You've misinterpreted my post. I'm not complaining about 50 hours a week. I'm complaining about 50 hours a week minimum, and the phases a company will put your through where you'll work upwards of 80 hours. I happpen to have a software development position where I am only required to work 40 hours a week, and I never take it granted, given that I know others who break thier backs for thier employers.
In all honesty, if a guy in India wants that job badly, then let him have it. The only true karma would be him falling over dead from work exhaustion because of the hours he put in for a promised extra day of vacation.
The communist reporter was not rescued she was bought with money that will go to buy arms that will be used to kill 80% Iraqi civilians and 20% foreign soldiers.
Woah! Slow down and don't drink all the kool-aid at once! The incident was likely an accident, but you do nothing to help your argument by calling people 'communists'. On Limbaugh, you may win brownie points for what you said, but in a reasonable (or even Slashdot) argument, you unlikely to convince anyone with stupid retoric.
But it was distributed. Just not shown. It you pass around a pack of papers and put one you hope nobody will look for at the bottom, can you really be upset when someone grabs exactly that sheet?
My guess is that it's going to be the staffer that released the document that's in hot water.
Here is a small reference to the 50 hour work week. From my experience however, I've come to know that companies set that as the minimum, with patches where you may work much longer hours (usually around the tail-end of a release of a product or software application). At that time (which can last for as long as two months), you may easily clock in 12 hrs a day for 5 days a week. Given that these are usually salaried positions, overtime is almost never offered.
Who cares if their working me 14 hours a day without overtime and I haven't seen my family in 3 months. With perks like a nice cafeteria, it's all worth it.
Sad thing is that most people probably have to use that cafeteria for breakfast, lunch and dinner since may comapnies that provide such things also mandate a 50 hr work week minimum. Don't know about anybody else, but I'd trade those benefits anyday for good pay and a chance to be out after 7 1/2 to 8 hrs.
People generally don't have any problem with the patent system.
That's not a very convincing argument when you consider that most people don't have a problem with the patent system because they don't know there's a problem in the first place. Once in a while some patent will go through that will garner some attention (patent on the swing, Smucker PB&J patent, etc) but in general the patent issue flies under the radar. No doubt that's the way they like it though.
The large amount of downloads are great, but how many of those downloads simply were the same users downloading updates: v1.0, v1.0.1, v1.0.2 and v1.0.3?
I'd be interested in knowing how many of those downloads correspond to unique users. After all, that's really what is most important.
Anyone going to tell me That Kerry wouldn't have done the same?
Rather stupid generalization if you ask me. 'Because Bush would do it, of course Kerry would do it too'. Not likely. It's Bush and Co. that have the history of weeding out individuals that it deems 'unfit' for discussion of public matters. Just look at thier Social Security 'TownHall' meetings.
...claim trademark on the term 'PDF'? I know its just a file extension, but the way corporate america has its way with the Trademark and Patent offices, I'm supprised it hasn't happened.
Amazingly those 333 MHz produce graphics close to Dreamcast level yet my 400MHz PDA can't even run Quake at 320x240 well.
The dramatic performance difference has to do with the inner properties of the hardware in the PSP. A PSP contains 1 CPU core, 2 Graphics cores, 1 Media core, 1 Sound core and firmware which is optimized to incredibly high levels for an assortment of polygon crunching and rendering tasks.
That, coupled with fast data-transfer rates across the Bus and other hardware capabilities, makes outperforming a standard PDA in the game department fairly easy.
It seems wrong for Sony to show up Microsoft by creating thier buzz just 3 hours before the new XBOX is unveiled, but that's buisness I suppose.
Regardless, I wonder what it was that drove Microsoft to unveil thier new system on MTV? It isn't the teen magnet that it used to be, and even if it were, the user base thier targeting (ie. those who could actually afford the new console) are probably in the 20+ age frame and would not likely be watching MTV in the first place. You want to maximize the amount of press you can receive, but I would think that a public press conference with a large chunk of the media in attendence would of seemed sufficient (and alot cheaper). It's getting the message out to the retailers, print press and net that will sell the console in the long run. Not short-lived promotional show that (if history is any indication) will mirror those god-awful Spike TV Game Award Shows in at least a few respects.
