), they would. It would bring in far more money than being the 100'th company selling cheap insulin.
"This is about another company modifying the software on the device to allow playing an unsupported format, not about screwing the consumer over."
Real did _not_ modify Apple's software. Real only figured out how to save a file in Apple's proprietary DRM-ed format. They're only saving a DRM-ed file in a format that the iPod can read. That's all.
That was Real's heinous crime: writing a utility to convert between two file formats. That's all.
It's like Microsoft using DMCA to stop OpenOffice from saving Word or Excel files. It's _that_ idiotic and anti-competitive.
Only suddenly that counts as good and fine, because it's from Apple.
And how the fsck is it good for the consumer? Real allows you to play more downloaded songs on the iPod. Apple wants you locked into only what Apple itself offered. How the heck isn't it screwing the consumer over? Geesh.
"And, there no restrictions that lock a user in to listening to music purchased from Apple. Any music in mp3 or AAC format can be played on the iPod. If Real wanted, they could have made their music available in a supported format"
Again, you're wrong. The iPod only supports Apple's own proprietary DRM scheme.
And again, _all_ that Read did was save a file in, yes, the kind of DRM-ed AAC format that the iPod supports. Yes, they did exactly what you preach. And Apple is waving the DMCA to stop them from doing that. How do you defend that?
And please don't give me the "so offer the files without DRM". You know that isn't an option. Most music labels only allow downloads if they're DRM-ed. Sure, you could always use a warezed MP3 on the iPod. But _legal_ download usually _must_ be DRM-ed.
Ah, the mandatory fscking stupid conspiracy theory
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Wasn't feeling like/. without some idiotic conspiracy theory. And hey, look, it's the old favourite: those evil pharma corporations are all refusing to develop a cure.
Never mind that:
1. There _is_ money in a cure. If you had a cure for, say, Cancer and a 20 year patent on it, you could sell it for any sky-high amount of money you'd want to. It's the perfect extortion scheme. You pay up or you die a slow painful death.
2. Lo and behold, they did make cures and vaccines for a metric buttload of diseases.
3. Most importantly: there are doctors, pharmacists, managers at pharmaceuticals corporations, etc, who die of Cancer every year. Or have a bad case of diabetes. Or whose _child_ is dying of some disease.
Now you're telling me no less than they'll rather patiently wait for their own death -- or the death of those they love -- rather than break the conspiracy oath and divulge the cure. Doesn't that strike you as a completely retarded idea? If _you_ could make a cure, and you'll _die_ if you don't, wouldn't you just make the stupid cure already?
4. We're talking millions of doctors, pharmacists and researchers world wide. Some in countries where they don't even have private enterprise as you know it. (E.g., until recently the USSR and to some extent still China.) Or where it's not even easy to keep in touch with a western conspiracy. (E.g., the USSR block was pretty much isolated and guarded by a paranoid secret police.) And which invested hundreds of billions in researchs. (E.g., in developping their own nuclear weapons, sattellites, chemical weapons, biological weapons, ICBMs, etc.)
Yet you'd want me to believe that _all_ those are part of the same global conspiracy to keep some diseases untreated.
You know what? There's a medical name for that. It's called "Paranoia".
Yes, companies want to make more money. Yes, greed is what keeps capitalism working.
However, just like gasoline and fire, we're talking a destructive force which needs to be channelled to work _for_ us, not let it run amok _against_ us. Corporate greed is only good and fine as long as it's channelled to serve the good of society. (E.g., the prospect of making a fortune seems to be a damn good motivation to research and produce cheaper or better goods.)
But there's a time and place to draw the line. The time when it acts against the consumer.
There is stuff which is plain old evil, even if done for corporate profit. E.g., spamming by fax is illegal, even though some companies were making a profit out of it. E.g., even the USA eventually recognized that, even though someone's making a profit out of it, most people would rather not be harrassed by telemarketting. Etc.
Back to Appl3e, in this case it is nothing more than an appalling attempt to lock people into a proprietary one-vendor scheme. It is nothing short of blatant anti-competitive behaviour.
It's something that/. always cries foul when done by Microsoft. E.g., I don't think many on/. cheered about MS deliberately making Netscape crash, back in the days of browser wars. E.g., I don't think anyone cheered way back when MS deliberately made Windows 3.x crash on DR DOS. Etc.
It was the same thing: a shameless attempt to lock out competition, and lock you into having one single choice.
Yes, those were done for corporate profit too. No, it didn't make them excusable.
So why is it excusable when done by Apple? Seems to me like Apple is doing the wrong thing here, and that's that.
Except then it wouldn't have been conspicuous consumption. Noone's even supposed to envy your having money to blow on a pogo stick.
Let's face it. That thing isn't practical, isn't useful, isn't even geeky. It's just a case of conspicuous consumption. The only thing it's supposed to do is scream "Look! I can afford to blow thousands on a useless toy!" Same as wearing exotic fur coats, solid gold watches, or such. Only a lot sadder. (A fur coat or a gold watch at least have _some_ use.)
And such stunts as "look! we're even using them to play a sad dumbed-down version of polo!" only serve to scream that to even more people. It's bragging.
And even as mine-is-bigger-than-yours willy-waving goes, I find this to be a very sad version.
When you read soneone's bragging about, say, their overclocking their CPU, there was some user skill involved. Some of those people spent time making their own waterblocks, or whatever.
When you see someone with a huge wing on their car, it's at least supposed to tell you that the owner can drive fast. (In practice it just says they have a small dick, even smaller brains, and a bad case of complexes.)
Whereas this is supposed to say... what? "Look! I'm a spoiled rich brat with too much money!" Sorry, that's nothing I can admire. Skill I can admire. Merely being rich and stupid, nope. No admiration from me there.
"The fact that a large quantity of people consider this to be a good idea probably says more about the generally poor physical fitness in N. America vs the world than diet, anyhow."
Erm. Even if you look in this thread alone, you'll see that most posts are basically rehashes of "Yuck. It's a stupid rich-boy's toy." It's also the topic with the least number of posts I've seen on/. on the front page in quite some time.
