A few years ago, I would have said: Buy UO now, it *IS* the answer:). However, since origin has been bought by EA, it is morphing into a standard powergaming/levelling/hacknslash MMOG. I reopened my account last month, and it is even worse now (The magic items now have diablo-like properties:( ). Ahh, the good ol' days... I guess that the answer would be to find an old UO client, and play on non-EA servers (which is illegal...).
Woot. Each time I wish I had mod points, I don't. Anyway, the comment already is at 5. Kick**s idea. It would motivate me to fix the little compliance glitches on my webpage:)
Of course healthcare is not free, but at least, the cost is shared among *all* canadians. This way, *any* canadian have access to the same service, not only the most fortunates citizens. My aunt lives in colorado, and had to mortgage her house to cure a quite nasty disease her son got, because the family healtcare insurance she had had no more money to pay ( I don't quite remember the details, but I think that it was the kind of insurance that stopped paying when there have been too much claims. My cousin should have been sick a couple of weeks earlier. ). You will never see that in canada ( You will see huuuuge waiting lists for certain types of surgeries though because the system is overloaded, but well... )
What I fail to understand here is why maths are needed to produce efficient code. I forgot most of my math courses, but I know how to implement a hash table or a binary tree. And even if I wouldn't, there are a *lot* of implementations of all advanced data structure out there. I think that knowing which data structure to use in different cases makes a programmer good. On top of that, a programmer that can produce efficient and maintainable implementations is even better.
If a contest like this would exist, to win, you would have to produce unmaintainable code on phase 1. I don't like that. I prefer the idea of the top parent: Create code to accomplish a goal, and then ask to morph that code to accomplish another goal, which is related, yet very different. Yet, another option would be to make exactly the same thing as you mentioned (Phase 1,2,3,4) but use different teams for each phase. Thus, you would have to chose which phase you want when you suscribe, and then, the prize is divided in 4 parts. This way, a phase 1 guy would have no interest in producing unmaintainable code, because he would not be involved in other phases at all.
I'm not sure if it is true, but I heard that under the old communist russian regime, EVERYBODY had to make at least 4 years into a manual, physical job before they could go on with their carrer. Thus, people having an office job would appreciate it much more. Kind of a neat idea IMO.
If you didn't mean *computer* games, we can point:
*D&D: the movie = One of the worst movie I ever seen, but it is a good game
Video games:
*Final fantasy = quite bad although but visually good. And these are *very* good games *Street fighter (thats an old one (with van damme)) = *BAD*. The games are good though *I didnt see tombraider, but I assume it is bad. The game is bad too....... I thought I could think of more movies than that...
Conclusion: Movies made from games are generally bad. Games made from movies too (Example: Enter the matrix).
Pirates of the burning sea ( www.burningsea.com )will be the LAST MMO I will try. I've been a UO addict for more than 2 years, and I was then extremely disappointed by AC2, and then SWG (the're both nothing compared to UO. well, SWG it much closer than AC2 though ). I loved Master & commander movie, and I think that PoBS could be very fun. If it's not, well, I swear it will have been my last MMO.
If I understand what LBI files are, it is some kind of HTML code that is in several HTML pages, and makes your HTML code change everywhere when you change that LBI files? I wouldn't call this efficient.
XSLT/XML/CSS all the way man. *There* lies the real power. http://www.w3c.org is the real source for webpage edition.
I also noticed that employers prefer mathematicians over CS people. But there is a problem when you use a mathematician to create software: The implementation. They might have wonderful theories, think about kickass algorithm, but IMO, the CS is the implementation specialist (Of course, like everywhere, there is a *lot* of bad CS people). Kickass class sets, data structures, efficient pointer manipulation.
Here in Quebec, people with high degrees in the IT didn't have any computer training prerequisite before starting their high degree training. Thus, they have as much, if not less experience with a computer than a CS guy.
