I think that depends more on the situation and person.
For me, I notice that I could sit there and try to make it work on paper, or I could write something that works in practice - and then refactor as necessary. In the end, the latter seems more efficient to me.
But then again, I don't work on truely large projects where architecture is more important.
I had the same problem. I was a mithra whm and unlocked brd and leveled that up. Going back to the dunes was absolute torture.
For me, the back-breaker was the grouping system. You actually feared a party member leveling up because it would destroy xp. If you had a set group (as I finally managed to get in) you had to wait until everyone was online so you could stay as in-sync as possible or you could ruin xp'ing. You surely don't want to be the highest level character in the PT as a bard - or any mage for that matter.
There were many other things I didn't like about the game though. Same mob graphics all the way to atleast mid 30's just about. It wouldn't be as painful if I didn't have to hit all the content twice. The downtime with travelling wasn't fun. There wasn't enough space for a given level range of hunting; everyone within certain level ranges were usually in 1 or 2 areas only which lead to massive overcrowding when the game first lauched. etc, etc, etc.
The auction system was cool. The graphics were sharp. The combat bursting was nice. But they made it so difficult to play with friends that I ended up dropping the game.
Not always true, unfortunately. All too often the 'job' part ruins the 'fun' part.
For example, I used to love programming. Then I got a job doing it for a living... and I no longer can easily start working on programming related things once I get home from work. After 5+ years of doing it as a job now, it's very difficult for me to spend time writing code at home now... it just feels too much like work. =(
The blender game engine has been out-of-sync with current blender development for a very long time now... meaning you have to use an old build of blender which is missing quite a lot of the new features you'll see in 2.32 (new ui, some raytracing, yafray, etc. etc. etc.... 2.3x is a wicked series).
They were waiting for a new version of SOLID to be released for the physics side of things and based on the forum @ blender.org, it seems like the game engine might finally be buildable from CVS again - but very buggy.
At any rate, if you're looking for a good 3d engine, checkout OGRE. If you need everything, including the kitchen sink, then look at Crystal Space 3D.
I downloaded this yesterday, and for the life of me, I could not get it to install on my laptop. It would either kernel panic while extracting packages - or shortly after, I was multitasking;) - or it would freeze while extracting packages.
I believe I had FreeBSD 5.1 on this laptop before so I don't know what's up. I just had OpenBSD 3.3 on that slice earlier, and it looks like I'll give OpenBSD 3.4 a shot now.
And yes, I'll most likely be a bad person and not spend the time necessary to submit a decent bug report. *shrug* Time time time...
But anyway, I've used Free before and it's cool - infact I wanted to slap that on my laptop instead of Open.
Believe it or not, innocent people do get convicted for crimes they didn't commit. This will always be a problem as long as humans control the justice system for their government.
Throwing away appeals and expanding death penalties would get more innocent people jailed or killed. And don't just ignore that point thinking, "What are the chances it would happent to me?" All I know is that if I was convicted of a crime I didn't commit, I sure as hell would appreciate the ability to appeal the decision to another court.
I try not to leave my self blatently open to flaming. =)
I think it's a matter of personal taste (Strong vs Dynamic typing), really. I like having my data structrues explicitly defined, and knowing what exactly I'm dealing with at any given time; therefore strong typing suits me.
I had a hard time keeping track of what was declared and when in Python (because the field will flat out not exist until it is assigned a value). Granted you can have null references in Java; atleast you can be guaranteed the field is actually there. This is just my nitpick with python though... overall I love the language, but don't like the libraries as much as I like the Java ones. Mainly due to the abundance available, quality documentation, either online or dead-tree. Some parts of the python libraries are documented okay, but some parts I needed at the time were not. I thought about giving Jthon a shot, but never got around to it. *shrug* I digress...
Strong typing is also self documenting. You don't *need* to document a variable with what you can expect to be stored there. Maybe you can infer it from the variable name, but maybe not. Also (and I may be wrong about this) intellisense doesn't work with dynamic languages that you can't pin a type on (VB you can Dim... is there an equivalent in Python?). And I love my intellisense.