And bear in mind that us/. people are usually terminal nerds, and easily excited by high tech toys. Normally you could pretty much take any stupidity, make it electronic, expensive and impractical (and preferrably put something running Linux in it too), and/.ters would be drawn to it like cats to a catnip mouse. Yet even here you don't see many people excited by the Segway.
And in the real world, you didn't see massive protests against forbidding Segways on walkways.
So exactly how does it translate into "a large quantity of people consider this to be a good idea"? How's it justifying a sweeping generalization about Americans? Seems to me like, most probably, if you took a bunch of average Americans and asked them about the Segway, you'd get the same "it's a stupid rich-boy's toy" answer as anywhere else in the world.
"Here's another benefit - anyone who's been a kid (or dealt with kids) and trying to distract their attention away from a game, the excuse is always "I can't pause now" or "hang on, just a minute". If you have a game that you can literally drop and walk away from, it changes the way you interact with it."
Good to see I'm not the only one who's been wondering if game companies are shooting themselves in the foot with that.
There's a lot of anti-gaming resentment among some parents, and a lot of it doesn't come from "it'll teach them to be violent" ideas. Probably most of it is along the lines of "but he cares about that console more than about me! Every time I tell him to come do something, he's like 'can't pause now'! And half an hour later he's still at it! He's addicted!"
And I've been playing games myself where I have to replay a whole huge map from the beginning, if I quit in the wrong place. Or even one which made me play 10 hours straight before I found a save point.
Now adult or kid, noone wants to lose half an hour of their work. Tell some non-gamer to turn the computer off _now_ without saving, when they're writing a long email or post. No, no touching that "save" or "send" button. Turn it off _now_! They won't be happy. They won't want to.
So I'm guessing that a lot of the "addiction" that some parents see, is actually just idiotic game design.
Just for the record, I do think that games are mildly addictive. But there's mild addiction and there's major addiction. Even an alcohol addict can take a 5 minute break from drinking. Even a chain-smoker can take a short break from smoking.
When they can't, that's when you get worried. And that's what those parents mistakenly think they see there: someone who absolutely can't take a break from playing with that console. No matter how often you tell him to come here, that damn kid is like glued there to the controller, and seemingly can't take a break. When in reality, the poor bugger is just feverishly looking for a save point, 'cause he'd rather not have to redo the whole last hour.
Makes it look like a far worse addiction than it really is. In some cases, it makes it look bad enough that a stupid parent and a luddite physician put that kid on drugs, to "save" him from those evil games.
I'm thinking that if designers stopped doing that, they'd have a lot less bad press and a lot less worried parents on their case.
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I don't know, I thought that experimentation was pretty much the _basis_ for alchemy.
Much of what we perceive wrong with it, is because back then they didn't have our model. Now we know a lot about mollecules, electrons, their orbits, all kinds of forces, etc. You know what happens when you mix two substances.
They didn't, back then. We're talking between hundreds and thousands of years before even the raisin pie model of the atom. (Which itself wasn't anywhere near right.)
They only saw that you mix solution A with solution B, and instead of a mixture of them, you get the totally different solution C. Or sometimes it blows up in your face.
Why? Who knows? Maybe the atoms of A and B change into atoms of C?
And when you start with a supposition like that, it no longer looks that ridiculous to ask "well, then, what are the A and B to mix so that C=gold?" In fact, it's a pretty scientific thing to ask.
All that mystical stuff was grasping in the dark for a model that worked. They didn't have ours. They had one which was largely false, but still marginally better than none whatsoever.
"There is this curve where when you learn how to program and write a few small projects you extrapolate from that experience and believe that large projects must be the same."
Good to see I'm not the only one who's noticed this. People write some 10 line BASIC program, and then can't understand why writing an 100,000 line one is a much bigger problem. (And that's not even the biggest of projects.)
You don't even need to go into uncharted waters: if you tried writing an 100,000 line as the same kind of unstructured mess, you'd end up with a nightmare to debug and/or maintain anyway. The size alone, and the fact that you're essentially looking at it through a keyhole of 25 (or 50 or 100) lines at a time makes it a fundamentally different kind of problem than that 10 line BASIC exercise.
And it's not only MBA types. Most programmers (and I mean actual programmers) come out the college without ever having had to maintain anything _near_ the scale of actual projects. And some of the flamewars (e.g., about how any kind of structure or strong typing sucks) are nothing but proof that someone never was in a large project, but is extrapolating out of their ass anyway.
Either way, IMHO that's only one of the problem types. The ones I've had trouble with include, but are not limited to:
1. The extrapolating type you've just described.
2. The "form before function" type. If it's easy to drag and drop some buttons in a form editor, surely any monkey can put the code together in no time. I mean, phbt, programming is easy. It was dropping those buttons that was the real problem.
3. The living proof that "just a little knowledge can be dangerous."
E.g., someone who doesn't really understand XML, but just heard that it's good. Dunno for what. Probably for everything. 'Cause SUN said so. So next thing you know, everything _must_ happen in XML. Even calls inside the program have their parameters passed as XML, and every method starts by parsing its arguments out of XML. (Not a joke: I know at least one project based on that idea.) Or since XSLT is all the rage too, let's have business logic and workflow control in XSLT. (Again, sadly not a joke.)
E.g., the PHB (or even programmer) who bought some book about patterns or best practices on Amazon, didn't really understand it, but now everything must use every single one of those. If every single of your objects doesn't also involve a singleton, which gives you a factory, which gives you an object registered with a manager, etc, it's coming out of your pay. (Again, not a joke: one PHB actually went through a phase where everyone was required to write endless reports about which patterns they used. And would get berated if they didn't use enough. No matter for what.)
4. The invisible man. Now much as I'm weary of over-management, the worst situation so far was basically not being managed at all. Everyone just go code something, and, hey, you can go talk to the others (and other teams) personally if you need something from them.
Actually, Microsoft or Google are proof of what he was saying. They're not companies who hired burger-flippers off the street, but companies who hired smart people with an education.
At least for Google we had a recent article right here on Slashdot: they have a very high number of well paid Ph.Ds. Quite the contrary of what your average clueless PHB or beancounter does in the name of efficiency.
