Actually I just happen to be reading some articles online and you struck on a topic I have some interest in (the confusion caused by misinterpretations of terminology in politics). It all started a long time ago when I read a number of articles that referred to both the major US political parties as Fascist. Once I realized that there was some serious confusion as to what Fascism is I started to realize this was true of many political terms. It's like calling the United States a democracy, which is about as far from accurate as one can get, since we are a constitutional republic and lack the main tenants of democracy. So I read the Doctrine of Fascism and realized that most people have no clue what Fascism is, and then read The Communist Manifesto and realized I had a lot to learn about the misuse of terms in politics. I have been trying to find the origin of the term libertarian as meaning strictly anarcho-capitilist but so far can't find a credible reference (Smith certainly never used the term, but that might be because smith was neither a libertarian or a capitalist).
Oh and beyond all that I was checking to see if you were an economic libertarian, since you never said so specifically, by waiting for you to say something moronic (which fortunately you have not yet done).
Only a portion of the population uses the term as you are proposing it be used. Some use the term libertarian to refer to registered members of the US Libertarian party, some use it to refer to modern objectivist, and some use it to refer to anarcho-capitalists. Other use it in conjunction with a number of other words or use it in context to the conversation at hand to have differing meanings. For example there is the term libertarian socialist, which I mentioned earlier, which uses the term libertarian, but not to reference those who are economically libertarian. When someone claims to be libertarian it is foolish to assume that this means they are anarcho-capilist, even if that is one possible usage of the term. Using libertarian without clarification is akin to using the term American when referring to citizens of the United States of America. Sure it's common usage but not entirely accurate and makes it very hard to refer to all the people living on the American continents. I'm also not saying that it was not understandable as to what was meant my libertarian in the pervious conversation I just wanted to be perfectly clear that not all libertarians are inherently prone to moronic acts, only economic libertarians.
why make the distinction between 'economic libertarians'... and social libertarians...? Because the term libertarian is older than it's modern usage and was original used by anarchist, including, but not limited to, anarcho-communist, anarcho-syndicalist and anarcho-socialists. Since there are still many in the world that ascribe to the concepts of Libertarian Socialism and Social Libertarianism (which happen to be vastly different), it's important to not lump these libertarians in with the economic libertarians which includes but is also not limited to anarcho-capitalist and objectivist, such as the Libertarian party.
I have spent far to many hours attempting to clear all this up and come to a common usage of terms like libertarianism, but in the end each side rightfully has chosen to continue to use the term how they see fit. I just like to be clear when I am referencing ambiguous terms which is why I was sure to clarify that this was in reference to economic libertarians, so I didn't accidentally offend any Social Libertarians that may have read my comment (as opposed to the intention of offending the economic libertarians).
I wouldn't refer to Republics as economic libertarians, or Democrats as social libertarians, though they are moronic in their own unique ways.
I was not the one that said anything about what a libertarian would say in this instance, I'm just saying that every libertarian I have ever had dealings with or read about was easily provoked or tricked into saying and doing moronic things. I would go as far as to say that "smart libertarian" is oxymoronic (at least those that tend towards objectivism). Note that I am assuming we are referring to economic libertarians as opposed to social libertarians.
The following statement contains broad generalizations which just happen to be accurate more often than they are not.
This conversation has shown were Software Engineers and Computer Scientist differ. Computer Scientist are arrogant with there heads in the clouds thinking that they have some sort of innate ability yet can't convert domain knowledge into a requirement that can be implemented by a skilled a competent coder. Software Engineers on the other hand realize that with some process and basic engineering principles the domain knowledge can be distilled to a point that the implementation can be handled by the software industries equivalent to craftsman and technicians. Analysis, Architecture, Engineering and Implementation are four independant major components of any substantial project, no mater what the domain. Sure one person can handle all four tasks but this would be both a waste or resources, as each takes becomes sequential, and normally means using a person who's better suited at some of the tasks and weaker at others. Engineering principles and Best practices can be taught just as well as any other skill, they just can't be taught by a scientist, but this is of course why all definition of Scientist reference knowledge not ability. Simply put, Engineers want things done correctly and efficiently, while scientist want it done their way. This is why it's easier to turn a Computer Engineer into a decent programer, even though they learn very little, if any, programing in their education, than it is to turn a Computer Scientist into a programer at all.
Learn to give up a little control and you will see you can produce better products with less resource expenditure.
