I've heard a lot about CMSs and ArsDigita in particular, but I'm not entirely up on my CMS terminology.
I poked around on the ArsDigita pages, but what I found was a lot of marketing and buzzword crap, and no really good to the point explanation on what it is. I don't have the time to read all the marketing B.S., so I'm hoping somebody here can get straight to the point and tell me what this is all about.
If I were to download and install the ArsDigita CMS, what exactly would that buy me?
Is it a collection of APIs for developing web pages? Is it a templating engine for generating markup? Is it a kind of uber-Wiki? Is it a message board system? Is it some online collaborative environmnet like Source Forge? It it an online publishing system like Slash or PostNuke?
But you make that call one time, at the end of your application when you need to do the final calculation for the shipping bill, correct?
If, however, you have a search page that could throw up 50 different products, and you query fed-ex for each individual product every time you load the page (without doing any caching) then I guarantee your web site will tank under a heavy load.
I suppose I should qualify my statement a little more, nonetheless:
Anybody who foolishly uses web services without taking into consideration the latencies and overheads involved deserves to suffer the consequences.
Does that make you happier?
Anyway, my original point still stands: The technology is sound when used properly, and the good programmers will, as always, seperate themselves from the bad.
Anybody who uses SOAP requests for doing small and frequent function calls over the net is foolish and deserves to suffer the consequences he will face for his foolishness.
On the other hand, however, those who use SOAP calls correctly will reap the benefits SOAP has to offer.
An example:
I work for a mortgage company. We had an online rate search engine (till the market went sour anyway). One of our clients ran a few XML queries to our engine (they were located in California, we are in Chicago). Here are the two most important queries.
1. The Loan Search: they would ask a few questions, and then do a Loan Search with one XML query and cache the results.
2. Apply for a loan: they would acquire all information related to applying for a loan, and then send one XML query at the end containing all that information.
Had SOAP and WebServices been available at the time to use in place of custom built XML handling methods (not to even mention production ready XML libraries) our jobs would have been a lot easier.
Had we used SOAP to handle every request (including sending every individual piece of information seperately, or sending an XML document back and forth for every step of the loan application process) our application would have been a hideous failure. Instead, it worked just fine. The biggest problems were my XML parsing techniques were lackluster (this was the first work with XML I had done so it was a little slow) and the market just wasn't there for online mortgaging (to this day, only about half a percent of people who get mortgages actually buy their mortgages entirely online).
SOAP has it's uses, but like any good technology, people can abuse it. As always, time will seperate the good programmers from the bad programmers. Therefore, my conclusion is that SOAP is not inherently evil, rather a lot of crappy programmers are!:)
I'm not completely up to speed on what Java Web development enhancements this brings to the table. However, I can honestly say that in my dealings with ßeta versions of Tomcat 4.0, the configuration files for Tomcat 4.0 are 1000x times easier and more sensible! The configuration files for Tomcat 3.x look like they were designed by a monkey on crack (or a Sendmail developer). Tomcat 4.0 config files are finally well thought out and usable. Can't wait to get my systems upgraded!:)
Don't you think the java standard library would be L'GPLed just like EVERY OTHER open source programming language standard library? I mean, come on people! Not everything has to be or will be GPLed!
It does NOT cost as much to develop OSX as it took to develop W2K! Apple took the Code straight from the BSD and NextStep projects. Apple saved a crapload of money thanks to the BSD guys, and quite frankly I'm still waiting to see Apple give anything substantial BACK to the BSD community.
We use a Linksys for our one location. It's nice, though it does have some annoying but not terrible limitations (you can only forward 10 ports for instance).
We locked the web configuration for the linksys to run only on the intranet, and then setup Apache + mod_proxy with a virtual host to proxy the interface out to the web. If SSL wasn't such a pain in the ass to configure properly, I'd probably have it even setup over an SSL connection right now (we're too cheap to pay for an SSL certificate, which makes setting up SSL an order of magnitude harder).
It works great for us, we can shut down the virtual host remotely and only enable it when we want to dink around with the Linksys router without having to resort to using SSH and/or Links (we have a custom webmin module that does a lot of stuff like this for us).