Microsoft makes money by selling PHBs the illusion of "buy our patented snake oil, and you can make quality software fast with any burger flipper turned VB.NET developper." But suspiciously enough that is _not_ who Microsoft employs.
Yes, you may rant and rave about how much Microsoft's software sucks, or how it misses deadlines too. But guess what? Most other companies software sucks twice as hard, and costs more too.
While Microsoft does have buffer overflow exploits, other companies had those _and_ a bunch of bugs or broken design decisions of their own. Or shipped downright broken and non-functional software, just to keep a badly planned deadline.
Among the closed source world, Microsoft actually does an outstanding job. So, you know, maybe hiring smart people actually does something for them.
Riight. Yet another case of "well, it worked for _me_, so surely everyone has the _exact_ _same_ hardware and software config."
Well, here's some clue for you. Here's verbatim what happened when installing SuSE 9.0 at home. (At that time, it was the latest and greatest distro.)
Installer detects stuff all wrong.
E.g., my Audigy 2 card isn't really supported unless I download and compile the latest ALSA. Which, in turn, makes 1 or 2 other apps no longer work, because they expect a different version of the ALSA libs. Ooookaaay.
Also, the sound is now muted by default. Not a big issue for me, nor unexpected, since I've been through the same ALSA-muted-by-default crap ever since I first tried ALSA in 2000 or so. But plain idiotic to expect Joe Average to not panic. He just sees that he gets no sound.
(Just for a lark, I tried plugging an old Plantronics USB headset in the USB port, instead of the Audigy 2. Worked in Windows like a charm, after all. Bit too noisy, but works. Linux seemed to be at a total loss about using it. There probably must be some way to get it to work, but nothing that looked like an obvious 5 minute exercise to me. I suppose even less so to Joe Average.)
After installation, X does _not_ work, because the 9800 XT is not among the supplied drivers. Hrm. Fine, I'll just download them with lynx then. (In Windows I would have just popped in the supplied driver CD, but still, downloading is something one does in Windows too.) Except the only way to install them is via the command prompt, and answering some questions. Which Joe Average would have trouble even understanding. (E.g., wth is a gart module, and how should I know which one to use.)
If I had a choice, I'd take Windows's defaulting to 640x480 VGA and having graphical installers for everything.
For some reason, even after following the instructions, X defaults to having no 3D acceleration at all. It all goes through Mesa, and even some screensavers are slower than a dead snail. Trying to play some emulated PSX games in the Linux version of ePSXe, nets me literally single digit frames-per-sec. On a rig which, at that moment, had the fastest gaming CPU _and_ the fastest video card money could buy. (And bearing in mind that Playstation games aren't exactly Doom3. They're very low polycount.)
Again, not something you'd expect Joe Sixpack to instinctively diagnose on his own. He just sees "linux is slow."
Thankfully, the network and the DSL modem is configured and running right. The network printer isn't.
To its credit, it does come with plenty of firewalling possibilities, and even offers to configure it for me. Too bad it's so f***in primitive, that it makes Zone Alarm look like Star Trek technology. (Hint: there's more to security than blocking ports by number.)
The desktop works, too bad half the applications are badly configured for it. E.g., running Midnight Commander in plain linux prompt (ctrl+alt+f2), xterm, konsole and the gnome terminal, yields wildly different results.
Etc, etc, etc.
And if that still sounds like something that Joe Average should be overjoyed with, someday I'll tell you about my installing the 64 bit version of Gentoo. Hint: almost no drivers at all, so it only worked in VESA framebuffer mode. Which was so slow that downloads were slowed down by the painting of the progress bar. Also about 90% of the apps (including OpenOffice) could not be simply emerged as it is, because they weren't ready for 64 bits.
Yep, that's gotta be something to recommend to Joe Average instead of waiting for the 64 bit Windows XP.
"Pop ups? Lets try out this Mozilla Browser instead shall we?"
Ah, right, thanks for giving the perfect example of how Mozilla is broken and not ready for Joe Average.
Ever tried to actually open a valid on-click pop-up before the page has finished loading? (E.g., links to other sites are commonly opening in a new window on most forums. It _is_ a valid pop-up I do _not_ want to block.) E.g., one of the ad servers is overloaded, and the page doesn't count as loaded for 5 minutes straight. It happens every day.
Nope, you can't, can you? Mozilla thinks it's an unwanted popup even though I explicitly clicked on that link.
Why? Because someone was retarded enough to take the quick-hack road there. Instead of actually tracking whether the user clicked or not, it just checks whether it opened after the page is fully loaded. Talk about an idiotic half-baked hack.
It's been like that for _years_, and noone bothers fixing it.
And that's just one example of stuff that's broken in Mozilla.
Just, you know, something to keep in mind before going on rants about how MS is the only one who has bugs. At least MS tries fixing them. Others keep their bugs for years, and pretend that their lack of viruses is some proof of perfection. As opposed to the more realistic: noone will bother writing viruses for a POS that has only 1% of the market.
I'm a programmer, and most of the time I use 2 fingers and the thumbs for shift/ctrl/alt/space. Decently fast, but nowhere near professional typist speeds.Works like a charm anyway.
You know why? Because programming is primarily about design, not about typing.
Anyone who either hires clueless morons off the street as programmers because "it's just typing", shouldn't be in a position to hire. Anyone who brags about their typing speed in vi, or at typing interminable command line pipes to find the definition of some function, is an outdated relic.
A lot of the mindless clerical tasks are nowadays taken by the IDE.
E.g., I don't need to type complex grep pipes to find what parameters does Wally's MyClass.myFunction() take. I only need to hit ctrl+space in Eclipse. Or for that matter, what methods does MyClass have anyway. It'll give me both the parameters _and_ the javadoc documentation.
Or if I want to jump into the source of a given class or method, I don't need to type endless paths at the command prompt. Either ctrl+click or F3 will open the relevant file and take me straight there.
A lot of the common patterns (e.g., writing whole wrapper, facade or factory classes) you no longer need to type either. Either they're available directly in the IDE, or utilities like xdoclet will generate them for you.
