Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think Google required 2.6 billion ANYTHING to get started. A true competitor for Google will not require a ton of money, but a ton of brainpower. Google is successful because their have a great philosophy and attract the best and brightest. They know how to treat their people (customers and employees both) right and do so.
What would make them think that pooring money into a startup could create what numerous other companies couldn't? (MS, Yahoo, AskJeeves, etc) AskJeeves even had a really great idea (natural language queries) and STILL didn't make it.
What makes you think this has not already happened? Botnets. They are a very real problem right now, and the public, in general, just ignores the problem. Only techies even care a little about botnets, and we generally are not infested with them. To the common Joe, it's just a buzzword and yet another virus. (Joe doesn't know the difference, and calls them all viruses.)
That is a valid concern as the author of PAR has indeed been working on a better implementation. But in the past, he has kept the parchive program backwards compatible. (The PAR2 version also handles PAR, even though they are quite different.)
Re:Recommended for new *nix users?
on
The Birth of vi
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· Score: 1
Depends on who you define as a 'new *nix user'.
If I gave a Kubuntu system to my mother (I wouldn't, because all she does is play those silly Windows-based games) then I would definitely not even show her the command line.
When we hired a new programmer at work that had very little *nix experience, I immediately told him to learn and love vi.
You'd be MUCH better off creating PAR2 files for the archive set, instead.
If you made 2 copies of the archive on the media, and piece 10 of both sets die, you've lost everything. If you made 1 copy of the archive, and a 10% par set, any 10% of the pieces (data and parity both) could die and you'd still have your data. If you made a 100% par set, you could lose half of the data and parity and still recover. And it doesn't matter which portions.
Add to that the fact that if you lost piece 10 in archive 1, and piece 9 in archive 2, it would be not much fun to figure out the dead pieces and make a full archive again. With PAR2, the tool will do the work for you.
Inconvenienced slightly, or given a cause for their own accident, you mean. If people were good drivers, this would be a good idea. But they aren't. And sometimes, all it takes it some nutjob with his 4-way flashers on for no reason to make an idiot have an accident. If a car suddenly started flashing EVERY light, they'd either:
A) Have no bloody idea what's going on, and stare to find out or B) Know that the person is drunk and immediately start digging for the cell phone, start changing lanes to get the license plate, and probably a few other stupid things like turning down the radio at the same time.
Not everyone is this stupid, but if one of these idiots caused an accident 1% of the time the car 'alerted' others, it would be quite horrid.
No, it sounds like a great idea on paper, but when you add in human stupidity, it's not so great. Or even good.
I agree with the rest of your points, but this one, as a programmer, bothers me:
"Part of the problem is that computers intimidate users. They never know if it is going to break when they do something. "Save" is a term that is strongly associated with computers these days. Saving a file and saving changes aren't so much "saving" as they are writing something to a semi-permanent record. They don't fit well with the document/folder metaphor because on paper people save a file or they toss it, they don't save part of a file or undo all the writing they have done in the last hour but keep the file itself and the old work. On the back end saving changes or saving a new file is pretty much the same thing. You write to disk. It is not so in the minds of many users."
What? What do they think the difference is? Are you saying that if they change a setting in an Options dialog, and are asked to 'save the changes' (Never seen it, it always says 'Apply'...) then they will think it is asking to save them to a file that they will specify? I can't think of a single instance 'save the changes' that didn't mean 'save the file to disk'... And most were used because they tried to exit without saving, and it's asking one last time.
I resist change? I'm a programmer. I effect change. If you only store documents on your desk, why are you navigating so deeply into your computer's hard drive? Is it because you have more stuff to store, or do you just have absolutely no idea why most document programs default to 'My Documents'? Consider that icon your desk to be the stack of folders, and you're there.
To the computer, there is NO difference between unplugging a cable and the cable going link-dead. I say again, if it went link-dead and didn't tell you, you'd be pissed. As for the virus scanner... Get a better one. The good ones don't do that.
Video in HTML IS a horrid kludge. But it does what you asked for a HELL of a lot better than what you suggested.
