While I like Java's class hierarchy, I have two complaints about the language itself:
No pointers. Many times when writing in Java I have figured that a pointer would work well, but instead I have to write a zillion lines of code to work around it. This can lead to slower programs, and ones that may not run at all on older machines.
JRE. Every machine that runs Java software must have the JRE installed, which can be a pain if you are writing commercial software. I know Sun loves to promote its "write once, run everywhere" ideology, but if you are writing mainly for one platform (in my case Windows), couldn't the JDK have an option to compile the bytecode into binary for that platform?
These two things tempt me to switch to C#. Yes, it's Microsoft, but at least it supports pointers and compiles into executables. AFAIK, the.NET Framework is a similar class hierarchy and if you have been running Windows Update like you should,.NET applications should run properly.
Will the JRE be coming through WU? I don't think so. I know it can't be helped, but when developing for Windows, I'd rather write for a framework that is already there.
I agree that deception is one of the biggest problems, but there is also another major problem - visual accessibility.
I myself have Firefox set to override colors on web pages in favor of a white-on-black scheme, because too much light bothers my eyes. Therefore, the familiar "You have won our hourly prize," for example, with all of its colors and blinking can really make things hard to see. General movement in Flash animations along the side of the site can also be a pain. All of these obnoxious ads can make it very difficult to focus. I cannot tell my browser to block all images because there may be a diagram or something that is part of the page itself.
Some people actually need Adblock so they do not spend hours trying to discern a single paragraph! Or, why can't ads simply be small boxes saying "Try Vanilla Coke" or something?
That's a useful tip, and yes, I knew nothing about that, but how many average users would know about it? We're talking people who would connect their computers directly to a DSL line without a router or software firewall to protect them! People who would say that the Norton Antivirus they bought five years ago should still protect them unupdated just fine, oblivious to the idea that new viruses require new definitions! People who never run Windows Update so they never received SP1 which would have turned on automatic updates, and subsequently SP2, which would have turned on the Windows Firewall by default!
The point I am trying to make is that the Internet would be a much safer place if the public were more educated about security problems. Companies such as DoubleClick and the infamous GAIN Publishing might not spend as many resources on adware and stay with page-based ads if everyone's computers were more secure.
Also I must add to my original post that it is DoubleClick's own fault that the more leet users are using Adblock or your IE fix. Their obnoxious "punch-the-monkeys" and "free iPods" and ads that jump right on top of what you are trying to see have driven us to these fixes!
Doubleclick and its cronies have been indirectly stealing people's money for years. Why does the average Joe switch from dialup to cable/DSL? Because these stupid Flash ads and images keep clogging bandwidth like crazy. Now that cable/DSL has overtaken dialup, Doubleclick can make more money by placing even more obnoxious ads on pages.
Also, look at some of the ads these guys put out: "Congratulations! You have won our hourly prize! Click OK to claim it," not bothering to tell you that you will have to give plenty of personal information, which is at their disposal to sell to spammers. "Shoot the villain and win a free iPod/Xbox!" At the very bottom of this ad is white text on a light backgroud saying "With participation in our program."
Not to mention the fact that they put adware/spyware on your computer without your consent or even your knowledge. Granted, this is only a minor problem if you are a more educated user who has a spyware removal tool and runs Windows Update regularly (if you have Windows), but it's still a problem. While Doubleclick may have a right to place ads on pages, they have no right to exploit people.
On top of that, the executive's warnings are completely unfounded. IE still takes up most of the browser market, and how many average users who happen to have tried Firefox would even know that it supports extensions, much less even know that Adblock exists?
If it did make it to a low orbit, we might be able to use ground-based lasers to send it up to the orbit it was supposed to have.
Either that, or we could accidentally send it clear to Pluto.
Re:Beginning of the End of Star Wars
on
Star Wars 3D And TV
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
I have to agree here. We (the Slashdot crowd) do not give Lucas enough credit. We watch the movies at face value, and ignore the human themes within.
Remember reading Faulkner in high school/college English class? At the surface, his novels in their full three-page sentence glory seemed not worthy of the dignity of a bonfire. But upon actually studying what the novels meant, their inner meanings, we realized why they were considered good literature. We are doing the same thing to Star Wars. We seem to be overlooking what in the movies are really important.
Emerson was right: To be great is to be misunderstood.
I don't think I want to be associated with something so consistently shoddy
Since you spot the errors so well, and could correct them as proofreader, you wouldn't be associated with something as consistently shoddy because it wouldn't be shoddy anymore.
I would hardly call it quiet, now that it's on Slashdot. We're the people who kill servers with sheer numbers in traffic. Now the whole geek world knows.
