You have to support any position you take by using the actual texts, understanding the history of the document itself as well as the Sitzt im Leben and supporting traditions. In fact, the professors tend to make you feel pretty small if you just spout off some fundie crap and say, "it's just what I believe".
And what *does* support the notion of Creationism? certainly not the Pope who claimed that the part where God created the world in 6 days was just a metaphor and that evolution is a fact, contradicting the Creationist notion that fossils were put there to "test our faith".
I have much respect for many of the world's religions, specially Christianity. However, Creationism is in my opinion the biggest plague to affect the human brain during the last century, and it had to beat Scientology to get there.
If you have 2 or more mutually exclusive descriptions of God's will, then at least one is guaranteed to be at least partialy wrong (and thus not worthy of mindless acceptance), and in the absence of any credible proof of one verses the other, then in all likelihood they are both wrong.
*BIG* jump in logic there, and one you cannot possibly justify without Occam's Razor. The problem is...
Note I don't believe Atheism is legitimate - because you can't prove the absence of something.
...that if you apply Occam's Razor to the debate of God's existence, you reach Atheism, not Agnosticism.
The problem is that people are still trying (and for the most part, failing) to make money from digital works. There are considerable forces in the world that want to make this impossible.
Wrong. They are simply trying to stop large companies from lobbying to prevent the free sharing of information. Lobbying to perpetually extend copyright, lobbying to penalize copyright infringement more harshly than rape or murder, lobbying to collect taxes on other companies' products solely because they wish to. And they are winning.
This means I can buy movies and post them on the Internet with the specific intent of making sure not another dime is spent on that movie, ever again.
Sure, and you can also buy movies and post them on the Internet with the specific intent of becoming a billionaire. Doesn't mean it'll work, though, and given the wide range of opinions of Internet citizens, I wouldn't bet on it either.
So why is free bad? It sounds really nice, just having everything for free. More money for everything else. Doesn't this just make us all richer? Sure, everyone except the creator. Somehow they got the idea that they were going to be paid. Well, payday is almost over. And when it is over for real they better like the new "everything for free" situation because there is no way you are going to convince people to go back to the old way.
And that wouldn't be a bad thing, or would you relinquish benefits for the whole of society for the sake of a single person?
So, yes, paying for movies and music is a political statement. A rabidly antisocial and greedy political statement.
Not really. Well, if you pay for MPAA-sponsored movies and RIAA-distributed music, yes you're making a rabidly antisocial and greedy political statement by supporting those who would take away our freedoms and limit our opportunities to grow as a society solely for their own profit, but if you buy indie there's no sin being commited./p>
How and where are you going to *put* that Youtube address? Joe Average doesn't copy-n-paste links full of gibberish from TV, doesn't visit Microsoft.com, and for the small percentage of average people who read the "OMG celebrity!" news at MSN.com, such a blantant ad campaign would remind them it's a website owned by a software company (instead of a reputable TV network like E!) and turn them off from it completely.
f I was in MS's marketing department I'd be all over the bad videos. I'd show them to everyone I could and explain, 'See? This is the type of person who identifies w/ Linux. This is how they brand them selves. These type of people will be working on your servers, looking through the source code, etc.'
First off, considering how "damaging" the Ellen Feiss episode was for Apple (read: not at all), I doubt it'd have any effect on the Linux community.
And second, Microsoft almost surely does *not* have the rights to redistribute the videos nor to use the image of the people in them for marketing purposes, and given the copyright scare we're living through right now misusing them in such a way would be suicidal.
Your post, in a nutshell: "More Madden and less Ico, you lazy fuck!".
And as a gamer, allow me to say "Fuck you". The day indie devs start worrying about making marketable, "sellable" games instead of developing various, innovative ideas and see what sticks, is the day I stop buying indie games altogether.
- The graphics hit a point where things no longer looked blatantly texture-mapped (the DOOM/early-quake problem) - The pacing was incredible - The weapons were surprisingly balanced. It's not like Q1 where it's "rockets or nothing"; every weapon is useful at some point. - Very customizable. (lots of FPS games have that, but it's still a point in UT2004's favor)
All of which also apply to UT3. Yes, it's slower than UT2004, but so was the original one and while I enjoyed UT2004's Quake-ness, it's good to be back.