So what's left? The design part. The actual solving the problem. Taking one big problem defined in the specs, and breaking it down in smaller and smaller interlocking parts, until you end up with an actual working program.
And then comes the debugging.
Basically whether you type 30 WPM or 100 WPM, you're _not_ going to constantly churn 30 * 60 * 8 = 14400 or 100 * 60 * 8 = 48000 words worth of working program per day. Because the biggest use of your time wasn't the typing.
And when you compare the productivity of two programmers, their typing speed will likely be the least important factor there. The guy who programs 10 times faster isn't typing 300 WPM, but is faster at solving and debugging the actual problem. The Wally who spends 2 years on a small module and it's still unfinished and buggy, well, wasn't a slow typist, but just stupid and lazy.
And that was always so. Typing was always a mean, not a goal.
So basically all I'm trying to say is: taking a typing course might save you a bit of frustration now and then ("grr! I didn't mean to type sprinft there!"), but won't make you a much more productive programmer than you already were.
"But really, what self-respecting Army would pass on a soldier because he spent too much time practicing his BFG9000 skills"
.50 BMG rifle round. So whenever you're not camping, run around between the armour and quad damage spawn points. Remember: not only you'll be protected yourself, you're also denying the enemy the oportunity to pick those armour points for himself.
Ah, forget the BFG. There's more military stuff in these games.
1. Rocket and grenade jumps. If you don't shoot rockets at your own feet, you're a wuss and will get 0wn3d.
2. Bunny hopping. Forget that lame myth about taking cover and laying suppression fire. And only crouch or go prone when you aim. Real Men (TM) bunny-hop their way across the battlefield.
3. For that matter, suppression fire never works. Only headshots work. If you don't have a good headshot lined up, better not shoot at all.
4. Only sniper rifles win battles. Any automatic weapon has such a horrible spread, that it's useless beyond 50 ft. Even in 3 round bursts. (E.g., forget about using a LSW at the effective range the US army claims. It can't hit the broad side of a barn at a tenth of that range in any "realistic" game.)
5. Which is just as well, since moving around is just begging to get hit. The way to win a battle is to camp in a dark place with a sniper rifle. Bunny-hop your way to a good camping place ASAP, and stay put there until the battle ends.
6. No battle ever was won by artillery or tanks. And forget about air support: it's just a bunch of n00bs who camp the airstrip, but none of them can actually fly. They'll just crash back into the ground in 5 seconds flat anyway.
7. Reload often. In fact, reload after each shot, if you have a chance.
8. Vehicles are a mixed bag. They are either indestructible, in which case the only way to stop them is to headshot the people using them. Or they can be destroyed with a pistol or SMG too. It just takes longer. Be sure to ask in advance what kind of vehicles you'll be facing.
9. Memorize the layout of the map. Especially where the medkits, weapon and armour spawn points are. When under fire, run (or better yet: bunny-hop) to the nearest medkit spawn point. Only n00bs get killed because they don't know where the nearest medkit spawn point is.
10. For that matter, always stay armoured and buffed. A good kevlar vest can stop even a
11. Enemies always make loud noises when they run. Army boots must have cast iron soles, or something. With a good pair of headphones or a good 7.1 setup you can know in advance where everyone is on the map. Even in the middle of a machinegun fight.
12. Rifles and such tend to clip through walls and doors. Always be on the lookout for gun barrels and such sticking out of concrete walls. It means someone's on the other side. That may be your only forewarning.
13. If all else fails, don't sweat death too much. You'll just respawn and go at it again. Worst that can happen is that you have to wait a whole 2 minutes until the current round ends.
14. Just because you're dead, it doesn't mean you can't still help your team. If the game allows you to move around in "ghost mode", grab Team Speak or the phone and tell your team members where the enemies are.
15. Anyone who's too good at it, is probably cheating. In fact, I bet the USA used aimbots and wall-hacks in Iraq. If you scream and curse loud enough about it, you can get them banned by the admin. Beats actually trying to shoot them.
16. If your team is losing, switch teams. It's not your fault that they're a bunch of unskilled n00bs, and you don't want their incompetence to look bad on your score. Always join the winning team.
Etc.
"Hon", even ancient Cirrus Logic cards from '94 had font acceleration. Blit acceleration is pretty much standard ever since ancient Tseng Labs cards from '90-'91.
;)
_Also_, if you have a TNT2 card, it's gonna probably be PCI, because and AGP 2x card will likely won't even work with a modern mobo. So your 80 bit tricks go through a 32 bit 33 MHz PCI bus. Instead of letting the card do it over a 128 bit bus, and much higher clocked too. And having to get background data out of the graphics card, combine it, and write it back through that slow bus. Gained any speed? Hell, no.
_Also_, as has been pointed out, there is no "88 bit" in a PC. The float registers are 80 bit, not 88, and still go through a 64 bit bus anyway.
Believing the "88 bit" stupidity alone already tells me you're completely clueless. The rest of the message just confirms it.
So, sure, go ahead and buy your "88 bit kernel." Buy logging rights in Sahara, while you're at it. While we're at it, care to buy a +3 Talisman of Crash Protection? Just glue it to the computer and it'll never crash or get a virus. Honest
God knows noone went bankrupt by UNDERestimating people's intelligence, and such posts are just proof.
"I daresay the odds are that I have calculated far more error bars than you have."
And yet you're unable to comprehend why training people to do that is a _good_ thing...
"I don't give a flip about the theory of how many degrees might be in a circle within experimental error. I'm just trying to get the damn missle designed, plane/bridge/road/building built, etc."
Yes, and you'd rather have it calculated by someone who fudged results, or by someone who knew how to calculate an error margin?
How often did you have to calculate something where you already knew the result in advance? Probably exactly zero times.
It's not about the number of degrees in a circle, it's about learning a damn skill. Yes, you learn it on something simple and known in advance. By definition, even. But then you get to apply that skill on something which _isn't_ known in advance.
Like how much fuel to put in that missile. If they knew that already, they wouldn't need you.