Problem is, a LOT of companies and government agenices will NOT deliver to a P.O. Box effectively nullifying the use of one. It also doesn't do much good if you move to a different city for instance (as I did). I can't exactly check my Cleveland PO Box when I'm living in Chicago now, can I?
A lot of you people are forgetting two other critical reasons why stored procedures are good.
1. Most database pre-parse the stored procedures and keep the cached parsed information in memory. Really complex SQL queries can take a significant amount of time to parse, and cutting down on that overhead can be a huge win for some applications (it was for one of our queries!).
2. Stored procedures can encapsulte logic that requires multiple SQL queries into one call. This saves the network overhead of making multiple trips to the database, which can potentially be huge (and even be REALLY huge if you open up a new connection for each SQL query and then shut the connection immediately).
I don't know if the Perl procedures remain parsed, but at the very least they should be able to accomplish #2. Personally though, I'm going to wait till mySQL supports some sort of Transact SQL like stored procedures. I don't see a justifiable reason for the overhead involved in running Perl on my database. That just strikes me as a bad idea (same goes for java).
Ruby does have ; at the end of statements! If you want to put two statements on the same line, you put a ; in between them. If you really feel like you want to have ; at the end of every statement, go ahead and put them in. Ruby won't complain.
Well, I see a lot of people complaining as usual... Why should they learn another language? So I thought I would throw in my $0.02 for all a languages (not just Ruby, which I am particularly fond of).
A lot of you people come from what I call the Computer Science Student mentality. This unfortunately something I've noticed as a side effect of the way computer science is taught in most schools. It's quite unfortunate, because that clearly isn't the aim of the Professor's when they are teaching classes this way.
I'll use my school as an example. When I started at the University of Dayton, about 7 years ago, every class was taught in ADA. It was a horrible horrible expierence. The ADA compilers were horribly lacking at the time, and anybody who has done any work in ADA will know that it is an extremely strict and picky language. That has it's good and bad sides when it comes to teaching programming, but I'll save that for a different discussion. I had no problems, since, well, I had a good solid 4 years for Pascal and C/C++ programming experience before I even started college, but this seriously affected the other students in my class.
The problem was, about two years into the program, my school decided (thank god) to switch the department over to C++. This was a great move, because now the students were being taught a language that they could actually apply in the real world (beyond the confines of the Wright Patterson Air Force base anyway). It worked out quite well for the newer students, but my classmates were blindsided. Most of them suffered through half a semester of C (the other half of the semester was 360 assembler) and never even touched upon C++. They should have just been able to pick up a C++ book, apply the concepts they learned from their ADA classes and the syntax from the C++ book and their C course and move on, but most of them had a hard time doing it.
Why was that? They all knew the concepts. They all knew how to write their algorithms, and their trees, and their stacks and queues. Yeah, they weren't taught how to write real software, but they clearly knew the basics. I spent more time helping others learn these concepts than I did doing my own homework the first two years, so I know what they were capable of from first hand experience.
The problem was entirely in their minds. C++ is a huge ugly beast, and it is a bit imposing when you first start. But if you've got two solid years of programming behind you, it should be a relatively smooth and easy transition. Most of them didn't realize this though. They were scared of C++, they were scared of new languages, and they suffered as a result.
The simple fact of the matter is, if you know one language, you know them all. It's not the syntax that makes the difference, it's the concepts that you express within the framework of the language's syntax that are the real guts of programming. My classmates took awhile to realize this (and I'm sure many of them still don't). That's the same thing with Ruby, or Python, or Perl, or just about any language. Unless you are making the jump from procedural to OOP, or OOP to Functional for the first time, you *CAN* pick up a book and learn a new language in a days time. The only thing stopping you is yourself.
Now, the other part of this is, why would you do that? I love learning new languages, and I love learning new languages for a few reasons. These reasons apply to every programmer, and I honestly don't understand why some people are so opposed to learning something new. I guess that's what seperates a good programmer from a bad programmer. So if you want to know why you should learn Ruby, or LISP, or Haskell, or even Visual Basic, I'll tell you why.
