Second, the GMs at blizzard really have no power. I asked for contact information. For email information. For names. For an appeal. To talk to a supervisor. And the best they would give me was the generic help phone line or a mailing address. [...] You have really no recourse against a GM. That scares me.
This makes you appreciate how nice it is to live in a country that relatively has protective rights for its people. I think the reasons the things above stand out so much as being despicable is a direct reflection o the rights/privileges that we enjoy every day in a free country. Are there a lot of things that need improving in our government? Absolutely, but imagine living in a place or era where instead of them forcibly changing you screen name, they imprisoned a loved one or confiscated your house/property.
I almost forgot--it's a bloody screenname FFS--and it's messed up that you posted a/. story about it.
As a former naval submarine lieutenant, this is pretty interesting... Indeed, our modern torpedoes (ADCAPs) travel at high speed, track on both passive and active acoustics, and rely on active ranging to detonate at an ideal distance under the ship. That's right, under -- torpedoes do the most damage by detonating a small distance (on the order of a couple dozen feet) below the center of a hull. The void formed from the detonation causes the target's hull to buckle/crack/shatter inward due to its own weight. A single ADCAP can in theory sink an entire carrier, but sub captains typically shoot two b/c the carrier is typically the primary objective. The kind of acoustics described in the article would be tough for even an ADCAP to work around, not to mention it takes our contractors many years to turn around software upgrades to the weapons that would filtering to increases its chances. Then again, good this is a DARPA project, meaning it'd take 5+ years to see any deployment in the fleet anyway.
The most cost effective anti-torpedo weapon a surface ship can have is the nixie. It's a towed (inflated, I believe) thing that trails the ship with ship-signature acoustics running on it, sucking up any torps on the ship's trail. Given their low lost, low maintenance, and (extremely!) high effectiveness they're the best deal in town.
I'm normally not the "mod parent up" type, but thank you for voicing this. I was growing increasingly nauseous as I scrolled down and read sympathetic whimper after whimper. Frankly, I thought many more people here would post this position and we could all chuckle together at this person craving sympathy.
The article is forgetting one big big thing: when Vista ships (late 2006), it will be Leopard (10.5) vs. Vista, not Tiger (10.4) vs. Vista. In other words, when Vista ships, Apple will have rev 2 of spotlight done, major revs to the Finder, and the list goes on.
It's just like MS to innovate to yesterday's bar. Wouldn't it be something if they pushed the bar instead...
I'm surprised nobody has modded me down and/or flamed me because I carelessly mispelled "enterprising" near the end of my post.
It's because most people here stopped reading your post when it caused them to be introspective, requiring them to consider that self improvement is needed. The other bunch that stopped reading couldn't take the originality or insight of an non-obvious idea that required thought.
Apple uses Xcode, yes, but many of the large "commercial" apps the original post was referring use carbon.>/i>
Presumably you meant "use CodeWarrior"; using Carbon doesn't, as far as I know, prevent you from using XCode.
I did mean carbon, actually. CW's cocoa support is always 6+ months behind the curve (if not grossly more) and is widely considered to not be a viable option for serious cocoa development. From everyhing I know and see, it's for two reasons: 1) apple (purposely) does not proactively work with metrowerks to keep their mac os support current (for obvious reasons) and 2), metrowerks management is decreasingly concerned about mac os support as their other (ie, embedded) customers continue to become their primary customer base.
Apple does manage to use XCode for OS X, yes? And certainly all the iApps. What about the pro apps like Shake, Motion, Final Cut, ProTools -- are those on XCode?
Apple uses Xcode, yes, but many of the large "commercial" apps the original post was referring use carbon. It's highly speculated that at the last WWDC, the purpose of all the rah-rah-rah of Xcode and all the speakers telling us how great it is to move to Xcode was to get the mountain of codewarrior users was to get us switch to Xcode.
But don't take my word for it--just read the last few weeks the xcode apple maillist (http://lists.apple.com/). You'll find lots of posts talking about how painful Xcode is to use in various respects compared to CW and lots of posts about cross compiling for 10.3 and 10.2.
83% of Mac developers use XCode primarily
74% of commercial Mac developers use XCode primarily.
Source?? This is FUD, and that's the reason the parent poster was AC--ugh!