It's like teaching people maths. It starts with 1+1=2. The point isn't that someday you'll have an ivory tower job trying to disprove "1+1=2", but that some day you'll use maths on more useful stuff. Again: it's learning a _skill_.
"The educational system needs to turn out informed, employable people.[...]Trained, intelligent people coming from a public education system can only be an aberration that quickly gets remedied."
Oh please... I enjoy a good whine as much as you do, but this one is a stupid whine. The point isn't to churn out people who don't know the 360 degrees definition, it's churning out people who've learned _both_ that _and_ how to conduct an experiment.
It's about teaching them a _skill_. Any idiot can regurgitate trivia. Having a scientific skill is a more valuable thing. And that's what they're trying to teach them there.
So I stand by what I've said: if you can't see why that's more useful than just memorizing trivia and fudging results, that _is_ a failure of education.
The funny thing about any modern video card (as in, made in or after 1994) is that it has hardware acceleration for a lot of things. Including font rendering, blitting bitmaps, etc.
It also tends to have stuff like 8 to 16 pipelines. (Think: 8 to 16 pixels moved at the same time, for a total of 256 to 512 bits moved at a time.) It also sucks data through a much wider pipe than the CPU, has faster RAM, and has a metric buttload of cache.
Each pipeline is also hardware optimized for its job, and _much_ faster than _any_ software loop.
So I'll just laugh at people who think their silly data move tricks are going to outperform a 9800XT's hardware acceleration. No, really, it's so idiotic, it's downright hillarious.
That's one of the major problems with programming: writing some silly optimization that doesn't even work, is for a lot of people more fun than actually doing the job. They just have to do some idiocy like using an Exception for flow control, or using float registers instead of the damn GPU.
And the more speed they _lose_ in the process (not unusual to see a 10x to 100x speed _drop_), tbe more they're convinced they've gained 300%. They haven't actually measured it (in which case they'd see it's actually _lost_ speed), but they just "know" it.
They're so l33t that everything they touch turns gold, after all. No point in actually measuring, when you already know it's got to be faster.
And God knows there's no shortage of them infatuated enough to post their "cool tricks" on some web site, or make a l33t "windows accelerator" utility out of it.
I've seen this problem in all its glory on my brief tenure as a builder on a LP Mud.
_Everyone_ wanted to code some cool uber-complex function. Noone wanted to just sit down and write room or NPC descriptions.
Getting a new _small_ town into the game took 2-3 years, with more team just for that town than some other MUDs have for the whole game.
Even coding new functions for the game degenerated into uber-complex designs that were no fun for the user either.
E.g., at one point they wanted to add ranged combat. You'd think that given the already existing limits of text mode, they'd do something simple and easy to to use. E.g., "shoot north at peter" to shoot at a player called Peter in the room to the north. Right?
Naah. The way they did it, it involved writing a whole novel to a get the game to track Peter, aim at Peter, prepare shooting at Peter, etc. By that time Peter would already be long gone out of your line of sight.
It was also a byzantine piece of code that wanted to track stuff noone even thought about in a text-based game. Such as the actual size of each room. (E.g., is it a small kitchen or a 1 km long piece of road described there?) Or the exact angles between them. (On the drawn map is that room directly west or sorta west-by-north-west?) Or visibility and cover. (Do we say something about trees in the rooms in between?)
The monster not only ran for ever to code, it wasn't fun to test either. No player wanted to track all those trivia himself, in a text-based game, just to shoot a stupid crossbow at someone.
E.g., at some point they wanted to have a crafts system. Me, I would have guessed "start easy, maybe change it later if you have time. Have a simple table of raw materials, tools, and outputs. It's quick to code, and easy on the player."
But, nah, it wasn't realistic and challenging for them. They wanted a complex system, tracking known designs, player-made alterations, intermediate steps and their timing (e.g., is the forge still hot after 5 minutes from using the bellows?), etc.
However, again, it degenerated in a monster project that AFAIK never even made it into beta-testing. Just as well, because again, I can't picture any player wanting to go through writing a whole novel for that and tracking all those details.
... and this kind of article seems to ignore it. In fact, he's a prime example of the problem himself: doesn't actually have a game, he's just talking about some super-cool engine with remote debug logging and whatnot.
The problem is: Games aren't only about programming. Neither are other apps, for that matter.
Programming complicated algorithms is the fun part, and that's why every kid wants to show off his cool (non-structured, non-indented and generally buggy _and_ unmanageable) clever code. No offense you OSS types, but people who want to donate clever coding are a dime a dozen. That's _the_ easy part.
What's the hard and thankless part (and often leading to open conflict with the coders) is the content for a game (e.g., dialogue trees) and the usability for both games and apps. Those are not monkey jobs to be left for last, those are what makes or breaks the game or app.
The nice engine is good and fine, but without content, good design and usability, that engine is stillborn. It's not even dead: it never lived in the first place.
The users won't see the clever code to handle NPC moods and racial interactions, because there are no well designed NPCs to use it. The users won't see that clever code to interpolate normals around a statue, and make it look like a higher polygon count object, unless someone actually sits down and models a statue. And without usability and well designed gameplay, they will see even less, because they quickly leave a non-fun game. Etc.
Not these particular ones, but I've tried various such before. Every couple of weeks someone comes with some "clever" idea how they could mess with Windows to run faster or prevent crashes. Big names too: Norton, Quarterdeck, etc, all had various such programs at various points in time.
They invariably suck.
E.g., Norton's "crash prevention" was _causing_ and otherwise patched-to-date and spyware-free Windows 9.x system to crash randomly. It was horrible. Uninstalling it resulted in a much more stable Windows. (In as much as Windows 9.x can be described as "stable".)
E.g., Quarterdeck's memory compression technique actually severely lowered the RAM available to apps and caused _more_ paging. Paging to a compressed RAM-drive, sure, but it's nevertheless worse than no paging at all. (Zipping the paged data does take CPU cycles.)
In the case of freeware/shareware ones, it's sometimes obvious that those people actually have no fscking clue how Windows works, nor what does their interfering with it really do.