- A variety of modes, that were generally well done. Ok, "double dominate" blows, but I still find myself playing a Bombing Run match and such just because it's crazy and different.
"Double Domination" blows, "Bombing Run" generally blows, and while Assault's loss was sad (though that kind of game mode is much better on something like Red Orchestra IMHO), UT3's Greed and Betrayal modes more than make up for it. Greed, specially is a stroke of genius, bringing DM-style action to a CTF-style game.
- Very gameplay-oriented level design. Sure, some of the maps look totally absurd, but the look that way because they have specific choke-points, carefully designed flow, etc.
And UT3 doesn't? fsck, I'd consider that a key feature of the whole UT series, brilliantly-designed maps. Specially the way they've rebalanced famous old maps for the newer installments, and UT3 only continues that trend.
- An extra level of polish across the board. I never really found myself saying "if it only had this feature, it'd be perfect". Even the little stuff like settings to change the crosshairs on a per-weapon basis - it showed a level of caring about the gameplay (the "fun"!) that most games skimp on.
Polish is exactly what keeps me in UT3 now. All that customizability is great, sure, but the rebalancing of the more 'common' stuff is even moreso to me. A sniper rifle that doesn't blow, an improved Link Gun, I miss those playing UT2004 more than I do the per-weapon crosshairs playing UT3.
Seriously, if you haven't tried UT3 with the newly-released Titan pack, then do so. It solves the main problem most people had with it: lack of content, and does so in a very spectacular way. It is, in many respects, what UT2004 was to UT2003, except you don't have to pay for it yet *again*.
Consider what happened to S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadows of Chernobyl, also available on Steam. When it came out, reviews were universally panning the game for its huge amount of bugs, yet by the time I bought it for $5 during one of Steam's weekend deals, the game was already on its fifth patch and with barely a bug to be found so I found instead one of the best FPSs of this decade, IMHO.
With UT3 something similar happened. I got it during Steam's X-Mas sale and, while fun and very polished, the relative lack of game modes made many go back to UT2004, myself included. Yet with the latest patch Epic not only added achievements but also two new modes that take UT3's focus on fast-paced action and push it even further, making it even more visceral and enjoyable than its predecessors were. Of course, it also helped that in the year-and-half since its original release, the number of people with computers capable of running it has increased tenfold, too.
As for other games I'd like to see revived, how about Medieval II: Total War? largely ignored by players and critics alike after being squeezed in between the critically-acclaimed Rome and Empire, yet so far my favorite from the series, it'd be nice to see it gather attention, and more than a handful of servers online.
Debate with them regarding what? If you're going to debate a creationist religious fundamentalist over creationism or religion, for the sole purpose of getting them to say, "You're right, I'm wrong," then maybe the religious person isn't the fool in the conversation.
Debating them over the inherent foolishness of being at the same time a creationist and a fundamentalist, given that the heads of most of the world's major religions have accepted evolution. But try to explain *that* to them and you'll see how 'easy' is to 'outsmart' a fool.
Then, of course, some bosses are stupid-- I'm not denying that. But I've seen plenty of instances where employees were complaining about their idiot boss only to find out that the employees simply didn't understand how the business worked.
Sure, but there's also plenty of instances where bosses don't understand the way things work (developing software, in this case), and in my experience getting *them* to admit they're wrong is much harder than for employees, mostly due to who writes the checks and the leverage that comes with that. And that's why many smart people simply don't bother 'outsmarting' them. It's stressful, it's hard, it comes with a chance of being fired, and *that* will look much worse on your resume than quitting and looking for a job that has a manager with a clue.
No one can tell me with 100% precision how long a project will take, but I'd rather work with someone who can give me a reasonable estimate 95% of the time than someone who is often slightly faster at doing the work, but whose estimates are way off 70% of the time. I think that preference is reasonable, too.
In regular businesses, yes it's reasonable, but can they? IIRC, more than 50% of software projects never get finished, and the lion's share of the rest are the ones that manage to do so but go over the initial budget and/or go past the deadline, so I'd say that if you *do* have someone that can give you a reasonable estimate 95% of the time you have a 'genius' in your hands, albeit perhaps not of the coding kind.
Is it any shock that these kids grow up to think the rules don't apply to them?