In fact, I don't know a lot of mathematicians, but I've seen a lot of awful code made by programmers with a higher degree than mine (I'm a CS guy:) ). And managers are NOT skilled to see the difference between efficient code and totally bloated code. Managers don't see why VB is evil.
Thus, even if I'm biased here, if I was a staff manager, I would prefer a very enthusiast CS guy to a high degree guy. And if I was a staff manager's boss, I would make sure that my manager has some computer skills before hiring IT people (enough skills to see the difference between good and bad code).
The defense said that personal information collected without the driver's knowledge couldn't be used in court, but the judge stated that brake/acceleration (The black box wasn't really a black box, it was a device that determines if the air bags should be deployed or not) was not personal data, but exclusively car data.
I would make it the XProgramming way. I would start brainstorming into XML files, without worrying about how this data will be displayed, or where wich data needs to be. I guess that my XML doc would naturally "refactor" as I write more stuff. Once I'm quite done, I would start to write a XSL stylesheet.
"VB" -> "Delphi" (It's a GREAT program, but not when badly used) "SQL Server" -> "Paradox 5.0" (ouch!) "5 digits" -> "5 digits goddamit! can you believe it?" "current job" -> "job I left last week" (well, I was laid off... because I was insisting on refactoring) "1000 lines reports" -> "cut & pasted 1000 lines report with 2 lines changed between each, try to maintain this..." "pointer" -> "what's a pointer? the other guy woulda said" Did I fail to mention it was mission critical?
Replacing hardcoded strings... I was a CS trainee back then. CS trainee is the "Cheap labor" of the IT. Thus, a lot of companies use them to do boring tasks that no regular employe want to do.
US is being hurt by their stupid trade agreements. This ruling from WTO is noting compared to what US did to other countries, Canada through NAFTA in particular (See this old but striking story about MMT, a dangerous fuel additive. Canada banned it for environmental reasons, and they were fined by NAFTA for 20m). And what about this silly 20% tax on Canada's wood exportation to US? And this new story is one more proof that these trade agreements are nothing but bull****. US is definately not fair in a LOT of cases and I think it's good for them to learn that these agreements are *2 WAYS* agreements! No wonder why so much people (me included) are in the streets during WTO summits.
The VB thing is absolutely right. And I was *lucky* enough to have this type of guy as my project manager. He first started the project with Delphi (which rules, as everybody know), and when I was hired there, I started talking about refactoring the whole thing after 3 months (Trust me, the project really needed (and still needs, since that refactoring has never been done ) it.), and this guy said: "I think we should rewrite the whole thing in VB".
I then knew that I needed to work under another project manager. I had to argue a lot before he finally gave up about VB. Darnit, this guy programmed 8 years with delphi, and has absolutely no clue about what OOP is (He knows that he must add code in the OnClick events).
I don't call these guys "programmers", I call them "barely-over-the-average users how can effectively point-and-click-and-sometimes-even-type-stuff". Hopefully, a lot of these guys are laid off because of the india outsourcing.
There was a great comment about VB on
ask.slashdot.
Have you ever watched someone playing Everquest after 8 hours straight? I can tell you, this guy *really* looks dumb, and *is* getting dumber as he clicks and clicks and clicks like a mindless zombie to get his XPs. In my case, it was UO, and I think that intensively playing it for 2 years didn't make me any good (but it still is better than EQ:) ). However, I would not say that games like civ3 gets you dumber. On the other side, I remember having looked at myself in the mirror once, after having played civ3 the whole day... and I felt dumb:)
That's the same thing with TV and books and everything. Not all TV programs or books have the same intellectual value. Watch reality shows all day, and I guarantee you that you'll feel (and will be) dumber.
I'm not sure where I read it (it must have been on/.:) ), but it said that the USPTO accepts almost all software patents because they do not have the ressources nor the knowledge to determine if a software patent is valid. Thus, unless they are allocated more funds, they will accept all patents, and wait for the court to rule if it is valid.
