Nice summary. Too bad it's stolen verbatim from TFA.
Ruby on Rails seems to be a lightning rod for controversy. At the heart of most of the controversy lies amazing productivity claims. Crossing Borders author Bruce Tate has come to understand that Rails isn't a better hammer; it's a different kind of tool. This article explores the compromises and design decisions that went into making Rails so productive within its niche. Then it looks at Rails-inspired ideas that should get more attention within the Java(TM) community.
Yeah, I'm sure they do exist. I enjoy tech support, but I enjoy programming even more. And my current job actually DOES value the work I do, but one of the requirements to even get the job was that I have the right kind of personality. I even had to go through an online test to prove personality and skills. I didn't mind, though, because I knew I'd pass it with flying colors. But at least they don't do the whole politics thing. (At least, not that I've seen in 6 months.)
Oh, you aren't alone in liking customers. My problem is that I usually don't like my co-workers. (My current job is an exception. I finally found a good company.)
I was only part time, but it was while I was in college. I worked phone tech support for a major computer manufacturer.
Despite being more knowledgeable and more helpful to customers, I was passed by for 'promotion' (if you call it that... the place sucked) several times. Poeple that knew a LOT less and usually just messed up my customer if I had to get a second opinion on something.
Until 1 day, the seating arrangement changed. I ended up sitting right next to the head of our area. I said good morning every morning and suddenly I was 'backup team lead' about a month later. Another month later, another seating rearrangement, and for the next 2-3 months, I remained 'backup' and people who had never even been backup were promoted to full team lead.
At the time, it stuck in my craw that I had to 'suck up' (even tho I was just being my normal self at the time I was promoted, I'd have had to go out of my way to be nice under the new seating) to the boss (female, if that matters) to get anywhere.
I was only there 6 months, but I learned a LOT about politics in the workplace. Geeks tend not to do well with it, but it's worth the time to look into so you at least know why thse things are happening to you.
They did that on purpose. You get to 20th about halfway through the first Guild Wars, and the content from that point on is oriented towards 20th level characters.
With the exception of the newbie island, all the content on Cantha is oriented towards lev 20 characters. They sped up the level up process to get your there quickly.
Many people complain about this, but I think they are the same people that don't enjoy the challenge of making a build and using it wisely. The 20th level missions in the first GW were FAR more fun for me than the early ones.
I've often thought this would be a great addition to an MMO also. The server could even do the hosting of your personal NPC, just like all its own NPCs. The monthly charge would take care of it.
It's actually frighteningly easy to expose the scripting to users. The problem is that most custom script languages provide too much functionality and you can make your NPC help you cheat. The language has to be planned to prevent any 'hacks' via the NPCs scripting.
I played FFXI the other day. For $30, I got the game and a 30 day trial for me, and another free trial for a friend. I uploaded the game to him (He's in Norway) and we eached played for a while. I cancelled after about 2 weeks. I think he cancelled closer to the end of the month.
It was total grind-ville. There was nothing to do but grind. Want to hunt? Grind. Want to make potions? Grind. Want to fish... Okay, you could fish a bit without grinding much. But only a bit. And only after you earn enough money for a fishing pole and bait.
I spent the first 2 hours walking. Not looking and talking to people. Walking. I was looking for a way out of town so I could hunt. Once I finally found it, I killed a couple things, got hurt and wandered back through town to rest and get healed. I eventually stopped a passerby in the field and asked if there was another way (no mention in the manual) and she said it was a certain button on the gamepad. (I was on PC, she PS2.) I thanked her and started the button hunt again. It turns out, after you hit the button there's a pointless 2-3 second delay, and then the animation begins. Grinding went a little quicker after that, but was always still grinding. (Kill, kill, rest, repeat.)
As for GW: Factions... I played the PvE of the original Guild Wars for 260+ hours before I finally got bored. For a person who thinks 40 hours games are long these days, that's pretty impressive.
Now, I have a full time job and don't have the time I used to dedicate to gaming, but it's excessively hard to find the time needed to sit down and do a mission on GW Factions now. I need to dedicate at LEAST an hour, probably 2-3 because there are so many noobs that think Assassins are cool and they can play them like a warrior. The usual solution is to just reject any group that has an Assassin in it. Since most groups are doing this anyhow, good groups aren't as rare as they could be. It still takes time, though, to find any group at all.
