In other words, in Sweden, people pay a bit more so that there are no homeless people. Also, if you get ill, you're covered. That makes it so that there are no cases of people going bankrupt out of sickness, and decreases criminality by a HUGE deal. How much would you pay to live in a nearly crime-free (by US standards) society, knowing you'll have support when you grow old or ill? Take blind selfishness out of the equation and you'll see that it might have its advantages.
Either way, it's missing the unit, wether it's "b" or "B".
A few examples:
512Kb - Kilo bits
512KB - Kilo bytes
The writer did not include the unit, but used smallcaps, so one would assume it reads as:
512k - kilo bits
512K - kilo bytes
It makes sense, because would interpret in any other way, due to the context. Noone, of course, except someone on./ nitpicking and trying to prove that the person who wrote the article is actually ignorant (not sure why people do that, maybe it makes them feel better?).
I totally agree. In my mind, a "God" capable of designing the basic principles that rule microcosmos would be far more worthy. What ID is saying is "it's too complex to understand, so it must have been created by some higher intelligence".
Well, newsflash: there are LOTS of higher intelligences out there... the ones who DO study to understand how many things work. That does tell a lot about the average education level of ID proponents, right?:)
From a learning point perspective, one would probably think of Java as being a more "pure" OO language. On the other hand, it misses a couple important features of modern OO languages, namedly "properties", which C# has. My advice? Learn both.
Forget Microsoft for a minute here. C# is a modern language, developed by a bright team (including Anders Hejlsberg of Delphi fame) with really improved and rich syntax. Java is older but proven. So why not take the chance and learn both?
If you're taking computer sciences, be prepared to learn a couple languages outside school. You can learn one at school and others on yourself, which will make you a much better programmer by developing your ideas in terms concepts and generic programming methods instead of a specific language. Also, learning both at the same time allows you to discover different approaches to the same problems, will boost your skills and make you a much better programmer (and eventually, a better software developer).:)
I understand where you're coming from, but religions are usually based on faith and belief (ok, and perhaps stupidity too). Books are only one in a number of ways in which religions get passed along, but not necessarily the primary form.
Spot on for the differences (although you could kinda get around that with a large enough radius and propper angular velocity).
Although those might be requisites for entering a reality show, you don't really have to be dumb or stupid to believe this - just ignorant (which is really not a crime). I know tons of really bright and successful people who simply do not have any kind of formal training in physics. I don't think any of them would join a reality show though.;)
Well, you'll have to apologize me on that one. The translation I got from Google and Babelfish both gave me "centrifugal" (how's that for judicious use of quoting), which is quite close to the wording in my native language. I'm sure you did understand what I meant, so not all was lost (maybe bandwidth).
And of course it does have lots of things to do with gravity. They are both forces (by definition both exert acceleration based on mass), and given a large enough radius you can use one to mimic another. As for the Coriolis force, can't see how that is related to the subject, seeing as you can't really feel it, just watch its effects (unlike gravity or a centripetal force).
Actually, "gravity generators" do exist - stuff that exerts centrifugal force.;) So, if the ship was rotating, the hull would technically be "under floor"... so there go your "gravity generators".
The "why preview" link at the bottom reads:
Firefox support
rest assured we haven't abandoned our firefox users
and are working on the issues continuously
Being a MS site this looks kinda funny - might also be related to the fact that there is no large banner with the MS logo. Support Firefox, gain user base, then drop support silently? Hmmmm....
Is it just me, or does anyone find this to be deliciously ironic? For ages the UA string has been used to lock out non-IE browsers, and many sites still use that method despite growing complaints.
Now the same mechanism that was used to leave non-IE users out in the cold from some sites will leave IE7 users out in the cold. Care to think about how many won't make the change because their favourite website doesn't work under IE7? How could we grab this opportunity and have people move to Firefox while at it? If they're going to change to a browser that is barred from some sites, they may as well do a good thing for once and change.
This stroke me as really surprising! I consider Portugal to be quite behind in terms of government websites... but we've been submitting TAX reports through the web for 4 years now, and although I don't recall the 1st year, the program is the same for the last 3 years, and it works perfectly on either Windows or Linux (and I'd bet Mac - it seems quite browser independant).
I thought Australia could very well do better, and not worse...:)
While I agree that hands on experience is important, do not underestimate the power of educating yourself. Writing a game might be about programming, but developing a game isn't.