If you can solve a problem without understanding pointers/recursion/data strictures/algorithms, and you can write well in English, then you can write well in Java. I was going to make a legitimate response to the previous comment, but then I read the above line. If you honestly think writing in high level languages is as the same as writing in your native language then you are either one of the few capable of doing both, or ignorant in regards to high level programing languages (my bet is it's some combination of both).
It's not that coding of that kind is hard, it's just that most people can't think clearly, and shouldn't have *any* kind of design job. There is no reason your coders should be doing design. It is possible to write solid software using Engineers for Design and Developers for coding (even interns if you know what you are doing). I assume that your plumber designed your house, or that your companies salesmen design the building you work in, and that's how you got your impression that all it takes to be an engineer is domain knowledge. Domain knowledge does not mean that you are suitable for designing and building software, and large successful projects (not the ones that are measured by how much VC they can pull in) understand this.
BTW, if you've had a hard time finding people who can write business apps well, imagine my frustration in trying to find people who *do* need to understand pointers/recursion/data strictures/algorithms in order to be useful. I'm sure it's difficult, but maybe that is because some people in the industry seem to think that business majors are capable of programing computers or after a couple programing course you should be able to design and program software.
The word you're thinking of is "whore" or "prostitute". One who sells one's abilities, talent, or name for an unworthy purpose. You need to pick you Whores and Prostitutes better if you think it's and "unworthy purpose."
Why is it going to take six months (spring 2008) for the Dualshock 3 to hit North America It's probably not coming to north America because there are still enough stock to meet expectations through spring. No need to push out a rumble capable controller until the current stock is depleted unless they want to completely eat the cost on all the existing stock. I'm also making wild speculation that Japanese developers have been working on games with rumble capability for a while where Western Developers have not, which means America won't have rumble capable games for a while (totally wild speculation, but a reasonable one).
With competent analyst there is no need for engineers or developers to understand the domain at all. Physical building architects, engineers and carpenters do not need to know what their space will be used for only what the space needs to be able to do (hold x number of people, etc.). Software engineering should be no different. The fact that you have developers, let alone engineers and architects, with domain knowledge is one of the major factors behind the piss poor software that tends to get pushed out on clients.
That's a little bit beside the point though. Good software development takes good software developers. Good software design takes good analyst, architects and engineers. Running a successful company takes good business personnel. Yes these can sometimes be the same person but that is usually not the case, end when it is the case it is only on very small projects. Even Gates and Jobs had technical gurus with them when they started their endeavors even though they were fairly knowledgeable about the technology themselves. Jobs had The Woz and Gates had Paul Allen (and eventually brought in a true business guru since that never really was gates strong point)
Lastly take some time to interview software developers sometime, you will see that even among those dedicated to the industry there are very few that know what they are doing (less than 10% of the perspective candidates are worth considering). If dedicated developers can't be expected to write decent code I don't see how your typical business graduate could.
This move only appears to be bad business when looking at the current point in time. The long term affects may be more positive than negative. The obvious benefit is that parents, the ones actually earning the money, will be more likely to shop at this particular store if they like the policy. This benefit will probably not pay off though since the parents that care most likely do not allow there kids to go out an buy games without their knowledge anyway. The more important long term effect has to do with the enforcement of better educated citizens. Gamestop's business is based on sales of a high tech product that requires well educated people to create. If everyone dropped out of school to play video games they would soon run out of video games to buy and sell. It is in the best interest of any business to keep the industry as a whole alive and running efficiently. This is Why companies like IBM are paying employees to teach at universities even though there is no obvious immediate gain for such actions.
Why are we equating bad grades to alcoholism, anyway? I have to agree this is a bad analogy. Alcoholism leads to unemployability, crime and violence, while poor grades lead to unemployability, crime and violence. Hey wait a minute...
You think the solution is to just let any moron with a minimum wage job do the work of a parent This would be insightful if it weren't for the fact that a large portion (dare I say the majority) of parents make minimum wage or less. Second this was a store Manager, and believe it or not, retail store managers are paid considerably more than minimum wage.
It seems that someone may actually need to experience the real world before they comment on it.
As for Guitar Hero 3, I'm going to expect that the winner will be the 360, since the system already has two GH games out for it The 360 has one GH game so far, and that would be GH 2 only. The PS2 on the other hand has 3 GH games, and as I said before I suspect GH 3 for PS2 will be the best selling GH 3 version. I also suspect GH 3 and Rock Band will be the reason for many people to finally make the move to PS 3 since they will have controllers available to allow them to play their PS2 versions of GH and have the online content they don't get with the PS 2. The only thing that might stop this from happening is if they don't make a single Guitar that is compatible with both games (so far it has only been said that the Rock Band Guitar, which is more complex, could be made to work with Guitar Hero but nothing has been announced about this actually being done).