The first mission you get if you sail your character to Cantha requires that not only you find a group, but that you get lucky and another group from another area isn't totally stupid, too. You each have to keep a single character alive through many swarms of mutants. It's not hard, but you HAVE to heal your NPC. It's a small nightmare. (I won't even mention that that quest glitches quite often and the NPCs stop moving, and you can't go on. Ooops, I did anyhow, didn't I?)
Once you get past that mission, things liven up quickly, but it's a real downer at first. I've only managed to put 10-15 hours into it so far, so there's still a chance to have the kind of fun I had in the original. We'll see.
Nobody's modded this up yet, but the parent has a point! Every single person with brain cancer in this study was exposed to copious amounts of dihydrogen monoxide at several times each day. Logically, for the same reason that the radio tower MUST HAVE caused the cancer, the DHM must also have caused it!
No, but the thought that someone without even a little knowledge could hire someone with just a little knowledge to affect the election... That's truly scary.
By oil-independent, do you mean using no oil, or not importing it?
They are already only importing light crude. (They produce heavy crude and apparently need to mix it with light crude for certain applications.)
If you mean that they will be using NO oil, I find that very very hard to believe. (Especially considering they just put in a new rig and plan to put another in place by 2010.)
Public or not, you have to follow the rules. It is pretty well known that only 'Stratum 2' NTP servers are to use 'Stratum 1' NTP servers. This is not just a 'because we want it that way' policy. There are many good reasons for this.
Re:SQL is a standard. Is it?
on
SQL Cookbook
·
· Score: 1
Just because nobody adheres to the standard strictly doesn't mean it isn't a standard. The standard itself is fully documented. Blame the developers, not ANSI.
I have to disagree with you. I definitely feel the 'Uncanny Valley' applies to FF Spirits Within. My first thoughts watching the movie were 'Wow, they are not -quite- real looking. It's kind of creepy.' That was closely followed by 'Eh, wasn't the CG in FF7 better than this?'
Just because you (and maybe a billion others) don't feel this way, that doesn't mean the concept doesn't apply. You may even be right about the Uncanny Valley having nothing to do with its poor sales. But that doesn't mean the concept was over-applied.
I watch anime all the time and think nothing of the fact that people just aren't shaped like that. I watch FF SW and think of how odd they look. I admit, part of it is because they tried for realism where anime does not, but even if I take that into considering, they still creep me out a bit.
Actually, after about a decade, I think you'd find she finally got most of it. At least, that's how it was for me.
I started training her on my Commodore 64 we had. She had sheets of paper with all the commands and keypresses needed to do things. She only used 1 program, but she used it seldom enough that she could never remember anything.
We've all moved on to IBM compatible computers now, of course, and Windows was quite a change. But she can actually install game trials from websites and stuff, now. Every once in a while I still have to lay down the law to get her to understand something, though. For instance:
Mom: My computer is still messing up. Me: I'll look at it again. Mom: I was thinking of buying one of those $400 Dells. Me: Okay, good. They can handle the tech support then. Mom: But... Me: I've told you before what I think of namebrand crap. You buy one, they can support you. Mom: Oh.
She didn't buy it. The computer still has issues (I think the CPU is dying now) but she'd much rather have me help her than some goober that can only read the screen.
Unfortunately, now my father is retired and I get to do it all over again.
Actually, that's not quite right either. The real lesson is 'Don't let customer run your company.' You ALWAYS listen to the customer. You don't always act on what they say.
Sadly, I am one of those they didn't listen to. (Sadly for me, not them.) I now have to eat crow and admit I was wrong. I grow interested in the idea of this controller day by day. My original thought was 'wtf are they thinking?' Now we know. They were thinking 'Games should be fun.'
The lightgun and powerglove are my 2 favorite controllers of all time, followed by the Phoenix Revolution (and out of production ps2 controller with moveable joys and buttons.) This Wii controller (oh God, please change the name) combines the first 2 in a way I think is interesting.
Sorry, no, it was a female mesh with a female texture. I don't have the data here at work, but it was like 'meshes/character/femalebody.nif' and 'textures/imperial/_male/femalebody.dds' (Yes, the second path says _male, but the actual file says female.) Those are not the exact file names, but they aren't far off and both DID say female. That's hardly an accident.