Flash IS a complicated thing, or maybe you haven't looked deep enough into it. Try some actual programming with it, instead of just pointing and clicking next time.
Yes, versioning file systems DO exist. I researched several a little while back. They all sucked. Horribly. Will someone make one eventually that isn't total crap? Probably.
What does KIOSLAVE have to do with anything again? I get that it lets you treat your fileserver, your ipod and a CD as if they were drives on the computer, and just move files... But it has absolutely nothing to do with anything else you talked about. I use FISH every day and it's probably the single greatest thing about KDE, in my opinion.
You should probably try to calm it on the insults. They do not help you get your point across, and only make you look a fool. Don't assume someone knows less than you simply because they didn't spell it all out for you. Many people tend to try to treat others as if they have a brain and won't spoon-feed you the information.
Part of the problem was the whole desktop metaphor. It's slightly implemented, but just for pretty pictures. For example, when I want to save some physical document I'm working on, I either drop it into a folder or a binder. The current desktop metaphor is to navigate a menu system to save the file in a hierarchical location that's easier for computer OSes to manage. Why can't I just drag the document to a folder?
You can. You don't just 'drop it into a folder' in real life, either. You put it in a folder, inside a drawer, inside a filing cabinet, inside a room, inside a building, etc etc.
When writing a document with pen/paper I can easily pull back revisions since I just cross them out. If I organize a presentation with index cards I can easily re-arrange them. With a computer saving a file will often blow away previous revisions. With the amount of hard drive space available, everything should be version controlled unless explicitly disabled.
You can. Don't ERASE the information in the file when you change it. Just cross it out with a strike-through, instead. You've got the same thing as the paper now.
What's with all the warnings and popup dialogs too? In a typical session my AV software puts up a warning, the updater puts up a warning, when I connect/disconnect from the LAN I get a warning, when I close a window I get a warning, when I delete a file I get a warning. The latter is annoying too because when I delete a physical file it's just a matter of retrieving it from the trash. The OS should just save the current and do what I asked. If I need to retrieve, so be it.
Because something bad is happening. If the network disconnected and DIDN'T tell you, you'd be pissed. If you got a virus and it DIDN'T tell you, you'd be pissed. (If you get THAT many warnings, you are doing something seriously wrong, btw.) If you delete a file... Well, maybe you don't need a warning for that, since the trashcan DOES now save the doc in case you want it back.
Simple things that are within the capabilities of a modern PC but alien to a "real" desktop are missing. For example, why is it so difficult to embed multimedia within a word processing document (yup, HTML can do this with relative ease, but most word procs can't). Text should auto-flow around images. Video should be as easy as dropping in a link to YouTube or other video hosting sites. Ideally, menuing systems like those in DVD authoring packages should be available.
With EASE? No it can't. Video is websites is a HUGE kludge, and only exists because so many people wanted it. Most people do not feel the need to have a 300mb video file inside a 1kb document. Text DOES flow around images... What word processor are you using? What are you looking to make a menu for? A video? Use a DVD. That's what it's for. If the videos are on the hard drive, they don't have much use for a menu. And if they're on an optical disc, DVD exists to handle that.
Outside of business users, people use computers for relatively few purposes: sending emails, writing some documents, keeping in touch with family/friends, browsing for entertainment and information. When I send a message to a family member it would be wonderful if they could open the letter, see the video and click on video links for other stuff.
So you're looking for a document that contains video, and a system of links inside it so they can click them. And you want to stuff their mailbox with it? JUST USE HTML. Host it on a free website somewhere and send them a link. Their email box cannot handle a 300mb video greeting card. Or even a 30mb one. (Which would be pretty crappy in quality.) If you want 'video links', use Flash. There's a REASON Flash is so complicated, you know. It's a complicated thing to do. Any attempt to make it 'easy' would end up pathetic and useless.
The reason your ideas don't exist is because they aren't practical, even though that was your reason for creating them. Technologies exist that cover the need more than adequately, and do the job well. You would like to invent needly complexity and probably break a lot of other stuff on the way.
