"Instead of a confusing bunch of numbers and some adjectives that don't mean anything why not just have a list of everyone who has posted a comment that a user can go through. That way you could click on a name and then click on their comments until you decided if you liked what they had to say. You could then click on them again and click on a ACCEPT COMMENTS link. Then you could click on them again and let them know that you like what they write so they will probably like what you write. That way it would save some clicking. After a bit you will have clicked on enough people that you could see a dozen or so comments in a story because you can't read much more than that anywy. You'd just have to click on a dozen people for a dozen or so stories and you will have your own little community with only the people who were worth clicking on. Just a thought."
Has she approached Amazon with a draft for a 9-click patent?
"I love the idea of a comment buddy. It reminds me of "Posture Pals" from the famous MST3K short. The next mail comes from a lady who doesn't mind clicking on things, in fact she loves it. If she had her way, everyone would have carpal tunnel syndrome."
I seem to remember a Discovery channel special with John Cleese that discussed the math behind good looks. I understand this is a learning algorithm but I wonder how much easily this could be accomplished just by enforcing the golden ratio on a face. I think science has come up with a more exact ratio for faces. Honestly, the sample picture looks like they made her face shorter and easily more attractive that way.
Of course, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and when you get old looks fade and all those cliched adages.
I had to make sure I was reading the article correctly as Kutztown is not a very large or well known campus. I'm not sure as to why they chose Kutztown for their first pictures. I would be interested if anybody could provide some sort of insight as to what process was used to select the first test location. Was the satellite simply in a convenient orbit to snap pictures of Kutztown?
Maybe you could explain this close up image of your campus? (It's from the lower right of the article's image)
Don't be coy, we all saw the lead up to this in the papers earlier this year. Kutztown's had this coming--it was one thing to invite Putin to talk but when he left those trailers, that was too far.
On a serious note, I'm certain they picked Kutztown based on the following:
Let P denote the number of lawyers a university has on reserve.
Let Q denote the number of lawyers Google has on reserve.
Let R denote said university's reserve resources for emergencies.
Let L be a function such that L(x) = the number of lawyers one can immediately hire with x dollars.
Is P + L(R) Q? Then I think we have a candidate! I found it on Google Scholar.
Is there any precedent for wireless electronics interfering with aircraft systems? Interfering with navigation instruments is one thing, but causing changes in the 'elevator control system' -- I would be quite worried if I thought the aircraft could be flown with a bluetooth mouse.
Following from reading that, I would need to see whether Quantas planes have a lack of shielding somewhere that would make this a vulnerability. In the defense of so many airlines and the FAA, I will state that I would rather read a book than work on a laptop if it means reducing a very low risk. That risk being that I am operating in a range that interferes with a device that is crucial to flight and also improperly shielded.
Expect this to very quickly go from Flash games into any game that connects to the internet, its a great new revenue stream for companies.
Why does it have to connect to the internet?
Isn't Burger King releasing games funded entirely by Burger King with Burger King themes in them? (Did I mention Burger King?)
When I was tiny and we had our first x86 machine, I recall receiving a free 7-up game from the local supermarket that was a 3.5 diskette. You played spot, the 7-up mascot in an Othello rip off against another person next to you or the computer. Is this any different?
Would I be shocked to see ad funded games hitting the shelves? Nope. I wouldn't be surprised to see free discs & downloads of games where a car company makes a racing game or a soda company makes a mario party-ish game...
I'm not too hip on this idea though, the last thing I want is more advertisement in my life. They seem like a distraction & waste of time. But since they fund a lot of what I do for entertainment, they're here to stay!
When I was a freshman at the University of Minnesota, a professor instructed us to use Arxiv as a resource (I think Citeseer was another but paled in comparison). A large part of my undergrad and grad school days were spent perusing Arxiv and sometimes implementing ideas I had read in the Computer Science section. My hard drive became strained by the sheer number of PDF/PS files in my user directory. My room was littered with papers printed off to read on the bus or at work. My base knowledge of computer science I owe to my professors, most of the things beyond that came from Arxiv.
I owe a lot of my knowledge to that site. Here's to another 50,000 papers, Arxiv. And another and another and another...
Also, the Arxiv Physics blog is a regular favorite in my Liferea news feed account.
I don't think this was covered on Slashdot and I wish I could find a better citation than this but it's been said that Apple has threatened makers of "docks" for PCs with lawsuits. I can't verify that but I do know that I downloaded and installed a beta program called Y'z Dock which was developed by a now defunct crew.