Guitar Hero III will be available on all 4 systems, and Rock band will be on all but the Wii. I actually think GH 3 and RB will boost PS2 sales (note necessarily hardware) more than the other systems combined.
Just out of curiosity, did you remember to change the output setting in the Wii to 480p from whatever the default is changing from 480i to 480p will not improve the quality of the image produced. It will still be less than 1/4 the number of pixels an HDTV is capable of displaying. The only thing changing to progressive scan will do is increase the rate of refresh and therefor reduce motion blur. At best this will make edges more crisp which will actually make the image look more grainy than it would interlaced as the oversized pixels will be more pronounced. At 19 inches the difference between a 480 and 1080 image is very little, but at even 40 or more images the difference is staggering. Those of us that have viewed a 1080 image regularly have a hard time watching 480 images when we have the choice.
who had no real understanding of pointers or how to implement simple data structures I'm not sure what your hang up on pointers and data structures is all about, but my only guess is you either work in a small sector of the software engineering industry that needs to understand these things (Embedded, Real Time, Performance critical, etc.) but for the majority of programmers developing Business Application Software these things are useless overhead that will actually cause more problems than good.
That last thing you would want from a Java or C# developer is for them to be writing data structures or trying to use pointers (which is one is technically impossible and in the other not not commonly recommended). When you have a developer on a team that thinks they need to write their own data structures it means that they either think they are better than the larger community, or they don't know the provided data structures well enough to know which to use in which situation.
"Java Schools" are no more or less dangerous that other CS degrees they just have a different focus, all of which is limited and rarely applicable to the real world. But my experience so far is that applicable skills is not necessarily the desired result of education.
That being said I happen to be one of those people that can program direct Java byte code, but if I was ever asked to do it at a job I would run screaming realizing these people have no clue what they are doing (unless I was working on a compiler obviously).
So I walk down the street to the resident big-box store which somehow manages to have copies in stock. Now you just need to walk back to the EB/Gamestop and show them how much you didn't spend at their store, and inform any in the store where they can find the game in stock. Do it enough, being sure to get the managers attention, and they will start stocking the games you are likely to buy. They may be pricks but they are still business owners/operators.
Does this mean I'll actually be able to walk into the store and buy a game without having pre-ordered it two months in advance? I buy most of my games at Gamestop (I only purchase new so the prices don't bother me) and I rarely ever preorder (only ever preordered twice). Yet even without preordering I have no problem getting the games I am looking for, often on release day. Of course I have made it clear to my local shops that if they don't have it in stock I will go somewhere else. And believe it or not, this actually works.
And there is very little more satisfying than purchasing a product and going back to the store that was sold out and letting the see the $50 sale they missed out on (normally only works in a mall).
Maybe they can follow this up with a live action Urotsukidoji. I mean if they were able to bring The Story of Riki to the big screen live action style, I can't see why they can't do the same for tentacled demonic sex.
You could have done all of these things had you or your parents gone through the correct channels (I'm making the bad assumption you lived in a modern democratic society). Every year there are children who excel beyond those in their age group and are accelerated through the education system. Some times children are bumped by a single year and sometimes by several. Most areas also have special programs designed for accelerated learning which allow students to complete their learning in half the usual time. Beyond that anyone is allowed to take college entrance exams (or SAT and it's international equivalent) and acceptance into higher education is most almost entirely on these aptitude tests and a governmentally accepted elementary school degree, which can also be achieved with a single exam.
So if you really were as smart as you thought you were then there would have been no issue with you proceeding through education at an accelerated rate.
I play violent games so I don't kill people. Um, now who's the deviant. I mean most people "don't kill people" because they feel it's morally objectionable.
As games have gotten more violent, violent crime has gone down in the big gamer demographics You have some references to back that up?
Jesus, he was abnormal. Yes Jesus was abnormal, but for some reason I don't think that was your point.
OS X really sucks for kids as my boss has just discovered. He wanted to run some spyware software to monitor his 13 year old daughter. I'm confused. First you say that OS X sucks for kids and then you go one to prove this my talking about how your bosses paranoia is not supported by OS X. I know many kids, as young as 18 months that use OS X all the time. To say OS X sucks for kids is just down right stupid (regardless of the other posts that show how you can feed you paranoia on OS X just as well as on Windows). I think what you may have meant to say is that OS X is not as good at being a replacement for good parenting as Windows is.