Let's consider you're writing a multiplayer game, consider a MUD (or even an MMORPG), which is something I'm confortable with. You'll have to understand issues like:
- Psychology (Character progression curve, interest):
How fast does a character have to develop itself in order to maintain interest. What is the breakeven point for challenging progression and boring progression? You'll want a bit of maths. For instance, knowledge on how to plot a negative exponential distribution curve will help you balance the game. Understanding that stair-stepping (levelling, titles, etc ) is usually better than proportional progression in terms of feeling the effects of "achievement" is another important issue.
- Economy (Resource drains, gameplay rewards):
New resources are brought into the world every instant, usually by the simple fact that NPCs drop items and money behind. How to avoid the world getting rich? What mechanics are inplace to counter this and maintain Archimedes law?
- Physics:
If you're writing anything 3D, you'll want to have a firm understanding of simple physics and be friends with our old friend Newton (velocity, acceleration, force). I suggest visiting ODE and check out their library.
In the end, what you'll want to attack is GAMEPLAY. To make the game fun and pretending to be realistic (while actually being cinematic).
Here two mistakes I have commited myself while developing for an mmorpg, to illustrate another point:
Problem: Expecting players to develop their Horsemanship skill in order for them to use better horses (war horses for instance). The less skill they had compared to the required skill to ride the horse, the more likely they were to fall off the horse.
Result: An outcry. Eventually I realized most people wanted to be able to ride them horses just for the looks of it.
Solution: You would only be thrown off-horse if under a stress situation (eg, combat or running at top speed). Otherwise, we'de assume people were in control enough to parade with their horses.
Final result: Both kinds of players satisfied.
Problem: Macroing. People would let their characters standing and doing stuff, just to raise their skills.
1st attempt: Banning macroing - obviously didn't work.
2nd attempt: Make it easier to obtain a skillcheck (a successful skill raise attempt), but then for a period of time, you wouldn't be able to learn. This makes lots of sense, and made raising a skill less of a random thing. People stopped bothering leaving their characters to macro and started caring a bit more about going to play. Many (those who actually played and not just macroed) still complained that it wasn't fair that a part of the time wasn't being rewarded.
3rd attempt: yield larger skill rewards for things that require the player to actually be in control, like combat yielding more experience in aggressive-filled areas you couldn't recall from (leaving a character macroing in there would result in certain death).
Final result: The combination of all these measures reduced macroing just for resource gathering characters (miners, lumberjacks) and craft professions. Each of these had a different approach. Understanding that macroing was a sign of a game with not enough interaction was fundamental to dealing with it, and generating interest in the game aswell.
All this to say that many of the final solutions came from reading and trying to understand people's frame of mind. I got many insights from numerous humorous articles on the web that tried to depict the stereotypes of players. None of this came from programming itself. Surely not all games are that demanding in terms of understanding players, but the bottom line is, developing a game has as much to do with programming as building a wood house
So, you'd say that bombing Sudan over some allegued people terrorists hidden there, while killing thousands - like the US did - is a better approach?
The UN put Sudanese people on their human rights comission, they did not put Sudan. While there, they might even learn something and take back to their country, right?
And get your facts right. The US is quite into violating human rights. That's why they don't even want to recognize the Haya courts - they simply don't want to be accountable to anyone.
Sure it makes sense, from a power-containment perspective, but please don't be so blind as to cover it with righteousness. Geez, you people believe your own propaganda...:)
I recently Bought an Asus laptop. It came with lots of software pre-installed, and a disk that reinstall everything. Seeing as I don't have to click on anything or accept anything (no eulas are visible), what can I possibly do to get a refund?
It's not really that misleading. According to this, the US total population is close to 295.823.632 individuals. According to the above study, 23.677.800 crimes. That's roughly 8% crime/person rate.
Take Portugal, with its population of nearly 12.000.000 inhabitants, and 363,294 felons, which amounts to about 3%.
Now, that's a pretty big difference. You'll find similar figures on other countries.
Crime stems from your problems with poverty and lack of socialist structures. It's a dog eat dog world.
>> We've had two-party rule since Washington left office. If it hasn't "broken" the American system in the last 200+ years, what makes you think it will happen now?
Actually, it makes you think it took 200 years to subvert everything. Which is why gradual changes are so hard to detect. In the span of so few generations, so much has been lost.