The Y'z Dock software was really really slick and very comparable to Apple's. You can still find the beta distros on pages like Fileforum and other third party hosters (I won't link because you will have to use those at your own risk).
I don't think anyone in the community ever thought they could get away with mimicking the dock... but my default response to software patents is that they're broken. Those of you that use Windows will never know the dock because Steve Jobs doesn't want it that way. Also, I'm kind of pissed that "a PC" means Windows... it means personal computer, does it not? Isn't my Linux machine a personal computer? I hate that. But that's a totally offtopic rant triggered by marketing from all camps.
However I am looking for a good book on programming threads from an applied point of view. I am looking for one or more texts that provide thorough coverage and provide meaningful exercises. Anyone have any ideas?
I went through grad school not too long ago for Computer Science (disclaimer: it was the kind of computer science degree that doesn't focus on hardware so I might not be the best expert on this). Anyway there were two books for the class.
One dealt with coding regular old C on a plain jain Unix machine and method of (I believe there are others) doing multithreaded in that environment is PThreads (or the super short overview). The book we used is the Addison Wesley book (ISBN 0-201-63392-2). It was informative and comprehensive... wasn't concentrated specifically on applications like you ask but very good reference. Also, I think there are a lot of good books free online in respect to that topic.
As for Java, there was an O'Reilly book (there's probably a new version out for Java 6) that was pretty good. Not as great of a reference but better on applications of threads in Java. Although, as far as introductory material, I personally learned it all from java.sun.com. Although I can't vouch for whether this is an applied approach or not, I would suggest the concurrency tutorial and a good book on Java Patterns or even a design pattern wiki.
I've never done concurrent programming in C# or Python so I do not know first hand what is best. I do know that erlang has been fun to mess around with in my spare time though!
Recently I have been incorporating them more in my solutions for clients.
Most important rule of thumb of multi-threaded programming is to avoid it if possible. Maybe hardware (multi-core) will change that, maybe you feel the scheduler can't do its job as well as you can and maybe you feel it's more intuitive. But, often is the case, that you're just adding more complexity to your code resulting in more difficult bugs and harder maintenance for others. Keep it simple.
Isn't there other software that allows you to copy/rip DVDs ?
Not commercial. There are open source tools that you can accomplish this with and there are certainly shady products you can find online that aren't supported and probably aren't owned and operated inside the United States. The important thing is that they are not sold at Best Buy nor are they easy to use. I know ways of doing it with Ubuntu but your average person is still mystified that typing something on a command line causes my DVD player to do something.
DVD X Copy comes to mind although I've never used it, that's the most commercial looking stuff I've ever seen. And this is what its site says:
Authentic DVDXCopy software is no longer being sold anywhere.
In response to:
If there isn't, can I write one and get sued ? At least I'd get my name in the papers...
Sir, you need look no further than the RIAA/MPAA to be sued. Why bother writing software when you can simply create a single backup copy of a CD or DVD for your personal use and notify them that you have done so. Your name won't make the papers but you will be sued. I'm certain they will be able to show that since you had it on your computer and your computer was connected to the internet, you were distributing it to several thousand other people who had no legal right in owning it. You won't be sued for the additional price of that media, you will be sued $75,000 because that's how much money you thieved from them! And thus you can be part of the ridiculous system that is digital music today!
Nature has other fast biological processes. I will cite the Nematocyst cells that jellyfish employ to inject poison into their victims.
Essentially creatures like jellyfish have cells that contain what looks like a coiled rope marinating in poison... when the cell is stimulated, it squeezes and fires the rope out through the small opening on the outside of the cell and sends a rigid looking line instantly out several feet. This was thought to be one of the fastest biological processes for a while as estimates have placed the force on these coils to be 40,000 g to millions of gs.
I saw a discovery channel special on this once and the video footage they showed up close of these cells reacting just gave you a skin crawling sensation all over your body. But after seeing that, it's no wonder certain box jellyfish or the Portuguese Man O' Wars (not actually jellyfish but a colony of Siphonophorae) can put poison through your skin, through your flesh and down to your bones/organs instantly.
To Leonard Boyarsky, lead world designer on Diablo III: How do you determine the enclosing size of a world or level/map for a game? I have played many games and those that have an 'open' feel to the world seem to possess more possibilities for me. Games where I could go out and get completely lost were much more exciting than a game like Warcraft or Diablo II. How do you determine whether you go with a 'closed and finite world' vs an 'open seemingly boundless world?'