And of course since you come from the Wisconsin Department of Transportation (per your http://das.doit.wisc.edu/ link), you obviously offer an unbiased opinion.
Don't get me wrong, i'm not trying to bash Ubuntu Linux (I'm sure it's a fine distribution), but don't others find the whole "Ubuntu Linux brings the spirit of Ubuntu to the software world" seem kinda hokey. I mean, I'm all for a user-accessible Linux accessible distribution but the whole idea of "Peace, Love, and Linux" just reeks of marketing gone wrong.
At risk of sounding completely stupid, could someone explain what the intricacy is that makes developing a file system such as WinFS such a consuming task? I have limited experience in terms of in terms of developing suite-style applications, but can't comprehend what would make the development cycle for something like this take so long.
Is the coding that difficult? Is getting the standards correct? Testing perhaps? I have no idea.
The fact that this line of reasoning is so common just underlines my point that people are choosing more based on "what industry uses", rather than on what would actually make a good teaching tool.
Perhaps, but you need to understand that the best teaching tool is not perhaps always the 'perfect' teaching tool. There is always going to be something better, but you need to make a tradeoff between the capabilities of a language and the usefullness of a language outside of the academic environment. A good language is said to be one that is not only expressive but also practical and useful (ie. you will find it useful in work and academics). We choose Java, or C++, because they meet both of these criteria. Thier not perfect (not by a long shot), but they are effective and widely used. The fact that these languages were the product of government funding or the commerical industry cannot be helped. In todays world, they (for better or worse) dictate the trends of software development (languages included). 20 years ago, corporate america exclaimed that object oriented programming was the paradigm of application development (casting out LISP, FORTRAN, etc) and it's remained that way since.
I can understand frustration with slowness when it comes to adopting new and better language constructs, but the computer science tends to move at the pace of the industry which pays us. And if the industry decrees that C++ or Java is the language of today, then we have to accept that (unfortunately).
People do not teach Java simply because some believe that it is what the industry uses. People teach Java because Java is simply a better C++ (as is C#).
Unlike C++, Java is a language typesafe and discourages bad programming practices, as well a providing checks for common programming mistakes such as array bounds or NULL pointers. It also removes need to deal with allocation/deallocation by adding garbage collection and making every object a 'reference object'. In short: Without worrying about having to be backwards compatible with C, Java created an environment that actually helped the developer.
Given that Java is also purely Object Oriented, Java is ideal for teaching the methods of OO programming. Things like programming to an interface, or design patterns are easier to express in Java then they are in C++ since the constructs that the design patterns assume are native elements of Java.
Combine this with a simpler API setup then your standard Windows API, exception handling that did more than core dump when it reached the top, and many other features, it's clear that Java is an ideal language to teach students.
Personally, I tend to think that MMORPGs are stale simply because thier based on the premise that 'gotta-catch-them-all' mentaility. Only today could we claim that it's entertaining to walk around for 20 hours, beating some stupid creature endlessly with 'The Rod of ' while hoping he'll drop the 'Werewolf's Bane of Transexual Nothingness' or some other stupidly named item.
Are MMORPGs really an piece of entertainment software or a financial enterprise and glorified chatroom.
When we trade characters in order to provide for our own financial well being in reality, or complain about having to 'go to work' and 'Grind EXP', is that game still a game? Virtual children? Virtual families? What happened to making games more fun, or more accessible?
Yeah, I was cool with stone tablets too till I heard about that whole Ten Commandments/DRM fiasco. Something about copyrights, devestating floods and 'pillars of salt' kinda irked me.
Slashdot Mirror
You've misinterpreted my post. I'm not complaining about 50 hours a week. I'm complaining about 50 hours a week minimum, and the phases a company will put your through where you'll work upwards of 80 hours. I happpen to have a software development position where I am only required to work 40 hours a week, and I never take it granted, given that I know others who break thier backs for thier employers.
