Holds the cake?" Where did THAT expression come from?
It comes from Victorian Britain, and is to do with sanitation. In public toilets, they used blocks of cleaning agent to wash the urinals - these blocks were commonly referred to as the cakes. Because they were small and could be sold on easily, the 'cake' was always held by whoever was in charge of the facility. So the person who 'holds the cake' is basically the guy who's in charge.
Tim
Re:Laws to help DSL penetration?
on
DSL Rising
·
· Score: 3, Funny
"If you show a politician some of these numbers, this should get them into action," Rodey said.
In other words, what Mr. Rodney is trying to say is that the United States needs laws to help DSL penetration and to give DSL providers a competitive advantage in the United States. Excuse me Mr. Rodeny, isn't it your department to become competitive?
Hell, no wonder he can't get anything done - how the hell do people know who to contact? Is it Mr Rodey, Rodney or Rodeny?:-)
Tim
Re:Listen up, this is the last time I'll say this
on
Decentralization
·
· Score: 2
I get a feeling of pleasure from donating to charity, does the fact that it makes me feel good mean that it isn't altruistic?
Hey, that's the plot of an episode of Friends!:-)
No, really - one of them claimed that there are 'no unselfish acts' - and used a similar argument - helping a charity makes you feel better.
I liked the the conclusion - Phoebe gave money to a charity that had pissed her off, so it gave her no pleasure to do so. Don't think about that one too much, or you'll go mad:-)
Although, in reply to myself:-), I will just say that 'The Sims' does seem to one PC game that bucks the trend. In a store the other day I counted 6 (six) add-on packs for The Sims - and those are unique add-ons - I'm not counting the bundles of two packs in one box, or special editions of The Sims including one or more add on packs, etc.
They've got to be shifting a lot of copies of that game.
...Mars bars are more popular than Ginseng, and Microsoft have decided to start charging for software.
I'm confused - the article and many comments here seem to give the impression that the PC was king of the block, but this report shows that it's now starting to lose.
The PC has been losing to consoles for a long time. I'm talking years and years. Console game sales have beaten the hell out of PC games for a long time. Some of the most successful console games sell millions of copies - Games like Donkey Kong Country etc sold in excess of 5 million units world wide. A million selling console game is doing pretty well - a million selling PC game is extremely rare. Super Mario Bros 3 sold over 7 million copies in the US alone. Nintendo sole about 9 million copies of Mario 64, 7 million copies of GoldenEye, and about 6 million copies of Zelda 64. I can't think of many/any PC games that approach those sales levels. And remember those are N64 games, and the N64 did not do nearly as well as the Playstation. I remember reading that a million copies of Starcraft (for PC) had been sold in Korea alone, and that was a stunning figure for anyone involved in PC game development/distribution.
As for advertising, I've always thought that adverts for console games have always been much more dominant than those for PC, especially on TV/at the cinema - but maybe this is specific to the UK?
In short, what's the fuss? Console games have always been more profitable/better selling, and it's not like it's news. PC game sales have been declining significantly for at least two years - that's certainly the message developers get from publishers, who are increasingly looking for PS2 games above anything else.
All fair points - but if you read the aricle, you'll see the guy is complaining about space being taken up, that people are not really using. They just have lots of characters that they use occasionally. So load balancing, bandwidth costs, etc don't come into it. They need a certain level of that for the game no matter how many characters are used - it seems to be a storage only issue.
Having said that, the admin, redundancy, backup etc are real issues. Most people seem to be missing the fact that if the servers/player data are mirrored, they're taking up that space many times over, in multiple hard drives and multiple tapes/backup systems, etc.
"I couldn't believe it. A Chicago resident named Melvin Christmas had just ruined my Christmas."
Well, for goodness' sake, why didn't he call Janie Porche? She saved Christmas!
You'd think a Mac user would know that:-)
Tim
PS. But, by God, the smug "I'm a Mac user - aren't we the coolest?!" wank really annoyed me in that article. I know he probably didn't mean it like that and was just a bit of fun, but I've heard so many Mac zealots beat that tired drum so often that silly comments like "Try getting a Dell user to do that!" wind me up no end now. Oh well, breathe, breathe. At least I'm not out $3000 like the poor guy was - I'll let him off for that reason:-)
PPS. But isn't it funny that the very people who noisily* claim that they 'Think Different' and are somehow better/more creative than anyone else who happens not to use a Mac are the very people demonstrating how foolish, prejudiced and intolerant they are? Hey ho.
* I emphasise that part - there's plenty of people who use Macs who are actually creative, and don't bang on about how great they are because of the computer manufacturer they chose.
Variable-sized block-chained allocators, which pull chunks of memory out of preallocated segments. The segments are chained together in a linked list. Very effective when you need to make a lot of variable-sized allocations, and do it fast, dammit. It also makes freeing the allocated memory blazingly fast, although it's a "free all or none" approach.