They have these in central Florida, as well, but not under a standardized name. It used to be GREAT for getting neat stuff cheap, but now it's just another depot to buy parts at. Might as well shop online.
As for the E3 -> EfAE... Didn't they close the E3 because there were too many people? And wasn't E3 about showing stuff that didn't exist yet, but would within the next year or so?
So they completely ignored the problem and instead turned it from a highly successful expo to a swapmeet that noboby really cares about.
Brilliant!
1) Create wildly successful expo. 2) Run with it for a few years. 3) Cancel expo. 4) Create swapmeet under a new name. 5) ??? 6) Profit!
Because I've been raised in society, where killing children is considered infinitely worse than killing adults. That's what I was raised to believe, and old beliefs die hard.
I don't particularly care for stories about murder and crime. Most of the stories I read have crime in them, sure, but the focus is not the crime. Having a story meant to explore the crime itself does not entice me at all. Having a story about killing children, to me, is just sick.
This is why I don't watch shows like CSI. Every single commercial I've ever seen for that show is about how someone murdered a mother and kids, or raped a little girl, or... Ugh. There are other shows like Bones and House that have some of these issues in them, but they don't dwell on them. They might be mentioned in a 5-minute stretch or something, but they aren't dwelt upon for the entire episode. No, I've never watched CSI, and maybe it isn't as bad as I think. But they shouldn't make the commercial like that if that's now what the show is like.
So no, to me, it is NOT okay because Montresor is fictional, and no, it would not be okay if they changed the name of SCMRPG and the people in it.
I don't have any problem with Columbine being remembered as a particularly horrid day in American history, and something that needs to be learned from. I have a problem with making a GAME out of it and letting people enjoy the experience of murdering a bunch of highschoolers. I even have a problem with making a movie out of it if it trivializes the murder and tries to paint the murderers as poor, misguided kids. There's no excuse.
"I enjoy meeting (and working with) the people who took as much math and physics as they possibly could, and who took the CS classes aimed at the hardcore nerd. But then, I'm a hardcore nerd myself, so I'm biased."
That's me. I took all of the sciences except for 'Earth Science' at a community college for the optional credits involved. I also took all of the math classes. And I also enjoy talking to people who enjoy these things, as they usually have their own viewpoint, instead of being a parrot.
"In any case, it will be a long time before I'm on the hiring side of the table again. I've gone back into research (Hydrology and Water Conservation. I live in the desert, and this is a pretty interesting field with a surprising amount of computer programming work involved.) This is a whole new gig for me, so wish me luck! I'm pretty happy to be out of the corporate world for once."
I can't say I envy you there, but good luck! I used to live out in the Mojave Desert (little town called Barstow) and I loved the town, but I prefer to be within a couple hours of a good mall. (And the tech/game stores associated with that.) I found (was found by?) a nice 'small' company that is now rapidly growing and actually knows what it's doing, with no dot-com capital. It's not corporate, but it's not 'be your own boss' either... A very nice middle ground.
DESCRIPTION: This game delves into the morning of April 20th, 1999 and asks players to relive that day through the eyes of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, those responsible for the deadliest school shooting in American history. Preview pictures can be found below.
Yeah, you get to play 'the killers'. They feed you a lot of crap about them being instrumental in opening the eyes of the world, but it's just sick.
That's a great amount of storage and a great price, but what about some REAL information: Speed, heat, power consumption. If for the same price I can run 4 250gb drives and save on heat and increase speed, this doesn't make sense to do. If I can run 6 and RAID them, and gain security, it really doesn't make sense.
The largest drive in the world isn't any use to me if it's slower than a 3.5" floppy or I can use it to replace my space heater.
My mistake, I picked the second definition, which does indeed only related to mathematics, because it said 'average' in it and I wasn't thinking mathematics.
1. situated in or pertaining to the middle; median; intermediate. and (American Heritage Dictionary, further into that same page) Average; ordinary.
