Interesting. Most scientists I know learn one language and stick with it exclusively, even to the point of making the language do things that others might do in a fraction of the time.
I'm currently having to build an entire experimentation framework in a language which doesn't even slightly suit the task, simply because the primary researcher has no interest in using anything but the language they know. And yes, I did try to change their mind.
All the same VB? At my university that language was barred from use in assignments, because it was considered to be without merit.
If the alternative is Vista, then yes, I'd like to get Windows 7. If only because the Kernel is apparently faster.
My next pc purchase will be later this year. My chances of getting XP for it diminish as the months wear on. I'm not even slightly happy about this. I've used Vista, and I don't like it.
Around this point people start thinking 'ooh, I'll type in "use Linux", and feel all smug'.
Well, just as soon as you can make all the games companies release Linux native versions of their stuff, I'd go for it. Until then, well, I've played Tux Racer once already, so I guess I'll stick with windows as my primary desktop machine.
(disclaimer: all my developer work is on Linux, but I seperate my day to day computer usage from my programming activities, my Linux machine is headless).
I guess you haven't seen ezquake (best obtained in the nquake package). A faster, more frantic FPS game you will not find. It's also been substantially improved graphically, so there are many more colours about the place.
Any reworking of quake 1 would be badly received by the old school (by this I mean most people who still play it). New people wouldn't see the need, since most of them have grown up on a different fps style. Why revisit quake 1?
Personally I love the game, and play it often. If I have one criticism its that most of the servers are populated by people who are so good at the game, after playing for so long, that just living long enough to pick up a gun and kill someone can be a real challenge.
The one incarnation of his work that I enjoy is the bbc radio adaption of Lord of the Rings. All bar the singing, which is hideous.
Aside from that I find his work laborious to read, and not sufficiently entertaining to warrant the effort. Most of it seems like a required reading exercise, and the extreme attention to detail, which I am sure some enjoy, comes across as an extended history lesson, not entertainment.
I suspect it takes a real passion for his work to read everything he wrote. I appreciate his talent in creating his fantasy world, one that underpins all modern fantasy to some extent, but I much prefer reading some of the lighter weight variants on his general theme.
The locking of the article for editing by senior editors only is a tad odd.
However, I don't know how common this is. If we are to assume innocence, then it might be that wikipedia was just trying to avoid being a location for mud slinging. If not, then yup, it's a bit odd.
However, merkey has long been associated with wacko behaviour, so in this light his accusation could b viewed as no more than yet another attempt to keep his name in internet headlines.
Given the absurdity of his previous claims, I'm tended to lean towards this last possibility.
These are just the pre-alpha build humans that god made while he was in the preliminary human creation development cycle. Height wasn't increased until Homo-Sapiens RC-1.
I mean really, if you're going to go poring over dev code, you've got to expect some pretty weird stuff.
Cross platform game development is only posible if you have a lot of money, or don't mind using free cross platform tools. Doing the latter seriously reuces your ablity to produce an end result as good as even mediocre competitors.
I spent the last year trying to drum up interest from developers for a linux only game. I've failed in this effort and gone back to the idea of releasing for windows only.
Why? Because no-one who was interested in joining the dev team believed for one moment that a closed source game could succeed on the linux platform. Open source sounds good, but won't pay the very immediate bills generated by running an online game world. The end result was that a Linux game was deemed to be an automatic fail (at least a linux version of my game), simply because there wasn't the user base to support such a move, and the API support for linux game related devices compared to windows is awful
I am fascinated by the history of science (my collection of books on same is large). As a result I am often interested to read of ancient astrologers/astronomers, what with those tasks being two sides of the one job back in ancient times.
As ancient history its great, and we find among such people the greats of mathematics and early philosphy. However I do not find modern advocates to be compelling. Rather (aside from the aforementioned atractive lady using it as a chat up line, and yes, it has happened to me before), I would tend to pour scorn on such things if presented as current fact.
Its similer to the early debates regarding the nature of the arch of the sky. As studied in context it represents a fascinating insight into the search for truth in the ancient world. In modern times such discussion, if stated as current fact, not ancient perception, would be absurd. This does not detract from those great early thinkers.
Please remind me again what's the difference between the "land of the free" and "dirty commie bastards".
Easy, the land of he free has Moms Apple pPie. (Now available from a frozen food isle near you..).
Seriously though, the main difference is that while the US government might get angry at you, or take you to court over something you said, they won't have you taken away in the middle of the night and executed. That's a biggie, trust me on this.