The thing is, they don't. One thing few people understand is that "rules" aren't God-given mandates that thou shall follow lest ye be cast into the fiery pits of hell, they're simply social conventions made to facilitate interaction with other people and, if the people around you expect something different from you, there's simply no need to give them more than that. For examples, see 'successful politicians'.
And if this "Josh" was capable of manipulating his boss into letting him take a dump on the company's lobby, well, who are we to say that he shouldn't? not that I'd do such a thing, but still, that's pretty impressive.
Of course, really extremely smart people can outsmart fools into getting them to do what they want.
Never tried to debate with a creationist religious fundamentalist before? well, manipulating your boss' boss into doing what you want is even worse, and the idiocy grows at an exponential level the more you rise on the management hierarchy. Plus there's the ethical implications of it, usually its best simply to walk away and let them self-destruct.
I don't do software development, but as a manager, yeah, I'd generally rather work with pleasant people who do their jobs "slow and steady" rather than the "brilliant" but unreliable guy. The real issue is often not the uncertainty about exactly how long a project will take, but uncertainty about whether you can trust what you're being told how long a project will take.
Pro tip: with software, you can *never* trust 100% what you're being told how long a project will take. You can start making some rough estimations when the software is already architected, designed and all it remains is to actually write the thing and test/debug it, but until then estimates are at best a shot in the dark, at worst an attempt to deceive their managers (meaning you) so they STFU and go bother someone else.
With the theoretically-9-weeks-but-who-knows answer, everyone would actually be better off being told, "I have no clue how long it will take," because at least then there would be no false expectations.
In terms of honesty, yes. But much like the people who write software even your grandma can understand, actually stating to your boss you don't have a clue about how long it'll take means you'll get fired next week, and replaced by an expensive consultant who *does* have the balls to lie to your face and tell you "I'll have it in less than five weeks", then make some excuses when its been 10 weeks and it's still a long way from being finished.
Seriously, for the individuals that want to Nitpick about the name, there is no place called "America".
Right, and wrong. Under the US' educational system, South America and North America are distinct, separate continents, but for other countries the continent is America and the division of north, south and sometimes, central is solely to simplify reffering to areas of such a large continent. Like East Asia or Northern Africa, neither of which is a separate continent.
I'm pretty sure that "North American" is universal understood to be someone from any country in North America.
Not really. Since most people in latin-speaking countries understand "American" as "someone born in the continent of America", on most dubbings of TV shows it is translated as "estadounidense" (meaning "someone from the United States"), but it is also sometimes translated as "North American" and casually, if someone says that "northamericans are a bunch of idiots", Canadians usually need not be offended;)
Seriously, for a pejorative term started by the british (to differentiate the "American English" from the real, true Englishmen), you guys have taken this *way* too far. Just invent a new word already, or try to translate "estadounidense" in a manner that doesn't sound too bloody stupid, and give "America" back to the continent named after Amerigo Vespucci. Or just STFU when we call you USians;)
For $16.000 I expect a case with good enough ventilation to make sure my $16.000 investment doesn't turn into an insanely expensive paperweight after a single session of Crysis. And with that many fans, it's kinda hard to get something to look Ferrari-ish, whereas the whole "little mainframe" look fits that perfectly.
No they don't, and no it isn't. People in academia have *already* standardized in LaTeX, Word's math support is attrocious and I don't know of any other technology trying to compete in that area, so LaTeX it is. Well, except for the few masochists who prefer to use straight TeX;)
And frankly, with things like Tortoise, SVN is hardly more complex than submitting random crap to a blog or such. It may or may not be easy for the admin who has to set it up (I've yet to set up my own SVN server), but from the user's point of view it's all fairly trivial.
The two aren't mutually exclusive. You can have the intellectual elites riding (and directing) the bleeding edge of research, while the country as a whole is slow on the uptake of the science the elites (both domestic and foreign) produce.
Specially if a good percentage of the intellectual elite is foreign, not a product of the US educational system.
Claiming religious belief is absurd. If I say the sky is red, and grass is purple, because I was honestly raised to believe these things, does that mean that a debate over whether clear daytime sky on Earth is blue or red is merely a difference of opinion?
It is. Let us define "daytime" as "any time of the day in which the sun is visible on the sky", and define each color by its most common definition. Now, we can safely state that, as far as my own personal experience determines at least, clear sky on Earth varies between blue, to purple, to red during a typical daytime and as such any possible combination of colors between blue and red is a valid answer to the question.