In all honesty, if a guy in India wants that job badly, then let him have it. The only true karma would be him falling over dead from work exhaustion because of the hours he put in for a promised extra day of vacation.
Correction: rhetoric
The communist reporter was not rescued she was bought with money that will go to buy arms that will be used to kill 80% Iraqi civilians and 20% foreign soldiers.
Woah! Slow down and don't drink all the kool-aid at once! The incident was likely an accident, but you do nothing to help your argument by calling people 'communists'. On Limbaugh, you may win brownie points for what you said, but in a reasonable (or even Slashdot) argument, you unlikely to convince anyone with stupid retoric.
But it was distributed. Just not shown. It you pass around a pack of papers and put one you hope nobody will look for at the bottom, can you really be upset when someone grabs exactly that sheet?
My guess is that it's going to be the staffer that released the document that's in hot water.
Sure. I should of given one earlier.
Here is a small reference to the 50 hour work week. From my experience however, I've come to know that companies set that as the minimum, with patches where you may work much longer hours (usually around the tail-end of a release of a product or software application). At that time (which can last for as long as two months), you may easily clock in 12 hrs a day for 5 days a week. Given that these are usually salaried positions, overtime is almost never offered.
Who cares if their working me 14 hours a day without overtime and I haven't seen my family in 3 months. With perks like a nice cafeteria, it's all worth it.
Sad thing is that most people probably have to use that cafeteria for breakfast, lunch and dinner since may comapnies that provide such things also mandate a 50 hr work week minimum. Don't know about anybody else, but I'd trade those benefits anyday for good pay and a chance to be out after 7 1/2 to 8 hrs.
People generally don't have any problem with the patent system.
That's not a very convincing argument when you consider that most people don't have a problem with the patent system because they don't know there's a problem in the first place. Once in a while some patent will go through that will garner some attention (patent on the swing, Smucker PB&J patent, etc) but in general the patent issue flies under the radar. No doubt that's the way they like it though.
The large amount of downloads are great, but how many of those downloads simply were the same users downloading updates: v1.0, v1.0.1, v1.0.2 and v1.0.3? I'd be interested in knowing how many of those downloads correspond to unique users. After all, that's really what is most important.
When you claim to be 'working' on Duke Nukem: Forever, you tend to become dilusional.
Anyone going to tell me That Kerry wouldn't have done the same?
Rather stupid generalization if you ask me. 'Because Bush would do it, of course Kerry would do it too'. Not likely. It's Bush and Co. that have the history of weeding out individuals that it deems 'unfit' for discussion of public matters. Just look at thier Social Security 'TownHall' meetings.
...claim trademark on the term 'PDF'? I know its just a file extension, but the way corporate america has its way with the Trademark and Patent offices, I'm supprised it hasn't happened.
If you don't support Adobe, you don't support America. If you use FrontPage, then the terrorist have already won.
Amazingly those 333 MHz produce graphics close to Dreamcast level yet my 400MHz PDA can't even run Quake at 320x240 well.
The dramatic performance difference has to do with the inner properties of the hardware in the PSP. A PSP contains 1 CPU core, 2 Graphics cores, 1 Media core, 1 Sound core and firmware which is optimized to incredibly high levels for an assortment of polygon crunching and rendering tasks.
That, coupled with fast data-transfer rates across the Bus and other hardware capabilities, makes outperforming a standard PDA in the game department fairly easy.
It seems wrong for Sony to show up Microsoft by creating thier buzz just 3 hours before the new XBOX is unveiled, but that's buisness I suppose.
Regardless, I wonder what it was that drove Microsoft to unveil thier new system on MTV? It isn't the teen magnet that it used to be, and even if it were, the user base thier targeting (ie. those who could actually afford the new console) are probably in the 20+ age frame and would not likely be watching MTV in the first place. You want to maximize the amount of press you can receive, but I would think that a public press conference with a large chunk of the media in attendence would of seemed sufficient (and alot cheaper). It's getting the message out to the retailers, print press and net that will sell the console in the long run. Not short-lived promotional show that (if history is any indication) will mirror those god-awful Spike TV Game Award Shows in at least a few respects.