In fact, I would also say that if you believe in open source, that you should get money first, and THEN contribute to open source. Money not only buys houses and cars, it buys you TIME needed to develop. Thus, young developer, get money, and you'll get time. (Well, that's my plan:) )
You can issue a chargeback. Before you do that, e-mail Micro 2000 and tell them that if they don't refund you, you will chargeback. If they still don't refund, take your credit card invoice, go to your bank, and tell them you never authorized this transaction. Since it is an online transaction, you never signed anything, so they don't have any proof of your authorization. It works. I'm a RegNow vendor, and they regulary get chargebacks (and they have no choice but to refund. They even get a penalty for having issued a false transaction).Micro 2000 fucked with you, so fuck with them.
Note that I'm not promoting false chargebacks, but if a company says it has a 30 days guarantee and doesn't honor it... well they deserve that.
You got it! That's a great analogy. Who's silly enough to plant seeds one at the time. If you need to grow a plant that need a lot of attention, THEN you will do it. Otherwise, think big! After you seeded you whole field with the big machine, you can look at it, check if there are parts which aren't seeded correctly, and seed it by hand (You know, use ASM for the critical parts of your high-level project). And even then, farming machines today are so well designed that the need manual seeding is extremely seldom.
I think the skill of a programmer comes from his ability to make abstraction of the machine. I mean, a good programmer will build a very well designed class tree, which is modular, well commented and easy to understand for the whole dev team, thus generating a lot less bugs than a messy, huge bunch of ASM commands.
A good design for a quick sort algorithm, even if badly implemented is much better than an optimized ASM implementation of a bubble sort algorithm. Thus, it is not because you're an ASM wizard that you are a good programmer. I know a kind of low-level wizard, and after taking a glimpse at his code, I wouldn't want to work in his messy code!
Slashdot Mirror
A few years ago, I would have said: Buy UO now, it *IS* the answer :). However, since origin has been bought by EA, it is morphing into a standard powergaming/levelling/hacknslash MMOG. I reopened my account last month, and it is even worse now (The magic items now have diablo-like properties :( ). Ahh, the good ol' days... I guess that the answer would be to find an old UO client, and play on non-EA servers (which is illegal...).
Woot. Each time I wish I had mod points, I don't. Anyway, the comment already is at 5. Kick**s idea. It would motivate me to fix the little compliance glitches on my webpage :)
the escrow website was a known scamming thing, if I understood right.
It will probably beat AYBABTU!
Of course healthcare is not free, but at least, the cost is shared among *all* canadians. This way, *any* canadian have access to the same service, not only the most fortunates citizens. My aunt lives in colorado, and had to mortgage her house to cure a quite nasty disease her son got, because the family healtcare insurance she had had no more money to pay ( I don't quite remember the details, but I think that it was the kind of insurance that stopped paying when there have been too much claims. My cousin should have been sick a couple of weeks earlier. ). You will never see that in canada ( You will see huuuuge waiting lists for certain types of surgeries though because the system is overloaded, but well... )
What I fail to understand here is why maths are needed to produce efficient code. I forgot most of my math courses, but I know how to implement a hash table or a binary tree. And even if I wouldn't, there are a *lot* of implementations of all advanced data structure out there. I think that knowing which data structure to use in different cases makes a programmer good. On top of that, a programmer that can produce efficient and maintainable implementations is even better.
If a contest like this would exist, to win, you would have to produce unmaintainable code on phase 1. I don't like that. I prefer the idea of the top parent: Create code to accomplish a goal, and then ask to morph that code to accomplish another goal, which is related, yet very different. Yet, another option would be to make exactly the same thing as you mentioned (Phase 1,2,3,4) but use different teams for each phase. Thus, you would have to chose which phase you want when you suscribe, and then, the prize is divided in 4 parts. This way, a phase 1 guy would have no interest in producing unmaintainable code, because he would not be involved in other phases at all.