1. It helps keep your skills in tip top shape. Perusing a computer manual may remind you of algorithms or techniques you haven't used in a long time and forgotten.
2. You always seem to learn something new. Not some new technical trick that only works in one lanuage (although that definitely happens), but just a different way of approaching problems that sometimes can transcend language boundaries.
3. You may find a new language that allows you to get the job done faster!
4. You're enhanced knowlege of languages looks great on your resume no matter what you use as your primary language.
5. You learn the way other people think. And I don't want to gloss over this one. As a programmer, you frequently have to work with other programmers. Learning new languages is a *GREAT* way to see how other people do things. To learn the way other people think, so to speak. By learning Ruby and Smalltalk, you start to learn why people in those communities are so die hard about OOP programming styles. By learning LISP or Haskell you start to learn why Functional styles even exist! And it all comes back full circle. Techniques I learned from Haskell I now use when writing C++ programs and vice versa. It only made my C++ code better.
Knowlege is power, and learning new languages is one (of many) ways of increasing your knowlege. Go ahead and try it, even if you think you won't use the language, and even if you're just starting out and don't think the transition from your learning language to a new one will be easy. You just might be surprised by how much you already know, and how much you have yet to learn. That's the real benefit of it.
But you know what, those applications can install MSHTML.DLL in their application directory and run it when they need to without touching the rest of the system.
That's the problem... Microsoft has used, oh say, Office's Dependency on parts of IE as an excuse to install all of IE and let it take over the system (take win95 or example which definitely does NOT come with IE).
The only thing stopping Microsoft from installing those components needed to get the job at hand finished and nothing more is Microsoft.
Actually, I think you're very wrong. These may not absolutely show what each compiler can accomplish when John Carmack is writing something for them, but what it can show is what each compiler might be able to accomplish when an average programmer makes an attempt at writing code for them. If one compiler/scripting language handles the average person's average code in a better than average way, don't you think that would be a much better metric to base your choice of language on than the extremes? Afterall, it's the average everyday programmers that do 90% of all the work.
I can think of someone else who had this same sense of rightness. His name was Hitler. We all know how that ended. He complains about people having close minds in this interview. He's right. But he's guilty of the same.
This may seem stupidly obvious... but if people have such problems with the GPL, then what's wrong with the LGPL? There is a reason the LGPL exists and many projects do use the LGPL. Sure, you can't distribute your own version of one of the compiled libraries, but you can use it without releasing the rest of your code. It's no differen than using a DLL developed by some other closed vendor (like Microsoft). At least you get to see the code and fix problems with it this way.
Seriously man, just forget about it. If they want to leave themselves with suck risk, so be it. They're the ones who will suffer in the end. Meanwhile, you guys have time to put towards more worthwhile customers and projects. Find the customers who do care. Make a better product, and show them by example.
This really means nothing to me, and here is why. If I were to even consider an OODBMS, it would have to be Open Source AND accessible from C++, Java, Perl, Python, you name it. Every where I look, just about every OODBMS is Java Java Java Java Java. Well, hello? The world isn't all about Java. I do plenty of work in Java, but I can't sacrifice support for other languages. I don't see any open source solutions that cross the language boundary.
Actually, they've still got it at Dave & Busters downtown Chicago. My department goes there about once every other month and spends an afternoon playing video games.
The Dave & Buster's Battletech center consists of about 8 pods. Everything runs on Macs. The graphics are absolutely horrible now (equal in quality to about Heavy Gear). The pods are nifty, and the price is cheaper than it used to be but it's still prohibitively expensive.
We usually spend most of our time shooting things at the shooting games, or playing Daytona USA instead of doing the Battletech thing. Amazing how a 3-4 year old racing game is STILL better than all the new ones that have come out:)
Really, it's not a big loss. When was the last time you saw an arcade game made by capcom that WASN'T Street Fighter or some derivative of it? In fact, Capcom's games lately have been utter copy-cat trash (take a look at the obscene # of Capcom fighter clones that are available for the Dreamcast).
Capcom USED to make good games. Remember Final Fight? Remember Mercs? Those were good times.