Games too long? I think the opposite. There are many games that I finish and then wish that they should have been longer. I was sorry to see Golden Sun end, and who else here thinks that KOTOR TSL was cut rather short? In many game reviews, a major statistic is hours of gameplay, and a low number usually means a complaint in the review.
However, I can understand where Miyamoto is coming from. Many games end up rather tedious after a while, such as (IMO) most Mario games. But I have never gotten tired of the Zelda games. Perhaps rather than making games shorter, they should make games with more interesting, less linear storylines, more interesting characters, and plenty of sidequests. They would hold the gamers' attention and the designers would gain good reputations and gamers would perhaps buy other games from them.
Remember Majora's Mask? If you managed to get Fierce Diety's mask your sword would shoot beams like the old Zeldas when you were wearing the mask (although you didn't necessarily need full hearts). It was the closest any 3-D Zelda came to sword beams, but in only worked in boss arenas.
I have to agree with xDes02 and buffer-overflowed. Bring back sword beams. They were useful in the old games and were ubercool in MM.
And why is it that it depends heavily on VS in the first place? Now mobile developers will have to pay through the nose for yet another MS product. Coincidence? I don't think so.
All these links go to the same story: "trolltalk". This does not seem to be an actual story, but just a thread for trolls to post their GNAA crap and utter nonsense. Where did this page come from, and how did this AC find these unless he was already there?
If I remember correctly, Win95 included a tool called MKCOMPAT. I didn't use it much, since my old 16-bit programs seemed to already be compatible. You probably will not have to worry.
I have Adelphia in Virginia and pay about $100/month for basic TV and Internet. I like the Internet side of the deal, but the TV channel selection is terrible. I have absolutely no reason to watch the Inspirational Network or the Golf Channel, for example. To get TechTV or any of the National Geographic channels, I would have to pay insane amounts for digital cable and get a box that screws up VCR recording and my DVD player (I've tried it), as well as get a bunch of movie channels I am never going to watch. If cable companies offered channels a la carte, I would not need to pay for VH1 or Nickolodeon or BET. Of course, that will never happen; many customers would cancel unwanted channels and revenues would be considerably less.
I have to say I have mixed feelings about this buyout.
Seriously, no matter how horny you are, you wouldn't simply jump on bed with anybody, would you?
Many men actually would, and that is why there is prostitution. Most normal (ie not willing to be whores) women won't jump in bed with just anyone, so you won't likely find male prostitutes.
Slashdot Mirror
Here
Whenever I need to know something, I just check Wikipedia.
While I like Java's class hierarchy, I have two complaints about the language itself:
- No pointers. Many times when writing in Java I have figured that a pointer would work well, but instead I have to write a zillion lines of code to work around it. This can lead to slower programs, and ones that may not run at all on older machines.
- JRE. Every machine that runs Java software must have the JRE installed, which can be a pain if you are writing commercial software. I know Sun loves to promote its "write once, run everywhere" ideology, but if you are writing mainly for one platform (in my case Windows), couldn't the JDK have an option to compile the bytecode into binary for that platform?
These two things tempt me to switch to C#. Yes, it's Microsoft, but at least it supports pointers and compiles into executables. AFAIK, theWill the JRE be coming through WU? I don't think so. I know it can't be helped, but when developing for Windows, I'd rather write for a framework that is already there.
How many Avagadroes are in guaca-mole?
6.02x10^23
I agree that deception is one of the biggest problems, but there is also another major problem - visual accessibility.
I myself have Firefox set to override colors on web pages in favor of a white-on-black scheme, because too much light bothers my eyes. Therefore, the familiar "You have won our hourly prize," for example, with all of its colors and blinking can really make things hard to see. General movement in Flash animations along the side of the site can also be a pain. All of these obnoxious ads can make it very difficult to focus. I cannot tell my browser to block all images because there may be a diagram or something that is part of the page itself.
Some people actually need Adblock so they do not spend hours trying to discern a single paragraph! Or, why can't ads simply be small boxes saying "Try Vanilla Coke" or something?
That's a useful tip, and yes, I knew nothing about that, but how many average users would know about it? We're talking people who would connect their computers directly to a DSL line without a router or software firewall to protect them! People who would say that the Norton Antivirus they bought five years ago should still protect them unupdated just fine, oblivious to the idea that new viruses require new definitions! People who never run Windows Update so they never received SP1 which would have turned on automatic updates, and subsequently SP2, which would have turned on the Windows Firewall by default!
The point I am trying to make is that the Internet would be a much safer place if the public were more educated about security problems. Companies such as DoubleClick and the infamous GAIN Publishing might not spend as many resources on adware and stay with page-based ads if everyone's computers were more secure.