I was going to add that you wouldn't be imprisoned for life without trial, but Guantanamo bay is giving me pause for thought. That's likely a special case, after all, it is your current war type thing that's caused that.
As a scientist I am likely to disregard most attempts at serious conversation on the subject of astrology.
That said, I would not, and I believe, nor would any other normal scientific single chap, turn away a hot chick just because she was pondering my star sign or wanting to read my palm. In most cases It's just another vector into a conversation anyway.
Why use mp3 in a situation where you might be in trouble over patents? There are plenty of other codecs out there, ogg for one. Most ripper programs hat I know of can rip to ogg, and there are conversion tools. It wouldn't be hard to set up a conversion system.
That article sure uses a a lot of words to say 'the web should be communist'.
Any system where a small group of people get to make the decisions will skew towards making the world more to the liking of those people. Further, new additions to this ruling class will be those deemed acceptable by the current encumbants. This is a bad thing.
All analysis like these are missing a huge, huge point. The wider web may well end up under the control of powerful, agenda ridden groups. This isn't that important, no really, it isn't. They are trying to control something which is already on its way to being obsolete as a means to disseminate information between ordinary people.
Why not? Because the net will contain sub-internets within game worlds. sub-internets will be the new places to hang out. We may even see clones of our current Internet hosted entirely inside game worlds (or whatever game worlds become).
This kind of posturing is more likely to rebound badly on WiKileaks than anything else.
So long as they are simply providing access to the kinds of information they normally host, they're being just what they said they were, and remain a powerful influence. If they try to stir up a boycot, and it fails (which it almot certainly will), then they will only have succeeded in demonstrating that they don't have much in the way of ability to influence others.
Its a mistake to even go down this road. A simple document on a web page can be more powerful then any number of boycots and angry marches.
Its easy to get, but in my experience people think he only did the books, then the tv series. It's very hard not to get all 'call yourself a fan!' on them.
Unless you were around at the time they were being broadcast, it probably wouldn't be apparent. Not sure though, I'm pretty certain it mentions 'adapted from the radio series' on several of my copies (yup, I have every version of the paperbacks I can find).
I was lucky to be at home, upstairs, and trying to find something interesting on the radio just minutes before the first ever broadcast of the series. I had no idea what was going to be on, and there it was, H2G2 in all its glory, largely unadvertised (I certainly hadn't seen anything about it).
Since then I've got through three sets of the tapes, and two cd versions. The last is lasting well, because I ripped it to mp3.
Yes, I suppose it wasn't too funny. Mind you, the only version of H2G2 to ever make me seriously laugh was the radio series (still does, and I must have listened to it hundreds of times over the years), so I wasn't too bothered, I just watch the film to enjoy it.
I'm not especially keen on the H2G2 books either, although I read them. That said, I'm currently desperately hoping that my local bookshop doesn't sell the first edition H2G2 hardcover they have. If someone comes in with a big offer, I'm boned,
His non fiction work, 'Last Chance to see' is my favorite of his written works, closely followed by the Dirk Gently books.
Actually, Douglas himself wrote a lot of the stuff for the Movie. He invented the new character Humma Kavula as well.
In fact if you read much of his stuff, including interviews (I have everything its possible to get in audio form), you learn that he definitely did not want the movie to be a copy of either the book or the radio series. Actually it never could be a copy of the radio series, because there were all sorts of problems over what Douglas had the right to use.
It's not fashionable to like the H2G2 movie, but I enjoyed it hugely. Had it been an exact rehash of the same old stuff I'd have been annoyed. I wanted to not know what was going on for as much of the film as possible. Casting Mos Def as Ford Prefect was an inspired move, he performed the role really well. I'm not so sure about Sam Rockwell as Zaphod, but we can't have everything.
And Marvin? Well he was amazing. I never did understand why such an advanced robot should look like the one in the tv series. The one in the movie was much closer to my mental image of the robot then I expected.
Slashdot Mirror
Nazgul, once Kings of assembly, they now serve the dark lord....
How you didn't get modded funny for that I don't know....
Interesting. Most scientists I know learn one language and stick with it exclusively, even to the point of making the language do things that others might do in a fraction of the time.
I'm currently having to build an entire experimentation framework in a language which doesn't even slightly suit the task, simply because the primary researcher has no interest in using anything but the language they know. And yes, I did try to change their mind.
All the same VB? At my university that language was barred from use in assignments, because it was considered to be without merit.