But then one day, Capcom released Street Fighter 2. That was a great game at the time. Then they released Street Fighter 2 Turbo, then Street Fighter 2 Championship Edition, then about a bazillion other Street Fighter 2 clones. What happened? Did the creative staff up and leave?
You wonder why they weren't making any money? It's because they weren't making any good games. Now, I'd care if Sega or Namco stopped making arcade games. That would be a sad day indeed. Those two companies do a lot of copy cat stuff as well, but at least some of their games show SOME creativity.
Does this *REALLY* deserve a 4? I mean, come on moderators! Now a days, almost every Slashdot article starts out with a 4 or 5 moderated "Funny" post, which often aren't that funny. Yet, somehow, extremely important posts that are full of information that is actually *applicable* to the Slashdot article never get moderated up at all!!
I like funny stuff like the next guy, but I don't come here because this is a humour site. I come here because this site offers interesting intellectual discussions about topics that are applicable to me today. Somehow, I just don't think the moderators get that, and it's only getting worse as time goes on.
The humour posts SHOULD be moderated up, but ABSOLUTELY NOT at the expensive of the other more serious posts that actually pertain to the discussion.
How much do you want to bet this post never gets moderated above a 1 or gets marked as flame bait?
Unfortunately, Japanese word order is different than than English. Fortunately, Japenese word order is dead simple.
English is SUBJECT VERB OBJECT.
Japanese is SUBJECT OBJECT VERB.
Also, modifiers in japanese tend to come AFTER the words they modify (not before like in English).
Finally, not all Japanese and English words have direct translations (which would explain a lot of the bad Engrish in Japan).
The Japanese language's structure and grammar is very simple, hence why people who speak English as their first language tend to have a better grasp of Japanese than the Japanese of English since English is a clusterf*** of a language.
So, using these few prinicipals and the word for word not quite a translation of the above you should be able to make sense of it all.:)
Slashdot Mirror
I've heard a lot about CMSs and ArsDigita in particular, but I'm not entirely up on my CMS terminology.
I poked around on the ArsDigita pages, but what I found was a lot of marketing and buzzword crap, and no really good to the point explanation on what it is. I don't have the time to read all the marketing B.S., so I'm hoping somebody here can get straight to the point and tell me what this is all about.
If I were to download and install the ArsDigita CMS, what exactly would that buy me?
Is it a collection of APIs for developing web pages?
Is it a templating engine for generating markup?
Is it a kind of uber-Wiki?
Is it a message board system?
Is it some online collaborative environmnet like Source Forge?
It it an online publishing system like Slash or PostNuke?
Help me get to the point!
Bryan
Maybe because people don't want to wait till April for KDE when 1000s of other applications can be updated now.
Read the Silmarillion. Sauron is VERY human in the Silmarilion (or at least very capable of putting on the appearance that he is human).
Except that last time I checked Star Office WASN'T built on top of J2EE...
If, however, you have a search page that could throw up 50 different products, and you query fed-ex for each individual product every time you load the page (without doing any caching) then I guarantee your web site will tank under a heavy load.
I suppose I should qualify my statement a little more, nonetheless:
Anybody who foolishly uses web services without taking into consideration the latencies and overheads involved deserves to suffer the consequences.
Does that make you happier?
Anyway, my original point still stands: The technology is sound when used properly, and the good programmers will, as always, seperate themselves from the bad.
Anybody who uses SOAP requests for doing small and frequent function calls over the net is foolish and deserves to suffer the consequences he will face for his foolishness.
:)
On the other hand, however, those who use SOAP calls correctly will reap the benefits SOAP has to offer.
An example:
I work for a mortgage company. We had an online rate search engine (till the market went sour anyway). One of our clients ran a few XML queries to our engine (they were located in California, we are in Chicago). Here are the two most important queries.
1. The Loan Search: they would ask a few questions, and then do a Loan Search with one XML query and cache the results.
2. Apply for a loan: they would acquire all information related to applying for a loan, and then send one XML query at the end containing all that information.
Had SOAP and WebServices been available at the time to use in place of custom built XML handling methods (not to even mention production ready XML libraries) our jobs would have been a lot easier.