Forget that. I should read more carefully.
And of course since you come from the Wisconsin Department of Transportation (per your http://das.doit.wisc.edu/ link), you obviously offer an unbiased opinion.
There's gotta be a Fox News Joke somewhere in there.
Don't get me wrong, i'm not trying to bash Ubuntu Linux (I'm sure it's a fine distribution), but don't others find the whole "Ubuntu Linux brings the spirit of Ubuntu to the software world" seem kinda hokey. I mean, I'm all for a user-accessible Linux accessible distribution but the whole idea of "Peace, Love, and Linux" just reeks of marketing gone wrong.
At risk of sounding completely stupid, could someone explain what the intricacy is that makes developing a file system such as WinFS such a consuming task? I have limited experience in terms of in terms of developing suite-style applications, but can't comprehend what would make the development cycle for something like this take so long.
Is the coding that difficult? Is getting the standards correct? Testing perhaps? I have no idea.
The fact that this line of reasoning is so common just underlines my point that people are choosing more based on "what industry uses", rather than on what would actually make a good teaching tool.
Perhaps, but you need to understand that the best teaching tool is not perhaps always the 'perfect' teaching tool. There is always going to be something better, but you need to make a tradeoff between the capabilities of a language and the usefullness of a language outside of the academic environment. A good language is said to be one that is not only expressive but also practical and useful (ie. you will find it useful in work and academics). We choose Java, or C++, because they meet both of these criteria. Thier not perfect (not by a long shot), but they are effective and widely used. The fact that these languages were the product of government funding or the commerical industry cannot be helped. In todays world, they (for better or worse) dictate the trends of software development (languages included). 20 years ago, corporate america exclaimed that object oriented programming was the paradigm of application development (casting out LISP, FORTRAN, etc) and it's remained that way since.
I can understand frustration with slowness when it comes to adopting new and better language constructs, but the computer science tends to move at the pace of the industry which pays us. And if the industry decrees that C++ or Java is the language of today, then we have to accept that (unfortunately).
People do not teach Java simply because some believe that it is what the industry uses. People teach Java because Java is simply a better C++ (as is C#).
Unlike C++, Java is a language typesafe and discourages bad programming practices, as well a providing checks for common programming mistakes such as array bounds or NULL pointers. It also removes need to deal with allocation/deallocation by adding garbage collection and making every object a 'reference object'. In short: Without worrying about having to be backwards compatible with C, Java created an environment that actually helped the developer.
Given that Java is also purely Object Oriented, Java is ideal for teaching the methods of OO programming. Things like programming to an interface, or design patterns are easier to express in Java then they are in C++ since the constructs that the design patterns assume are native elements of Java.
Combine this with a simpler API setup then your standard Windows API, exception handling that did more than core dump when it reached the top, and many other features, it's clear that Java is an ideal language to teach students.
Personally, I tend to think that MMORPGs are stale simply because thier based on the premise that 'gotta-catch-them-all' mentaility. Only today could we claim that it's entertaining to walk around for 20 hours, beating some stupid creature endlessly with 'The Rod of ' while hoping he'll drop the 'Werewolf's Bane of Transexual Nothingness' or some other stupidly named item.
Are MMORPGs really an piece of entertainment software or a financial enterprise and glorified chatroom.
When we trade characters in order to provide for our own financial well being in reality, or complain about having to 'go to work' and 'Grind EXP', is that game still a game? Virtual children? Virtual families? What happened to making games more fun, or more accessible?
They've also had some of the highest fines when it comes to violating the do-not-call list.
Example
Yeah, I was cool with stone tablets too till I heard about that whole Ten Commandments/DRM fiasco. Something about copyrights, devestating floods and 'pillars of salt' kinda irked me.