I get annoyed at the Darwin-thumping antics of the evolution front. They seem to be more rabid and emotional than most creationists, particularly as evidenced above.
One thing I don't quite get, is the reason why there isn't a third option for those of you whose biggest beef with intelligent design seems to be the theological nature thereof. A good half of the rhetoric behind evolutionism seems to be more anti-theological than simply liking the premise of evolutionism.
Are there any non-theological theories other than evolution? I certainly feel it's nowhere near "provable" enough to justify the level of dogma which evolutionists seem to attach to it.
The average temperature in server rooms has very little to do with server stability. It's actually mostly about the fact that the guys adjusting the climate control have these fantasies about attractive female sysadmins running around in the room in thin tops...
Disclaimer: I've never touched the thermostat in my server rooms.:)
The conneseurs of this world will perhaps enjoy one or two tracks of pretty much any CD that's out there - that's because part of their mind is always locked in evaluating, triaging, and finding things to hate about pieces. Sure, you can be enlightened and discriminating and only like a bit of it, or you can be easy to please as long as it's not painfully bad, and generally be quite happy as you go on in life. It may sound like an argument for consumerism, but - eh, which is more consumeristic? To run out and buy lots of things looking for the good stuff, or to be happier with what you have and thus not buy as much?
The amateur film critic I know who's perpetually moaning about the lack of "brilliant" movies seems perpetually annoyed in his video experiences, yet he keeps going to movies like Data with his "REVOLTING!" drink (Trekkie quiz: why did he drink it?). On the other hand, I enjoy watching pretty much any movie to varying degrees - except perhaps for Blood Moon and Hellraiser 6. Assuming we both live the same length of time and watch the same number of hours of movies, I think I'll have a much higher overall enjoyment rating and will have wasted less money in my quest for the one golden movie per year. And isn't enjoyment what ANY media - music, movies, etc - is all about?
Simple solution: start a rumor that womens' swimsuits frequently fall off on-camera. Problem solved, plenty of volunteers to watch the monitors tirelessly!
Personally, I don't care about the realism. I'm perfectly happy shooting at totally realistic folks.
What I object to is undirected carnage. I.e. I would have less of an issue playing a game as an Al-Queda member than I have with playing as GTA:SA's for-his-own-purpose protagonist. The difference is, carnage in the pursuit of a perceived greater good vs an individual desire for more ho's, etc.
On the other hand, if the opposing forces are aliens, zombies, mafia, an opposing government/planet, etc - cool, line up the body bags 'cause I'm taking them all down. And it'll hurt when it happens.
Free? If you don't mind the lack of graphics, look into MUDs - some of the MMORPG's are practically just graphical facelifts to what could easily be done in a MUD engine. I understand there's a few free graphical (java, generally) ones out there too, but haven't really followed that part of the scene.
Heh, and we Amiga users tend to stick together. I landed my sysadmin job partly on the basis of putting the Amiga on my resume. Another sysadmin saw it and went, "Ah, this guy probably knows his stuff!"
[cue whooshing sounds] The Amiga - an elegant system, from a more civilized age.
Either that or there's only so much cute we can handle before we feel the desire to make them explode. It's not just guys, either - my girlfriend and I were having a terrific time playing Darkwatch the other night, and we're both in our mid-20s. Cheerful, happy games annoy both of us (unless of course Serious Sam counts).
As I've said on another thread - games without body counts bore me. However, amoral games (GTA-like) aren't my cup of tea either.
They should come up with a game which unites both our interests. Cute and cheerful in some parts, gory in others. Happy Tree Friends: The Game!
That's one thing I've noticed time and again, cited by the Nintendo players: the games - and usually they're citing the same ones. Yet, the games they cite as compelling titles don't share my core interests in gaming:
Carnage. Blood. I want to tear the arms off of zombies and beat them to a second death with them. I want to fill a villain with lead, then attach a brick of C-4 to his back and shove him at his friends to check out the splatter pattern. I want to inflict terrific carnage upon evil people (note the evil qualifier - which is why I won't play GTA), and if they don't suffer enough when I kill them, I want to bring them back to life so that I can get it right the second time.
This is the kind of title I like to play. It's why I play the PS2 instead of the Gamecube, it's why Mario never caught my fancy, etc. Now, given the audience targetting, I'm absolutely sure that the PSP would be more likely to provide me with the digital carnage I desire to immerse myself in.
Yep, I'm interested in gameplay, but what I value in gameplay is very different from what Nintendo gamers seem to largely focus on.
