To the extent to which it applies to a debate such as this, that religion already is "outlawed."
As are all others.
The separation of church and state is one of the foundational concepts of the USA, and vocally religious politicians should be raising red flags everywhere - not just at E3.
Although it's not specifically illegal to be a hate-mongering racist and religious bigot - and a politician at the same time if it doesn't get in the way of his policies - it's still considered to be pretty bad form considering the stated goals at the foundation of the USA.
People who are stridently against the foundational principles of my country are typically not invited to my fucking fondue parties.
This actually might have worked with Ultima Online.
Being an entirely player-driven world, there were some epic wars going on between player groups, some fairly crazy action sequences (despite the fact that all movement was kinda stilted), and some really novel abuses of power.
As a result, the drama factor was pretty high, at least in a "drama queen" sense.
Not to mention some amusing publicity stunts would come out of it, like the original Bob & Jim war on the Great Lakes shard, which raged on for weeks, and was entirely comprised of one army of people named Jim and one army of people named Bob. (iirc)
A) Write your own compiler for every target platform...
... or...
B) Buy a third party compiler with no community support...
...to turn a finished product from "interpreted" to "compiled," then it's pretty fucking relevant as a discussion on the merits of a language.
I for one wouldn't like to run a single script on 35 million file system elements as part of a multi-step process when that script has a 5/2 second overhead as it loads/unloads the interpreter.
I agree that in terms of the usability of the language for development, it shouldn't matter how the client has to use it, but we don't all have the luxury of ignoring our clients and letting them worry about how to use our product.
I wouldn't say C is particularly hard to use either.
The chief problem with C is that it requires you to understand what the computer is doing in order to use it easily. If the tasks you are using the language for make that utterly irrelevant - you don't care how it does it, just so long as it does it - you might see C as being hard or at very least needlessly Byzantine. There are some things I'd rather work in C to do, or work in ASM to do. However, for most applications, PHP will do just fine for me.
Therefore I'd put forth a final metric for measuring the quality of a language:
Abstraction: How closely does the style of programming using the language resemble the way the user actually thinks - or needs to think to solve a particular domain of problem?
I think that the reason that a lot of these "bizarre" languages have such rabid supporters is precisely due to that. The process of developing a piece of software in these languages does fairly accurately model the thought processes which aforementioned rabid supporter uses to approach logical problems. (ugly sentence, I know.)
If, in the course of solving problems and performing your daily tasks, you find that the language you are using makes it simple, logical, clean, and easy, then you are going to think that that language is the best.
Cisco's argument says that "wearing a condom won't protect me against Space Herpes, therefore I shouldn't wear one at all," ignoring the fact that it will protect you against most (if not all) known threats.
Seriously, most people, while they don't RTFA, and may not even RTFS, at least bother to read the comments they're replying to.
The distinction is between public domain, (which is entirely free to use, free of restrictions, copyright, or any form of use control) and GPL, (which says you can't improve or alter the code for a commercial product and then subsequently choose not to release the source in a usable form.)
In writing, it is placed within square brackets and usually italicizedâ"[sic]â"to indicate that an incorrect or unusual spelling, phrase, punctuation, and/or other preceding quoted material has been reproduced verbatim from the quoted original and is not a transcription error.
So it's only used to indicate that the quoted or referenced material has been faithfully reproduced, not used to indicate that an original document here presented is factually correct.
I've gotta say, I've lost 40 pounds since I started an IT job. The constant mental strain and deadline stress has not only increased my use of calories but also decreased my appetite.
Add that to the fact that I typically would rather go hungry than buy more than one meal out per day and the fact that I hike up a hundred foot hill to get to the office, I'm getting far more exercise than I ever did in my previous job as a security guard.
Here's a tip for you caffeine junkies: learn to like Splenda - Jolt has a green "flavor" which basically tastes like caffeine in sprite with a mild Splenda flavor. It's a tall can, 15 calories. Been a life saver for me (and my dental copays).
Yeah, they really are the most useless of animals.
They have this lovable tendency, for instance, to get knocked up in the summer (when food is plentiful) spend their entire pregnancy starving in a cave, then come out with their newborn babe in the beginning of winter (when it's snowing) then head HIGHER into the mountains where there's less food.
They're impossible to get to breed, and even after they reproduce, the female tries to kill the male. Very few panda cubs survive to adulthood.
Finally, they eat the single most useless food in their habitat (bamboo), even though they are carnivorous and they cannot digest cellulose.