The mesh was not actually used anywhere in the game.
I Googled and found the instructions to mod it yourself, without a download. I'm too lazy to change the above text.
My appologies. I apparently skipped over his tip there. At any rate, why is that disabled by default? That doesn't sound like an 'expert' user thing to me.
Because they don't live in Russia and they have to obey the laws where they live, unfortunately.
A better solution would be to have the package/installer maintainer live in Sweden. Make it his responsibility that things got packaged like that and then stop worrying about it.
I don't so much disagree with abiding by their local laws (since they usually are mine, too) but you can't claim to have a home user solution and not have it do basic things like write FAT and play DVDs out of the box. Those are basic functions for a computer these days.
And if you need reasons to back that up, just read the 'What could be improved' section on the last page of that article. It talks about show-stopping bugs that are enabled by default if you download the wrong version. It also talks about some of the most common linux features (ability to write to FAT partitions) that are disabled and you have to compile from source to change it.
They claim they are just trying not to run afoul of USA law, but what they've really done is trash their own distribution. (At least for the intended users in the article.)
I don't intend to actually carry it around with me anywhere but at the house, so portability isn't really an issue. It's more of a computer that I can wander around the house with. I'm not willing to pay $2000 to support my adhd-like tendencies, but $650 is well within reason. (After the rebate.)
Unfortunately, I just noticed it doesn't use a standard kde or gnome desktop. That's not really what I'm looking for. Oh well. Money saved, I guess.
Eh, no. That's less than half the product for the same price! (There's a $150 rebate on Pepper Pad if you go to their website. Good until the end of May.)
As for Dynamism, I don't see anything on there that's linux, and nothing less than $1000. (Most are $2000+)
Prove me wrong. Please. I actively want to be wrong here.
Learn to write it neatly and the computer will have no problem reading it. Or humans either, for that matter. Write it poorly and both will have a hard time.
Slashdot Mirror
Eh, yeah. Front page is always green. Each section has a color (this is blue). Stories that are 'under construction' and can't be replied to are red.
Ruby on Rails seems to be a lightning rod for controversy. At the heart of most of the controversy lies amazing productivity claims. Crossing Borders author Bruce Tate has come to understand that Rails isn't a better hammer; it's a different kind of tool. This article explores the compromises and design decisions that went into making Rails so productive within its niche. Then it looks at Rails-inspired ideas that should get more attention within the Java(TM) community.
Actually, he faked the research and stole the technology. If you're going to correct someone, do it right.
Yeah, I'm sure they do exist. I enjoy tech support, but I enjoy programming even more. And my current job actually DOES value the work I do, but one of the requirements to even get the job was that I have the right kind of personality. I even had to go through an online test to prove personality and skills. I didn't mind, though, because I knew I'd pass it with flying colors. But at least they don't do the whole politics thing. (At least, not that I've seen in 6 months.)
Oh, you aren't alone in liking customers. My problem is that I usually don't like my co-workers. (My current job is an exception. I finally found a good company.)
I was only part time, but it was while I was in college. I worked phone tech support for a major computer manufacturer.
Despite being more knowledgeable and more helpful to customers, I was passed by for 'promotion' (if you call it that... the place sucked) several times. Poeple that knew a LOT less and usually just messed up my customer if I had to get a second opinion on something.
Until 1 day, the seating arrangement changed. I ended up sitting right next to the head of our area. I said good morning every morning and suddenly I was 'backup team lead' about a month later. Another month later, another seating rearrangement, and for the next 2-3 months, I remained 'backup' and people who had never even been backup were promoted to full team lead.
At the time, it stuck in my craw that I had to 'suck up' (even tho I was just being my normal self at the time I was promoted, I'd have had to go out of my way to be nice under the new seating) to the boss (female, if that matters) to get anywhere.
I was only there 6 months, but I learned a LOT about politics in the workplace. Geeks tend not to do well with it, but it's worth the time to look into so you at least know why thse things are happening to you.
They did that on purpose. You get to 20th about halfway through the first Guild Wars, and the content from that point on is oriented towards 20th level characters.
With the exception of the newbie island, all the content on Cantha is oriented towards lev 20 characters. They sped up the level up process to get your there quickly.