They don't even have to leave California, per se - just get out of the blasted big cities. I live in California and would love to see companies get out of San Diego, LA, and SF. There are very few things which have more negative impact on your quality of life than a horrible commute, and commuting against the flow of traffic (particularly if the company's located near affordable housing, as opposed to $600k+ housing) would be enough to make most jobs much more palatable.
My personal hatred of Bill Gates started back when Windows 3.1 came out. He was on some annoying morning show my parents were watching at a hotel, and he was people that Microsoft had "just invented" multitasking with Windows 3.1. And it had never before been available in a home computer.
Uh, my Amiga at home had been multitasking since 1985.
Anyway, not sure when people considered 'em darlings. I didn't mind Microsoft BASIC for the Commodore 8-bit computers, but I minded Windows more with each release. I do know that the incident above was when MS gained my undying hatred.
Naw, this is Japan, remember?
They'll be more interested in sneaking around the crowd and v-groping unsuspecting female sports fans. This will be followed by the hot all-virtual title "crowded weekday subway train commute".
Uh, look up the RioCar some time. They were hard drive based MP3 players, running an embedded version of Linux, and worked rather nicely. If I remember right, they used laptop hard drives and mounted the file systems read-only when they were in the car (vs read/write when plugged into USB). When you wanted to change out music, you just pulled it from your dash (the whole unit came out via a system resembling an HD caddy) and plugged it in at your desk. They stopped making them back in... '02 or '03, can't remember which. The market just wasn't willing to pay for 'em at the $400-$500 price point.
Nowadays, it would be trivially cheap to put together a next-gen RioCar. But, no one is bothering to do so for reasons I don't quite get.
Now, one issue is friends (most importantly, gf's/dates) who wish to play music in your car - you're pretty much stuck with CDs there. But if a new RioCar like player were to include a CD-ROM drive as well, that would eliminate the last semi-reasonable barrier I can see, feature wise.
Oh yeah, I forgot... you could play Pong on the thing too.
Bear in mind that the components, while expensive when a console is released, become much cheaper over time. Consider the original PS2. Then, think of the new slimline PS2's, with most of the system integrated onto one board and several chips' functions combined together. They do start off selling the console at a loss, but consoles don't drop in price too quickly and they're probably not breaking a loss after the first year or so.
It's the people who actually had a 'social life' (in the traditional sense) in college who seem to think the world is full of folks who're suitable to hang out with.
Those of us who didn't venture out much because we didn't like the typical college free-for-all... uh, yeah, we become adults who don't venture out much either.:)
Now, I will say I'm ok with small groups - 3-4 of the same folks I usually hang out with one on one. That's normally for movie nights or whatnot, though.
Although I was half-sarcastic, in the past two work environments I've been in, RFO meetings are the *ONLY* repercussions that incompetent / dangerous developers ever suffer for their incompetence.
Since it's the only thing they ever DO get nailed for, at least RFO meetings can be made unpleasant for them.
Just for an example of the environment I'm talking about, this one idiot holier-than-thou developer decided that he didn't need to sanitize data coming off of the web. So he was passing it, unquoted, directly into an SQL update. What happened when a user entered a # into a zip code which he refused to sanitize because "oh, it'll ONLY EVER be numbers!"? It commented out the where clause (in mysql) and updated all the records of our multi-million-record address table to have the SAME zip code. The developer in question suffered no repercussions beyond being dragged to an meeting. Before we had RFO meetings, they didn't even get a stern talking to.
Believe it or not, in some environments it may seem vindictive, but at least it does provide SOME degree of negative feedback to roughshod developers who will never get fired for their incompetence, no matter what.
*raises hand* Some of us really ARE mercenaries at heart... I'd take the money and be happy. Then again, I'm single and like my job, so free time isn't my key to happiness anyway.
Geez. Last raise I received didn't even keep up with inflation, and that was one company and three years ago. I did, however, receive about a 14% raise when going from the one job to the other.
I don't know anyone else who's received regular raises at either company in question, actually.
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Middle class not-particularly-fat white guy here.
I get annoyed at the Darwin-thumping antics of the evolution front. They seem to be more rabid and emotional than most creationists, particularly as evidenced above.
One thing I don't quite get, is the reason why there isn't a third option for those of you whose biggest beef with intelligent design seems to be the theological nature thereof. A good half of the rhetoric behind evolutionism seems to be more anti-theological than simply liking the premise of evolutionism.