Incidentally, Microsoft seems to be headed this way with its "Games for Windows" initiative as well, only with the stink of its product identity slathered all over it, naturally.
Still, it's a laudable effort to bolster up the flagging hardcore PC gaming industry in the face of diminishing costs of development on consoles.
What you just said is precisely the reason I've dropped out of an engineering program into a communications program.
Going back to college in a situation where I have to work at the same time, I just don't have time to do 60 hours a week of homework, plus 15 hours a week of classes and 30 hours a week of work - only to graduate with worse odds of getting a decent job as the business or comm majors who took far easier courses.
Given that I already work for the state and my resume looks better every single year I continue to do so, I have little incentive to even continue getting a degree.
Engineering degrees (at traditional 4-year US universities) are more work and expense than they'll be worth in the long run; for job security, expected income, job satisfaction, or nearly any other metric.
For those who have stuck it out and gotten enough of an education to be righteously called an 'engineer,' I salute you. I have great respect for people who still care enough about the sciences to fight their way through the bullshit. You're the people who made the US the great place it used to be.
It was a tough road, and for some of you, worthwhile, but it's far from the free ride through life that people like me who grew up in the late 70s and 80s were led to believe it was.
For me personally, it wasn't worth the stress and expense. I'll graduate with a communications degree with a technical minor, get paid at worst 10k per year less than you, and be 40k less in debt.
However, I feel I should also make it clear that if you have to carry files on your laptop which need to remain confidential, something is desperately wrong with your process.
1) Install at least one large game with large binary data files on your hard drive.
2) Install TrueCrypt and store all of your trade secrets, patent applications, customer lists, whatever confidential crap you think you actually need to hide from Customs agents on a large volume file.
3) Place that data file in the data directory of your large video game with a plausible name, or replace one of the actual data files which doesn't get loaded until late in the game.
4) Sit pretty in the realization that unless the NSA, DHS or CIA takes personal interest in you (in which case you're probably fucked anyway) nobody will ever see your "private data."
5) Realize that even if they do, it'll take them months to decrypt the contents, and even longer to use it, so your company will have ample time to sue the government for their information back, or at least begin damage control the leak of that information.
They already made a Doom 3 before Doom 3 came out, and you mentioned it:
It was called Serious Sam. Coop, multiple episodes, insane levels of action, devious traps, and giant monsters which were intimidating as all hell while at the same time being somewhat comical.
That was what Doom was always about.
Doom 3 was not like that. Too predictable, too linear and claustrophobic, too utterly dependent on nyctophobia in its use of tension.
2) Priuses aren't largely driven by "the affluent". They're mostly a middle class car.
I hate to be the one to break it to you, but in most of the US, the middle class is extinct. The few people making enough to be called a middle class family ARE "relatively affluent" as the GP poster stated. the 2006 census shows that the median human being in this country is making $26k. Depending on where that person lives, that's only barely above the poverty level.
In downtown Seattle for instance, you can expect to pay around $900 a month for a crappy studio without a kitchen. A few miles out of town, you could get a small house for rent for about $1400 a month, or a decent one-bedroom apartment for $700-900.
Move much further and you're looking at in excess of a two hour commute due to the effective death of the carpool in the state. At this point, making that $26k a year, it becomes financially infeasible to drive to work, so you need to buy bus passes (not cheap either) and spend hours on the bus every day.
Now walk down to your corner grocery or gas station, buy a local paper if they still exist in your area. Take a look at the job listings. Find 3 entry level jobs which pay more than $18,000 a year without a college education. It's going to be difficult in most areas.
The people who used to be lower middle to middle class are now the upper end of the lower class. The jobs that used to seat you squarely in a financially secure area are now below average. It's getting hard to make a living doing work which used to be considered good pay.
If you can afford a new Prius, realize that 80% of America cannot while maintaining their current standard of living, and that therefore you can consider yourself "reasonably affluent."
The list price on most stuff I read (mostly fiction) is $10-15, and even buying it discounted runs $7-12. A new hardcover (if you can't wait to read it) will cost you $15-35, a good fat programming or computer themed book might cost as much as $50, and a textbook runs $70-120.
I'd say $10 for a book which is being wired to you in under 30 seconds isn't that damned expensive, unless you only read used books or new ones that are more than a year old.
Slashdot Mirror
To the extent to which it applies to a debate such as this, that religion already is "outlawed."
As are all others.
The separation of church and state is one of the foundational concepts of the USA, and vocally religious politicians should be raising red flags everywhere - not just at E3.
