Ah, but we work for the Scope Creep, code is obsolete the moment it is compiled and deployed to UAT:)
To be honest, I had an easter egg in my current app, if there was a specific configuration error on the server that caused remote service calls to cease working you'd get navigated to a special debug page that had that picture of the half sunken container ship labelled "Your ship of fail has arrived". We all had a good laugh because we knew what it meant:)
I removed it and replaced it with a boring message for the client's infrastructure people so they'd know if they forgot how to configure this beast...
As someone else said the best place for humour is in the comments. They can be funny and informative and really lighten the mood if you are debugging or learning the guts of something.
I remember hitting one huge ugly class, the comment right before the most complex method was:
//FINAL BOSS! The method you are about to battle is...
FREAKING AWESOME. I will joyously see every movie about the series no matter what kind of steaming pile they are. I'll probably buy most of the games too. Probably not the MMORPG though...
That's the kind of thinking that leads to a wisecracking CG animated Jamaican sidekick to a newly midichlorian fuelled Rand al'Thor.
I'm actually quite curious what the differences would be that would make it a bad interpreter.
C64 was my first exposure to programming (I was 8 when I got my hot little hands on it), and not having tried anything else from that particular era of home computing I don't have a yardstick to measure that sort of thing.
Seriously, if you start bugging me to do something I don't want to do, well, I hear there are other browsers that are pretty good too.
The "smart" location bar enabled by default was a huge turn off, as was the reversal of the text zooming with the mouse scroll wheel. Of course, there is no easy place to change these settings within the GUI, so it was easier to go back to FF2 than it was to dick around with FF3 and get it the way I like.
Not even mentioning the Add-ons that hadn't quite made the transition to FF3 yet...
The parallel is even closer for M:tG fans as there used to be a quite nice piece of software floating around the 'net about 10 years ago called "Magic Suitcase".
Instead of buying it and creating a licensed version that fans would appreciate and support they just killed it outright if memory serves.
A better question would be why aren't these groups getting exposure in Europe / United States in the first place? Isn't that what organizations like RIAA are for?
I find it interesting that a video game soundtrack or an iPod commercial might be a better distribution system for pop music than radio or television. Something seems broken here.
Given that Netscape made their source code public in March '98 and had a final release in November of that year and IE 5.x wasn't released until March '99 I don't see how they were in direct competition with each other.
By late 1998 the "browser war" was over (really). Having IE pre-installed on Windows had finally done the trick that Microsoft was hoping for, dominance through apathy.
There is no doubt that "Communicator 4" stank, but to say that Microsoft saved the day for users and developers alike with IE 5 is pure fantasy.
To this day I miss the view source / HTML validator that was built into Netscape, not to mention the Javascript console.
I worked in a company where "status quo" incompetence was preferable to functional ability, I left and found somewhere better.
Management has to be held accountable for bad decision making, that's a big part of their job. It's our job to push back up and make sure they understand what challenges we face. A manager ideally is a facilitator not a governor.
I completely understand that sometimes there is a desire to have a senior liaison with the customer (or whatever), fair enough, but there is an absolute need for competent management. Particularly in IT.
I wonder how long it will be before cybernetic sports become a reality?
I mean, think about it. Soccer can be a rough sport but it's nothing compared to American Football. The game is faster and rougher and vastly supported (and in my opinion enhanced) by technology (helmets, pads, shoes, etc). But that would be nothing if players were augmented in such a way to play faster / better / stronger.
Granted, most athletes won't cut their feet off for speed enhancing powers a prosthetic might bestow just yet, but how far off are we from seeing "cybersports" develop and shift into the mainstream?
1983 was an awesome year, I was 6 and my parents took me out to a place that was so magically 80s it hurt. Imagine neon and glass blocks everywhere. Imagine drinking a Shirley Temple for the first time, but even better, imagine the first time seeing, touching, PLAYING a video game.
The place had arcade machines everywhere and I cut my teeth on Pac-Man. From there on in I was hooked.
In 1984 I received a Commodore 64 and I had a few games for it (on cassette), that was the end of normal life for me. From then on in I've been a nerd.