Are there any non-theological theories other than evolution? I certainly feel it's nowhere near "provable" enough to justify the level of dogma which evolutionists seem to attach to it.
The average temperature in server rooms has very little to do with server stability. It's actually mostly about the fact that the guys adjusting the climate control have these fantasies about attractive female sysadmins running around in the room in thin tops...
:)
Disclaimer: I've never touched the thermostat in my server rooms.
And it'll be reality TV, too. "Let's see how long these rednecks can resist it when we take them to the sheep farm right after shearing time!"
Uh, remember the recent system upgrade to Tivos which is meant to prohibit them from recording (or was it just retaining?) PPV content?
Kind of an interesting coincidence that this would come along shortly after that, eh?
The conneseurs of this world will perhaps enjoy one or two tracks of pretty much any CD that's out there - that's because part of their mind is always locked in evaluating, triaging, and finding things to hate about pieces. Sure, you can be enlightened and discriminating and only like a bit of it, or you can be easy to please as long as it's not painfully bad, and generally be quite happy as you go on in life. It may sound like an argument for consumerism, but - eh, which is more consumeristic? To run out and buy lots of things looking for the good stuff, or to be happier with what you have and thus not buy as much?
The amateur film critic I know who's perpetually moaning about the lack of "brilliant" movies seems perpetually annoyed in his video experiences, yet he keeps going to movies like Data with his "REVOLTING!" drink (Trekkie quiz: why did he drink it?). On the other hand, I enjoy watching pretty much any movie to varying degrees - except perhaps for Blood Moon and Hellraiser 6. Assuming we both live the same length of time and watch the same number of hours of movies, I think I'll have a much higher overall enjoyment rating and will have wasted less money in my quest for the one golden movie per year. And isn't enjoyment what ANY media - music, movies, etc - is all about?
Simple solution: start a rumor that womens' swimsuits frequently fall off on-camera. Problem solved, plenty of volunteers to watch the monitors tirelessly!
Personally, I don't care about the realism. I'm perfectly happy shooting at totally realistic folks.
What I object to is undirected carnage. I.e. I would have less of an issue playing a game as an Al-Queda member than I have with playing as GTA:SA's for-his-own-purpose protagonist. The difference is, carnage in the pursuit of a perceived greater good vs an individual desire for more ho's, etc.
On the other hand, if the opposing forces are aliens, zombies, mafia, an opposing government/planet, etc - cool, line up the body bags 'cause I'm taking them all down. And it'll hurt when it happens.
Free? If you don't mind the lack of graphics, look into MUDs - some of the MMORPG's are practically just graphical facelifts to what could easily be done in a MUD engine. I understand there's a few free graphical (java, generally) ones out there too, but haven't really followed that part of the scene.
Heh, and we Amiga users tend to stick together. I landed my sysadmin job partly on the basis of putting the Amiga on my resume. Another sysadmin saw it and went, "Ah, this guy probably knows his stuff!"
[cue whooshing sounds] The Amiga - an elegant system, from a more civilized age.
Either that or there's only so much cute we can handle before we feel the desire to make them explode. It's not just guys, either - my girlfriend and I were having a terrific time playing Darkwatch the other night, and we're both in our mid-20s. Cheerful, happy games annoy both of us (unless of course Serious Sam counts).
As I've said on another thread - games without body counts bore me. However, amoral games (GTA-like) aren't my cup of tea either.
They should come up with a game which unites both our interests. Cute and cheerful in some parts, gory in others. Happy Tree Friends: The Game!
That's one thing I've noticed time and again, cited by the Nintendo players: the games - and usually they're citing the same ones. Yet, the games they cite as compelling titles don't share my core interests in gaming:
Carnage. Blood. I want to tear the arms off of zombies and beat them to a second death with them. I want to fill a villain with lead, then attach a brick of C-4 to his back and shove him at his friends to check out the splatter pattern. I want to inflict terrific carnage upon evil people (note the evil qualifier - which is why I won't play GTA), and if they don't suffer enough when I kill them, I want to bring them back to life so that I can get it right the second time.
This is the kind of title I like to play. It's why I play the PS2 instead of the Gamecube, it's why Mario never caught my fancy, etc. Now, given the audience targetting, I'm absolutely sure that the PSP would be more likely to provide me with the digital carnage I desire to immerse myself in.
Yep, I'm interested in gameplay, but what I value in gameplay is very different from what Nintendo gamers seem to largely focus on.