Many people complain about this, but I think they are the same people that don't enjoy the challenge of making a build and using it wisely. The 20th level missions in the first GW were FAR more fun for me than the early ones.
I've often thought this would be a great addition to an MMO also. The server could even do the hosting of your personal NPC, just like all its own NPCs. The monthly charge would take care of it.
It's actually frighteningly easy to expose the scripting to users. The problem is that most custom script languages provide too much functionality and you can make your NPC help you cheat. The language has to be planned to prevent any 'hacks' via the NPCs scripting.
I played FFXI the other day. For $30, I got the game and a 30 day trial for me, and another free trial for a friend. I uploaded the game to him (He's in Norway) and we eached played for a while. I cancelled after about 2 weeks. I think he cancelled closer to the end of the month.
It was total grind-ville. There was nothing to do but grind. Want to hunt? Grind. Want to make potions? Grind. Want to fish... Okay, you could fish a bit without grinding much. But only a bit. And only after you earn enough money for a fishing pole and bait.
I spent the first 2 hours walking. Not looking and talking to people. Walking. I was looking for a way out of town so I could hunt. Once I finally found it, I killed a couple things, got hurt and wandered back through town to rest and get healed. I eventually stopped a passerby in the field and asked if there was another way (no mention in the manual) and she said it was a certain button on the gamepad. (I was on PC, she PS2.) I thanked her and started the button hunt again. It turns out, after you hit the button there's a pointless 2-3 second delay, and then the animation begins. Grinding went a little quicker after that, but was always still grinding. (Kill, kill, rest, repeat.)
As for GW: Factions... I played the PvE of the original Guild Wars for 260+ hours before I finally got bored. For a person who thinks 40 hours games are long these days, that's pretty impressive.
Now, I have a full time job and don't have the time I used to dedicate to gaming, but it's excessively hard to find the time needed to sit down and do a mission on GW Factions now. I need to dedicate at LEAST an hour, probably 2-3 because there are so many noobs that think Assassins are cool and they can play them like a warrior. The usual solution is to just reject any group that has an Assassin in it. Since most groups are doing this anyhow, good groups aren't as rare as they could be. It still takes time, though, to find any group at all.
The first mission you get if you sail your character to Cantha requires that not only you find a group, but that you get lucky and another group from another area isn't totally stupid, too. You each have to keep a single character alive through many swarms of mutants. It's not hard, but you HAVE to heal your NPC. It's a small nightmare. (I won't even mention that that quest glitches quite often and the NPCs stop moving, and you can't go on. Ooops, I did anyhow, didn't I?)
Once you get past that mission, things liven up quickly, but it's a real downer at first. I've only managed to put 10-15 hours into it so far, so there's still a chance to have the kind of fun I had in the original. We'll see.
Nobody's modded this up yet, but the parent has a point! Every single person with brain cancer in this study was exposed to copious amounts of dihydrogen monoxide at several times each day. Logically, for the same reason that the radio tower MUST HAVE caused the cancer, the DHM must also have caused it!
No, but the thought that someone without even a little knowledge could hire someone with just a little knowledge to affect the election... That's truly scary.
By oil-independent, do you mean using no oil, or not importing it?
They are already only importing light crude. (They produce heavy crude and apparently need to mix it with light crude for certain applications.)
If you mean that they will be using NO oil, I find that very very hard to believe. (Especially considering they just put in a new rig and plan to put another in place by 2010.)
Public or not, you have to follow the rules. It is pretty well known that only 'Stratum 2' NTP servers are to use 'Stratum 1' NTP servers. This is not just a 'because we want it that way' policy. There are many good reasons for this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTP_vandalism
Just because nobody adheres to the standard strictly doesn't mean it isn't a standard. The standard itself is fully documented. Blame the developers, not ANSI.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQL
I have to disagree with you. I definitely feel the 'Uncanny Valley' applies to FF Spirits Within. My first thoughts watching the movie were 'Wow, they are not -quite- real looking. It's kind of creepy.' That was closely followed by 'Eh, wasn't the CG in FF7 better than this?'
Just because you (and maybe a billion others) don't feel this way, that doesn't mean the concept doesn't apply. You may even be right about the Uncanny Valley having nothing to do with its poor sales. But that doesn't mean the concept was over-applied.