The grass is a bit trickier, but it depends on both the particular shade of colors you like to call 'green', the particular shade of colors you like to call 'purple', and the particular species of flora you like to call 'grass'.
With no intention to offend, I think this provides a good example for MickLinux's post above. Successfully demonstrating a seemingly trivial expression such as "the grass is green" requires one to precisely define what "grass" is, what "green" means, what characteristics are exclusive to "green" elements, how to measure such characteristics, then determine the margin of error of such experiment. In fact, my 'demonstration' of the sky being blue-and-red above is far from rigurous, though it is merely an example to make my point rather than conclusive proof of anything:)
No, but there are situations where you have both a variable named 'count' and a variable named 'conut', both of the same type and so the compiler doesn't think there's an error.
Unlikely in the case of 'conut', but fairly common when dealing with single-letter variables, and perhaps not so unlikely with things like 'bear' and 'beer', though what kind of program would need to use those words as variable names is beyond my imagination.
Well, that's why I said *if* they win over NCSoft. More likely than not this will get thrown out as it deserves, perhaps after some small donations to NCSoft's legal team courtesy of Sony and Blizzard, but any argument that Blizzard could use for WoW NCSoft could use for Tabula Rasa or Guild Wars so if they lose I don't think it'll be as clear-cut for Blizzard as some people believe.
Blizzard makes a few handy billion per year. I imagine they could front a defense that would make the SCO epic look like a parking infringement notice.
Honestly, I doubt it. There's a reason IBM's lawyers are typically known as the Nazgul, they've got a reputation as the most dangerous lawyers money can buy so if they couldn't end it sooner and bloodier for SCO, chances are nobody could have.
Add to that the fact that this is about patents instead of copyright, which are usually much more vague in their phrasing, and you'd see that *if* they do win against NCSoft, I believe Blizzard is in for some serious pain next. The US is obssessed over protecting the concept of "IP" as of late, and it shows on both laws and judgements.
But that'd be a result more of a witch-hunt against Bush rather than Obama apologism. If this had happened during Bush's first year in office, I believe the popular response would've been "and this is news for nerds?".
No, the sole purpose of the computer is to access the applications they require to do their work, but *those* had already been taken care of and migrated to multi-platform offerings long beforehand. All the user training they needed to do *now* was to teach them which icons launched which applications, and remind them to stay away from games in work hours;)
In context, I think he was reffering to the biggest obstacles for users to adapt themselves to it. From their perspective, different icons and different (more!) games are about the only thing they'll see, since all they need an OS for is to launch the applications they need to work, which had already been migrated before.
Reliability, ease of administration, security and such may matter to the average home user, but in a large organization those things only serve to make the local IT staff less prone to BOFH outbursts:)
No, this is like after you go shopping, a neighbor passes by your door and sees you left your keys on the door, picks them up, uses them to enter your house, leaves the key on the table along with a note stating what happened, and left.
That actually happened to my mom once, and first thing she did when she got back home was to go give her thanks to the neighbor, *not* to sue her for trespassing.
I'll start with the last part: no, the BBC isn't "more allowed" to break the law because they have brand recognition, they are allowed to break the law because they did it in the name of journalism and made sure nobody got hurt (and no, the electricity argument is bollocks and everyone knows it). Same reason I defended the guy a while back that was thrown in jail in the US for correctly guessing some big wig's password was, in fact, "password".
Further, this *is* old news for us, tech guys but if it was truly common knowledge getting 22.000 computers in a botnet would be *way* harder than it apparently is. And much like speeding and traffic accidents, until it stops being so fucking common it deserves to be in the news IMHO. Plus, we know that at least a good percentage of those 22.000 computers will have some security now, these kind of things serve as a good scare for the average people.
As for your reporting suggestions, I'd send them to the BBC as commentary for this news, they're actually quite good. Perhaps they'll consider them, perhaps they won't, but I think you have a better shot with them than with Fox News;)
WTF!? are you seriously arguing that reporting on the sorry state of computer security is "avoid reporting on things that annoy the powerful", and that information is in any way *safe* in computers that can be hacked en masse through fucking chat networks!?
You either commented on the wrong thread, or you're smoking some pretty heavy stuff.