They also usually don't measure. Just like that fucktard at the office who uses exceptions as flow-control, they didn't even actually measure if their optimizations work: they just "know" that it works. It must be blazing fast because it's his code, and he's such a l33t über-hacker. Or he's read it in some l33t über-hacker's blog. (In practice, throwing an Exception in Java is the slowest operation possible, so that's an anti-optimization.)
E.g., every kid with a compiler first guesses: "RAM. Preciousss RAM. Gotta free more RAM." So they write some idiotic utility to force-swap everything but the current app to disc. Well, that's nice, except it's what Windows would have done anyway if needed. Every OS, including Windows, keeps some form of LRU evidence to swap unused pages to disc when a more used app needs the space.
But what happens when that app _is_ needed in RAM? E.g., it's some core DLL of Windows. E.g., it's the IM program in use. Well, it gets loaded right back. And that idiotic utility force-swaps it out again. And Windows loads it again. Repeat ad nauseam, just generating pointless disk activity.
That's just one example.
Dunno if you even realize how experimental science works. The point of an experiment isn't to test your knowledge, but to actually measure, add and calculate whether you're within the expecting margin of error.
Generally the point is to try to _test_ the theory, and be prepared for it to be false. Not just to show that you know what the answer should be.
That's the difference between science and religion. If you know the sacred 360 and never dare show your lack of faith by measuring, that's religion. Science on the other hand is _based_ on searching for that experiment which disproves existing theories, or at least shows their limits.
E.g., at one point, everyone just "knew" that a cannonball 10 times heavier will fall 10 times faster. For thousands of years people were content to be cool by regurgitating the known result. Then someone actually measured, and it turns out it was false.
It was also "known" that if you drop something off the top of the mast on a moving ship, it will undoubtedly fall straight down and thus behind the ship. Again, for thousands of years everyone was cool with just knowing that. Turns out it was false too.
It was "known" that an object heavier than air can't possibly fly. Turns out it was false too.
Etc.
Basically if everyone was your ideal of fudging the results to fit the existing theory, we'd still be living in caves and wearing stylish tiger-skin loincloths. Any progress that was made was made by people who weren't affraid to measure and get a 365 result. And know why 365 is ok for the precision class of their used instruments.
And it's also important from another point of view: sometimes you don't know the answer. Sometimes you don't get to measure a full circle. Sometimes you just get to add a long list of imprecisely measured numbers. And if you can actually calculate the expected margin of error, you may well be far more useful than the "educated" ignoramus who doesn't even think about that.
And if you're _still_ not able to comprehend why the 355-365 range is actually a more useful result than 360 there, and why learning to calculate that is fundamental to science _and_ computing... well, let's just say there's a failure of education for you.
I've worked with both Oracle and IBM's DB2. Both offer fixed precision numbers. Even all the single user databases I've used, dating at least all the way back to dBase 2 under CP/M, worked that way.
And all major languages offer libraries to read and process that as a decimal, not as float. At least in Java it's part of the standard library.
You know why? Because of the reason I've mentioned in the post you're answering to. Floating point maths errors. It's an issue known since the 60s.
I.e., I stand by what I've said. If in the program it's read by as a float, then the blame lies squarely with the clueless burger-flipper who's read that data into a float. Someone who didn't even bother learning either the standard database capabilities or the very core libraries of the language, but is paid as a programmer anyway.
"More power to him I say.[...] Expecting people 'not' to crack/compromise insecure systems, a daydream you're having"
Newsflash: the real world was not built on being 100 unbreakable and unpenetrable.
E.g., your front door would _not_ be unbreakable to someone determined to get past it with an axe. It's a known vulnerability, for the past few thousands of years, and noone's fixing it. Your windows are likely even more vulnerable.
E.g., locks can be picked. Locks with master keys allow for escalation of privileges by attacking one pin at a time. It's a known vulnerability too.
The way Real Life works isn't to waste manpower and money to make something 100% impenetrable. Real Life works by basically just setting up a big sign that says "you're not allowed past this point." And if you do, we'll throw your sorry ass in jail.
That's really all that your front door and lock are: a sign that other people are not allowed past that point. If someone actually does the effort to pick the lock or hack down the door, it's proof enough that they did get their hint to stay out and deliberately circumvented it. So we throw them in jail.
If someone entered your home, it's not the door manufacturer's fault, it's not the lock manufacturer's fault, it's simply the thief that's to blame. That's the one who deserves some fine time in a state prison.
That's the security model that the Real World society was built upon. It's not perfect, but it worked wonderfully so far.
And here's your free complimentary clue for the day: those Windows users' instinctive expectation of computer security is the same. They don't expect their computers to be an impenetrable fortress, since their RL home or car isn't either. They do expect that whoever breaks past the boundary of their home, car or computer be thrown into state jail.
Unrealistic expectation at the moment? Maybe. But not an _unreasonable_ one. As in: it's not unreasonable to throw the script kiddie or virus writer in jail anyway. Sure, we won't stop trying to make the apps more secure, but in the meantime we also throw the asshole in jail to deter other assholes.
And maybe it's time to give users what they ask for, instead of idiotically insisting that they addapt to what we feel like programming. Not even just in this aspect. The software industry is a fucking disaster in this aspect, and all this whining about "idiot users" and "idiot managers" is just proof of it.
Any other industry, they try to make things comfortable and obvious for the user. In the software industry we just call them idiots and have whole sites dedicated to whining about them.
"these are probably the same sort of people who blame doctors for letting someone die when they're forcecd to work 100 hour shifts with no budget, aging equipment and abusive people."
Talk about a retarded analogy...
No, if you want to compare those doctors to someone, the apt comparison is with the net admins who had to do overtime to remove worms. If you want to compare this particular cretin to someone, it's with someone who deliberately creates and releases a new strain on flu to make a profit out of the cure. (Remember the cretin made the virus to drum up his mom's business.)
Would I be angry at the doctors or sysadmins there? Nope. They worked hard to repair the damage.
Would I be angry at the cretin who deliberately set the virus loose (whether computer virus or new flu strain)? Damn right.
Or maybe not necessarily angry, but I'd want him roasted slowly at the stake anyway. Or if that's not an option, hey, put him behind bars for a couple of decades. Just to deterr other such vandals.
