No, Guildford is not noted for its black population. On the contrary; it's the heart of tradition bound middle England.
But I don't think that's really relevant - Guildford was selected as being the most mundane address an alien from Beatelgeuse could use as a cover. In the same way that Ford Prefect was the most ludicrously poor choice of cover name, chosen by Ford as being "nicely inconspicuous" - I recall reading somewhere that the initial gag was going to be that Ford had mistaken the dominant lifeform on the planet.
Arthur represents our perspective in the story. Ford is the exposition; when he tells Arthur what's going on, he's telling us. His character in most of versions of the story is essentially relaxed coward. I don't think skin colour, or indeed nationality and accent, needs to affect anything essential to the part.
I've just recently finished watching the BBC's DVD version of HHGTTG, and I enjoyed it [...] even though it didn't have a lot of redeeming qualities, technically.
It was phenomenally cheap. Its other redeeming features were the writing and the cast (I agree that Trillian was a poor choice though). The "graphics" representing the guide pages were all hand animated because computers couldn't really do that at the time for anything approaching an affordable sum of money. In fact the series (as with the radio series before it) pioneered a whole set of techniques that are now mundane simply to get the whole thing done within budget! They may look shabby now, but bear in mind the vintage of what you're watching.
I'll probably go and see the film - but I don't hold out much hope for it. If Adams was alive to control things, maybe, but then I probably wouldn't be seeing it for another ten years.
But Adams once said "never underestimate the baleful stupidity of studio executives", so I won't.
Actually HitchHikers sold some quite ridiculous number of copies, so I'm not sure you could really call his appeal limited - but yes, there certainly seems to be a stronger following amongst the science and IT types.
I'd say that there's a certain similarity between Dilbert and Arthur Dent, for a start. Everyman up against the lunacy of bureaucracy (and technology) is a recurring theme in his books.
Then there's the obvious sci-fi/geek connection, and it's what originally drew me into them well before I understood half the jokes. His understanding of science was pretty good, even though he wasn't a scientist per se. He had a wonderful ability to draw hilariously illogical conclusions from a correct starting premise.
He was a gentle but perspicacious satirist. The story of the popularly elected (unpopular) lizards in So Long And Thanks for All the Fish is beautiful. So anyone who likes satire will get something from them.
And lastly he was the master of the absolutely cracking joke, often delivered as a one-liner after an extensive but subtle build up.
My recollection is that that the on stage performance was his 42nd birthday present from the band.
Personally I think the most disconcerting thing I've heard recently was Adams playing the part of Agrajag in the radio adaptation of his later books. Disconcerting because he was dead at the time they made the series (he'd recorded the part previously as, essentially, an audition to be in the series).
As you may remember, Agrajag is the character who gets reincarnated and then killed by Arthur Dent (accidentally) over and over again. Which is a bit spooky when you think about it...
Thank you very much for the New Scientist link - I hadn't read that article (despite having a subscription. D'oh!) so I'd never seen this quote before:
The US Patent Office says it does not comment on individual patents, leaving it unclear how such an obvious idea won approval. A spokeswoman did say that the patent office uses a legalistic definition of obviousness: "That is not necessarily the conventional definition."
Now, I'd like to have that in context, but does sound like they're admitting to using a non-obvious definition of "obvious".
Perhaps. But as with all things, one learns by doing. If you cultivated a good writing style even on Slashdot, perhaps it would have carried over into your essay.
Regardless, saying that an essay which was not up to par in the eye of your interviewers "kicked ass" is to ignore its obvious practical deficiency.
PostgreSQL on Windows is really slick (after using it on Linux for years, I installed Beta 2 under Win2K and I haven't had a single problem yet). I think it's going to get a huge boost with the official 8.0 release; it would be great if they could go to a clearly pronouncible name.
But whatever flag they fly under, I'm really pleased to see them getting so close to the 8.0 release. It's an incredibly good bit of software. Congratulations guys.
I think it's a shame that RMS insists on pushing this point, because it makes him look pretty stupid. Language is essentially democratic, insisting that it's being used "wrong" looks and sounds like pedantry.
You use Emacs and Ant and think you're close to the metal? What sort of lunatic are you?
Emacs is certainly a mature product, so it's hardly surprising that its CVS support is rock solid. But in no way, shape, or form is it less complex (unless the Eclipse SDK acquired a LISP interpreter that nobody's told me about).
Eclipse support for CVS was patchy to start with and is pretty solid as of the 3.0 release, but that's because Eclipse is essentially a work in progress. I use it myself and adore it, but it has its faults.
Mind you I tried to learn Emacs once and reverted to vi pretty quickly, so you might not want to respect my views...
While I'm sure there are some idiots who "hate" MySQL, that's really missing the point.
MySQL doesn't do a lot of things that the big commercial databases do.
If you don't need those things, then MySQL is an outstanding product. If you do need those things, MySQL is useless - worse, if you need those things but assume that MySQL has them it becomes dangerous. Specifically I'm thinking of referential integrity and invalid value behaviour here.