And as far as exceptions go... I hated them until recently. They still allow you to be lazy and not check for exceptional errors when you don't need too - as long as somewhere lower in the call stack you do. And this has turned out pretty cool, in my opinion. Java will also tell you if you didn't cover an exception properly which is a great help when figuring out whether or not you got atleast something covering the possible errors. I wish C# had this...
I don't think it's so much believing the party line, as just using what suits you, and the situation, best. Of course there are people that never expirement and just take other's opinions for things though...
The exceptions and formality of Java are supposed to aid development by making sure you've crossed all your t's and dotted your i's when it comes to error handling and type checking. This too helps prevent bugs, and makes your code safer.
When utilized properly they're nice things. =) But that's just my humble opinion...
Are there any screenshots anywhere about what GNE looks like? I seen some of their encyclopedia... but I want to see what it is like to travel through the game. (Second beta is closed aparently...)
To most of us (us = young, educated middle-class) the whole idea of voting is a complete joke. [early disclaimer: I disagree] Most only see it as a choice between whatever figurehead the donkeys or elephants can drudge up and read the speeches they write (some of which can't even do that without fumbling so I hear). The figureheads, once appointed, will then disregard the general public and focus on people that pay thier campain ads on TV. This was my political view before I had somewhat of an epiphany earlier this year.
Not voting is an *unacceptable* protest. Instead of it showing that you believe the voting system is flawed due to lack of choice, you actually show that you don't care enought to spend 10 minutes out of a four year period to check some boxes. And more over, there ARE other choices out there. For instance the Libertarian party (http://www.lp.org) is the largest 3rd party out there, and have radically different ideas than Gore, Bush, or any of the others. And if socialism is more to your liking you have Nader.
Voting outside of the 2 major parties is a clear protest to the current bi-party system (I say bi-party because the press only focses on these to mainly, and not to mention the debates...). If you give your vote to Browne, Nader, or any other 3rd party, you're making a clear statement - and this statement will carry A LOT more weight than not voting at all!
As for my own personal experience today, I have to say this is the first time in my life I felt actually *proud* to be American. Casting my vote across the Libertarian party line knowing there's a candidate for prez, senate, and house was a great feeling. I went to vote at 2pm CST, and was slightly surprised to see that I was the only one under 60 there! I know most people were still working [I took a half day off], but wow.
So if you havn't voted yet and you're just sitting on your duff reading/. - GO VOTE! And if you dont like Gore or Bush, THERE *ARE* ALTERNATIVES! Browne, Nader, and the reform party would all love to have yours - as each vote for them means 10x as much.
I've been tossing the idea around about going back to college for a BA in Philosophy. I too, think an online college will be acceptable for this type of degree.
Are there alot of these online colleges? Are any other slashdotters enrolled in one? If you guys know of some, please post some links.
My personal opinions about newspapers are in sync with Jon's. I feel that newspapers are often too shallow, and are written for third graders learning to read. You can point to a handfull of papers (Times, etc.) that contain great content, but I think the opposite can be said about the majority of newspapers out there.
Papers do miss a range of subjects. Why do they miss alot of pop culture & technology news? Because they're targeting thier audience - the older generation. How many younger people habitually read the paper as opposed to the number of older people? The newspaper is a business, and they're playing the numbers and catering to thier larger audience.
I won't ever read a newspaper again. But I'm a geek with little interest in local or international news. Everywhere I am, there is a computer, or another device that can connect to the net; and from the net, I can get at pretty much all the news that I am interested in. I can get at technology news that is better written, and that contains, by far, more content. I dont like having to work my way through many huge, full page adds from car dealers, or whatever. Atleast the banners on websites are generally located at the extremes of the page (top or bottom), and not submerged in the content.
Slashdot Mirror
My HP120 iRiver plays low bitrate ogg vorbis files just fine. I do remember seeing this as a fix though in the last firmware release a while ago.
I think that depends more on the situation and person.
For me, I notice that I could sit there and try to make it work on paper, or I could write something that works in practice - and then refactor as necessary. In the end, the latter seems more efficient to me.