What kind of half breed freak is this guy?
If the alternative is Vista, then yes, I'd like to get Windows 7. If only because the Kernel is apparently faster.
My next pc purchase will be later this year. My chances of getting XP for it diminish as the months wear on. I'm not even slightly happy about this. I've used Vista, and I don't like it.
Around this point people start thinking 'ooh, I'll type in "use Linux", and feel all smug'.
Well, just as soon as you can make all the games companies release Linux native versions of their stuff, I'd go for it. Until then, well, I've played Tux Racer once already, so I guess I'll stick with windows as my primary desktop machine.
(disclaimer: all my developer work is on Linux, but I seperate my day to day computer usage from my programming activities, my Linux machine is headless).
Redo quake? Why?
I guess you haven't seen ezquake (best obtained in the nquake package). A faster, more frantic FPS game you will not find. It's also been substantially improved graphically, so there are many more colours about the place.
Any reworking of quake 1 would be badly received by the old school (by this I mean most people who still play it). New people wouldn't see the need, since most of them have grown up on a different fps style. Why revisit quake 1?
Personally I love the game, and play it often. If I have one criticism its that most of the servers are populated by people who are so good at the game, after playing for so long, that just living long enough to pick up a gun and kill someone can be a real challenge.
surely you mean brown...
The one incarnation of his work that I enjoy is the bbc radio adaption of Lord of the Rings. All bar the singing, which is hideous.
Aside from that I find his work laborious to read, and not sufficiently entertaining to warrant the effort. Most of it seems like a required reading exercise, and the extreme attention to detail, which I am sure some enjoy, comes across as an extended history lesson, not entertainment.
I suspect it takes a real passion for his work to read everything he wrote. I appreciate his talent in creating his fantasy world, one that underpins all modern fantasy to some extent, but I much prefer reading some of the lighter weight variants on his general theme.
I mentioned sucking, and you retort with 'the other end of a horse'.
Urk.. the resultant mental association doesn't make me feel too well, I think I need to go lie down for a while.
Oh you are so sucking up.
This message was brought to you by 'someone who wasn't jealous at all, no really....'
The locking of the article for editing by senior editors only is a tad odd.
However, I don't know how common this is. If we are to assume innocence, then it might be that wikipedia was just trying to avoid being a location for mud slinging.
If not, then yup, it's a bit odd.
However, merkey has long been associated with wacko behaviour, so in this light his accusation could b viewed as no more than yet another attempt to keep his name in internet headlines.
Given the absurdity of his previous claims, I'm tended to lean towards this last possibility.
Silly everyone.
These are just the pre-alpha build humans that god made while he was in the preliminary human creation development cycle. Height wasn't increased until Homo-Sapiens RC-1.
I mean really, if you're going to go poring over dev code, you've got to expect some pretty weird stuff.
Cross platform game development is only posible if you have a lot of money, or don't mind using free cross platform tools. Doing the latter seriously reuces your ablity to produce an end result as good as even mediocre competitors.
I spent the last year trying to drum up interest from developers for a linux only game. I've failed in this effort and gone back to the idea of releasing for windows only.
Why? Because no-one who was interested in joining the dev team believed for one moment that a closed source game could succeed on the linux platform. Open source sounds good, but won't pay the very immediate bills generated by running an online game world. The end result was that a Linux game was deemed to be an automatic fail (at least a linux version of my game), simply because there wasn't the user base to support such a move, and the API support for linux game related devices compared to windows is awful
Ah, let me clarify something.
I am fascinated by the history of science (my collection of books on same is large). As a result I am often interested to read of ancient astrologers/astronomers, what with those tasks being two sides of the one job back in ancient times.
As ancient history its great, and we find among such people the greats of mathematics and early philosphy. However I do not find modern advocates to be compelling. Rather (aside from the aforementioned atractive lady using it as a chat up line, and yes, it has happened to me before), I would tend to pour scorn on such things if presented as current fact.
Its similer to the early debates regarding the nature of the arch of the sky. As studied in context it represents a fascinating insight into the search for truth in the ancient world. In modern times such discussion, if stated as current fact, not ancient perception, would be absurd. This does not detract from those great early thinkers.
Please remind me again what's the difference between the "land of the free" and "dirty commie bastards".
Easy, the land of he free has Moms Apple pPie.
(Now available from a frozen food isle near you..).
Seriously though, the main difference is that while the US government might get angry at you, or take you to court over something you said, they won't have you taken away in the middle of the night and executed. That's a biggie, trust me on this.