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You have to support any position you take by using the actual texts, understanding the history of the document itself as well as the Sitzt im Leben and supporting traditions. In fact, the professors tend to make you feel pretty small if you just spout off some fundie crap and say, "it's just what I believe".
And what *does* support the notion of Creationism? certainly not the Pope who claimed that the part where God created the world in 6 days was just a metaphor and that evolution is a fact, contradicting the Creationist notion that fossils were put there to "test our faith".
I have much respect for many of the world's religions, specially Christianity. However, Creationism is in my opinion the biggest plague to affect the human brain during the last century, and it had to beat Scientology to get there.
If you have 2 or more mutually exclusive descriptions of God's will, then at least one is guaranteed to be at least partialy wrong (and thus not worthy of mindless acceptance), and in the absence of any credible proof of one verses the other, then in all likelihood they are both wrong.
*BIG* jump in logic there, and one you cannot possibly justify without Occam's Razor. The problem is...
Note I don't believe Atheism is legitimate - because you can't prove the absence of something.
...that if you apply Occam's Razor to the debate of God's existence, you reach Atheism, not Agnosticism.
The problem is that people are still trying (and for the most part, failing) to make money from digital works. There are considerable forces in the world that want to make this impossible.
Wrong. They are simply trying to stop large companies from lobbying to prevent the free sharing of information. Lobbying to perpetually extend copyright, lobbying to penalize copyright infringement more harshly than rape or murder, lobbying to collect taxes on other companies' products solely because they wish to. And they are winning.
This means I can buy movies and post them on the Internet with the specific intent of making sure not another dime is spent on that movie, ever again.
Sure, and you can also buy movies and post them on the Internet with the specific intent of becoming a billionaire. Doesn't mean it'll work, though, and given the wide range of opinions of Internet citizens, I wouldn't bet on it either.
So why is free bad? It sounds really nice, just having everything for free. More money for everything else. Doesn't this just make us all richer? Sure, everyone except the creator. Somehow they got the idea that they were going to be paid. Well, payday is almost over. And when it is over for real they better like the new "everything for free" situation because there is no way you are going to convince people to go back to the old way.
And that wouldn't be a bad thing, or would you relinquish benefits for the whole of society for the sake of a single person?
So, yes, paying for movies and music is a political statement. A rabidly antisocial and greedy political statement.
Not really. Well, if you pay for MPAA-sponsored movies and RIAA-distributed music, yes you're making a rabidly antisocial and greedy political statement by supporting those who would take away our freedoms and limit our opportunities to grow as a society solely for their own profit, but if you buy indie there's no sin being commited./p>
How and where are you going to *put* that Youtube address? Joe Average doesn't copy-n-paste links full of gibberish from TV, doesn't visit Microsoft.com, and for the small percentage of average people who read the "OMG celebrity!" news at MSN.com, such a blantant ad campaign would remind them it's a website owned by a software company (instead of a reputable TV network like E!) and turn them off from it completely.
f I was in MS's marketing department I'd be all over the bad videos. I'd show them to everyone I could and explain, 'See? This is the type of person who identifies w/ Linux. This is how they brand them selves. These type of people will be working on your servers, looking through the source code, etc.'
First off, considering how "damaging" the Ellen Feiss episode was for Apple (read: not at all), I doubt it'd have any effect on the Linux community.
And second, Microsoft almost surely does *not* have the rights to redistribute the videos nor to use the image of the people in them for marketing purposes, and given the copyright scare we're living through right now misusing them in such a way would be suicidal.
Your post, in a nutshell: "More Madden and less Ico, you lazy fuck!".
And as a gamer, allow me to say "Fuck you". The day indie devs start worrying about making marketable, "sellable" games instead of developing various, innovative ideas and see what sticks, is the day I stop buying indie games altogether.
- The graphics hit a point where things no longer looked blatantly texture-mapped (the DOOM/early-quake problem)
- The pacing was incredible
- The weapons were surprisingly balanced. It's not like Q1 where it's "rockets or nothing"; every weapon is useful at some point.
- Very customizable. (lots of FPS games have that, but it's still a point in UT2004's favor)
All of which also apply to UT3. Yes, it's slower than UT2004, but so was the original one and while I enjoyed UT2004's Quake-ness, it's good to be back.