But then again, I don't work on truely large projects where architecture is more important.
Focusing too much on the booth models were you? ;)
I know I shouldn't post on a spelling error because I hate it when people are pedantic about that ... but I just found this one funny.
But it's without challenge. I can put an entire 'B-squad' in and destroy the enemy without too much effort.
...
I really liked it at first, until I realized I couldn't lose
That is AWESOME! I got a bootleg of the Tour de Fromage show I was at off of Further, but I'll be buying a soundboard copy soon now. =)
I had the same problem. I was a mithra whm and unlocked brd and leveled that up. Going back to the dunes was absolute torture.
For me, the back-breaker was the grouping system. You actually feared a party member leveling up because it would destroy xp. If you had a set group (as I finally managed to get in) you had to wait until everyone was online so you could stay as in-sync as possible or you could ruin xp'ing. You surely don't want to be the highest level character in the PT as a bard - or any mage for that matter.
There were many other things I didn't like about the game though. Same mob graphics all the way to atleast mid 30's just about. It wouldn't be as painful if I didn't have to hit all the content twice. The downtime with travelling wasn't fun. There wasn't enough space for a given level range of hunting; everyone within certain level ranges were usually in 1 or 2 areas only which lead to massive overcrowding when the game first lauched. etc, etc, etc.
The auction system was cool. The graphics were sharp. The combat bursting was nice. But they made it so difficult to play with friends that I ended up dropping the game.
I first thought of "Signal to Noise" by Eric S. Nylund, actually.
Not always true, unfortunately. All too often the 'job' part ruins the 'fun' part.
... and I no longer can easily start working on programming related things once I get home from work. After 5+ years of doing it as a job now, it's very difficult for me to spend time writing code at home now ... it just feels too much like work. =(
For example, I used to love programming. Then I got a job doing it for a living
They were waiting for a new version of SOLID to be released for the physics side of things and based on the forum @ blender.org, it seems like the game engine might finally be buildable from CVS again - but very buggy.
At any rate, if you're looking for a good 3d engine, checkout OGRE. If you need everything, including the kitchen sink, then look at Crystal Space 3D.
Lucky you.
;) - or it would freeze while extracting packages.
...
I downloaded this yesterday, and for the life of me, I could not get it to install on my laptop. It would either kernel panic while extracting packages - or shortly after, I was multitasking
I believe I had FreeBSD 5.1 on this laptop before so I don't know what's up. I just had OpenBSD 3.3 on that slice earlier, and it looks like I'll give OpenBSD 3.4 a shot now.
And yes, I'll most likely be a bad person and not spend the time necessary to submit a decent bug report. *shrug* Time time time
But anyway, I've used Free before and it's cool - infact I wanted to slap that on my laptop instead of Open.
Believe it or not, innocent people do get convicted for crimes they didn't commit. This will always be a problem as long as humans control the justice system for their government.
Throwing away appeals and expanding death penalties would get more innocent people jailed or killed. And don't just ignore that point thinking, "What are the chances it would happent to me?" All I know is that if I was convicted of a crime I didn't commit, I sure as hell would appreciate the ability to appeal the decision to another court.
> i have been a teacher for 8 years
;)
And yet you still haven't mastered capitalization.
It's Kevin Bacon.
OpenBSD (AFAIK) doesn't support PAM modules ...
emerge gentoolkit ... it has programs to list installed packages.
Bah! Of course it had to be something easy. ;) Glad I qualified that one as a nitpick. LOL
I try not to leave my self blatently open to flaming. =)
... overall I love the language, but don't like the libraries as much as I like the Java ones. Mainly due to the abundance available, quality documentation, either online or dead-tree. Some parts of the python libraries are documented okay, but some parts I needed at the time were not. I thought about giving Jthon a shot, but never got around to it. *shrug* I digress ...
... is there an equivalent in Python?). And I love my intellisense.