Paris Hilton? You mean, the girl who is famous for being a celebrity, and vice-versus?
I wouldn't want to have anything to do with Linux even if she showed up dressed (or barely) as a penguin! That girl is the paradigm of uselessness, she's more anti-Linux than Bill-Gates (although she does better videos).
>> While more powerful at a basic functional level than it's successors, C lacks the powerful language features that more mature languages like VC++ and Java provide
I'm sure you didn't really mean to say VC++, because that's just an ide for C++ and a couple of buggy libraries. But if we went that path, BCB++ 6.0 (even being 3 years old) beats VC++ any day.:)
Back to the issue, this is probably why Gnome has been investing in Mono. Not everybody understands the role of Mono yet, but I'm sure they'll slap their foreheads and say "of course" sometime later down the path.
>> For instance, book origin of species will turn up the full text of Charles Darwin's controversial treatise
Controversial? It's hasn't been controversial for decades, nor is it "just a theory", it's based on solid geological, anatomical, climatic evidence.
That book and its author are only controversial in creationist circles in the US, who apparently don't understand that if god does exist, evolution would be his doing anyway, and they insist in saying that the world was created by divine intervention and not by solid, tangible facts and processes (which could have been set up by god in the first place, if you need to believe that).
So, maybe Darwin is controversial for some deluded minds in that little world up there in North America, but the rest of the civilized world has already understood that the bible is based on metaphores and moved on to find "God" in other places. The alternative would be going back to the Dark Ages or ending up like most Islamic societies.
So maybe I'm just being picky and I would apologize, but I feel an itch everytime people refer to Darwin as controversial.:)
Did it ever occur to you guys that if they wanted to artifitially raise one of their pages, they'd just have to ask the engineers to go to the database and manually change their ranking? They definitly wouldn't have to resort to tricks done by everyone else.
Slashdot Mirror
You got a point there. It's just that 64 bytes (512 bits) would be a possible (although unlikely) value.
In other words, in Sweden, people pay a bit more so that there are no homeless people. Also, if you get ill, you're covered. That makes it so that there are no cases of people going bankrupt out of sickness, and decreases criminality by a HUGE deal. How much would you pay to live in a nearly crime-free (by US standards) society, knowing you'll have support when you grow old or ill? Take blind selfishness out of the equation and you'll see that it might have its advantages.
Either way, it's missing the unit, wether it's "b" or "B".
./ nitpicking and trying to prove that the person who wrote the article is actually ignorant (not sure why people do that, maybe it makes them feel better?).
A few examples:
512Kb - Kilo bits
512KB - Kilo bytes
The writer did not include the unit, but used smallcaps, so one would assume it reads as:
512k - kilo bits
512K - kilo bytes
It makes sense, because would interpret in any other way, due to the context. Noone, of course, except someone on
I totally agree. In my mind, a "God" capable of designing the basic principles that rule microcosmos would be far more worthy. What ID is saying is "it's too complex to understand, so it must have been created by some higher intelligence".
:)
Well, newsflash: there are LOTS of higher intelligences out there... the ones who DO study to understand how many things work. That does tell a lot about the average education level of ID proponents, right?
From a learning point perspective, one would probably think of Java as being a more "pure" OO language. On the other hand, it misses a couple important features of modern OO languages, namedly "properties", which C# has. My advice? Learn both.
:)
Forget Microsoft for a minute here. C# is a modern language, developed by a bright team (including Anders Hejlsberg of Delphi fame) with really improved and rich syntax. Java is older but proven. So why not take the chance and learn both?
If you're taking computer sciences, be prepared to learn a couple languages outside school. You can learn one at school and others on yourself, which will make you a much better programmer by developing your ideas in terms concepts and generic programming methods instead of a specific language. Also, learning both at the same time allows you to discover different approaches to the same problems, will boost your skills and make you a much better programmer (and eventually, a better software developer).
I understand where you're coming from, but religions are usually based on faith and belief (ok, and perhaps stupidity too). Books are only one in a number of ways in which religions get passed along, but not necessarily the primary form.
Spot on for the differences (although you could kinda get around that with a large enough radius and propper angular velocity).
;)
Although those might be requisites for entering a reality show, you don't really have to be dumb or stupid to believe this - just ignorant (which is really not a crime). I know tons of really bright and successful people who simply do not have any kind of formal training in physics. I don't think any of them would join a reality show though.