If you read the xcode apple maillist or develop mac os software for large scale apps, you'd know the figures are actually around the opposite. The truth of the matter is that the latest version of Xcode, 2.1, still has *major* potholes for any medium sized or larger projects. A simple read through the last few weeks of the xcode users apple maillist will reveal this--CodeWarrior users are furious since they're effectively being told that they need to use Xcode (b/c of the intel switch) while Xcode is a far cry from being able to swallow medium (or larger) projects (I myself am in this situation).
Xcode 2.2 promises to stop of the bleeding, but even one of the apple xcode devs said point blank that many of the UI inadequacies won't be addressed until the "next major release" (meaning Xcode 3! -- how far is *that* off?). And then there's GCC 4.0 being broken for certain things. Sure, this has nothing to do with Xcode, but it's more reason CW people like myself are still totally turned off from making the switch.
Anyway, what's more scary is the wacko who posted the parent comment--to just blatantly make up weird shit like that--wtf.
At my home office and I use internet sharing to share my 17" powerbook's ethernet wire connection to a couple PCs in the office via airport/wifi. After installing 10.4.2, it's now broken--my vaio and my dell laptops can no longer connect to my powerbook's airport when encryption is on. Since security is an issue (and I can't have an unsecured network), I'm pretty much hosed (unless I want to go out and buy a wireless router). Sigh.
Interesting... I got at 17" in March 03 and its HD failed mid 2004. IIRC, it was an Hitachi I believe (or a Travelstar perhaps). I then replaced it with an identical model HD and it failed a couple weeks later. After that pain, I got a different brand and vowed never use Hitachi or an IBM drive ever again.
Here's a little tip: go and check out Delicious Library, and then check out the apps that Wil was involved with at Omni, and see if you still think he was just lucky.
I never said he got to where he was because he was lucky. What I said is that many hardworking an innovative entrepreneurs don't succeed because they are unlucky or get screwed (whatever you want to call it).
May I make the suggestion that you should try to listen what people mean rather than what they say.
As a founder of a Mac OS (and Windows) shareware company for a couple years now (trying to live the self-employed dream), I definitely agree strongly with most of what this guy says... Where I think he shoots himself in the foot is how he talks about his money/car a little too often (it's a little uncouth to make a remark about your money or success more than once, even if its in jest--that's just leadership 101).
Anyway, my other comment was that he doesn't hit on the fact that being a successful startup takes a good chunk of luck as well. You have to be in the right place, at the right time, and usually know the right person(s). He does a lot of hardworking and visionary entrepreneurs that haven't been as successful a disservice when he acts/assumes that luck isn't a major factor. If you look at the infancy stages of most major success stories, there were usually at least a couple "lucky" events that happened in a row.
Computer games are of course always a possibility (and a good one at that), but there are other options. I make music visualizers for audio players, and I find younger folks take an interest in it all the time--from all ages. It appeals to kids that are into math and science because, to them, it's something really cool you can do with subjects that are geeky. It's something to consider, at least.
Personally, I don't believe the ThinkSecret rumor for a second. Apple is *way* too marketing savvy to release a product on April Fool's Day. Also, April 1 is a Friday. Apple almost always announces products on Tuesday.:)
Yep. I'm on the Rendezvous dev apple list serv and I know first hand that the apple dev who moderates it (Marc something) said they won't license the windows version of it (dnssd.dll) to windows developers until Tiger is released (for legal licensing and/or ip reasons). The apple guy who works w/ him on licensing has been turning down licensing requests (mine, for example) for windows rendezvous licensing, even after I told him we wouldn't be shipping until 2 months from now. Put one and one together and June is probably the month.
For any tron fans out there, buena vista interactive and disney partnered to make the game "Tron 2.0". The game not only beautiful, it has multiplayer/net lightcycles that're a total hoot. It's totally worth the $40, especially if you've always been a tron fan. The game is available for Mac OS as well as windows.
Although the 3D engine is the HL engine (not sure though), they spent a *lot* of time on the solo-play story line, a very unique gameplay feel, and visual detail. If you look at some of the screenshots, they did a great job of replicating the tron world, using textures in very creative and interesting ways.
Slashdot Mirror
Second, the GMs at blizzard really have no power. I asked for contact information. For email information. For names. For an appeal. To talk to a supervisor. And the best they would give me was the generic help phone line or a mailing address. [...] You have really no recourse against a GM. That scares me.