Had we used SOAP to handle every request (including sending every individual piece of information seperately, or sending an XML document back and forth for every step of the loan application process) our application would have been a hideous failure. Instead, it worked just fine. The biggest problems were my XML parsing techniques were lackluster (this was the first work with XML I had done so it was a little slow) and the market just wasn't there for online mortgaging (to this day, only about half a percent of people who get mortgages actually buy their mortgages entirely online).
SOAP has it's uses, but like any good technology, people can abuse it. As always, time will seperate the good programmers from the bad programmers. Therefore, my conclusion is that SOAP is not inherently evil, rather a lot of crappy programmers are!
Bryan
I'm not completely up to speed on what Java Web development enhancements this brings to the table. However, I can honestly say that in my dealings with ßeta versions of Tomcat 4.0, the configuration files for Tomcat 4.0 are 1000x times easier and more sensible! The configuration files for Tomcat 3.x look like they were designed by a monkey on crack (or a Sendmail developer). Tomcat 4.0 config files are finally well thought out and usable. Can't wait to get my systems upgraded! :)
Don't you think the java standard library would be L'GPLed just like EVERY OTHER open source programming language standard library? I mean, come on people! Not everything has to be or will be GPLed!
It does NOT cost as much to develop OSX as it took to develop W2K! Apple took the Code straight from the BSD and NextStep projects. Apple saved a crapload of money thanks to the BSD guys, and quite frankly I'm still waiting to see Apple give anything substantial BACK to the BSD community.
We use a Linksys for our one location. It's nice, though it does have some annoying but not terrible limitations (you can only forward 10 ports for instance).
We locked the web configuration for the linksys to run only on the intranet, and then setup Apache + mod_proxy with a virtual host to proxy the interface out to the web. If SSL wasn't such a pain in the ass to configure properly, I'd probably have it even setup over an SSL connection right now (we're too cheap to pay for an SSL certificate, which makes setting up SSL an order of magnitude harder).
It works great for us, we can shut down the virtual host remotely and only enable it when we want to dink around with the Linksys router without having to resort to using SSH and/or Links (we have a custom webmin module that does a lot of stuff like this for us).
Problem is, a LOT of companies and government agenices will NOT deliver to a P.O. Box effectively nullifying the use of one. It also doesn't do much good if you move to a different city for instance (as I did). I can't exactly check my Cleveland PO Box when I'm living in Chicago now, can I?
A lot of you people are forgetting two other critical reasons why stored procedures are good.
1. Most database pre-parse the stored procedures and keep the cached parsed information in memory. Really complex SQL queries can take a significant amount of time to parse, and cutting down on that overhead can be a huge win for some applications (it was for one of our queries!).
2. Stored procedures can encapsulte logic that requires multiple SQL queries into one call. This saves the network overhead of making multiple trips to the database, which can potentially be huge (and even be REALLY huge if you open up a new connection for each SQL query and then shut the connection immediately).
I don't know if the Perl procedures remain parsed, but at the very least they should be able to accomplish #2. Personally though, I'm going to wait till mySQL supports some sort of Transact SQL like stored procedures. I don't see a justifiable reason for the overhead involved in running Perl on my database. That just strikes me as a bad idea (same goes for java).
Ruby does have ; at the end of statements! If you want to put two statements on the same line, you put a ; in between them. If you really feel like you want to have ; at the end of every statement, go ahead and put them in. Ruby won't complain.
Well, I see a lot of people complaining as usual... Why should they learn another language? So I thought I would throw in my $0.02 for all a languages (not just Ruby, which I am particularly fond of).
A lot of you people come from what I call the Computer Science Student mentality. This unfortunately something I've noticed as a side effect of the way computer science is taught in most schools. It's quite unfortunate, because that clearly isn't the aim of the Professor's when they are teaching classes this way.
I'll use my school as an example. When I started at the University of Dayton, about 7 years ago, every class was taught in ADA. It was a horrible horrible expierence. The ADA compilers were horribly lacking at the time, and anybody who has done any work in ADA will know that it is an extremely strict and picky language. That has it's good and bad sides when it comes to teaching programming, but I'll save that for a different discussion. I had no problems, since, well, I had a good solid 4 years for Pascal and C/C++ programming experience before I even started college, but this seriously affected the other students in my class.