- A variety of modes, that were generally well done. Ok, "double dominate" blows, but I still find myself playing a Bombing Run match and such just because it's crazy and different.
"Double Domination" blows, "Bombing Run" generally blows, and while Assault's loss was sad (though that kind of game mode is much better on something like Red Orchestra IMHO), UT3's Greed and Betrayal modes more than make up for it. Greed, specially is a stroke of genius, bringing DM-style action to a CTF-style game.
- Very gameplay-oriented level design. Sure, some of the maps look totally absurd, but the look that way because they have specific choke-points, carefully designed flow, etc.
And UT3 doesn't? fsck, I'd consider that a key feature of the whole UT series, brilliantly-designed maps. Specially the way they've rebalanced famous old maps for the newer installments, and UT3 only continues that trend.
- An extra level of polish across the board. I never really found myself saying "if it only had this feature, it'd be perfect". Even the little stuff like settings to change the crosshairs on a per-weapon basis - it showed a level of caring about the gameplay (the "fun"!) that most games skimp on.
Polish is exactly what keeps me in UT3 now. All that customizability is great, sure, but the rebalancing of the more 'common' stuff is even moreso to me. A sniper rifle that doesn't blow, an improved Link Gun, I miss those playing UT2004 more than I do the per-weapon crosshairs playing UT3.
Seriously, if you haven't tried UT3 with the newly-released Titan pack, then do so. It solves the main problem most people had with it: lack of content, and does so in a very spectacular way. It is, in many respects, what UT2004 was to UT2003, except you don't have to pay for it yet *again*.
Consider what happened to S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadows of Chernobyl, also available on Steam. When it came out, reviews were universally panning the game for its huge amount of bugs, yet by the time I bought it for $5 during one of Steam's weekend deals, the game was already on its fifth patch and with barely a bug to be found so I found instead one of the best FPSs of this decade, IMHO.
With UT3 something similar happened. I got it during Steam's X-Mas sale and, while fun and very polished, the relative lack of game modes made many go back to UT2004, myself included. Yet with the latest patch Epic not only added achievements but also two new modes that take UT3's focus on fast-paced action and push it even further, making it even more visceral and enjoyable than its predecessors were. Of course, it also helped that in the year-and-half since its original release, the number of people with computers capable of running it has increased tenfold, too.
As for other games I'd like to see revived, how about Medieval II: Total War? largely ignored by players and critics alike after being squeezed in between the critically-acclaimed Rome and Empire, yet so far my favorite from the series, it'd be nice to see it gather attention, and more than a handful of servers online.
Debate with them regarding what? If you're going to debate a creationist religious fundamentalist over creationism or religion, for the sole purpose of getting them to say, "You're right, I'm wrong," then maybe the religious person isn't the fool in the conversation.
Debating them over the inherent foolishness of being at the same time a creationist and a fundamentalist, given that the heads of most of the world's major religions have accepted evolution. But try to explain *that* to them and you'll see how 'easy' is to 'outsmart' a fool.
Then, of course, some bosses are stupid-- I'm not denying that. But I've seen plenty of instances where employees were complaining about their idiot boss only to find out that the employees simply didn't understand how the business worked.
Sure, but there's also plenty of instances where bosses don't understand the way things work (developing software, in this case), and in my experience getting *them* to admit they're wrong is much harder than for employees, mostly due to who writes the checks and the leverage that comes with that. And that's why many smart people simply don't bother 'outsmarting' them. It's stressful, it's hard, it comes with a chance of being fired, and *that* will look much worse on your resume than quitting and looking for a job that has a manager with a clue.
No one can tell me with 100% precision how long a project will take, but I'd rather work with someone who can give me a reasonable estimate 95% of the time than someone who is often slightly faster at doing the work, but whose estimates are way off 70% of the time. I think that preference is reasonable, too.
In regular businesses, yes it's reasonable, but can they? IIRC, more than 50% of software projects never get finished, and the lion's share of the rest are the ones that manage to do so but go over the initial budget and/or go past the deadline, so I'd say that if you *do* have someone that can give you a reasonable estimate 95% of the time you have a 'genius' in your hands, albeit perhaps not of the coding kind.
Is it any shock that these kids grow up to think the rules don't apply to them?