Ok, like many of you when I was in school researching something I'd wander over to the card catalogue and find several books from different authors / publishers, absorb the relevant data from them and draw conclusions on correlated data that was supported by most of my references. How did I know the data in those books was correct? Often, they cited the same piece of work or research (usually unavailable to my library), so in a lot of cases even though I had different perspectives on a given topic I couldn't be 100% sure that the information presented there was correct, all I really had with my bibliography was the unspoken assurance that several publishers and authors weren't trying to trick me into believing something.
Now-a-days Google is my card catalogue, Wikis and Answer sites are my reference material. I hold information I cull from the internet with the same amount of trust as the books I used to use. I'm not sure if I first heard it in high school or not but the same rule applies to both:
Check your references before you even begin to draw conclusions.
If I'm in a snarky mood that's exactly what I do, pick up the phone and tell them I'm interested, tell them to hold on for just a sec and put the receiver down and put on some awful Wurlitzer music or go back to whatever I was doing (dishes is my favourite) and see how long it takes them to hang up.
I had one guy on the line for over an hour, at one point he said "hello" loud enough for me to hear and I told him to "uhh... hang on just a bit more" and returned to whatever I was doing.
I've actually just recently used some of the sites in question to figure out what lame person was trying to ring my number at dinner time. I did a Google search with the number and it came right up with it on 800notes.com. Impressive I thought, now if only I could block numbers for free...
I fail to see the benefit for me of interacting with a robotic receptionist (over say, a human one).
Why should I want my robot vacuum to look like a tiny slave in my employ?
Why should I want children to have really sophisticated robot toys?
Why should I want any of that?
The article seems to imply that the lack of consumer interest in humanoid robotics is somehow socially retarded. I think consumers like it when machines can help them, it's largely irrelevant what they look like or how they behave if they do a good job.
Slashdot Mirror
Ah, but we work for the Scope Creep, code is obsolete the moment it is compiled and deployed to UAT :)
To be honest, I had an easter egg in my current app, if there was a specific configuration error on the server that caused remote service calls to cease working you'd get navigated to a special debug page that had that picture of the half sunken container ship labelled "Your ship of fail has arrived". We all had a good laugh because we knew what it meant :)
I removed it and replaced it with a boring message for the client's infrastructure people so they'd know if they forgot how to configure this beast...
As someone else said the best place for humour is in the comments. They can be funny and informative and really lighten the mood if you are debugging or learning the guts of something.
I remember hitting one huge ugly class, the comment right before the most complex method was:
That was hilarious at the time...
Most of the projects I've been on never left me with time for fun stuff like that.
That's the kind of thinking that leads to a wisecracking CG animated Jamaican sidekick to a newly midichlorian fuelled Rand al'Thor.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, if a game is fun and challenging it will win no matter how sophisticated (or "unsophisticated") it is.
So if "fun games" is a fad then fuck it I'm on the fad bandwagon.
Compared to...?
I'm actually quite curious what the differences would be that would make it a bad interpreter.
C64 was my first exposure to programming (I was 8 when I got my hot little hands on it), and not having tried anything else from that particular era of home computing I don't have a yardstick to measure that sort of thing.
So please, tell me more :-)
You haven't seen their driver docs for IBM Content Manager...
Nothing would have been better than what they have currently (at least for the Java flavour).
Have they seen IBM documentation? *shudder*
Sorry... what were we talking about again?
Seriously, if you start bugging me to do something I don't want to do, well, I hear there are other browsers that are pretty good too.
The "smart" location bar enabled by default was a huge turn off, as was the reversal of the text zooming with the mouse scroll wheel. Of course, there is no easy place to change these settings within the GUI, so it was easier to go back to FF2 than it was to dick around with FF3 and get it the way I like.
Not even mentioning the Add-ons that hadn't quite made the transition to FF3 yet...
The parallel is even closer for M:tG fans as there used to be a quite nice piece of software floating around the 'net about 10 years ago called "Magic Suitcase".
Instead of buying it and creating a licensed version that fans would appreciate and support they just killed it outright if memory serves.
Game development will always have room for the little guy, as long as he is making fun games.
Step 1: Review video footage.
Step 2: Carve memorable/important parts into stone.
Step 3: ??? (mummies?)
Step 4: Profit!
I'll just switch to filing my taxes electronically...
A better question would be why aren't these groups getting exposure in Europe / United States in the first place? Isn't that what organizations like RIAA are for?