They don't even have to leave California, per se - just get out of the blasted big cities. I live in California and would love to see companies get out of San Diego, LA, and SF. There are very few things which have more negative impact on your quality of life than a horrible commute, and commuting against the flow of traffic (particularly if the company's located near affordable housing, as opposed to $600k+ housing) would be enough to make most jobs much more palatable.
My personal hatred of Bill Gates started back when Windows 3.1 came out. He was on some annoying morning show my parents were watching at a hotel, and he was people that Microsoft had "just invented" multitasking with Windows 3.1. And it had never before been available in a home computer.
Uh, my Amiga at home had been multitasking since 1985.
Anyway, not sure when people considered 'em darlings. I didn't mind Microsoft BASIC for the Commodore 8-bit computers, but I minded Windows more with each release. I do know that the incident above was when MS gained my undying hatred.
Naw, this is Japan, remember? They'll be more interested in sneaking around the crowd and v-groping unsuspecting female sports fans. This will be followed by the hot all-virtual title "crowded weekday subway train commute".
Someone clearly watched 'Unbreakable' recently... :)
Uh, look up the RioCar some time. They were hard drive based MP3 players, running an embedded version of Linux, and worked rather nicely. If I remember right, they used laptop hard drives and mounted the file systems read-only when they were in the car (vs read/write when plugged into USB). When you wanted to change out music, you just pulled it from your dash (the whole unit came out via a system resembling an HD caddy) and plugged it in at your desk. They stopped making them back in ... '02 or '03, can't remember which. The market just wasn't willing to pay for 'em at the $400-$500 price point.
Nowadays, it would be trivially cheap to put together a next-gen RioCar. But, no one is bothering to do so for reasons I don't quite get.
Now, one issue is friends (most importantly, gf's/dates) who wish to play music in your car - you're pretty much stuck with CDs there. But if a new RioCar like player were to include a CD-ROM drive as well, that would eliminate the last semi-reasonable barrier I can see, feature wise.
Oh yeah, I forgot... you could play Pong on the thing too.
Bear in mind that the components, while expensive when a console is released, become much cheaper over time. Consider the original PS2. Then, think of the new slimline PS2's, with most of the system integrated onto one board and several chips' functions combined together. They do start off selling the console at a loss, but consoles don't drop in price too quickly and they're probably not breaking a loss after the first year or so.
Amen to that.
:)
It's the people who actually had a 'social life' (in the traditional sense) in college who seem to think the world is full of folks who're suitable to hang out with.
Those of us who didn't venture out much because we didn't like the typical college free-for-all... uh, yeah, we become adults who don't venture out much either.
Now, I will say I'm ok with small groups - 3-4 of the same folks I usually hang out with one on one. That's normally for movie nights or whatnot, though.
No, no. It's supposed to be...
PURPLE!
GREEN!
PURPLE!
GREEN!
[huge brawl breaks out amongst the Drazi community]
All I can say is, the more I see of new pricing, the more I like Gamefly.
And don't forget, buy two get one free sales at Blockbuster!
Although I was half-sarcastic, in the past two work environments I've been in, RFO meetings are the *ONLY* repercussions that incompetent / dangerous developers ever suffer for their incompetence.
Since it's the only thing they ever DO get nailed for, at least RFO meetings can be made unpleasant for them.
Just for an example of the environment I'm talking about, this one idiot holier-than-thou developer decided that he didn't need to sanitize data coming off of the web. So he was passing it, unquoted, directly into an SQL update. What happened when a user entered a # into a zip code which he refused to sanitize because "oh, it'll ONLY EVER be numbers!"? It commented out the where clause (in mysql) and updated all the records of our multi-million-record address table to have the SAME zip code. The developer in question suffered no repercussions beyond being dragged to an meeting. Before we had RFO meetings, they didn't even get a stern talking to.
Believe it or not, in some environments it may seem vindictive, but at least it does provide SOME degree of negative feedback to roughshod developers who will never get fired for their incompetence, no matter what.
Ooo, shiiiny...
*raises hand* Some of us really ARE mercenaries at heart... I'd take the money and be happy. Then again, I'm single and like my job, so free time isn't my key to happiness anyway.
Geez. Last raise I received didn't even keep up with inflation, and that was one company and three years ago. I did, however, receive about a 14% raise when going from the one job to the other.
:p
I don't know anyone else who's received regular raises at either company in question, actually.
3% sounds really good to me.