Ordinary does not have a defintion related to mathematics that I know of. This means that medial, when not in relation to mathematics, means 'ordinary' or 'average'.
The Grammar Police may have been right, or they may not have been. (They probably were.) But to be the GP, you have to be exact and they were not. What's the point of being anal if you're not going to go all the way?
The Grid is used for complex, processor-intensive tasks, I'm sure. The regular daily cruft is probably still done on the old mainframe. Those would be 'medial tasks'. If they made it into a monitor instead of a system that does processing, that might be considered menial. (I'm having a hard time finding 'menial' tasks a computer can do...)
If by KDE you mean 'KDE, all the apps hosted on the KDE site, and all the features of KDE like the FISH protocol' then I am -so- with you. If apps like K3B would run also, nothing could stop me from buying it.
But if you mean just the window manager and such, and not Quanta/Konqueror/Konsole... I'd have to pass. KDE is useful to me. It's not about looks.
I agree that most people who do not want a 4-year degree do not acknowledge the pain involved with getting them. They willfully ignore the work involved so that they do not have to think of themselves as failures. They aren't failures, but admitting to themselves that they can't (or won't) do that much work is a failure in their mind. The easiest way to cope is to put down the accomplishments of others.
And I agree with the GP post that a 4yr degree with the worst grades trumps a 2yr degree with perfect grades in most situations. Entry level is one of the situations that it doesn't mean much more. It can even keep you from getting the job.
What does a 4yr degree mean to a company? It means they'll have to pay you more money for the same job. If the college/uni is worth its salt, you'll be enough better at the job that it's worth the money. But most entry-level computer jobs are very simple. (The job I got was not entry level. I wasn't supposed to be the only programmer on staff, but a series of events caused this to be. I was responsible for all the software systems that had been developed in-house, updating an old one, and overseeing the outsourced programmers. A bit more than I expected, but I managed well enough that I got a huge raise at 3 months, and another at 1 yr. There are more programmers now and the load is shared.)
As for college experience... The college only has so many labs and departments. If every Programming major tried to do that, most would fail to find anything. I do agree that they should have SOMETHING to show for their time in college, though, even if it's a small game or pointless program. They should be able to show they actually care about programming, and aren't just trying to find an easy job with big money. (Which it isn't.) Open source projects are great for this, as they supply motivation. I worked on an open source game engine for a while, and it was quite rewarding. (I actually just tried to contact them again lately, as I want to develop some ideas with it, but their repository is a bit messed up.)
My point is that while degrees matter a LOT in higher-level job hunting, they don't matter so much in entry-level. Degrees are expensive for companies and they don't actually prove you can do the job. (As proved by the guy whose resume looked a LOT better than mine, but I blew him out of the water on the Brainbench testing.)
Actually, GPA doesn't even manage to get you a 'first job', either. (I assume you mean 'first job in that field' because if it really IS your first job, you had rich parents AND a ton of luck.)
I graduated with a 2-yr computer programming degree and a 4.0 GPA. I went a year and a half without getting a single computer job at all. GPA did not even get me an interview. The job I finally landed, I got by taking a test at Brain Bench and blowing everyone else away. (Company paid for it... Half personality, half technical. They insisted new-hires do well on both.)
Why do you call it Sims 2? That exists already. This is 'Wii Sims' or some such.
As for the death... The major complaint in the console versions of The Sims is that is has a plot and is scaled back. It wasn't just freeform-do-whatever like the PC version. Death is sometimes one of the scaled back things, but is by no means the major reason for lack of sales.
Slashdot Mirror
Bingo. Exactly right.
And you get bonus points for being the first post (that I've seen) that stated that you should use CSS to style the button.
Not only do you have no idea what TFA is about, you're wrong about what you're talking about as well.
That isn't 'lazy programmers'. That's people trying to up their search engine rank without bothering their customers with a ton of pointless text.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think Google required 2.6 billion ANYTHING to get started. A true competitor for Google will not require a ton of money, but a ton of brainpower. Google is successful because their have a great philosophy and attract the best and brightest. They know how to treat their people (customers and employees both) right and do so.