I find it interesting that a video game soundtrack or an iPod commercial might be a better distribution system for pop music than radio or television. Something seems broken here.
Given that Netscape made their source code public in March '98 and had a final release in November of that year and IE 5.x wasn't released until March '99 I don't see how they were in direct competition with each other.
By late 1998 the "browser war" was over (really). Having IE pre-installed on Windows had finally done the trick that Microsoft was hoping for, dominance through apathy.
There is no doubt that "Communicator 4" stank, but to say that Microsoft saved the day for users and developers alike with IE 5 is pure fantasy.
To this day I miss the view source / HTML validator that was built into Netscape, not to mention the Javascript console.
I worked in a company where "status quo" incompetence was preferable to functional ability, I left and found somewhere better.
Management has to be held accountable for bad decision making, that's a big part of their job. It's our job to push back up and make sure they understand what challenges we face. A manager ideally is a facilitator not a governor.
I completely understand that sometimes there is a desire to have a senior liaison with the customer (or whatever), fair enough, but there is an absolute need for competent management. Particularly in IT.
Age != Experience
I've had perfectly brilliant IT managers that were my age (30) and I've had functionally incapable 45+ year old "IT" managers.
A good IT manager will take roadblocks away so IT staff can get work done. I don't care if they're 60 or 20, as long as they "work".
I wonder how long it will be before cybernetic sports become a reality?
I mean, think about it. Soccer can be a rough sport but it's nothing compared to American Football. The game is faster and rougher and vastly supported (and in my opinion enhanced) by technology (helmets, pads, shoes, etc). But that would be nothing if players were augmented in such a way to play faster / better / stronger.
Granted, most athletes won't cut their feet off for speed enhancing powers a prosthetic might bestow just yet, but how far off are we from seeing "cybersports" develop and shift into the mainstream?
1983 was an awesome year, I was 6 and my parents took me out to a place that was so magically 80s it hurt. Imagine neon and glass blocks everywhere. Imagine drinking a Shirley Temple for the first time, but even better, imagine the first time seeing, touching, PLAYING a video game.
The place had arcade machines everywhere and I cut my teeth on Pac-Man. From there on in I was hooked.
In 1984 I received a Commodore 64 and I had a few games for it (on cassette), that was the end of normal life for me. From then on in I've been a nerd.
No regrets!
Ok, like many of you when I was in school researching something I'd wander over to the card catalogue and find several books from different authors / publishers, absorb the relevant data from them and draw conclusions on correlated data that was supported by most of my references. How did I know the data in those books was correct? Often, they cited the same piece of work or research (usually unavailable to my library), so in a lot of cases even though I had different perspectives on a given topic I couldn't be 100% sure that the information presented there was correct, all I really had with my bibliography was the unspoken assurance that several publishers and authors weren't trying to trick me into believing something.
Now-a-days Google is my card catalogue, Wikis and Answer sites are my reference material. I hold information I cull from the internet with the same amount of trust as the books I used to use. I'm not sure if I first heard it in high school or not but the same rule applies to both:
Check your references before you even begin to draw conclusions.
I tried this, most don't call back but some do and sometimes from a direct line. This is key because you can have some fun with that number...
Not that I would do anything like that.
If I'm in a snarky mood that's exactly what I do, pick up the phone and tell them I'm interested, tell them to hold on for just a sec and put the receiver down and put on some awful Wurlitzer music or go back to whatever I was doing (dishes is my favourite) and see how long it takes them to hang up.
I had one guy on the line for over an hour, at one point he said "hello" loud enough for me to hear and I told him to "uhh... hang on just a bit more" and returned to whatever I was doing.
I've actually just recently used some of the sites in question to figure out what lame person was trying to ring my number at dinner time. I did a Google search with the number and it came right up with it on 800notes.com. Impressive I thought, now if only I could block numbers for free...
"We'll call it a draw"
~Black Knight
I fail to see the benefit for me of interacting with a robotic receptionist (over say, a human one).
Why should I want my robot vacuum to look like a tiny slave in my employ?
Why should I want children to have really sophisticated robot toys?
Why should I want any of that?
The article seems to imply that the lack of consumer interest in humanoid robotics is somehow socially retarded. I think consumers like it when machines can help them, it's largely irrelevant what they look like or how they behave if they do a good job.