I'm not sure if it is true, but I heard that under the old communist russian regime, EVERYBODY had to make at least 4 years into a manual, physical job before they could go on with their carrer. Thus, people having an office job would appreciate it much more. Kind of a neat idea IMO.
If you didn't mean *computer* games, we can point:
... ...
*D&D: the movie = One of the worst movie I ever seen, but it is a good game
Video games:
*Final fantasy = quite bad although but visually good. And these are *very* good games
*Street fighter (thats an old one (with van damme)) = *BAD*. The games are good though
*I didnt see tombraider, but I assume it is bad. The game is bad too.
I thought I could think of more movies than that...
Conclusion: Movies made from games are generally bad. Games made from movies too (Example: Enter the matrix).
Pirates of the burning sea ( www.burningsea.com )will be the LAST MMO I will try. I've been a UO addict for more than 2 years, and I was then extremely disappointed by AC2, and then SWG (the're both nothing compared to UO. well, SWG it much closer than AC2 though ). I loved Master & commander movie, and I think that PoBS could be very fun. If it's not, well, I swear it will have been my last MMO.
See my comment on XSLT... XSLT/XML *is* static linking.
If I understand what LBI files are, it is some kind of HTML code that is in several HTML pages, and makes your HTML code change everywhere when you change that LBI files? I wouldn't call this efficient.
XSLT/XML/CSS all the way man. *There* lies the real power. http://www.w3c.org is the real source for webpage edition.
I also noticed that employers prefer mathematicians over CS people. But there is a problem when you use a mathematician to create software: The implementation. They might have wonderful theories, think about kickass algorithm, but IMO, the CS is the implementation specialist (Of course, like everywhere, there is a *lot* of bad CS people). Kickass class sets, data structures, efficient pointer manipulation.
:) ). And managers are NOT skilled to see the difference between efficient code and totally bloated code. Managers don't see why VB is evil.
Here in Quebec, people with high degrees in the IT didn't have any computer training prerequisite before starting their high degree training. Thus, they have as much, if not less experience with a computer than a CS guy.
In fact, I don't know a lot of mathematicians, but I've seen a lot of awful code made by programmers with a higher degree than mine (I'm a CS guy
Thus, even if I'm biased here, if I was a staff manager, I would prefer a very enthusiast CS guy to a high degree guy. And if I was a staff manager's boss, I would make sure that my manager has some computer skills before hiring IT people (enough skills to see the difference between good and bad code).
The defense said that personal information collected without the driver's knowledge couldn't be used in court, but the judge stated that brake/acceleration (The black box wasn't really a black box, it was a device that determines if the air bags should be deployed or not) was not personal data, but exclusively car data.
I would make it the XProgramming way. I would start brainstorming into XML files, without worrying about how this data will be displayed, or where wich data needs to be. I guess that my XML doc would naturally "refactor" as I write more stuff. Once I'm quite done, I would start to write a XSL stylesheet.
Same as you, but you can subst some strings:
"VB" -> "Delphi" (It's a GREAT program, but not when badly used)
"SQL Server" -> "Paradox 5.0" (ouch!)
"5 digits" -> "5 digits goddamit! can you believe it?"
"current job" -> "job I left last week" (well, I was laid off... because I was insisting on refactoring)
"1000 lines reports" -> "cut & pasted 1000 lines report with 2 lines changed between each, try to maintain this..."
"pointer" -> "what's a pointer? the other guy woulda said"
Did I fail to mention it was mission critical?
Good luck, you'll need it. I totally sympatize.
This kind of code is, sadly, everywhere near VB programmers. Blame VB.
Replacing hardcoded strings... I was a CS trainee back then. CS trainee is the "Cheap labor" of the IT. Thus, a lot of companies use them to do boring tasks that no regular employe want to do.