Are there any books or resources you recommend that discuss/explain game world design?
To Chris Sigaty, lead producer on StarCraft II: Are you planning on a population cap in Starcraft II? I assume this is true and it has been something that annoyed me, even if it is a soft cap. I understand that building the perfect army is more desirable than meat grinding a thousand of the same unit but what is the function of a population cap? I understand machines used to have severely limited resources so it was necessary but what about now?
To Paul Sams, Blizzard COO: What is the hardest thing in managing the operations of what is arguably the largest MMO? At 10,000,000 subscribers, what are your number one concerns? What challenges do you face in an average day?
To Chris Sigaty, lead producer on StarCraft II: We discussed Warcraft III being played on a table top a while ago. Do you see this technology taking off in the near future? Are you planning to do any testing with your manipulation of units to see if this will be a possibility for gamers? Do you think this will ever be commonplace?
To Jeffrey Kaplan (aka Tigole), game director for World of Warcraft: What has been the most disastrous or disheartening experience in your time as game director for World of Warcraft? Duping, gold, farmers, MMOGlider, barrens chat, server failures, what?
To Leonard Boyarsky, lead world designer on Diablo III: Where do you find inspiration for designing Diablo III? Even though I was young, I was always impressed with the darkness and feel to Diablo I & II. Do you turn to novels? Fantasy artwork? Your own imagination? What are your influences?
To Jeffrey Kaplan (aka Tigole), game director for World of Warcraft: Do you feel that Blizzard's dominance hurts other MMORPGs? Do you see yourself in direct competition with the other studios & products? Do you ever play these games to see what has been reused or what is new? Do you ever feel like another MMO has extended from World of Warcraft? Do you owe any credit to previous MMOs that have influenced your creations?
To Jeffrey Kaplan (aka Tigole), game director for World of Warcraft: How does your team balance class, race & profession specific traits? I have seen the new trees for the expansion & I naturally have some concerns. But how do you measure when something is 'unfair?' Do you measure in game reports, analyze logs, play them yourselves? What is your strategy?
To Chris Sigaty, lead producer on StarCraft II: How do you balance races, units, health, damage, effects, et cetera?
Uh, as someone forced to labor around these animals, I second your dubiousness. I have stared into the void that is the eye of a bovine creature and the void also stared back.
From trying to help one get untangled from a barbed wire fence to watching one fry itself on an electrified fence to watching one stare confoundedly as a vehicle killed it at 55 mph to... did I mention you can't lead them down a set of stairs?
Well, now stealing the cattle is not only going to be easier but there's going to be bonus cattle where not only do you get the $800-$1000 a head but you also get a $900 device!
"Being in a relationship is not easy, more than half of all first marriages fail in this country. That statistic doesn't improve if you spend most of your time reading your favorite website and not tending to the needs of your family."
A coworker & I were discussing the alarming amount of people around us who are divorced. It's really crazy.
We bagan betting which state would have the highest divorce rate... probably New York or California I had thought. We decided to look up the annual divorce rates by state and were shocked to see that some states in the bible belt states are relatively high. One of our most cherished institutions indeed!
We both had forgotten about Vegas!:)
These numbers look really low because it's yearly... but as the decay continues for--say Ohio with 4%--you have a group of 100 couples over ten years ending up (exponential decay formula) with 33 divorced couples
Our conversation continued to speculate what the hell has changed. We were wondering if it had to do with the fact that the world is getting smaller. I come into contact with way more people today than 20 years ago. Do I find a suitable mate and then find a more suitable mate later? Is it ebbing morals? Is it growing equality of the sexes? Is divorce rewarded in some way? Most importantly, I thought, there is less of a social stigma associated with it. Most likely it's influenced by all of these things.
Personally I think it's a shame but there's not a lot to be done about it.
I am code monkey so I have no right to make fun of your job but let's look at it from the eyes of your audience:
I am a systems administrator,
tedius
primarily Unix/Linux
boring
and enterprise NAS/SAN storage,
snore
working for an aerospace company.
BINGO!
There's a lot of angles you could approach your job from but if I can give you any advice, keep it entertaining. I volunteer to teach grade school kids occasionally and what we do is an engineering challenge for each class. We do many different challenges but an example is handing out limited supplies to each team and having them build paper planes. Sometimes we throw in random stuff like paper clips or rubber bands to see what the kids try to do with them. While they work, we talk about engineering in general. At the beginning we'll give them specific requirements in a childish Statement of Work style which lay out how we are selecting the best airplane or bridge or tower or whatever.