This makes you appreciate how nice it is to live in a country that relatively has protective rights for its people. I think the reasons the things above stand out so much as being despicable is a direct reflection o the rights/privileges that we enjoy every day in a free country. Are there a lot of things that need improving in our government? Absolutely, but imagine living in a place or era where instead of them forcibly changing you screen name, they imprisoned a loved one or confiscated your house/property.
I almost forgot--it's a bloody screenname FFS--and it's messed up that you posted a
As a former naval submarine lieutenant, this is pretty interesting... Indeed, our modern torpedoes (ADCAPs) travel at high speed, track on both passive and active acoustics, and rely on active ranging to detonate at an ideal distance under the ship. That's right, under -- torpedoes do the most damage by detonating a small distance (on the order of a couple dozen feet) below the center of a hull. The void formed from the detonation causes the target's hull to buckle/crack/shatter inward due to its own weight. A single ADCAP can in theory sink an entire carrier, but sub captains typically shoot two b/c the carrier is typically the primary objective. The kind of acoustics described in the article would be tough for even an ADCAP to work around, not to mention it takes our contractors many years to turn around software upgrades to the weapons that would filtering to increases its chances. Then again, good this is a DARPA project, meaning it'd take 5+ years to see any deployment in the fleet anyway.
The most cost effective anti-torpedo weapon a surface ship can have is the nixie. It's a towed (inflated, I believe) thing that trails the ship with ship-signature acoustics running on it, sucking up any torps on the ship's trail. Given their low lost, low maintenance, and (extremely!) high effectiveness they're the best deal in town.
I'm normally not the "mod parent up" type, but thank you for voicing this. I was growing increasingly nauseous as I scrolled down and read sympathetic whimper after whimper. Frankly, I thought many more people here would post this position and we could all chuckle together at this person craving sympathy.
In other news, Yahoo! will be changing its name to "Realhoo!"
You made my fan list in a heartbeat when I saw your sig--I'm a huge fan of Waking Life and of course all of Linklater's stuff.
Andy
The article is forgetting one big big thing: when Vista ships (late 2006), it will be Leopard (10.5) vs. Vista, not Tiger (10.4) vs. Vista. In other words, when Vista ships, Apple will have rev 2 of spotlight done, major revs to the Finder, and the list goes on.
It's just like MS to innovate to yesterday's bar. Wouldn't it be something if they pushed the bar instead...
I'm surprised nobody has modded me down and/or flamed me because I carelessly mispelled "enterprising" near the end of my post.
It's because most people here stopped reading your post when it caused them to be introspective, requiring them to consider that self improvement is needed. The other bunch that stopped reading couldn't take the originality or insight of an non-obvious idea that required thought.
andy
I need a target!
I need a target!
I need a target!
Shazbot!
*nod* God, I miss the Tribes...
Now they'd like to see Microsoft's influence reduced and be the only 800 lb. gorilla in the x86 world.
Don't ask me why, but it just dawned on me: where the phrase "800lb gorilla" came from. Why isn't it 1000 lbs or some other animal?
P.S. This is a serious question... I did some googling around but no joy.
Presumably you meant "use CodeWarrior"; using Carbon doesn't, as far as I know, prevent you from using XCode.
I did mean carbon, actually. CW's cocoa support is always 6+ months behind the curve (if not grossly more) and is widely considered to not be a viable option for serious cocoa development. From everyhing I know and see, it's for two reasons: 1) apple (purposely) does not proactively work with metrowerks to keep their mac os support current (for obvious reasons) and 2), metrowerks management is decreasingly concerned about mac os support as their other (ie, embedded) customers continue to become their primary customer base.
Apple does manage to use XCode for OS X, yes? And certainly all the iApps. What about the pro apps like Shake, Motion, Final Cut, ProTools -- are those on XCode?
Apple uses Xcode, yes, but many of the large "commercial" apps the original post was referring use carbon. It's highly speculated that at the last WWDC, the purpose of all the rah-rah-rah of Xcode and all the speakers telling us how great it is to move to Xcode was to get the mountain of codewarrior users was to get us switch to Xcode.
But don't take my word for it--just read the last few weeks the xcode apple maillist (http://lists.apple.com/). You'll find lots of posts talking about how painful Xcode is to use in various respects compared to CW and lots of posts about cross compiling for 10.3 and 10.2.
83% of Mac developers use XCode primarily
74% of commercial Mac developers use XCode primarily.
Source?? This is FUD, and that's the reason the parent poster was AC--ugh!