So here's the deal: get brain already. If you can't tell the difference between someone working to _repair_ the damage, and the vandal who deliberately _did_ the damage, you have a problem. You need professional help.
It's like not being to distinguish between the asshole who keyed your car, and the shop who repainted the car. It's like not being able to distinguish between the vandal who threw a brick through a window, and the people who worked to replace the glass sheets. It's that idiotic.
You're measuring angles with an analog device with at best 1 degree accuracy per angle. When adding such imprecise data, yes, the margin for error increases.
In fact, there are several lessons to learn from that. E.g.,:
1. Any experimental data which neatly falls _exactly_ on the theoretical curve, and adds up to _exactly_ the predicted number is most probably cheated.
I.e., had I been a teacher, I would have been a lot more suspicious of anyone who came with 360 there, than of someone whose angles added up to 355. The guy with 360 probably skipped the last angle and just subtracted the sum of the others from 360. Which is _not_ what was asked.
2. Be aware of the imprecision involved in any measurement. Be aware how they add up, subtract or multiply. Especially for anyone working in any experimental science. (E.g., physics.) Or with computers.
I.e., when that board calculated that, within the precision of the measuring device, it can be between 355 and 365, they did their homework. You didn't.
3. If you work with computers, be aware of the limitations of the data type you use.
E.g., if I see another clueless burger-flipper using 4 byte floats to hold money amounts in a database program, I'm gonna barf. Doubly so when then they start wondering why their final numbers are some 10,000$ off the mark.
4. As a corolary, never use == with floating point results. Not even with the most trivial calculations (e.g., that the sum of the individual rows equals what's in the totals field.) Do what scientists and that Board of Studies do: calculate the expected margin for error and use an interval.
Greedy people, they sure have. Very greedy even. Some even evil.
But people who'd die a slow painful death themselves for that greed? I really don't think so. I'll say that:
- No amount of money in the world can make every single pharamaceuticals executive rather die of cancer than search for a cure. When you're dead, all the money in the world is no longer of any use.
- No amount of money in the world can make all of them just watch their child or parents die a slow death, rather than search for a cure. Maybe one or two assholes, yeah. But all of them? No fscking way. Your average mother would probably rather die herself than watch her 5 year old in a casket.
People, even politicians, have been known to make 180 degree turns when their loved ones are in danger. See the recent swing in stem cell research policy in the USA, when it looked like it could save a few rich old people.
Some stuff turns around even a politician who got elected for bible-thumping and promising the exact opposite. So I'll go on a limb and say that if a cure is possible, something like this _will_ convince at least one doctor or pharma manager to search for it.
I'll also say that for most diseases you don't have anything to gain from _not_ making a cure. Contrary to the popular conspiracy theory you just can't milk them of money for ever.
E.g., someone with cancer typically dies within 3 years. Most even sooner. That's it. Whatever milking you're going to do, that's the deadline. You milk them of money, but then they die.
If you could make a treatment which costs a lot for 3 years, and then they're _cured_, you'd have a lot more money to gain. Until the patent expires, everyone would want to pay for 3 years and _live_, as opposed to pay for 3 years and _die_. You could make them pay a helluva lot more.
_Especially_ those "evil" greedy corporate types are very good at understanding that kind of logic. They're there to make money, and blimey, that's one cure which would bring in _tons_ of money.
E.g., diabetes was mentioned. Well, you know, insuline isn't protected by patents or anything, and everyone produces it. It's a _commodity_. It does't bring in that much money. If someone could make a pill that just cures diabetes, and get a 20 year monopoly on it (via patents), they would. It would bring in far more money than being the 100'th company selling cheap insulin.
"This is about another company modifying the software on the device to allow playing an unsupported format, not about screwing the consumer over."
Real did _not_ modify Apple's software. Real only figured out how to save a file in Apple's proprietary DRM-ed format. They're only saving a DRM-ed file in a format that the iPod can read. That's all.
That was Real's heinous crime: writing a utility to convert between two file formats. That's all.
It's like Microsoft using DMCA to stop OpenOffice from saving Word or Excel files. It's _that_ idiotic and anti-competitive.
Only suddenly that counts as good and fine, because it's from Apple.
And how the fsck is it good for the consumer? Real allows you to play more downloaded songs on the iPod. Apple wants you locked into only what Apple itself offered. How the heck isn't it screwing the consumer over? Geesh.
"And, there no restrictions that lock a user in to listening to music purchased from Apple. Any music in mp3 or AAC format can be played on the iPod. If Real wanted, they could have made their music available in a supported format"
Again, you're wrong. The iPod only supports Apple's own proprietary DRM scheme.
And again, _all_ that Read did was save a file in, yes, the kind of DRM-ed AAC format that the iPod supports. Yes, they did exactly what you preach. And Apple is waving the DMCA to stop them from doing that. How do you defend that?
And please don't give me the "so offer the files without DRM". You know that isn't an option. Most music labels only allow downloads if they're DRM-ed. Sure, you could always use a warezed MP3 on the iPod. But _legal_ download usually _must_ be DRM-ed.
Wasn't feeling like /. without some idiotic conspiracy theory. And hey, look, it's the old favourite: those evil pharma corporations are all refusing to develop a cure.
Never mind that:
1. There _is_ money in a cure. If you had a cure for, say, Cancer and a 20 year patent on it, you could sell it for any sky-high amount of money you'd want to. It's the perfect extortion scheme. You pay up or you die a slow painful death.
2. Lo and behold, they did make cures and vaccines for a metric buttload of diseases.
3. Most importantly: there are doctors, pharmacists, managers at pharmaceuticals corporations, etc, who die of Cancer every year. Or have a bad case of diabetes. Or whose _child_ is dying of some disease.
Now you're telling me no less than they'll rather patiently wait for their own death -- or the death of those they love -- rather than break the conspiracy oath and divulge the cure. Doesn't that strike you as a completely retarded idea? If _you_ could make a cure, and you'll _die_ if you don't, wouldn't you just make the stupid cure already?