At the end of the session we start to ramp up the specifics as we do the final tests on the stuff they made and hand out candy. I'll start to talk about structural integrity, how we use math to make things better, etc. As I get more technical, I'll start to lose kids but there are usually a few that get excited and that's why I'm there.
If you go there set on talking about just IT, you're going to lose them and--worse--possibly turn them off to technical jobs like that. Stick to the end product of what you actually provide. Try to think of fun facts to keep them entertained--don't say petabyte, figure out how many times around the world one string of text will go that a petabyte can store. Then tell them how many of those you are in charge of. I also suggest you start out generic--ask the kids what an engineer does and then get more specific with your job and place.
Also, my company always has junk left over from bring your child to work day, hand that stuff out like prizes or give one to each student if you have enough.
I'm assuming that's because what you said was unfounded, but more importantly completely ridiculous.
Yeah, completely ridiculous. Alright, here's the TOS:
d. You acknowledge that some aspects of the Service, Products, and administering of the Usage Rules entails the ongoing involvement of Apple. Accordingly, in the event that Apple changes any part of the Service or discontinues the Service, which Apple may do at its election, you acknowledge that you may no longer be able to use Products to the same extent as prior to such change or discontinuation, and that Apple shall have no liability to you in such case.
But it's completely ridiculous that I start to talk about them electing to discontinue your right to use the product. Completely.
Couple that with the fact that Apple pulled the $1 pricing scheme out of it's ass as well as the RIAA being a legion of lawyers and I think we've got ourselves the perfect storm. Of course, that's just completely ridiculous.
You can't retroactively revoke access to something that was already sold...
Nothing was sold. Something was "licensed" temporarily to you in the very loosest sense of the word. By saying "sold" are you saying I now own the rights to the music I buy on iTunes? No, it follows the TOS which I pointed out is full of red alarms.
Slashdot Mirror
"Instead of a confusing bunch of numbers and some adjectives that don't mean anything why not just have a list of everyone who has posted a comment that a user can go through. That way you could click on a name and then click on their comments until you decided if you liked what they had to say. You could then click on them again and click on a ACCEPT COMMENTS link. Then you could click on them again and let them know that you like what they write so they will probably like what you write. That way it would save some clicking. After a bit you will have clicked on enough people that you could see a dozen or so comments in a story because you can't read much more than that anywy. You'd just have to click on a dozen people for a dozen or so stories and you will have your own little community with only the people who were worth clicking on. Just a thought."
Has she approached Amazon with a draft for a 9-click patent?
"I love the idea of a comment buddy. It reminds me of "Posture Pals" from the famous MST3K short. The next mail comes from a lady who doesn't mind clicking on things, in fact she loves it. If she had her way, everyone would have carpal tunnel syndrome."
"Ms. Martin! Tommy drew a bong!"
I seem to remember a Discovery channel special with John Cleese that discussed the math behind good looks. I understand this is a learning algorithm but I wonder how much easily this could be accomplished just by enforcing the golden ratio on a face. I think science has come up with a more exact ratio for faces. Honestly, the sample picture looks like they made her face shorter and easily more attractive that way.
Of course, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and when you get old looks fade and all those cliched adages.
Sooo, Kev92486, how are the *squints eyes and leans closer to his LCD screen* Golden Bears doin' this year?
I had to make sure I was reading the article correctly as Kutztown is not a very large or well known campus. I'm not sure as to why they chose Kutztown for their first pictures. I would be interested if anybody could provide some sort of insight as to what process was used to select the first test location. Was the satellite simply in a convenient orbit to snap pictures of Kutztown?
Maybe you could explain this close up image of your campus? (It's from the lower right of the article's image)
Don't be coy, we all saw the lead up to this in the papers earlier this year. Kutztown's had this coming--it was one thing to invite Putin to talk but when he left those trailers, that was too far.
On a serious note, I'm certain they picked Kutztown based on the following:
Let P denote the number of lawyers a university has on reserve.
Let Q denote the number of lawyers Google has on reserve.
Let R denote said university's reserve resources for emergencies.
Let L be a function such that L(x) = the number of lawyers one can immediately hire with x dollars.
Is P + L(R) Q? Then I think we have a candidate! I found it on Google Scholar.