So MySQL gets a bad name with (some) people who use "real" databases, and a good name with (some) people who use "toy" databases - even though it's perfectly suited to some very "real" applications, and some of the competitors would be wild overkill for "toy" applications.
Your requirements sound like an excellent fit for MySQL. Good choice.
Hmm... I seem to have been modded funny for that, but actually I kind of mean it.
Having tried to use a couple of projects that depended upon it, I found that maven really was quite painful to use, and the projects seemed less "clean" than ones built by Ant with greater constraints on the library versions they can use.
Worse yet, trying to build a project that's been mavenized when you're subsisting on 28.8K thinband is a nightmare. Maven's repository may seem like a great idea, but it's a terrible one for anyone behind a restrictive proxy, or otherwise unable to take advantage of this "feature".
If you are choosing between a project based on maven and one based on Ant then I'd recommend the Ant one. Maven has no features that I consider compelling over and above Ant, but it is much more complicated, and it does introduce problems for some users' circumstances.
What you and others miss with Nielson is that he's not just spouting off his own opinion on this and other points - these are things they discovered by conducting usability testing.
This program doesn't seem to be anything but a slightly sophisticated version of 'banner' that is able to intercept and send packets over a Cisco network. As I said before, nothing new...
Two other distros I'm curious about but won't probably ever install are slackware and gentoo. It just sounds like they like things more minimalistic than me (just get that feeling of it sounds difficult).
Funnily enough, I actually use Slackware because I find it easier than Redhat to configure as a server. I don't think you'd really have any trouble with it - next time you have time and a machine to install, give it a go dor a week.
Caution: Slackware was the first proper "distribution" that I used (once such things existed), so I may be blinded by familiarity.
Slashdot Mirror
Suddenly a thousand people try to pinch your slashdot account.
The first rule of passwords is...? Anyone?
Bueller?
Did you mean to post that A/C ? 'cos it's the most intelligent thing I've read on the subject of blogs pretty much ever.
No, Guildford is not noted for its black population. On the contrary; it's the heart of tradition bound middle England.
But I don't think that's really relevant - Guildford was selected as being the most mundane address an alien from Beatelgeuse could use as a cover. In the same way that Ford Prefect was the most ludicrously poor choice of cover name, chosen by Ford as being "nicely inconspicuous" - I recall reading somewhere that the initial gag was going to be that Ford had mistaken the dominant lifeform on the planet.
Arthur represents our perspective in the story. Ford is the exposition; when he tells Arthur what's going on, he's telling us. His character in most of versions of the story is essentially relaxed coward. I don't think skin colour, or indeed nationality and accent, needs to affect anything essential to the part.
I've just recently finished watching the BBC's DVD version of HHGTTG, and I enjoyed it [...] even though it didn't have a lot of redeeming qualities, technically.
It was phenomenally cheap. Its other redeeming features were the writing and the cast (I agree that Trillian was a poor choice though). The "graphics" representing the guide pages were all hand animated because computers couldn't really do that at the time for anything approaching an affordable sum of money. In fact the series (as with the radio series before it) pioneered a whole set of techniques that are now mundane simply to get the whole thing done within budget! They may look shabby now, but bear in mind the vintage of what you're watching.
I'll probably go and see the film - but I don't hold out much hope for it. If Adams was alive to control things, maybe, but then I probably wouldn't be seeing it for another ten years.
But Adams once said "never underestimate the baleful stupidity of studio executives", so I won't.
Dave.
And yet you cared enough to tell us? Thanks so much for letting us know.
Actually HitchHikers sold some quite ridiculous number of copies, so I'm not sure you could really call his appeal limited - but yes, there certainly seems to be a stronger following amongst the science and IT types.
I'd say that there's a certain similarity between Dilbert and Arthur Dent, for a start. Everyman up against the lunacy of bureaucracy (and technology) is a recurring theme in his books.
Then there's the obvious sci-fi/geek connection, and it's what originally drew me into them well before I understood half the jokes. His understanding of science was pretty good, even though he wasn't a scientist per se. He had a wonderful ability to draw hilariously illogical conclusions from a correct starting premise.
He was a gentle but perspicacious satirist. The story of the popularly elected (unpopular) lizards in So Long And Thanks for All the Fish is beautiful. So anyone who likes satire will get something from them.
And lastly he was the master of the absolutely cracking joke, often delivered as a one-liner after an extensive but subtle build up.
Dave.
My recollection is that that the on stage performance was his 42nd birthday present from the band.
Personally I think the most disconcerting thing I've heard recently was Adams playing the part of Agrajag in the radio adaptation of his later books. Disconcerting because he was dead at the time they made the series (he'd recorded the part previously as, essentially, an audition to be in the series).
As you may remember, Agrajag is the character who gets reincarnated and then killed by Arthur Dent (accidentally) over and over again. Which is a bit spooky when you think about it...