US is being hurt by their stupid trade agreements. This ruling from WTO is noting compared to what US did to other countries, Canada through NAFTA in particular (See this old but striking story about MMT, a dangerous fuel additive. Canada banned it for environmental reasons, and they were fined by NAFTA for 20m). And what about this silly 20% tax on Canada's wood exportation to US? And this new story is one more proof that these trade agreements are nothing but bull****. US is definately not fair in a LOT of cases and I think it's good for them to learn that these agreements are *2 WAYS* agreements! No wonder why so much people (me included) are in the streets during WTO summits.
The VB thing is absolutely right. And I was *lucky* enough to have this type of guy as my project manager. He first started the project with Delphi (which rules, as everybody know), and when I was hired there, I started talking about refactoring the whole thing after 3 months (Trust me, the project really needed (and still needs, since that refactoring has never been done ) it.), and this guy said: "I think we should rewrite the whole thing in VB".
I then knew that I needed to work under another project manager. I had to argue a lot before he finally gave up about VB. Darnit, this guy programmed 8 years with delphi, and has absolutely no clue about what OOP is (He knows that he must add code in the OnClick events).
I don't call these guys "programmers", I call them "barely-over-the-average users how can effectively point-and-click-and-sometimes-even-type-stuff". Hopefully, a lot of these guys are laid off because of the india outsourcing.
There was a great comment about VB on ask.slashdot.
Have you ever watched someone playing Everquest after 8 hours straight? I can tell you, this guy *really* looks dumb, and *is* getting dumber as he clicks and clicks and clicks like a mindless zombie to get his XPs. In my case, it was UO, and I think that intensively playing it for 2 years didn't make me any good (but it still is better than EQ :) ). However, I would not say that games like civ3 gets you dumber. On the other side, I remember having looked at myself in the mirror once, after having played civ3 the whole day... and I felt dumb :)
That's the same thing with TV and books and everything. Not all TV programs or books have the same intellectual value. Watch reality shows all day, and I guarantee you that you'll feel (and will be) dumber.
I'm not sure where I read it (it must have been on /. :) ), but it said that the USPTO accepts almost all software patents because they do not have the ressources nor the knowledge to determine if a software patent is valid. Thus, unless they are allocated more funds, they will accept all patents, and wait for the court to rule if it is valid.
In fact, I would also say that if you believe in open source, that you should get money first, and THEN contribute to open source. Money not only buys houses and cars, it buys you TIME needed to develop. Thus, young developer, get money, and you'll get time. (Well, that's my plan :) )
You can issue a chargeback. Before you do that, e-mail Micro 2000 and tell them that if they don't refund you, you will chargeback. If they still don't refund, take your credit card invoice, go to your bank, and tell them you never authorized this transaction. Since it is an online transaction, you never signed anything, so they don't have any proof of your authorization. It works. I'm a RegNow vendor, and they regulary get chargebacks (and they have no choice but to refund. They even get a penalty for having issued a false transaction).Micro 2000 fucked with you, so fuck with them.
Note that I'm not promoting false chargebacks, but if a company says it has a 30 days guarantee and doesn't honor it... well they deserve that.
You got it! That's a great analogy. Who's silly enough to plant seeds one at the time. If you need to grow a plant that need a lot of attention, THEN you will do it. Otherwise, think big! After you seeded you whole field with the big machine, you can look at it, check if there are parts which aren't seeded correctly, and seed it by hand (You know, use ASM for the critical parts of your high-level project). And even then, farming machines today are so well designed that the need manual seeding is extremely seldom.
I think the skill of a programmer comes from his ability to make abstraction of the machine. I mean, a good programmer will build a very well designed class tree, which is modular, well commented and easy to understand for the whole dev team, thus generating a lot less bugs than a messy, huge bunch of ASM commands.
A good design for a quick sort algorithm, even if badly implemented is much better than an optimized ASM implementation of a bubble sort algorithm. Thus, it is not because you're an ASM wizard that you are a good programmer. I know a kind of low-level wizard, and after taking a glimpse at his code, I wouldn't want to work in his messy code!