I was going to add that you wouldn't be imprisoned for life without trial, but Guantanamo bay is giving me pause for thought. That's likely a special case, after all, it is your current war type thing that's caused that.
As a scientist I am likely to disregard most attempts at serious conversation on the subject of astrology.
That said, I would not, and I believe, nor would any other normal scientific single chap, turn away a hot chick just because she was pondering my star sign or wanting to read my palm. In most cases It's just another vector into a conversation anyway.
Why use mp3 in a situation where you might be in trouble over patents? There are plenty of other codecs out there, ogg for one. Most ripper programs hat I know of can rip to ogg, and there are conversion tools. It wouldn't be hard to set up a conversion system.
How long is it until mp3 is out of patent anyway?
Europe isn't a country...
Indeed, its more a sort of political soufflé
And that sir, is a lot of words to sy you don't understand what I meant.
I suggest you go and read Plato's 'Politeia'. It may help you understand the issue a little better.
That article sure uses a a lot of words to say 'the web should be communist'.
Any system where a small group of people get to make the decisions will skew towards making the world more to the liking of those people. Further, new additions to this ruling class will be those deemed acceptable by the current encumbants. This is a bad thing.
All analysis like these are missing a huge, huge point. The wider web may well end up under the control of powerful, agenda ridden groups. This isn't that important, no really, it isn't. They are trying to control something which is already on its way to being obsolete as a means to disseminate information between ordinary people.
Why not? Because the net will contain sub-internets within game worlds. sub-internets will be the new places to hang out. We may even see clones of our current Internet hosted entirely inside game worlds (or whatever game worlds become).
This kind of posturing is more likely to rebound badly on WiKileaks than anything else.
So long as they are simply providing access to the kinds of information they normally host, they're being just what they said they were, and remain a powerful influence. If they try to stir up a boycot, and it fails (which it almot certainly will), then they will only have succeeded in demonstrating that they don't have much in the way of ability to influence others.
Its a mistake to even go down this road. A simple document on a web page can be more powerful then any number of boycots and angry marches.
Its easy to get, but in my experience people think he only did the books, then the tv series. It's very hard not to get all 'call yourself a fan!' on them.
Unless you were around at the time they were being broadcast, it probably wouldn't be apparent. Not sure though, I'm pretty certain it mentions 'adapted from the radio series' on several of my copies (yup, I have every version of the paperbacks I can find).
I was lucky to be at home, upstairs, and trying to find something interesting on the radio just minutes before the first ever broadcast of the series. I had no idea what was going to be on, and there it was, H2G2 in all its glory, largely unadvertised (I certainly hadn't seen anything about it).
Since then I've got through three sets of the tapes, and two cd versions. The last is lasting well, because I ripped it to mp3.
Yes, I suppose it wasn't too funny. Mind you, the only version of H2G2 to ever make me seriously laugh was the radio series (still does, and I must have listened to it hundreds of times over the years), so I wasn't too bothered, I just watch the film to enjoy it.
I'm not especially keen on the H2G2 books either, although I read them. That said, I'm currently desperately hoping that my local bookshop doesn't sell the first edition H2G2 hardcover they have. If someone comes in with a big offer, I'm boned,
His non fiction work, 'Last Chance to see' is my favorite of his written works, closely followed by the Dirk Gently books.
Actually, Douglas himself wrote a lot of the stuff for the Movie. He invented the new character Humma Kavula as well.
In fact if you read much of his stuff, including interviews (I have everything its possible to get in audio form), you learn that he definitely did not want the movie to be a copy of either the book or the radio series. Actually it never could be a copy of the radio series, because there were all sorts of problems over what Douglas had the right to use.
It's not fashionable to like the H2G2 movie, but I enjoyed it hugely. Had it been an exact rehash of the same old stuff I'd have been annoyed. I wanted to not know what was going on for as much of the film as possible. Casting Mos Def as Ford Prefect was an inspired move, he performed the role really well. I'm not so sure about Sam Rockwell as Zaphod, but we can't have everything.
And Marvin? Well he was amazing. I never did understand why such an advanced robot should look like the one in the tv series. The one in the movie was much closer to my mental image of the robot then I expected.
I prefer that old Janx Spirit personally.
/sob
All these people mourning the loss of Gygax know how us H2G2 fans felt the day we heard the news of Douglas's passing.
Then to finally read the first three chapters of Salmon of Doubt was a double blow, because it was shaping up to be one of his finest books.