Is there any precedent for wireless electronics interfering with aircraft systems? Interfering with navigation instruments is one thing, but causing changes in the 'elevator control system' -- I would be quite worried if I thought the aircraft could be flown with a bluetooth mouse.
Well, Wikipedia has a great section on this.
Following from reading that, I would need to see whether Quantas planes have a lack of shielding somewhere that would make this a vulnerability. In the defense of so many airlines and the FAA, I will state that I would rather read a book than work on a laptop if it means reducing a very low risk. That risk being that I am operating in a range that interferes with a device that is crucial to flight and also improperly shielded.
Expect this to very quickly go from Flash games into any game that connects to the internet, its a great new revenue stream for companies.
Why does it have to connect to the internet?
...
Isn't Burger King releasing games funded entirely by Burger King with Burger King themes in them? (Did I mention Burger King?)
When I was tiny and we had our first x86 machine, I recall receiving a free 7-up game from the local supermarket that was a 3.5 diskette. You played spot, the 7-up mascot in an Othello rip off against another person next to you or the computer. Is this any different?
Would I be shocked to see ad funded games hitting the shelves? Nope. I wouldn't be surprised to see free discs & downloads of games where a car company makes a racing game or a soda company makes a mario party-ish game
I'm not too hip on this idea though, the last thing I want is more advertisement in my life. They seem like a distraction & waste of time. But since they fund a lot of what I do for entertainment, they're here to stay!
When I was a freshman at the University of Minnesota, a professor instructed us to use Arxiv as a resource (I think Citeseer was another but paled in comparison). A large part of my undergrad and grad school days were spent perusing Arxiv and sometimes implementing ideas I had read in the Computer Science section. My hard drive became strained by the sheer number of PDF/PS files in my user directory. My room was littered with papers printed off to read on the bus or at work. My base knowledge of computer science I owe to my professors, most of the things beyond that came from Arxiv.
...
I owe a lot of my knowledge to that site. Here's to another 50,000 papers, Arxiv. And another and another and another
Also, the Arxiv Physics blog is a regular favorite in my Liferea news feed account.
I don't think this was covered on Slashdot and I wish I could find a better citation than this but it's been said that Apple has threatened makers of "docks" for PCs with lawsuits. I can't verify that but I do know that I downloaded and installed a beta program called Y'z Dock which was developed by a now defunct crew.
... but my default response to software patents is that they're broken. Those of you that use Windows will never know the dock because Steve Jobs doesn't want it that way. Also, I'm kind of pissed that "a PC" means Windows ... it means personal computer, does it not? Isn't my Linux machine a personal computer? I hate that. But that's a totally offtopic rant triggered by marketing from all camps.
The Y'z Dock software was really really slick and very comparable to Apple's. You can still find the beta distros on pages like Fileforum and other third party hosters (I won't link because you will have to use those at your own risk).
I don't think anyone in the community ever thought they could get away with mimicking the dock
However I am looking for a good book on programming threads from an applied point of view. I am looking for one or more texts that provide thorough coverage and provide meaningful exercises. Anyone have any ideas?
I went through grad school not too long ago for Computer Science (disclaimer: it was the kind of computer science degree that doesn't focus on hardware so I might not be the best expert on this). Anyway there were two books for the class.
... wasn't concentrated specifically on applications like you ask but very good reference. Also, I think there are a lot of good books free online in respect to that topic.
One dealt with coding regular old C on a plain jain Unix machine and method of (I believe there are others) doing multithreaded in that environment is PThreads (or the super short overview). The book we used is the Addison Wesley book (ISBN 0-201-63392-2). It was informative and comprehensive
As for Java, there was an O'Reilly book (there's probably a new version out for Java 6) that was pretty good. Not as great of a reference but better on applications of threads in Java. Although, as far as introductory material, I personally learned it all from java.sun.com. Although I can't vouch for whether this is an applied approach or not, I would suggest the concurrency tutorial and a good book on Java Patterns or even a design pattern wiki.
I've never done concurrent programming in C# or Python so I do not know first hand what is best. I do know that erlang has been fun to mess around with in my spare time though!
Recently I have been incorporating them more in my solutions for clients.
Most important rule of thumb of multi-threaded programming is to avoid it if possible. Maybe hardware (multi-core) will change that, maybe you feel the scheduler can't do its job as well as you can and maybe you feel it's more intuitive. But, often is the case, that you're just adding more complexity to your code resulting in more difficult bugs and harder maintenance for others. Keep it simple.