The thing is, they don't. One thing few people understand is that "rules" aren't God-given mandates that thou shall follow lest ye be cast into the fiery pits of hell, they're simply social conventions made to facilitate interaction with other people and, if the people around you expect something different from you, there's simply no need to give them more than that. For examples, see 'successful politicians'.
And if this "Josh" was capable of manipulating his boss into letting him take a dump on the company's lobby, well, who are we to say that he shouldn't? not that I'd do such a thing, but still, that's pretty impressive.
Of course, really extremely smart people can outsmart fools into getting them to do what they want.
Never tried to debate with a creationist religious fundamentalist before? well, manipulating your boss' boss into doing what you want is even worse, and the idiocy grows at an exponential level the more you rise on the management hierarchy. Plus there's the ethical implications of it, usually its best simply to walk away and let them self-destruct.
I don't do software development, but as a manager, yeah, I'd generally rather work with pleasant people who do their jobs "slow and steady" rather than the "brilliant" but unreliable guy. The real issue is often not the uncertainty about exactly how long a project will take, but uncertainty about whether you can trust what you're being told how long a project will take.
Pro tip: with software, you can *never* trust 100% what you're being told how long a project will take. You can start making some rough estimations when the software is already architected, designed and all it remains is to actually write the thing and test/debug it, but until then estimates are at best a shot in the dark, at worst an attempt to deceive their managers (meaning you) so they STFU and go bother someone else.
With the theoretically-9-weeks-but-who-knows answer, everyone would actually be better off being told, "I have no clue how long it will take," because at least then there would be no false expectations.
In terms of honesty, yes. But much like the people who write software even your grandma can understand, actually stating to your boss you don't have a clue about how long it'll take means you'll get fired next week, and replaced by an expensive consultant who *does* have the balls to lie to your face and tell you "I'll have it in less than five weeks", then make some excuses when its been 10 weeks and it's still a long way from being finished.
Seriously, for the individuals that want to Nitpick about the name, there is no place called "America".
Right, and wrong. Under the US' educational system, South America and North America are distinct, separate continents, but for other countries the continent is America and the division of north, south and sometimes, central is solely to simplify reffering to areas of such a large continent. Like East Asia or Northern Africa, neither of which is a separate continent.
I'm pretty sure that "North American" is universal understood to be someone from any country in North America.
Not really. Since most people in latin-speaking countries understand "American" as "someone born in the continent of America", on most dubbings of TV shows it is translated as "estadounidense" (meaning "someone from the United States"), but it is also sometimes translated as "North American" and casually, if someone says that "northamericans are a bunch of idiots", Canadians usually need not be offended ;)
Seriously, for a pejorative term started by the british (to differentiate the "American English" from the real, true Englishmen), you guys have taken this *way* too far. Just invent a new word already, or try to translate "estadounidense" in a manner that doesn't sound too bloody stupid, and give "America" back to the continent named after Amerigo Vespucci. Or just STFU when we call you USians ;)
For $16.000 I expect a case with good enough ventilation to make sure my $16.000 investment doesn't turn into an insanely expensive paperweight after a single session of Crysis. And with that many fans, it's kinda hard to get something to look Ferrari-ish, whereas the whole "little mainframe" look fits that perfectly.
No they don't, and no it isn't. People in academia have *already* standardized in LaTeX, Word's math support is attrocious and I don't know of any other technology trying to compete in that area, so LaTeX it is. Well, except for the few masochists who prefer to use straight TeX ;)
And frankly, with things like Tortoise, SVN is hardly more complex than submitting random crap to a blog or such. It may or may not be easy for the admin who has to set it up (I've yet to set up my own SVN server), but from the user's point of view it's all fairly trivial.
The two aren't mutually exclusive. You can have the intellectual elites riding (and directing) the bleeding edge of research, while the country as a whole is slow on the uptake of the science the elites (both domestic and foreign) produce.
Specially if a good percentage of the intellectual elite is foreign, not a product of the US educational system.
Claiming religious belief is absurd. If I say the sky is red, and grass is purple, because I was honestly raised to believe these things, does that mean that a debate over whether clear daytime sky on Earth is blue or red is merely a difference of opinion?
It is. Let us define "daytime" as "any time of the day in which the sun is visible on the sky", and define each color by its most common definition. Now, we can safely state that, as far as my own personal experience determines at least, clear sky on Earth varies between blue, to purple, to red during a typical daytime and as such any possible combination of colors between blue and red is a valid answer to the question.