What would make them think that pooring money into a startup could create what numerous other companies couldn't? (MS, Yahoo, AskJeeves, etc) AskJeeves even had a really great idea (natural language queries) and STILL didn't make it.
Exactly. But I think everyone forgets something:
Those labels exist because the manufacturer has ALREADY had problems with the issue. Probably a lawsuit.
They are not 'wacky' or 'stupid' in any way. The idiots that made the label HAVE to exist are the stupid ones.
What makes you think this has not already happened? Botnets. They are a very real problem right now, and the public, in general, just ignores the problem. Only techies even care a little about botnets, and we generally are not infested with them. To the common Joe, it's just a buzzword and yet another virus. (Joe doesn't know the difference, and calls them all viruses.)
That is a valid concern as the author of PAR has indeed been working on a better implementation. But in the past, he has kept the parchive program backwards compatible. (The PAR2 version also handles PAR, even though they are quite different.)
Depends on who you define as a 'new *nix user'.
If I gave a Kubuntu system to my mother (I wouldn't, because all she does is play those silly Windows-based games) then I would definitely not even show her the command line.
When we hired a new programmer at work that had very little *nix experience, I immediately told him to learn and love vi.
You'd be MUCH better off creating PAR2 files for the archive set, instead.
If you made 2 copies of the archive on the media, and piece 10 of both sets die, you've lost everything. If you made 1 copy of the archive, and a 10% par set, any 10% of the pieces (data and parity both) could die and you'd still have your data. If you made a 100% par set, you could lose half of the data and parity and still recover. And it doesn't matter which portions.
Add to that the fact that if you lost piece 10 in archive 1, and piece 9 in archive 2, it would be not much fun to figure out the dead pieces and make a full archive again. With PAR2, the tool will do the work for you.
Inconvenienced slightly, or given a cause for their own accident, you mean. If people were good drivers, this would be a good idea. But they aren't. And sometimes, all it takes it some nutjob with his 4-way flashers on for no reason to make an idiot have an accident. If a car suddenly started flashing EVERY light, they'd either:
A) Have no bloody idea what's going on, and stare to find out
or
B) Know that the person is drunk and immediately start digging for the cell phone, start changing lanes to get the license plate, and probably a few other stupid things like turning down the radio at the same time.
Not everyone is this stupid, but if one of these idiots caused an accident 1% of the time the car 'alerted' others, it would be quite horrid.
No, it sounds like a great idea on paper, but when you add in human stupidity, it's not so great. Or even good.
Bzzzt. Ah, sorry, thanks for playing though.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062622/quotes
"I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that. "
I agree with the rest of your points, but this one, as a programmer, bothers me:
"Part of the problem is that computers intimidate users. They never know if it is going to break when they do something. "Save" is a term that is strongly associated with computers these days. Saving a file and saving changes aren't so much "saving" as they are writing something to a semi-permanent record. They don't fit well with the document/folder metaphor because on paper people save a file or they toss it, they don't save part of a file or undo all the writing they have done in the last hour but keep the file itself and the old work. On the back end saving changes or saving a new file is pretty much the same thing. You write to disk. It is not so in the minds of many users."
What? What do they think the difference is? Are you saying that if they change a setting in an Options dialog, and are asked to 'save the changes' (Never seen it, it always says 'Apply'...) then they will think it is asking to save them to a file that they will specify? I can't think of a single instance 'save the changes' that didn't mean 'save the file to disk'... And most were used because they tried to exit without saving, and it's asking one last time.
I resist change? I'm a programmer. I effect change. If you only store documents on your desk, why are you navigating so deeply into your computer's hard drive? Is it because you have more stuff to store, or do you just have absolutely no idea why most document programs default to 'My Documents'? Consider that icon your desk to be the stack of folders, and you're there.
To the computer, there is NO difference between unplugging a cable and the cable going link-dead. I say again, if it went link-dead and didn't tell you, you'd be pissed. As for the virus scanner... Get a better one. The good ones don't do that.