I watch anime all the time and think nothing of the fact that people just aren't shaped like that. I watch FF SW and think of how odd they look. I admit, part of it is because they tried for realism where anime does not, but even if I take that into considering, they still creep me out a bit.
Actually, after about a decade, I think you'd find she finally got most of it. At least, that's how it was for me.
I started training her on my Commodore 64 we had. She had sheets of paper with all the commands and keypresses needed to do things. She only used 1 program, but she used it seldom enough that she could never remember anything.
We've all moved on to IBM compatible computers now, of course, and Windows was quite a change. But she can actually install game trials from websites and stuff, now. Every once in a while I still have to lay down the law to get her to understand something, though. For instance:
Mom: My computer is still messing up.
Me: I'll look at it again.
Mom: I was thinking of buying one of those $400 Dells.
Me: Okay, good. They can handle the tech support then.
Mom: But...
Me: I've told you before what I think of namebrand crap. You buy one, they can support you.
Mom: Oh.
She didn't buy it. The computer still has issues (I think the CPU is dying now) but she'd much rather have me help her than some goober that can only read the screen.
Unfortunately, now my father is retired and I get to do it all over again.
Don't listen to your customers.
Actually, that's not quite right either. The real lesson is 'Don't let customer run your company.' You ALWAYS listen to the customer. You don't always act on what they say.
Sadly, I am one of those they didn't listen to. (Sadly for me, not them.) I now have to eat crow and admit I was wrong. I grow interested in the idea of this controller day by day. My original thought was 'wtf are they thinking?' Now we know. They were thinking 'Games should be fun.'
The lightgun and powerglove are my 2 favorite controllers of all time, followed by the Phoenix Revolution (and out of production ps2 controller with moveable joys and buttons.) This Wii controller (oh God, please change the name) combines the first 2 in a way I think is interesting.
I hope it lives up to the hype.
Sorry, no, it was a female mesh with a female texture. I don't have the data here at work, but it was like 'meshes/character/femalebody.nif' and 'textures/imperial/_male/femalebody.dds' (Yes, the second path says _male, but the actual file says female.) Those are not the exact file names, but they aren't far off and both DID say female. That's hardly an accident.
The mesh was not actually used anywhere in the game.
I Googled and found the instructions to mod it yourself, without a download. I'm too lazy to change the above text.
From http://rome.ro/2006/05/oblivion-re-rated-bad-news. html:
My appologies. I apparently skipped over his tip there. At any rate, why is that disabled by default? That doesn't sound like an 'expert' user thing to me.
Because they don't live in Russia and they have to obey the laws where they live, unfortunately.
A better solution would be to have the package/installer maintainer live in Sweden. Make it his responsibility that things got packaged like that and then stop worrying about it.
I don't so much disagree with abiding by their local laws (since they usually are mine, too) but you can't claim to have a home user solution and not have it do basic things like write FAT and play DVDs out of the box. Those are basic functions for a computer these days.
And if you need reasons to back that up, just read the 'What could be improved' section on the last page of that article. It talks about show-stopping bugs that are enabled by default if you download the wrong version. It also talks about some of the most common linux features (ability to write to FAT partitions) that are disabled and you have to compile from source to change it.
They claim they are just trying not to run afoul of USA law, but what they've really done is trash their own distribution. (At least for the intended users in the article.)
I don't intend to actually carry it around with me anywhere but at the house, so portability isn't really an issue. It's more of a computer that I can wander around the house with. I'm not willing to pay $2000 to support my adhd-like tendencies, but $650 is well within reason. (After the rebate.)
Unfortunately, I just noticed it doesn't use a standard kde or gnome desktop. That's not really what I'm looking for. Oh well. Money saved, I guess.
Okay, yeah. That's the same item I linked to on the other site. And it's still more money and less hardware than the Pepper Pad.
I assume you mean this trisoft offering.
Eh, no. That's less than half the product for the same price! (There's a $150 rebate on Pepper Pad if you go to their website. Good until the end of May.)
As for Dynamism, I don't see anything on there that's linux, and nothing less than $1000. (Most are $2000+)
Prove me wrong. Please. I actively want to be wrong here.
Sure, it's called... THE ALPHABET.
Learn to write it neatly and the computer will have no problem reading it. Or humans either, for that matter. Write it poorly and both will have a hard time.