... I hated them until recently. They still allow you to be lazy and not check for exceptional errors when you don't need too - as long as somewhere lower in the call stack you do. And this has turned out pretty cool, in my opinion. Java will also tell you if you didn't cover an exception properly which is a great help when figuring out whether or not you got atleast something covering the possible errors. I wish C# had this ...
...
I think it's a matter of personal taste (Strong vs Dynamic typing), really. I like having my data structrues explicitly defined, and knowing what exactly I'm dealing with at any given time; therefore strong typing suits me.
I had a hard time keeping track of what was declared and when in Python (because the field will flat out not exist until it is assigned a value). Granted you can have null references in Java; atleast you can be guaranteed the field is actually there. This is just my nitpick with python though
Strong typing is also self documenting. You don't *need* to document a variable with what you can expect to be stored there. Maybe you can infer it from the variable name, but maybe not. Also (and I may be wrong about this) intellisense doesn't work with dynamic languages that you can't pin a type on (VB you can Dim
And as far as exceptions go
I don't think it's so much believing the party line, as just using what suits you, and the situation, best. Of course there are people that never expirement and just take other's opinions for things though
The exceptions and formality of Java are supposed to aid development by making sure you've crossed all your t's and dotted your i's when it comes to error handling and type checking. This too helps prevent bugs, and makes your code safer.
...
When utilized properly they're nice things. =) But that's just my humble opinion
Are there any screenshots anywhere about what GNE looks like? I seen some of their encyclopedia ... but I want to see what it is like to travel through the game. (Second beta is closed aparently ...)
To most of us (us = young, educated middle-class) the whole idea of voting is a complete joke. [early disclaimer: I disagree] Most only see it as a choice between whatever figurehead the donkeys or elephants can drudge up and read the speeches they write (some of which can't even do that without fumbling so I hear). The figureheads, once appointed, will then disregard the general public and focus on people that pay thier campain ads on TV. This was my political view before I had somewhat of an epiphany earlier this year.
...). If you give your vote to Browne, Nader, or any other 3rd party, you're making a clear statement - and this statement will carry A LOT more weight than not voting at all!
/. - GO VOTE! And if you dont like Gore or Bush, THERE *ARE* ALTERNATIVES! Browne, Nader, and the reform party would all love to have yours - as each vote for them means 10x as much.
Not voting is an *unacceptable* protest. Instead of it showing that you believe the voting system is flawed due to lack of choice, you actually show that you don't care enought to spend 10 minutes out of a four year period to check some boxes. And more over, there ARE other choices out there. For instance the Libertarian party (http://www.lp.org) is the largest 3rd party out there, and have radically different ideas than Gore, Bush, or any of the others. And if socialism is more to your liking you have Nader.
Voting outside of the 2 major parties is a clear protest to the current bi-party system (I say bi-party because the press only focses on these to mainly, and not to mention the debates
As for my own personal experience today, I have to say this is the first time in my life I felt actually *proud* to be American. Casting my vote across the Libertarian party line knowing there's a candidate for prez, senate, and house was a great feeling. I went to vote at 2pm CST, and was slightly surprised to see that I was the only one under 60 there! I know most people were still working [I took a half day off], but wow.
So if you havn't voted yet and you're just sitting on your duff reading
I've been tossing the idea around about going back to college for a BA in Philosophy. I too, think an online college will be acceptable for this type of degree.
Are there alot of these online colleges? Are any other slashdotters enrolled in one? If you guys know of some, please post some links.
Papers do miss a range of subjects. Why do they miss alot of pop culture & technology news? Because they're targeting thier audience - the older generation. How many younger people habitually read the paper as opposed to the number of older people? The newspaper is a business, and they're playing the numbers and catering to thier larger audience.
I won't ever read a newspaper again. But I'm a geek with little interest in local or international news. Everywhere I am, there is a computer, or another device that can connect to the net; and from the net, I can get at pretty much all the news that I am interested in. I can get at technology news that is better written, and that contains, by far, more content. I dont like having to work my way through many huge, full page adds from car dealers, or whatever. Atleast the banners on websites are generally located at the extremes of the page (top or bottom), and not submerged in the content.