Video in HTML IS a horrid kludge. But it does what you asked for a HELL of a lot better than what you suggested.
Flash IS a complicated thing, or maybe you haven't looked deep enough into it. Try some actual programming with it, instead of just pointing and clicking next time.
Yes, versioning file systems DO exist. I researched several a little while back. They all sucked. Horribly. Will someone make one eventually that isn't total crap? Probably.
What does KIOSLAVE have to do with anything again? I get that it lets you treat your fileserver, your ipod and a CD as if they were drives on the computer, and just move files... But it has absolutely nothing to do with anything else you talked about. I use FISH every day and it's probably the single greatest thing about KDE, in my opinion.
You should probably try to calm it on the insults. They do not help you get your point across, and only make you look a fool. Don't assume someone knows less than you simply because they didn't spell it all out for you. Many people tend to try to treat others as if they have a brain and won't spoon-feed you the information.
Part of the problem was the whole desktop metaphor. It's slightly implemented, but just for pretty pictures. For example, when I want to save some physical document I'm working on, I either drop it into a folder or a binder. The current desktop metaphor is to navigate a menu system to save the file in a hierarchical location that's easier for computer OSes to manage. Why can't I just drag the document to a folder?
You can. You don't just 'drop it into a folder' in real life, either. You put it in a folder, inside a drawer, inside a filing cabinet, inside a room, inside a building, etc etc.
When writing a document with pen/paper I can easily pull back revisions since I just cross them out. If I organize a presentation with index cards I can easily re-arrange them. With a computer saving a file will often blow away previous revisions. With the amount of hard drive space available, everything should be version controlled unless explicitly disabled.
You can. Don't ERASE the information in the file when you change it. Just cross it out with a strike-through, instead. You've got the same thing as the paper now.
What's with all the warnings and popup dialogs too? In a typical session my AV software puts up a warning, the updater puts up a warning, when I connect/disconnect from the LAN I get a warning, when I close a window I get a warning, when I delete a file I get a warning. The latter is annoying too because when I delete a physical file it's just a matter of retrieving it from the trash. The OS should just save the current and do what I asked. If I need to retrieve, so be it.
Because something bad is happening. If the network disconnected and DIDN'T tell you, you'd be pissed. If you got a virus and it DIDN'T tell you, you'd be pissed. (If you get THAT many warnings, you are doing something seriously wrong, btw.) If you delete a file... Well, maybe you don't need a warning for that, since the trashcan DOES now save the doc in case you want it back.
Simple things that are within the capabilities of a modern PC but alien to a "real" desktop are missing. For example, why is it so difficult to embed multimedia within a word processing document (yup, HTML can do this with relative ease, but most word procs can't). Text should auto-flow around images. Video should be as easy as dropping in a link to YouTube or other video hosting sites. Ideally, menuing systems like those in DVD authoring packages should be available.
With EASE? No it can't. Video is websites is a HUGE kludge, and only exists because so many people wanted it. Most people do not feel the need to have a 300mb video file inside a 1kb document. Text DOES flow around images... What word processor are you using? What are you looking to make a menu for? A video? Use a DVD. That's what it's for. If the videos are on the hard drive, they don't have much use for a menu. And if they're on an optical disc, DVD exists to handle that.
Outside of business users, people use computers for relatively few purposes: sending emails, writing some documents, keeping in touch with family/friends, browsing for entertainment and information. When I send a message to a family member it would be wonderful if they could open the letter, see the video and click on video links for other stuff.
So you're looking for a document that contains video, and a system of links inside it so they can click them. And you want to stuff their mailbox with it? JUST USE HTML. Host it on a free website somewhere and send them a link. Their email box cannot handle a 300mb video greeting card. Or even a 30mb one. (Which would be pretty crappy in quality.) If you want 'video links', use Flash. There's a REASON Flash is so complicated, you know. It's a complicated thing to do. Any attempt to make it 'easy' would end up pathetic and useless.