If you read the xcode apple maillist or develop mac os software for large scale apps, you'd know the figures are actually around the opposite. The truth of the matter is that the latest version of Xcode, 2.1, still has *major* potholes for any medium sized or larger projects. A simple read through the last few weeks of the xcode users apple maillist will reveal this--CodeWarrior users are furious since they're effectively being told that they need to use Xcode (b/c of the intel switch) while Xcode is a far cry from being able to swallow medium (or larger) projects (I myself am in this situation).
Xcode 2.2 promises to stop of the bleeding, but even one of the apple xcode devs said point blank that many of the UI inadequacies won't be addressed until the "next major release" (meaning Xcode 3! -- how far is *that* off?). And then there's GCC 4.0 being broken for certain things. Sure, this has nothing to do with Xcode, but it's more reason CW people like myself are still totally turned off from making the switch.
Anyway, what's more scary is the wacko who posted the parent comment--to just blatantly make up weird shit like that--wtf.
At my home office and I use internet sharing to share my 17" powerbook's ethernet wire connection to a couple PCs in the office via airport/wifi. After installing 10.4.2, it's now broken--my vaio and my dell laptops can no longer connect to my powerbook's airport when encryption is on. Since security is an issue (and I can't have an unsecured network), I'm pretty much hosed (unless I want to go out and buy a wireless router). Sigh.
Andy
Interesting... I got at 17" in March 03 and its HD failed mid 2004. IIRC, it was an Hitachi I believe (or a Travelstar perhaps). I then replaced it with an identical model HD and it failed a couple weeks later. After that pain, I got a different brand and vowed never use Hitachi or an IBM drive ever again.
Here's a little tip: go and check out Delicious Library, and then check out the apps that Wil was involved with at Omni, and see if you still think he was just lucky.
I never said he got to where he was because he was lucky. What I said is that many hardworking an innovative entrepreneurs don't succeed because they are unlucky or get screwed (whatever you want to call it).
May I make the suggestion that you should try to listen what people mean rather than what they say.
As a founder of a Mac OS (and Windows) shareware company for a couple years now (trying to live the self-employed dream), I definitely agree strongly with most of what this guy says... Where I think he shoots himself in the foot is how he talks about his money/car a little too often (it's a little uncouth to make a remark about your money or success more than once, even if its in jest--that's just leadership 101).
Anyway, my other comment was that he doesn't hit on the fact that being a successful startup takes a good chunk of luck as well. You have to be in the right place, at the right time, and usually know the right person(s). He does a lot of hardworking and visionary entrepreneurs that haven't been as successful a disservice when he acts/assumes that luck isn't a major factor. If you look at the infancy stages of most major success stories, there were usually at least a couple "lucky" events that happened in a row.
Just my two cents...
andy
World of PornCraft.
You sig rules... hahaha... very nice--it's defintely in my /. top 5 sigs!
I, for one, welcome our new pirate overlords.
...and let me guess...it's being unveiled on April 1st?
Computer games are of course always a possibility (and a good one at that), but there are other options. I make music visualizers for audio players, and I find younger folks take an interest in it all the time--from all ages. It appeals to kids that are into math and science because, to them, it's something really cool you can do with subjects that are geeky. It's something to consider, at least.
Personally, I don't believe the ThinkSecret rumor for a second. Apple is *way* too marketing savvy to release a product on April Fool's Day. Also, April 1 is a Friday. Apple almost always announces products on Tuesday.
Yep. I'm on the Rendezvous dev apple list serv and I know first hand that the apple dev who moderates it (Marc something) said they won't license the windows version of it (dnssd.dll) to windows developers until Tiger is released (for legal licensing and/or ip reasons). The apple guy who works w/ him on licensing has been turning down licensing requests (mine, for example) for windows rendezvous licensing, even after I told him we wouldn't be shipping until 2 months from now. Put one and one together and June is probably the month.
And in other news, the makers of the roller ruler aim to replace the ruler.
For any tron fans out there, buena vista interactive and disney partnered to make the game "Tron 2.0". The game not only beautiful, it has multiplayer/net lightcycles that're a total hoot. It's totally worth the $40, especially if you've always been a tron fan. The game is available for Mac OS as well as windows.
Although the 3D engine is the HL engine (not sure though), they spent a *lot* of time on the solo-play story line, a very unique gameplay feel, and visual detail. If you look at some of the screenshots, they did a great job of replicating the tron world, using textures in very creative and interesting ways.
tron 2.0 official site
Game fan/story site