Thank you very much for the New Scientist link - I hadn't read that article (despite having a subscription. D'oh!) so I'd never seen this quote before:
The US Patent Office says it does not comment on individual patents, leaving it unclear how such an obvious idea won approval. A spokeswoman did say that the patent office uses a legalistic definition of obviousness: "That is not necessarily the conventional definition."
Now, I'd like to have that in context, but does sound like they're admitting to using a non-obvious definition of "obvious".
Just how much more ludicrous could they be?
Perhaps. But as with all things, one learns by doing. If you cultivated a good writing style even on Slashdot, perhaps it would have carried over into your essay.
Regardless, saying that an essay which was not up to par in the eye of your interviewers "kicked ass" is to ignore its obvious practical deficiency.
Yours was the only ass kicked.
Did your essay use paragraphs?
Frankly I'm amazed you got so far, if the depth of introspection you can achieve is "my essay kicked ass". Clearly it didn't.
It plunges on January 14th, not 24th.
Press Release
(me): Language is essentially democratic
Except when it comes to trademarks and commerical use of names.
On the contrary. The democratic process is one of the ways you can lose a trademark. See: Genericized Trademarks
Bingo.
PostgreSQL on Windows is really slick (after using it on Linux for years, I installed Beta 2 under Win2K and I haven't had a single problem yet). I think it's going to get a huge boost with the official 8.0 release; it would be great if they could go to a clearly pronouncible name.
But whatever flag they fly under, I'm really pleased to see them getting so close to the 8.0 release. It's an incredibly good bit of software. Congratulations guys.
I think it's a shame that RMS insists on pushing this point, because it makes him look pretty stupid. Language is essentially democratic, insisting that it's being used "wrong" looks and sounds like pedantry.
And nobody likes a pedant.
You use Emacs and Ant and think you're close to the metal? What sort of lunatic are you?
Emacs is certainly a mature product, so it's hardly surprising that its CVS support is rock solid. But in no way, shape, or form is it less complex (unless the Eclipse SDK acquired a LISP interpreter that nobody's told me about).
Eclipse support for CVS was patchy to start with and is pretty solid as of the 3.0 release, but that's because Eclipse is essentially a work in progress. I use it myself and adore it, but it has its faults.
Mind you I tried to learn Emacs once and reverted to vi pretty quickly, so you might not want to respect my views...
You answered the questions. Then you answered more questions.
I take it you have no plans for a political career?
This book may well be perfectly good, but I've been put off it by Fiachra's astroturfing of it. He's a friend of the authors.
The mention of his name in the above review (for no apparent reason) makes me suspicious.
Dave.
While I'm sure there are some idiots who "hate" MySQL, that's really missing the point.
MySQL doesn't do a lot of things that the big commercial databases do.
If you don't need those things, then MySQL is an outstanding product. If you do need those things, MySQL is useless - worse, if you need those things but assume that MySQL has them it becomes dangerous. Specifically I'm thinking of referential integrity and invalid value behaviour here.
So MySQL gets a bad name with (some) people who use "real" databases, and a good name with (some) people who use "toy" databases - even though it's perfectly suited to some very "real" applications, and some of the competitors would be wild overkill for "toy" applications.
Your requirements sound like an excellent fit for MySQL. Good choice.
Really ? That's how I got to your post...
Dave.
Hmm... I seem to have been modded funny for that, but actually I kind of mean it.
Having tried to use a couple of projects that depended upon it, I found that maven really was quite painful to use, and the projects seemed less "clean" than ones built by Ant with greater constraints on the library versions they can use.
Worse yet, trying to build a project that's been mavenized when you're subsisting on 28.8K thinband is a nightmare. Maven's repository may seem like a great idea, but it's a terrible one for anyone behind a restrictive proxy, or otherwise unable to take advantage of this "feature".
If you are choosing between a project based on maven and one based on Ant then I'd recommend the Ant one. Maven has no features that I consider compelling over and above Ant, but it is much more complicated, and it does introduce problems for some users' circumstances.
Let me clarify.
It's a great big pain in the butt.
"A fall of moondust" is the story you're thinking of.
What you and others miss with Nielson is that he's not just spouting off his own opinion on this and other points - these are things they discovered by conducting usability testing.
This program doesn't seem to be anything but a slightly sophisticated version of 'banner' that is able to intercept and send packets over a Cisco network. As I said before, nothing new ...
The part that's in bold is the part that's new.
Cretin.
Two other distros I'm curious about but won't probably ever install are slackware and gentoo. It just sounds like they like things more minimalistic than me (just get that feeling of it sounds difficult).
Funnily enough, I actually use Slackware because I find it easier than Redhat to configure as a server. I don't think you'd really have any trouble with it - next time you have time and a machine to install, give it a go dor a week.
Caution: Slackware was the first proper "distribution" that I used (once such things existed), so I may be blinded by familiarity.
Dijkstra was in a good position to be arrogant.
He "did" as well as taught - you might like to read up on him a bit before putting your foot in your mouth.
And, incidentally, good teachers are worth a thousand "arrogant" programmers who think they know better.
D.