Well, you'll have to apologize me on that one. The translation I got from Google and Babelfish both gave me "centrifugal" (how's that for judicious use of quoting), which is quite close to the wording in my native language. I'm sure you did understand what I meant, so not all was lost (maybe bandwidth).
And of course it does have lots of things to do with gravity. They are both forces (by definition both exert acceleration based on mass), and given a large enough radius you can use one to mimic another. As for the Coriolis force, can't see how that is related to the subject, seeing as you can't really feel it, just watch its effects (unlike gravity or a centripetal force).
Actually, "gravity generators" do exist - stuff that exerts centrifugal force. ;) So, if the ship was rotating, the hull would technically be "under floor"... so there go your "gravity generators".
So, this means you can just pick an idea from an existing game (CoC), and patent its adaptation to a computer game? Nice...
The "why preview" link at the bottom reads:
Firefox support
rest assured we haven't abandoned our firefox users and are working on the issues continuously
Being a MS site this looks kinda funny - might also be related to the fact that there is no large banner with the MS logo. Support Firefox, gain user base, then drop support silently? Hmmmm....
If I had mod points I'd give this a +Funny for such a successful impersonation of a teenager! Cheers! :)
Is it just me, or does anyone find this to be deliciously ironic? For ages the UA string has been used to lock out non-IE browsers, and many sites still use that method despite growing complaints.
Now the same mechanism that was used to leave non-IE users out in the cold from some sites will leave IE7 users out in the cold. Care to think about how many won't make the change because their favourite website doesn't work under IE7? How could we grab this opportunity and have people move to Firefox while at it? If they're going to change to a browser that is barred from some sites, they may as well do a good thing for once and change.
This stroke me as really surprising! I consider Portugal to be quite behind in terms of government websites... but we've been submitting TAX reports through the web for 4 years now, and although I don't recall the 1st year, the program is the same for the last 3 years, and it works perfectly on either Windows or Linux (and I'd bet Mac - it seems quite browser independant).
:)
I thought Australia could very well do better, and not worse...
While I agree that hands on experience is important, do not underestimate the power of educating yourself. Writing a game might be about programming, but developing a game isn't.
Let's consider you're writing a multiplayer game, consider a MUD (or even an MMORPG), which is something I'm confortable with. You'll have to understand issues like:
- Psychology (Character progression curve, interest):
How fast does a character have to develop itself in order to maintain interest. What is the breakeven point for challenging progression and boring progression? You'll want a bit of maths. For instance, knowledge on how to plot a negative exponential distribution curve will help you balance the game. Understanding that stair-stepping (levelling, titles, etc ) is usually better than proportional progression in terms of feeling the effects of "achievement" is another important issue.
- Economy (Resource drains, gameplay rewards):
New resources are brought into the world every instant, usually by the simple fact that NPCs drop items and money behind. How to avoid the world getting rich? What mechanics are inplace to counter this and maintain Archimedes law?
- Physics:
If you're writing anything 3D, you'll want to have a firm understanding of simple physics and be friends with our old friend Newton (velocity, acceleration, force). I suggest visiting ODE and check out their library.
In the end, what you'll want to attack is GAMEPLAY. To make the game fun and pretending to be realistic (while actually being cinematic).
Here two mistakes I have commited myself while developing for an mmorpg, to illustrate another point:
Problem: Expecting players to develop their Horsemanship skill in order for them to use better horses (war horses for instance). The less skill they had compared to the required skill to ride the horse, the more likely they were to fall off the horse.
Result: An outcry. Eventually I realized most people wanted to be able to ride them horses just for the looks of it.
Solution: You would only be thrown off-horse if under a stress situation (eg, combat or running at top speed). Otherwise, we'de assume people were in control enough to parade with their horses.
Final result: Both kinds of players satisfied.
Problem: Macroing. People would let their characters standing and doing stuff, just to raise their skills.
1st attempt: Banning macroing - obviously didn't work.
2nd attempt: Make it easier to obtain a skillcheck (a successful skill raise attempt), but then for a period of time, you wouldn't be able to learn. This makes lots of sense, and made raising a skill less of a random thing. People stopped bothering leaving their characters to macro and started caring a bit more about going to play. Many (those who actually played and not just macroed) still complained that it wasn't fair that a part of the time wasn't being rewarded.