The reason your ideas don't exist is because they aren't practical, even though that was your reason for creating them. Technologies exist that cover the need more than adequately, and do the job well. You would like to invent needly complexity and probably break a lot of other stuff on the way.
I'm a *programmer* and I was wondering exactly the same thing. I suspect it's a typo, and was meant to be 'modem'.
They have these in central Florida, as well, but not under a standardized name. It used to be GREAT for getting neat stuff cheap, but now it's just another depot to buy parts at. Might as well shop online.
As for the E3 -> EfAE... Didn't they close the E3 because there were too many people? And wasn't E3 about showing stuff that didn't exist yet, but would within the next year or so?
So they completely ignored the problem and instead turned it from a highly successful expo to a swapmeet that noboby really cares about.
Brilliant!
1) Create wildly successful expo.
2) Run with it for a few years.
3) Cancel expo.
4) Create swapmeet under a new name.
5) ???
6) Profit!
Wait... Wasn't the profit up around #2?
Because I've been raised in society, where killing children is considered infinitely worse than killing adults. That's what I was raised to believe, and old beliefs die hard.
I don't particularly care for stories about murder and crime. Most of the stories I read have crime in them, sure, but the focus is not the crime. Having a story meant to explore the crime itself does not entice me at all. Having a story about killing children, to me, is just sick.
This is why I don't watch shows like CSI. Every single commercial I've ever seen for that show is about how someone murdered a mother and kids, or raped a little girl, or... Ugh. There are other shows like Bones and House that have some of these issues in them, but they don't dwell on them. They might be mentioned in a 5-minute stretch or something, but they aren't dwelt upon for the entire episode. No, I've never watched CSI, and maybe it isn't as bad as I think. But they shouldn't make the commercial like that if that's now what the show is like.
So no, to me, it is NOT okay because Montresor is fictional, and no, it would not be okay if they changed the name of SCMRPG and the people in it.
I don't have any problem with Columbine being remembered as a particularly horrid day in American history, and something that needs to be learned from. I have a problem with making a GAME out of it and letting people enjoy the experience of murdering a bunch of highschoolers. I even have a problem with making a movie out of it if it trivializes the murder and tries to paint the murderers as poor, misguided kids. There's no excuse.
"I enjoy meeting (and working with) the people who took as much math and physics as they possibly could, and who took the CS classes aimed at the hardcore nerd. But then, I'm a hardcore nerd myself, so I'm biased."
That's me. I took all of the sciences except for 'Earth Science' at a community college for the optional credits involved. I also took all of the math classes. And I also enjoy talking to people who enjoy these things, as they usually have their own viewpoint, instead of being a parrot.
"In any case, it will be a long time before I'm on the hiring side of the table again. I've gone back into research (Hydrology and Water Conservation. I live in the desert, and this is a pretty interesting field with a surprising amount of computer programming work involved.) This is a whole new gig for me, so wish me luck! I'm pretty happy to be out of the corporate world for once."
I can't say I envy you there, but good luck! I used to live out in the Mojave Desert (little town called Barstow) and I loved the town, but I prefer to be within a couple hours of a good mall. (And the tech/game stores associated with that.) I found (was found by?) a nice 'small' company that is now rapidly growing and actually knows what it's doing, with no dot-com capital. It's not corporate, but it's not 'be your own boss' either... A very nice middle ground.
From the game's site:
DESCRIPTION: This game delves into the morning of April 20th, 1999 and asks players to relive that day through the eyes of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, those responsible for the deadliest school shooting in American history. Preview pictures can be found below.
Yeah, you get to play 'the killers'. They feed you a lot of crap about them being instrumental in opening the eyes of the world, but it's just sick.
That's a great amount of storage and a great price, but what about some REAL information: Speed, heat, power consumption. If for the same price I can run 4 250gb drives and save on heat and increase speed, this doesn't make sense to do. If I can run 6 and RAID them, and gain security, it really doesn't make sense.
The largest drive in the world isn't any use to me if it's slower than a 3.5" floppy or I can use it to replace my space heater.