Although it's not specifically illegal to be a hate-mongering racist and religious bigot - and a politician at the same time if it doesn't get in the way of his policies - it's still considered to be pretty bad form considering the stated goals at the foundation of the USA.
People who are stridently against the foundational principles of my country are typically not invited to my fucking fondue parties.
From the two links you pasted, apparently most of Brazil, much of Eastern Europe, central Mexico, and the northern center of North America.
At least make them significantly less godawfully poor limits.
A Netflix subscriber watching a few TV series on their Watch Instantly package in a month is going to burn through more than 40gb.
Your average YouTube addict will burn through more than that.
What about people who remote desktop to their home PC?
This actually might have worked with Ultima Online.
Being an entirely player-driven world, there were some epic wars going on between player groups, some fairly crazy action sequences (despite the fact that all movement was kinda stilted), and some really novel abuses of power.
As a result, the drama factor was pretty high, at least in a "drama queen" sense.
Not to mention some amusing publicity stunts would come out of it, like the original Bob & Jim war on the Great Lakes shard, which raged on for weeks, and was entirely comprised of one army of people named Jim and one army of people named Bob. (iirc)
Don't forget on the list of advantages:
5. You've already paid for it 20 years ago.
If you have to either:
A) Write your own compiler for every target platform...
... or ...
B) Buy a third party compiler with no community support...
...to turn a finished product from "interpreted" to "compiled," then it's pretty fucking relevant as a discussion on the merits of a language.
I for one wouldn't like to run a single script on 35 million file system elements as part of a multi-step process when that script has a 5/2 second overhead as it loads/unloads the interpreter.
I agree that in terms of the usability of the language for development, it shouldn't matter how the client has to use it, but we don't all have the luxury of ignoring our clients and letting them worry about how to use our product.
I wouldn't say C is particularly hard to use either.
The chief problem with C is that it requires you to understand what the computer is doing in order to use it easily. If the tasks you are using the language for make that utterly irrelevant - you don't care how it does it, just so long as it does it - you might see C as being hard or at very least needlessly Byzantine. There are some things I'd rather work in C to do, or work in ASM to do. However, for most applications, PHP will do just fine for me.
Therefore I'd put forth a final metric for measuring the quality of a language:
Abstraction: How closely does the style of programming using the language resemble the way the user actually thinks - or needs to think to solve a particular domain of problem?
I think that the reason that a lot of these "bizarre" languages have such rabid supporters is precisely due to that. The process of developing a piece of software in these languages does fairly accurately model the thought processes which aforementioned rabid supporter uses to approach logical problems. (ugly sentence, I know.)
If, in the course of solving problems and performing your daily tasks, you find that the language you are using makes it simple, logical, clean, and easy, then you are going to think that that language is the best.
That's exactly the point.
Cisco's argument says that "wearing a condom won't protect me against Space Herpes, therefore I shouldn't wear one at all," ignoring the fact that it will protect you against most (if not all) known threats.
That's ten kinds of stupid.
<strongbad>Strawman'd!</strongbad>
Seriously, most people, while they don't RTFA, and may not even RTFS, at least bother to read the comments they're replying to.
The distinction is between public domain, (which is entirely free to use, free of restrictions, copyright, or any form of use control) and GPL, (which says you can't improve or alter the code for a commercial product and then subsequently choose not to release the source in a usable form.)
I hate to say it, but he's right.
In writing, it is placed within square brackets and usually italicizedâ"[sic]â"to indicate that an incorrect or unusual spelling, phrase, punctuation, and/or other preceding quoted material has been reproduced verbatim from the quoted original and is not a transcription error.So it's only used to indicate that the quoted or referenced material has been faithfully reproduced, not used to indicate that an original document here presented is factually correct.
I've gotta say, I've lost 40 pounds since I started an IT job. The constant mental strain and deadline stress has not only increased my use of calories but also decreased my appetite.
Add that to the fact that I typically would rather go hungry than buy more than one meal out per day and the fact that I hike up a hundred foot hill to get to the office, I'm getting far more exercise than I ever did in my previous job as a security guard.
Here's a tip for you caffeine junkies: learn to like Splenda - Jolt has a green "flavor" which basically tastes like caffeine in sprite with a mild Splenda flavor. It's a tall can, 15 calories. Been a life saver for me (and my dental copays).
Yeah, they really are the most useless of animals.