Isn't there other software that allows you to copy/rip DVDs ?
Not commercial. There are open source tools that you can accomplish this with and there are certainly shady products you can find online that aren't supported and probably aren't owned and operated inside the United States. The important thing is that they are not sold at Best Buy nor are they easy to use. I know ways of doing it with Ubuntu but your average person is still mystified that typing something on a command line causes my DVD player to do something.
DVD X Copy comes to mind although I've never used it, that's the most commercial looking stuff I've ever seen. And this is what its site says:
Authentic DVDXCopy software is no longer being sold anywhere.
In response to:
If there isn't, can I write one and get sued ? At least I'd get my name in the papers...
Sir, you need look no further than the RIAA/MPAA to be sued. Why bother writing software when you can simply create a single backup copy of a CD or DVD for your personal use and notify them that you have done so. Your name won't make the papers but you will be sued. I'm certain they will be able to show that since you had it on your computer and your computer was connected to the internet, you were distributing it to several thousand other people who had no legal right in owning it. You won't be sued for the additional price of that media, you will be sued $75,000 because that's how much money you thieved from them! And thus you can be part of the ridiculous system that is digital music today!
Nature has other fast biological processes. I will cite the Nematocyst cells that jellyfish employ to inject poison into their victims.
... when the cell is stimulated, it squeezes and fires the rope out through the small opening on the outside of the cell and sends a rigid looking line instantly out several feet. This was thought to be one of the fastest biological processes for a while as estimates have placed the force on these coils to be 40,000 g to millions of gs.
Essentially creatures like jellyfish have cells that contain what looks like a coiled rope marinating in poison
I saw a discovery channel special on this once and the video footage they showed up close of these cells reacting just gave you a skin crawling sensation all over your body. But after seeing that, it's no wonder certain box jellyfish or the Portuguese Man O' Wars (not actually jellyfish but a colony of Siphonophorae) can put poison through your skin, through your flesh and down to your bones/organs instantly.
To Leonard Boyarsky, lead world designer on Diablo III: How do you determine the enclosing size of a world or level/map for a game? I have played many games and those that have an 'open' feel to the world seem to possess more possibilities for me. Games where I could go out and get completely lost were much more exciting than a game like Warcraft or Diablo II. How do you determine whether you go with a 'closed and finite world' vs an 'open seemingly boundless world?'
Are there any books or resources you recommend that discuss/explain game world design?
To Paul Sams, Blizzard COO: Has Blizzard achieved Six Sigma? Is this even important in creating MMO software? If so, how do you apply it exactly?
To Chris Sigaty, lead producer on StarCraft II: Are you planning on a population cap in Starcraft II? I assume this is true and it has been something that annoyed me, even if it is a soft cap. I understand that building the perfect army is more desirable than meat grinding a thousand of the same unit but what is the function of a population cap? I understand machines used to have severely limited resources so it was necessary but what about now?
To Paul Sams, Blizzard COO: What is the hardest thing in managing the operations of what is arguably the largest MMO? At 10,000,000 subscribers, what are your number one concerns? What challenges do you face in an average day?
To Chris Sigaty, lead producer on StarCraft II: We discussed Warcraft III being played on a table top a while ago. Do you see this technology taking off in the near future? Are you planning to do any testing with your manipulation of units to see if this will be a possibility for gamers? Do you think this will ever be commonplace?
To Jeffrey Kaplan (aka Tigole), game director for World of Warcraft: What has been the most disastrous or disheartening experience in your time as game director for World of Warcraft? Duping, gold, farmers, MMOGlider, barrens chat, server failures, what?
To Leonard Boyarsky, lead world designer on Diablo III: Where do you find inspiration for designing Diablo III? Even though I was young, I was always impressed with the darkness and feel to Diablo I & II. Do you turn to novels? Fantasy artwork? Your own imagination? What are your influences?
To Jeffrey Kaplan (aka Tigole), game director for World of Warcraft: Do you feel that Blizzard's dominance hurts other MMORPGs? Do you see yourself in direct competition with the other studios & products? Do you ever play these games to see what has been reused or what is new? Do you ever feel like another MMO has extended from World of Warcraft? Do you owe any credit to previous MMOs that have influenced your creations?