3rd attempt: yield larger skill rewards for things that require the player to actually be in control, like combat yielding more experience in aggressive-filled areas you couldn't recall from (leaving a character macroing in there would result in certain death).
Final result: The combination of all these measures reduced macroing just for resource gathering characters (miners, lumberjacks) and craft professions. Each of these had a different approach. Understanding that macroing was a sign of a game with not enough interaction was fundamental to dealing with it, and generating interest in the game aswell.
All this to say that many of the final solutions came from reading and trying to understand people's frame of mind. I got many insights from numerous humorous articles on the web that tried to depict the stereotypes of players. None of this came from programming itself. Surely not all games are that demanding in terms of understanding players, but the bottom line is, developing a game has as much to do with programming as building a wood house
Now you're quick in pointing fingers.
:)
So, you'd say that bombing Sudan over some allegued people terrorists hidden there, while killing thousands - like the US did - is a better approach?
The UN put Sudanese people on their human rights comission, they did not put Sudan. While there, they might even learn something and take back to their country, right?
And get your facts right. The US is quite into violating human rights. That's why they don't even want to recognize the Haya courts - they simply don't want to be accountable to anyone.
Sure it makes sense, from a power-containment perspective, but please don't be so blind as to cover it with righteousness. Geez, you people believe your own propaganda...
You comment reads like "I am American and under 16".
:)
You see, all these troubles start at an early age. Isn't country-wide brainwashing beautiful?
You mean:
"I have 2 apples. I give you 3, how many apples do I have now?"
I recently Bought an Asus laptop. It came with lots of software pre-installed, and a disk that reinstall everything. Seeing as I don't have to click on anything or accept anything (no eulas are visible), what can I possibly do to get a refund?
It's not really that misleading. According to this, the US total population is close to 295.823.632 individuals. According to the above study, 23.677.800 crimes. That's roughly 8% crime/person rate.
Take Portugal, with its population of nearly 12.000.000 inhabitants, and 363,294 felons, which amounts to about 3%.
Now, that's a pretty big difference. You'll find similar figures on other countries.
Crime stems from your problems with poverty and lack of socialist structures. It's a dog eat dog world.
>> We've had two-party rule since Washington left office. If it hasn't "broken" the American system in the last 200+ years, what makes you think it will happen now?
Actually, it makes you think it took 200 years to subvert everything. Which is why gradual changes are so hard to detect. In the span of so few generations, so much has been lost.
Paris Hilton? You mean, the girl who is famous for being a celebrity, and vice-versus?
I wouldn't want to have anything to do with Linux even if she showed up dressed (or barely) as a penguin! That girl is the paradigm of uselessness, she's more anti-Linux than Bill-Gates (although she does better videos).
>> While more powerful at a basic functional level than it's successors, C lacks the powerful language features that more mature languages like VC++ and Java provide
:)
I'm sure you didn't really mean to say VC++, because that's just an ide for C++ and a couple of buggy libraries. But if we went that path, BCB++ 6.0 (even being 3 years old) beats VC++ any day.
Back to the issue, this is probably why Gnome has been investing in Mono. Not everybody understands the role of Mono yet, but I'm sure they'll slap their foreheads and say "of course" sometime later down the path.
>> For instance, book origin of species will turn up the full text of Charles Darwin's controversial treatise
:)
Controversial? It's hasn't been controversial for decades, nor is it "just a theory", it's based on solid geological, anatomical, climatic evidence.
That book and its author are only controversial in creationist circles in the US, who apparently don't understand that if god does exist, evolution would be his doing anyway, and they insist in saying that the world was created by divine intervention and not by solid, tangible facts and processes (which could have been set up by god in the first place, if you need to believe that).
So, maybe Darwin is controversial for some deluded minds in that little world up there in North America, but the rest of the civilized world has already understood that the bible is based on metaphores and moved on to find "God" in other places. The alternative would be going back to the Dark Ages or ending up like most Islamic societies.
So maybe I'm just being picky and I would apologize, but I feel an itch everytime people refer to Darwin as controversial.
Did it ever occur to you guys that if they wanted to artifitially raise one of their pages, they'd just have to ask the engineers to go to the database and manually change their ranking? They definitly wouldn't have to resort to tricks done by everyone else.