The problem was, about two years into the program, my school decided (thank god) to switch the department over to C++. This was a great move, because now the students were being taught a language that they could actually apply in the real world (beyond the confines of the Wright Patterson Air Force base anyway). It worked out quite well for the newer students, but my classmates were blindsided. Most of them suffered through half a semester of C (the other half of the semester was 360 assembler) and never even touched upon C++. They should have just been able to pick up a C++ book, apply the concepts they learned from their ADA classes and the syntax from the C++ book and their C course and move on, but most of them had a hard time doing it.
Why was that? They all knew the concepts. They all knew how to write their algorithms, and their trees, and their stacks and queues. Yeah, they weren't taught how to write real software, but they clearly knew the basics. I spent more time helping others learn these concepts than I did doing my own homework the first two years, so I know what they were capable of from first hand experience.
The problem was entirely in their minds. C++ is a huge ugly beast, and it is a bit imposing when you first start. But if you've got two solid years of programming behind you, it should be a relatively smooth and easy transition. Most of them didn't realize this though. They were scared of C++, they were scared of new languages, and they suffered as a result.
The simple fact of the matter is, if you know one language, you know them all. It's not the syntax that makes the difference, it's the concepts that you express within the framework of the language's syntax that are the real guts of programming. My classmates took awhile to realize this (and I'm sure many of them still don't). That's the same thing with Ruby, or Python, or Perl, or just about any language. Unless you are making the jump from procedural to OOP, or OOP to Functional for the first time, you *CAN* pick up a book and learn a new language in a days time. The only thing stopping you is yourself.
Now, the other part of this is, why would you do that? I love learning new languages, and I love learning new languages for a few reasons. These reasons apply to every programmer, and I honestly don't understand why some people are so opposed to learning something new. I guess that's what seperates a good programmer from a bad programmer. So if you want to know why you should learn Ruby, or LISP, or Haskell, or even Visual Basic, I'll tell you why.
1. It helps keep your skills in tip top shape. Perusing a computer manual may remind you of algorithms or techniques you haven't used in a long time and forgotten.
2. You always seem to learn something new. Not some new technical trick that only works in one lanuage (although that definitely happens), but just a different way of approaching problems that sometimes can transcend language boundaries.
3. You may find a new language that allows you to get the job done faster!
4. You're enhanced knowlege of languages looks great on your resume no matter what you use as your primary language.
5. You learn the way other people think. And I don't want to gloss over this one. As a programmer, you frequently have to work with other programmers. Learning new languages is a *GREAT* way to see how other people do things. To learn the way other people think, so to speak. By learning Ruby and Smalltalk, you start to learn why people in those communities are so die hard about OOP programming styles. By learning LISP or Haskell you start to learn why Functional styles even exist! And it all comes back full circle. Techniques I learned from Haskell I now use when writing C++ programs and vice versa. It only made my C++ code better.
Knowlege is power, and learning new languages is one (of many) ways of increasing your knowlege. Go ahead and try it, even if you think you won't use the language, and even if you're just starting out and don't think the transition from your learning language to a new one will be easy. You just might be surprised by how much you already know, and how much you have yet to learn. That's the real benefit of it.
But you know what, those applications can install MSHTML.DLL in their application directory and run it when they need to without touching the rest of the system.
That's the problem... Microsoft has used, oh say, Office's Dependency on parts of IE as an excuse to install all of IE and let it take over the system (take win95 or example which definitely does NOT come with IE).
The only thing stopping Microsoft from installing those components needed to get the job at hand finished and nothing more is Microsoft.
Actually, I think you're very wrong. These may not absolutely show what each compiler can accomplish when John Carmack is writing something for them, but what it can show is what each compiler might be able to accomplish when an average programmer makes an attempt at writing code for them. If one compiler/scripting language handles the average person's average code in a better than average way, don't you think that would be a much better metric to base your choice of language on than the extremes? Afterall, it's the average everyday programmers that do 90% of all the work.
That is until they load up Bochs + Linux + Tux on their own end, toy with it till they get the exploit right and then wham, you're really screwed.