To Jeffrey Kaplan (aka Tigole), game director for World of Warcraft: How does your team balance class, race & profession specific traits? I have seen the new trees for the expansion & I naturally have some concerns. But how do you measure when something is 'unfair?' Do you measure in game reports, analyze logs, play them yourselves? What is your strategy?
To Chris Sigaty, lead producer on StarCraft II: How do you balance races, units, health, damage, effects, et cetera?
Uh, as someone forced to labor around these animals, I second your dubiousness. I have stared into the void that is the eye of a bovine creature and the void also stared back.
... did I mention you can't lead them down a set of stairs?
From trying to help one get untangled from a barbed wire fence to watching one fry itself on an electrified fence to watching one stare confoundedly as a vehicle killed it at 55 mph to
Well, now stealing the cattle is not only going to be easier but there's going to be bonus cattle where not only do you get the $800-$1000 a head but you also get a $900 device!
"Being in a relationship is not easy, more than half of all first marriages fail in this country. That statistic doesn't improve if you spend most of your time reading your favorite website and not tending to the needs of your family."
A coworker & I were discussing the alarming amount of people around us who are divorced. It's really crazy.
... probably New York or California I had thought. We decided to look up the annual divorce rates by state and were shocked to see that some states in the bible belt states are relatively high. One of our most cherished institutions indeed!
:)
... but as the decay continues for--say Ohio with 4%--you have a group of 100 couples over ten years ending up (exponential decay formula) with 33 divorced couples
Our conversation continued to speculate what the hell has changed. We were wondering if it had to do with the fact that the world is getting smaller. I come into contact with way more people today than 20 years ago. Do I find a suitable mate and then find a more suitable mate later? Is it ebbing morals? Is it growing equality of the sexes? Is divorce rewarded in some way? Most importantly, I thought, there is less of a social stigma associated with it. Most likely it's influenced by all of these things.
We bagan betting which state would have the highest divorce rate
We both had forgotten about Vegas!
These numbers look really low because it's yearly
Personally I think it's a shame but there's not a lot to be done about it.
I am a systems administrator,
tedius
primarily Unix/Linux
boring
and enterprise NAS/SAN storage,
snore
working for an aerospace company.
BINGO!
There's a lot of angles you could approach your job from but if I can give you any advice, keep it entertaining. I volunteer to teach grade school kids occasionally and what we do is an engineering challenge for each class. We do many different challenges but an example is handing out limited supplies to each team and having them build paper planes. Sometimes we throw in random stuff like paper clips or rubber bands to see what the kids try to do with them. While they work, we talk about engineering in general. At the beginning we'll give them specific requirements in a childish Statement of Work style which lay out how we are selecting the best airplane or bridge or tower or whatever.
At the end of the session we start to ramp up the specifics as we do the final tests on the stuff they made and hand out candy. I'll start to talk about structural integrity, how we use math to make things better, etc. As I get more technical, I'll start to lose kids but there are usually a few that get excited and that's why I'm there.
If you go there set on talking about just IT, you're going to lose them and--worse--possibly turn them off to technical jobs like that. Stick to the end product of what you actually provide. Try to think of fun facts to keep them entertained--don't say petabyte, figure out how many times around the world one string of text will go that a petabyte can store. Then tell them how many of those you are in charge of. I also suggest you start out generic--ask the kids what an engineer does and then get more specific with your job and place.
Also, my company always has junk left over from bring your child to work day, hand that stuff out like prizes or give one to each student if you have enough.
I'm assuming that's because what you said was unfounded, but more importantly completely ridiculous.
Yeah, completely ridiculous. Alright, here's the TOS:
d. You acknowledge that some aspects of the Service, Products, and administering of the Usage Rules entails the ongoing involvement of Apple. Accordingly, in the event that Apple changes any part of the Service or discontinues the Service, which Apple may do at its election, you acknowledge that you may no longer be able to use Products to the same extent as prior to such change or discontinuation, and that Apple shall have no liability to you in such case.
But it's completely ridiculous that I start to talk about them electing to discontinue your right to use the product. Completely.
Couple that with the fact that Apple pulled the $1 pricing scheme out of it's ass as well as the RIAA being a legion of lawyers and I think we've got ourselves the perfect storm. Of course, that's just completely ridiculous.
You can't retroactively revoke access to something that was already sold ...
Nothing was sold. Something was "licensed" temporarily to you in the very loosest sense of the word. By saying "sold" are you saying I now own the rights to the music I buy on iTunes? No, it follows the TOS which I pointed out is full of red alarms.