"If you don't like the way I drive, get off my sidewalk you damn kids!" I believe you meant "If you don't like the way I drive get of the street, and the side walk and the lawn..." But I don't have the energy to dig out my "Sunday Driver" to check.
Wow, Gramps! You're so old you played Car Wars? You do know that Car Wars is still in production, though not in it's exact original form. Hopefully they will release the vehicle design guide one of these days and a new generation of Autoduellers and be trained.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually I just happen to be reading some articles online and you struck on a topic I have some interest in (the confusion caused by misinterpretations of terminology in politics). It all started a long time ago when I read a number of articles that referred to both the major US political parties as Fascist. Once I realized that there was some serious confusion as to what Fascism is I started to realize this was true of many political terms. It's like calling the United States a democracy, which is about as far from accurate as one can get, since we are a constitutional republic and lack the main tenants of democracy. So I read the Doctrine of Fascism and realized that most people have no clue what Fascism is, and then read The Communist Manifesto and realized I had a lot to learn about the misuse of terms in politics. I have been trying to find the origin of the term libertarian as meaning strictly anarcho-capitilist but so far can't find a credible reference (Smith certainly never used the term, but that might be because smith was neither a libertarian or a capitalist).
Oh and beyond all that I was checking to see if you were an economic libertarian, since you never said so specifically, by waiting for you to say something moronic (which fortunately you have not yet done).
Only a portion of the population uses the term as you are proposing it be used. Some use the term libertarian to refer to registered members of the US Libertarian party, some use it to refer to modern objectivist, and some use it to refer to anarcho-capitalists. Other use it in conjunction with a number of other words or use it in context to the conversation at hand to have differing meanings. For example there is the term libertarian socialist, which I mentioned earlier, which uses the term libertarian, but not to reference those who are economically libertarian. When someone claims to be libertarian it is foolish to assume that this means they are anarcho-capilist, even if that is one possible usage of the term. Using libertarian without clarification is akin to using the term American when referring to citizens of the United States of America. Sure it's common usage but not entirely accurate and makes it very hard to refer to all the people living on the American continents. I'm also not saying that it was not understandable as to what was meant my libertarian in the pervious conversation I just wanted to be perfectly clear that not all libertarians are inherently prone to moronic acts, only economic libertarians.
I have spent far to many hours attempting to clear all this up and come to a common usage of terms like libertarianism, but in the end each side rightfully has chosen to continue to use the term how they see fit. I just like to be clear when I am referencing ambiguous terms which is why I was sure to clarify that this was in reference to economic libertarians, so I didn't accidentally offend any Social Libertarians that may have read my comment (as opposed to the intention of offending the economic libertarians).
I wouldn't refer to Republics as economic libertarians, or Democrats as social libertarians, though they are moronic in their own unique ways.
I was not the one that said anything about what a libertarian would say in this instance, I'm just saying that every libertarian I have ever had dealings with or read about was easily provoked or tricked into saying and doing moronic things. I would go as far as to say that "smart libertarian" is oxymoronic (at least those that tend towards objectivism). Note that I am assuming we are referring to economic libertarians as opposed to social libertarians.
Oh, and fuck the Karma if you don't get funny when you see it.
The following statement contains broad generalizations which just happen to be accurate more often than they are not.
This conversation has shown were Software Engineers and Computer Scientist differ. Computer Scientist are arrogant with there heads in the clouds thinking that they have some sort of innate ability yet can't convert domain knowledge into a requirement that can be implemented by a skilled a competent coder. Software Engineers on the other hand realize that with some process and basic engineering principles the domain knowledge can be distilled to a point that the implementation can be handled by the software industries equivalent to craftsman and technicians. Analysis, Architecture, Engineering and Implementation are four independant major components of any substantial project, no mater what the domain. Sure one person can handle all four tasks but this would be both a waste or resources, as each takes becomes sequential, and normally means using a person who's better suited at some of the tasks and weaker at others. Engineering principles and Best practices can be taught just as well as any other skill, they just can't be taught by a scientist, but this is of course why all definition of Scientist reference knowledge not ability. Simply put, Engineers want things done correctly and efficiently, while scientist want it done their way. This is why it's easier to turn a Computer Engineer into a decent programer, even though they learn very little, if any, programing in their education, than it is to turn a Computer Scientist into a programer at all.
Learn to give up a little control and you will see you can produce better products with less resource expenditure.