The grass is a bit trickier, but it depends on both the particular shade of colors you like to call 'green', the particular shade of colors you like to call 'purple', and the particular species of flora you like to call 'grass'.
With no intention to offend, I think this provides a good example for MickLinux's post above. Successfully demonstrating a seemingly trivial expression such as "the grass is green" requires one to precisely define what "grass" is, what "green" means, what characteristics are exclusive to "green" elements, how to measure such characteristics, then determine the margin of error of such experiment. In fact, my 'demonstration' of the sky being blue-and-red above is far from rigurous, though it is merely an example to make my point rather than conclusive proof of anything :)
No, but there are situations where you have both a variable named 'count' and a variable named 'conut', both of the same type and so the compiler doesn't think there's an error.
Unlikely in the case of 'conut', but fairly common when dealing with single-letter variables, and perhaps not so unlikely with things like 'bear' and 'beer', though what kind of program would need to use those words as variable names is beyond my imagination.
Well, that's why I said *if* they win over NCSoft. More likely than not this will get thrown out as it deserves, perhaps after some small donations to NCSoft's legal team courtesy of Sony and Blizzard, but any argument that Blizzard could use for WoW NCSoft could use for Tabula Rasa or Guild Wars so if they lose I don't think it'll be as clear-cut for Blizzard as some people believe.
Blizzard makes a few handy billion per year. I imagine they could front a defense that would make the SCO epic look like a parking infringement notice.
Honestly, I doubt it. There's a reason IBM's lawyers are typically known as the Nazgul, they've got a reputation as the most dangerous lawyers money can buy so if they couldn't end it sooner and bloodier for SCO, chances are nobody could have.
Add to that the fact that this is about patents instead of copyright, which are usually much more vague in their phrasing, and you'd see that *if* they do win against NCSoft, I believe Blizzard is in for some serious pain next. The US is obssessed over protecting the concept of "IP" as of late, and it shows on both laws and judgements.
But that'd be a result more of a witch-hunt against Bush rather than Obama apologism. If this had happened during Bush's first year in office, I believe the popular response would've been "and this is news for nerds?".
Which is exactly my personal response now.
No, the sole purpose of the computer is to access the applications they require to do their work, but *those* had already been taken care of and migrated to multi-platform offerings long beforehand. All the user training they needed to do *now* was to teach them which icons launched which applications, and remind them to stay away from games in work hours ;)
In context, I think he was reffering to the biggest obstacles for users to adapt themselves to it. From their perspective, different icons and different (more!) games are about the only thing they'll see, since all they need an OS for is to launch the applications they need to work, which had already been migrated before.
Reliability, ease of administration, security and such may matter to the average home user, but in a large organization those things only serve to make the local IT staff less prone to BOFH outbursts :)
No, this is like after you go shopping, a neighbor passes by your door and sees you left your keys on the door, picks them up, uses them to enter your house, leaves the key on the table along with a note stating what happened, and left.
That actually happened to my mom once, and first thing she did when she got back home was to go give her thanks to the neighbor, *not* to sue her for trespassing.
I'll start with the last part: no, the BBC isn't "more allowed" to break the law because they have brand recognition, they are allowed to break the law because they did it in the name of journalism and made sure nobody got hurt (and no, the electricity argument is bollocks and everyone knows it). Same reason I defended the guy a while back that was thrown in jail in the US for correctly guessing some big wig's password was, in fact, "password".
Further, this *is* old news for us, tech guys but if it was truly common knowledge getting 22.000 computers in a botnet would be *way* harder than it apparently is. And much like speeding and traffic accidents, until it stops being so fucking common it deserves to be in the news IMHO. Plus, we know that at least a good percentage of those 22.000 computers will have some security now, these kind of things serve as a good scare for the average people.
As for your reporting suggestions, I'd send them to the BBC as commentary for this news, they're actually quite good. Perhaps they'll consider them, perhaps they won't, but I think you have a better shot with them than with Fox News ;)
WTF!? are you seriously arguing that reporting on the sorry state of computer security is "avoid reporting on things that annoy the powerful", and that information is in any way *safe* in computers that can be hacked en masse through fucking chat networks!?
You either commented on the wrong thread, or you're smoking some pretty heavy stuff.