My mistake, I picked the second definition, which does indeed only related to mathematics, because it said 'average' in it and I wasn't thinking mathematics.
1. situated in or pertaining to the middle; median; intermediate.
and
(American Heritage Dictionary, further into that same page)
Average; ordinary.
Ordinary does not have a defintion related to mathematics that I know of. This means that medial, when not in relation to mathematics, means 'ordinary' or 'average'.
The Grammar Police may have been right, or they may not have been. (They probably were.) But to be the GP, you have to be exact and they were not. What's the point of being anal if you're not going to go all the way?
While it is quite possible they meant 'menial', as that is the common phrase, they might also have meant just what they said.
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=medial
2. pertaining to a mean or average; average.
The Grid is used for complex, processor-intensive tasks, I'm sure. The regular daily cruft is probably still done on the old mainframe. Those would be 'medial tasks'. If they made it into a monitor instead of a system that does processing, that might be considered menial. (I'm having a hard time finding 'menial' tasks a computer can do...)
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=menial
1. lowly and sometimes degrading: menial work.
Sooo... If you're going to be grammar police, please do your homework first.
If by KDE you mean 'KDE, all the apps hosted on the KDE site, and all the features of KDE like the FISH protocol' then I am -so- with you. If apps like K3B would run also, nothing could stop me from buying it.
But if you mean just the window manager and such, and not Quanta/Konqueror/Konsole... I'd have to pass. KDE is useful to me. It's not about looks.
I agree that most people who do not want a 4-year degree do not acknowledge the pain involved with getting them. They willfully ignore the work involved so that they do not have to think of themselves as failures. They aren't failures, but admitting to themselves that they can't (or won't) do that much work is a failure in their mind. The easiest way to cope is to put down the accomplishments of others.
And I agree with the GP post that a 4yr degree with the worst grades trumps a 2yr degree with perfect grades in most situations. Entry level is one of the situations that it doesn't mean much more. It can even keep you from getting the job.
What does a 4yr degree mean to a company? It means they'll have to pay you more money for the same job. If the college/uni is worth its salt, you'll be enough better at the job that it's worth the money. But most entry-level computer jobs are very simple. (The job I got was not entry level. I wasn't supposed to be the only programmer on staff, but a series of events caused this to be. I was responsible for all the software systems that had been developed in-house, updating an old one, and overseeing the outsourced programmers. A bit more than I expected, but I managed well enough that I got a huge raise at 3 months, and another at 1 yr. There are more programmers now and the load is shared.)
As for college experience... The college only has so many labs and departments. If every Programming major tried to do that, most would fail to find anything. I do agree that they should have SOMETHING to show for their time in college, though, even if it's a small game or pointless program. They should be able to show they actually care about programming, and aren't just trying to find an easy job with big money. (Which it isn't.) Open source projects are great for this, as they supply motivation. I worked on an open source game engine for a while, and it was quite rewarding. (I actually just tried to contact them again lately, as I want to develop some ideas with it, but their repository is a bit messed up.)
My point is that while degrees matter a LOT in higher-level job hunting, they don't matter so much in entry-level. Degrees are expensive for companies and they don't actually prove you can do the job. (As proved by the guy whose resume looked a LOT better than mine, but I blew him out of the water on the Brainbench testing.)
Actually, GPA doesn't even manage to get you a 'first job', either. (I assume you mean 'first job in that field' because if it really IS your first job, you had rich parents AND a ton of luck.)
I graduated with a 2-yr computer programming degree and a 4.0 GPA. I went a year and a half without getting a single computer job at all. GPA did not even get me an interview. The job I finally landed, I got by taking a test at Brain Bench and blowing everyone else away. (Company paid for it... Half personality, half technical. They insisted new-hires do well on both.)
Why do you call it Sims 2? That exists already. This is 'Wii Sims' or some such.
As for the death... The major complaint in the console versions of The Sims is that is has a plot and is scaled back. It wasn't just freeform-do-whatever like the PC version. Death is sometimes one of the scaled back things, but is by no means the major reason for lack of sales.