Sorry man, an exploit is an exploit. Where there is a will, there is a way.
I can think of someone else who had this same sense of rightness. His name was Hitler. We all know how that ended. He complains about people having close minds in this interview. He's right. But he's guilty of the same.
This may seem stupidly obvious... but if people have such problems with the GPL, then what's wrong with the LGPL? There is a reason the LGPL exists and many projects do use the LGPL. Sure, you can't distribute your own version of one of the compiled libraries, but you can use it without releasing the rest of your code. It's no differen than using a DLL developed by some other closed vendor (like Microsoft). At least you get to see the code and fix problems with it this way.
Seriously man, just forget about it. If they want to leave themselves with suck risk, so be it. They're the ones who will suffer in the end. Meanwhile, you guys have time to put towards more worthwhile customers and projects. Find the customers who do care. Make a better product, and show them by example.
This really means nothing to me, and here is why. If I were to even consider an OODBMS, it would have to be Open Source AND accessible from C++, Java, Perl, Python, you name it. Every where I look, just about every OODBMS is Java Java Java Java Java. Well, hello? The world isn't all about Java. I do plenty of work in Java, but I can't sacrifice support for other languages. I don't see any open source solutions that cross the language boundary.
Actually, they've still got it at Dave & Busters downtown Chicago. My department goes there about once every other month and spends an afternoon playing video games.
:)
The Dave & Buster's Battletech center consists of about 8 pods. Everything runs on Macs. The graphics are absolutely horrible now (equal in quality to about Heavy Gear). The pods are nifty, and the price is cheaper than it used to be but it's still prohibitively expensive.
We usually spend most of our time shooting things at the shooting games, or playing Daytona USA instead of doing the Battletech thing. Amazing how a 3-4 year old racing game is STILL better than all the new ones that have come out
Really, it's not a big loss. When was the last time you saw an arcade game made by capcom that WASN'T Street Fighter or some derivative of it? In fact, Capcom's games lately have been utter copy-cat trash (take a look at the obscene # of Capcom fighter clones that are available for the Dreamcast).
Capcom USED to make good games. Remember Final Fight? Remember Mercs? Those were good times.
But then one day, Capcom released Street Fighter 2. That was a great game at the time. Then they released Street Fighter 2 Turbo, then Street Fighter 2 Championship Edition, then about a bazillion other Street Fighter 2 clones. What happened? Did the creative staff up and leave?
You wonder why they weren't making any money? It's because they weren't making any good games. Now, I'd care if Sega or Namco stopped making arcade games. That would be a sad day indeed. Those two companies do a lot of copy cat stuff as well, but at least some of their games show SOME creativity.
Does this *REALLY* deserve a 4? I mean, come on moderators! Now a days, almost every Slashdot article starts out with a 4 or 5 moderated "Funny" post, which often aren't that funny. Yet, somehow, extremely important posts that are full of information that is actually *applicable* to the Slashdot article never get moderated up at all!!
I like funny stuff like the next guy, but I don't come here because this is a humour site. I come here because this site offers interesting intellectual discussions about topics that are applicable to me today. Somehow, I just don't think the moderators get that, and it's only getting worse as time goes on.
The humour posts SHOULD be moderated up, but ABSOLUTELY NOT at the expensive of the other more serious posts that actually pertain to the discussion.
How much do you want to bet this post never gets moderated above a 1 or gets marked as flame bait?
This appears to be a word for word translation.
:)
Unfortunately, Japanese word order is different than than English. Fortunately, Japenese word order is dead simple.
English is SUBJECT VERB OBJECT.
Japanese is SUBJECT OBJECT VERB.
Also, modifiers in japanese tend to come AFTER the words they modify (not before like in English).
Finally, not all Japanese and English words have direct translations (which would explain a lot of the bad Engrish in Japan).
The Japanese language's structure and grammar is very simple, hence why people who speak English as their first language tend to have a better grasp of Japanese than the Japanese of English since English is a clusterf*** of a language.
So, using these few prinicipals and the word for word not quite a translation of the above you should be able to make sense of it all.
Bryan