Also I must add to my original post that it is DoubleClick's own fault that the more leet users are using Adblock or your IE fix. Their obnoxious "punch-the-monkeys" and "free iPods" and ads that jump right on top of what you are trying to see have driven us to these fixes!
Doubleclick and its cronies have been indirectly stealing people's money for years. Why does the average Joe switch from dialup to cable/DSL? Because these stupid Flash ads and images keep clogging bandwidth like crazy. Now that cable/DSL has overtaken dialup, Doubleclick can make more money by placing even more obnoxious ads on pages.
Also, look at some of the ads these guys put out: "Congratulations! You have won our hourly prize! Click OK to claim it," not bothering to tell you that you will have to give plenty of personal information, which is at their disposal to sell to spammers. "Shoot the villain and win a free iPod/Xbox!" At the very bottom of this ad is white text on a light backgroud saying "With participation in our program."
Not to mention the fact that they put adware/spyware on your computer without your consent or even your knowledge. Granted, this is only a minor problem if you are a more educated user who has a spyware removal tool and runs Windows Update regularly (if you have Windows), but it's still a problem. While Doubleclick may have a right to place ads on pages, they have no right to exploit people.
On top of that, the executive's warnings are completely unfounded. IE still takes up most of the browser market, and how many average users who happen to have tried Firefox would even know that it supports extensions, much less even know that Adblock exists?
If it did make it to a low orbit, we might be able to use ground-based lasers to send it up to the orbit it was supposed to have.
Either that, or we could accidentally send it clear to Pluto.
Remember reading Faulkner in high school/college English class? At the surface, his novels in their full three-page sentence glory seemed not worthy of the dignity of a bonfire. But upon actually studying what the novels meant, their inner meanings, we realized why they were considered good literature. We are doing the same thing to Star Wars. We seem to be overlooking what in the movies are really important.
Emerson was right: To be great is to be misunderstood.One other thing: I just realized that the OP had a mispelling himself - interpret my comment sarcastically.
Since you spot the errors so well, and could correct them as proofreader, you wouldn't be associated with something as consistently shoddy because it wouldn't be shoddy anymore.
No no no no no.
It's the Fine S______.
Is the phone system going to be slashdotted now? That would be a first!
I would hardly call it quiet, now that it's on Slashdot. We're the people who kill servers with sheer numbers in traffic. Now the whole geek world knows.
Games too long? I think the opposite. There are many games that I finish and then wish that they should have been longer. I was sorry to see Golden Sun end, and who else here thinks that KOTOR TSL was cut rather short? In many game reviews, a major statistic is hours of gameplay, and a low number usually means a complaint in the review.
However, I can understand where Miyamoto is coming from. Many games end up rather tedious after a while, such as (IMO) most Mario games. But I have never gotten tired of the Zelda games. Perhaps rather than making games shorter, they should make games with more interesting, less linear storylines, more interesting characters, and plenty of sidequests. They would hold the gamers' attention and the designers would gain good reputations and gamers would perhaps buy other games from them.
Remember Majora's Mask? If you managed to get Fierce Diety's mask your sword would shoot beams like the old Zeldas when you were wearing the mask (although you didn't necessarily need full hearts). It was the closest any 3-D Zelda came to sword beams, but in only worked in boss arenas.
I have to agree with xDes02 and buffer-overflowed. Bring back sword beams. They were useful in the old games and were ubercool in MM.Seasons also had Subrosia, although it wasn't really a mirror of Holodrum.
OMG, I remembered the names of those places?! Guess I don't need genetics tests to determine my geek level!
And why is it that it depends heavily on VS in the first place? Now mobile developers will have to pay through the nose for yet another MS product. Coincidence? I don't think so.
No, those are developers. Developers. Developers. Developers. Developers. Developers. Developers.
...another 27 "Developers."
7+27+8=42, but I see where you are coming from. I don't blame you for not counting the first "developers".All these links go to the same story: "trolltalk". This does not seem to be an actual story, but just a thread for trolls to post their GNAA crap and utter nonsense. Where did this page come from, and how did this AC find these unless he was already there?
Add 8 more developers and you've got 42. With the Ultimate Answer maybe BSODs and security problems will go away.
Warf was the offical commander of the Defiant.
But what about before Worf joined? The Defiant appeared in the 3rd season while Worf didn't join until the fourth.
Roger Penrose was also interviewed on NPR about his book a few months ago.
If I remember correctly, Win95 included a tool called MKCOMPAT. I didn't use it much, since my old 16-bit programs seemed to already be compatible. You probably will not have to worry.
I have to say I have mixed feelings about this buyout.
Many men actually would, and that is why there is prostitution. Most normal (ie not willing to be whores) women won't jump in bed with just anyone, so you won't likely find male prostitutes.