It's not that coding of that kind is hard, it's just that most people can't think clearly, and shouldn't have *any* kind of design job. There is no reason your coders should be doing design. It is possible to write solid software using Engineers for Design and Developers for coding (even interns if you know what you are doing). I assume that your plumber designed your house, or that your companies salesmen design the building you work in, and that's how you got your impression that all it takes to be an engineer is domain knowledge. Domain knowledge does not mean that you are suitable for designing and building software, and large successful projects (not the ones that are measured by how much VC they can pull in) understand this.
BTW, if you've had a hard time finding people who can write business apps well, imagine my frustration in trying to find people who *do* need to understand pointers/recursion/data strictures/algorithms in order to be useful. I'm sure it's difficult, but maybe that is because some people in the industry seem to think that business majors are capable of programing computers or after a couple programing course you should be able to design and program software.
With competent analyst there is no need for engineers or developers to understand the domain at all. Physical building architects, engineers and carpenters do not need to know what their space will be used for only what the space needs to be able to do (hold x number of people, etc.). Software engineering should be no different. The fact that you have developers, let alone engineers and architects, with domain knowledge is one of the major factors behind the piss poor software that tends to get pushed out on clients.
That's a little bit beside the point though. Good software development takes good software developers. Good software design takes good analyst, architects and engineers. Running a successful company takes good business personnel. Yes these can sometimes be the same person but that is usually not the case, end when it is the case it is only on very small projects. Even Gates and Jobs had technical gurus with them when they started their endeavors even though they were fairly knowledgeable about the technology themselves. Jobs had The Woz and Gates had Paul Allen (and eventually brought in a true business guru since that never really was gates strong point)
Lastly take some time to interview software developers sometime, you will see that even among those dedicated to the industry there are very few that know what they are doing (less than 10% of the perspective candidates are worth considering). If dedicated developers can't be expected to write decent code I don't see how your typical business graduate could.
This move only appears to be bad business when looking at the current point in time. The long term affects may be more positive than negative. The obvious benefit is that parents, the ones actually earning the money, will be more likely to shop at this particular store if they like the policy. This benefit will probably not pay off though since the parents that care most likely do not allow there kids to go out an buy games without their knowledge anyway. The more important long term effect has to do with the enforcement of better educated citizens. Gamestop's business is based on sales of a high tech product that requires well educated people to create. If everyone dropped out of school to play video games they would soon run out of video games to buy and sell. It is in the best interest of any business to keep the industry as a whole alive and running efficiently. This is Why companies like IBM are paying employees to teach at universities even though there is no obvious immediate gain for such actions.
It seems that someone may actually need to experience the real world before they comment on it.
Guitar Hero III will be available on all 4 systems, and Rock band will be on all but the Wii. I actually think GH 3 and RB will boost PS2 sales (note necessarily hardware) more than the other systems combined.
That last thing you would want from a Java or C# developer is for them to be writing data structures or trying to use pointers (which is one is technically impossible and in the other not not commonly recommended). When you have a developer on a team that thinks they need to write their own data structures it means that they either think they are better than the larger community, or they don't know the provided data structures well enough to know which to use in which situation.
"Java Schools" are no more or less dangerous that other CS degrees they just have a different focus, all of which is limited and rarely applicable to the real world. But my experience so far is that applicable skills is not necessarily the desired result of education.
That being said I happen to be one of those people that can program direct Java byte code, but if I was ever asked to do it at a job I would run screaming realizing these people have no clue what they are doing (unless I was working on a compiler obviously).
And there is very little more satisfying than purchasing a product and going back to the store that was sold out and letting the see the $50 sale they missed out on (normally only works in a mall).
Maybe they can follow this up with a live action Urotsukidoji. I mean if they were able to bring The Story of Riki to the big screen live action style, I can't see why they can't do the same for tentacled demonic sex.
You could have done all of these things had you or your parents gone through the correct channels (I'm making the bad assumption you lived in a modern democratic society). Every year there are children who excel beyond those in their age group and are accelerated through the education system. Some times children are bumped by a single year and sometimes by several. Most areas also have special programs designed for accelerated learning which allow students to complete their learning in half the usual time. Beyond that anyone is allowed to take college entrance exams (or SAT and it's international equivalent) and acceptance into higher education is most almost entirely on these aptitude tests and a governmentally accepted elementary school degree, which can also be achieved with a single exam.
So if you really were as smart as you thought you were then there would have been no issue with you proceeding through education at an accelerated rate.
To Paraphrase Tyler Durden: We're a generation of children raised by Windows. I'm wondering if another Windows is really the answer we need.