They have this lovable tendency, for instance, to get knocked up in the summer (when food is plentiful) spend their entire pregnancy starving in a cave, then come out with their newborn babe in the beginning of winter (when it's snowing) then head HIGHER into the mountains where there's less food.
They're impossible to get to breed, and even after they reproduce, the female tries to kill the male. Very few panda cubs survive to adulthood.
Finally, they eat the single most useless food in their habitat (bamboo), even though they are carnivorous and they cannot digest cellulose.
That is a far better idea, I'd say.
Incidentally, Microsoft seems to be headed this way with its "Games for Windows" initiative as well, only with the stink of its product identity slathered all over it, naturally.
Still, it's a laudable effort to bolster up the flagging hardcore PC gaming industry in the face of diminishing costs of development on consoles.
"first world"
GP wasn't saying that they'd be the "first (world country)" but that they'd be a "(first world) country."
Hooray for English and its ability to form ambiguous clauses.
What you just said is precisely the reason I've dropped out of an engineering program into a communications program.
Going back to college in a situation where I have to work at the same time, I just don't have time to do 60 hours a week of homework, plus 15 hours a week of classes and 30 hours a week of work - only to graduate with worse odds of getting a decent job as the business or comm majors who took far easier courses.
Given that I already work for the state and my resume looks better every single year I continue to do so, I have little incentive to even continue getting a degree.
Engineering degrees (at traditional 4-year US universities) are more work and expense than they'll be worth in the long run; for job security, expected income, job satisfaction, or nearly any other metric.
For those who have stuck it out and gotten enough of an education to be righteously called an 'engineer,' I salute you. I have great respect for people who still care enough about the sciences to fight their way through the bullshit. You're the people who made the US the great place it used to be.
It was a tough road, and for some of you, worthwhile, but it's far from the free ride through life that people like me who grew up in the late 70s and 80s were led to believe it was.
For me personally, it wasn't worth the stress and expense. I'll graduate with a communications degree with a technical minor, get paid at worst 10k per year less than you, and be 40k less in debt.
Thank god for people like you.
Replying to myself - bad form.
However, I feel I should also make it clear that if you have to carry files on your laptop which need to remain confidential, something is desperately wrong with your process.
Easy steps:
The first thing I thought of is "why the hell does an aircraft carrier need a supercomputer?"
They already made a Doom 3 before Doom 3 came out, and you mentioned it:
It was called Serious Sam. Coop, multiple episodes, insane levels of action, devious traps, and giant monsters which were intimidating as all hell while at the same time being somewhat comical.
That was what Doom was always about.
Doom 3 was not like that. Too predictable, too linear and claustrophobic, too utterly dependent on nyctophobia in its use of tension.
You read the article?
Turn in your Slashdot user id and get out now.
I hate to be the one to break it to you, but in most of the US, the middle class is extinct. The few people making enough to be called a middle class family ARE "relatively affluent" as the GP poster stated. the 2006 census shows that the median human being in this country is making $26k. Depending on where that person lives, that's only barely above the poverty level.
In downtown Seattle for instance, you can expect to pay around $900 a month for a crappy studio without a kitchen. A few miles out of town, you could get a small house for rent for about $1400 a month, or a decent one-bedroom apartment for $700-900.
Move much further and you're looking at in excess of a two hour commute due to the effective death of the carpool in the state. At this point, making that $26k a year, it becomes financially infeasible to drive to work, so you need to buy bus passes (not cheap either) and spend hours on the bus every day.
Now walk down to your corner grocery or gas station, buy a local paper if they still exist in your area. Take a look at the job listings. Find 3 entry level jobs which pay more than $18,000 a year without a college education. It's going to be difficult in most areas.
The people who used to be lower middle to middle class are now the upper end of the lower class. The jobs that used to seat you squarely in a financially secure area are now below average. It's getting hard to make a living doing work which used to be considered good pay.
If you can afford a new Prius, realize that 80% of America cannot while maintaining their current standard of living, and that therefore you can consider yourself "reasonably affluent."
Tell me more about this... "Terrorforming." Is it.... evil?
Excuse me, but where the hell do you buy books?
The list price on most stuff I read (mostly fiction) is $10-15, and even buying it discounted runs $7-12. A new hardcover (if you can't wait to read it) will cost you $15-35, a good fat programming or computer themed book might cost as much as $50, and a textbook runs $70-120.
I'd say $10 for a book which is being wired to you in under 30 seconds isn't that damned expensive, unless you only read used books or new ones that are more than a year old.
That is the single best pun-based abuse of a
Bravo!