4. We're talking millions of doctors, pharmacists and researchers world wide. Some in countries where they don't even have private enterprise as you know it. (E.g., until recently the USSR and to some extent still China.) Or where it's not even easy to keep in touch with a western conspiracy. (E.g., the USSR block was pretty much isolated and guarded by a paranoid secret police.) And which invested hundreds of billions in researchs. (E.g., in developping their own nuclear weapons, sattellites, chemical weapons, biological weapons, ICBMs, etc.)
Yet you'd want me to believe that _all_ those are part of the same global conspiracy to keep some diseases untreated.
You know what? There's a medical name for that. It's called "Paranoia".
Yes, companies want to make more money. Yes, greed is what keeps capitalism working.
/. always cries foul when done by Microsoft. E.g., I don't think many on /. cheered about MS deliberately making Netscape crash, back in the days of browser wars. E.g., I don't think anyone cheered way back when MS deliberately made Windows 3.x crash on DR DOS. Etc.
However, just like gasoline and fire, we're talking a destructive force which needs to be channelled to work _for_ us, not let it run amok _against_ us. Corporate greed is only good and fine as long as it's channelled to serve the good of society. (E.g., the prospect of making a fortune seems to be a damn good motivation to research and produce cheaper or better goods.)
But there's a time and place to draw the line. The time when it acts against the consumer.
There is stuff which is plain old evil, even if done for corporate profit. E.g., spamming by fax is illegal, even though some companies were making a profit out of it. E.g., even the USA eventually recognized that, even though someone's making a profit out of it, most people would rather not be harrassed by telemarketting. Etc.
Back to Appl3e, in this case it is nothing more than an appalling attempt to lock people into a proprietary one-vendor scheme. It is nothing short of blatant anti-competitive behaviour.
It's something that
It was the same thing: a shameless attempt to lock out competition, and lock you into having one single choice.
Yes, those were done for corporate profit too. No, it didn't make them excusable.
So why is it excusable when done by Apple? Seems to me like Apple is doing the wrong thing here, and that's that.
Except then it wouldn't have been conspicuous consumption. Noone's even supposed to envy your having money to blow on a pogo stick.
Let's face it. That thing isn't practical, isn't useful, isn't even geeky. It's just a case of conspicuous consumption. The only thing it's supposed to do is scream "Look! I can afford to blow thousands on a useless toy!" Same as wearing exotic fur coats, solid gold watches, or such. Only a lot sadder. (A fur coat or a gold watch at least have _some_ use.)
And such stunts as "look! we're even using them to play a sad dumbed-down version of polo!" only serve to scream that to even more people. It's bragging.
And even as mine-is-bigger-than-yours willy-waving goes, I find this to be a very sad version.
When you read soneone's bragging about, say, their overclocking their CPU, there was some user skill involved. Some of those people spent time making their own waterblocks, or whatever.
When you see someone with a huge wing on their car, it's at least supposed to tell you that the owner can drive fast. (In practice it just says they have a small dick, even smaller brains, and a bad case of complexes.)
Whereas this is supposed to say... what? "Look! I'm a spoiled rich brat with too much money!" Sorry, that's nothing I can admire. Skill I can admire. Merely being rich and stupid, nope. No admiration from me there.
"The fact that a large quantity of people consider this to be a good idea probably says more about the generally poor physical fitness in N. America vs the world than diet, anyhow."
/. on the front page in quite some time.
/. people are usually terminal nerds, and easily excited by high tech toys. Normally you could pretty much take any stupidity, make it electronic, expensive and impractical (and preferrably put something running Linux in it too), and /.ters would be drawn to it like cats to a catnip mouse. Yet even here you don't see many people excited by the Segway.
Erm. Even if you look in this thread alone, you'll see that most posts are basically rehashes of "Yuck. It's a stupid rich-boy's toy." It's also the topic with the least number of posts I've seen on
And bear in mind that us
And in the real world, you didn't see massive protests against forbidding Segways on walkways.
So exactly how does it translate into "a large quantity of people consider this to be a good idea"? How's it justifying a sweeping generalization about Americans? Seems to me like, most probably, if you took a bunch of average Americans and asked them about the Segway, you'd get the same "it's a stupid rich-boy's toy" answer as anywhere else in the world.
And no, I'm not even American.
"Here's another benefit - anyone who's been a kid (or dealt with kids) and trying to distract their attention away from a game, the excuse is always "I can't pause now" or "hang on, just a minute". If you have a game that you can literally drop and walk away from, it changes the way you interact with it."
Good to see I'm not the only one who's been wondering if game companies are shooting themselves in the foot with that.
There's a lot of anti-gaming resentment among some parents, and a lot of it doesn't come from "it'll teach them to be violent" ideas. Probably most of it is along the lines of "but he cares about that console more than about me! Every time I tell him to come do something, he's like 'can't pause now'! And half an hour later he's still at it! He's addicted!"
And I've been playing games myself where I have to replay a whole huge map from the beginning, if I quit in the wrong place. Or even one which made me play 10 hours straight before I found a save point.
Now adult or kid, noone wants to lose half an hour of their work. Tell some non-gamer to turn the computer off _now_ without saving, when they're writing a long email or post. No, no touching that "save" or "send" button. Turn it off _now_! They won't be happy. They won't want to.
So I'm guessing that a lot of the "addiction" that some parents see, is actually just idiotic game design.
Just for the record, I do think that games are mildly addictive. But there's mild addiction and there's major addiction. Even an alcohol addict can take a 5 minute break from drinking. Even a chain-smoker can take a short break from smoking.
When they can't, that's when you get worried. And that's what those parents mistakenly think they see there: someone who absolutely can't take a break from playing with that console. No matter how often you tell him to come here, that damn kid is like glued there to the controller, and seemingly can't take a break. When in reality, the poor bugger is just feverishly looking for a save point, 'cause he'd rather not have to redo the whole last hour.
Makes it look like a far worse addiction than it really is. In some cases, it makes it look bad enough that a stupid parent and a luddite physician put that kid on drugs, to "save" him from those evil games.
I'm thinking that if designers stopped doing that, they'd have a lot less bad press and a lot less worried parents on their case.