Not necessarily - depends how you implement it. For example, the SmartHeap library would use fixed size allocators for common small block sizes that worked in pretty much O(1) time (they just popped an item off the head of a list). This was used as a GP replacement for normal malloc/free libs. When you free a block, it just gets put on the head of the list.
And is there any chance someone could dredge up and release the NS3.x source package? Pleeeeeeeeeeze??
No need to do that - a quick poke around on Netscape's site will find it - took me about a minute - have a look at this page. (From front page, go to Browser Central, then Product Archive).
Granted, I knew it would probably be there, because I know Netscape are pretty cool about keeping old versions available for download. You probably just assumed it wouldn't be on Netscape's site, which isn't surprising.
Hope this helps. The links seem to actually work, too - I just downloaded 3.04 for Linux, just to check the links weren't dead.
Do you always take things people say to ridiculous extremes?
Er, why do I need to do that, when you say things like this:
Of course a sound card is useless for listening to music.
This may come as a shock to you, but the vast majority of people who listen to music on their computers would consider that a ridiculous statement. No extrapolation is necessary on my part - that's a direct quote.
Note the word listening.
Wow, I'm so confused as to why I've been playing mp3s on my PC up to now...I thought I was listening to music. Guess not.
An internal sound card is worthless for listening to music
Ah, yes, I see what you mean.
Well, we'd better get on the case and let those millions of people around the world who think they're listening to music on their computers that they're not. I know I've been hallucinating for the past 3 years - I could have sworn that I listened to music using my internal sound card. I was so deluded that I thought it sounded fine to me. I bet those millions of other people thought so too.
The poor deranged fools.
Tim
PS. You know that JPEGs are useless for looking at graphics, too, right?
While most handguns fire rounds that won't penetrate a human body, the rounds fired from an assault rifle or machine gun will penetrate multiple human bodies in a row.
I'm curious as to what constitutes penetration. Are you saying that if I got an 'average' handgun as sold in the US, aimed it at someone's chest from a few yards away and shot them, then they (usually) wouldn't suffer any damage to, e.g. heart, lungs, stomach, or ribcage?
What happens to the bullet? 'Tis but a flesh wound? Sounds unlikely. I hadn't realised skin and muscle were so resilient.
Or by penetration, do you mean that the bullet exits the body as well? (I can well believe a bullet fired from a handgun would often stop inside the body).
Machine guns and silencers are not illegal to own either.
Obligatory Simpsons quote:
Sales guy: Well, you probably want the accessories kit. Holster. Vendalier. Silencer. Loudener. Speed cocker.
Homer: Ohh, I like the sound of that.
Sales guy: And this is for shooting down police helicopters.
Homer: Oh. I don't need anything like that...yet.
And who can forget:
Sales guy: Sorry, the law requires a five-day waiting period.
We've got to run a background check.
Homer: Five days? But I'm mad now!
The point I think he was trying to make is that sure there might be bad customers, but there are also plenty of shitty stores and employees, and the two deserve eachother.
Wow, those are some scary stories. It must be tough in retail.
Still, at least retail outlets themselves are squeaky clean, and would never employ people who are "too fucking stupid" to know the difference between VHS and SVHS VCRs. Or push expensive extended warranties onto people using scare tactics like telling the customer how unreliable the item they've decided to buy is (just after telling them how reliable it is in order to get them to buy it). Or force their staff to describe extended warranty schemes to every customer, even if the customer says they're not interested, on pain of losing their job if they don't. Or routinely misrepresent items that they sell. Or point you towards an item that is not really what you want, but they get better commission on it. Or argue that a software glitch in your STB is not a valid reason to return it, because "everything has bugs in it these days". Or put up "No Refunds" signs which are illegal (in the UK). Or take 12 weeks to service an item under warranty. Or put a hold on your account without telling you because they screwed up and undercharged you by $50, when you have put about $30,000 worth of business their way in the past year. Or sell you a DVD and AV amp together that they know have an incompatibility, and refuse to refund the money for either item. Or refuse to accept a return of a reference book on the grounds that it is factually inaccurate in many important ways.
You're right - customers are a real problem, damn them.
Microsoft products and revenue channels are for joe six-pack. If you disagree with this, YOU ARE joe six-pack.
An incisive argument indeed! How can we argue with such breathtaking sophistry:)
As an ex military tech, I am disgusted that a Navy ship was put in a position so that it could be disabled, dead in the water, by a single instance of a Microsoft product.
I just researched this (via the incredibly in-depth and accurate research tool known as Google), and it seems that much quoted story has been embellished a bit, i.e.:
The failure was not attributable to a Microsoft product.
The navy was running an unvalidated version of the software, which is why the system failed.
The software contractor who wrote the system in question told the Navy they shouldn't use the unvalidated version in sea trials. (The Navy decided they'd do it to see if they could shake out any bugs).
The ship was not dead in the water - it had an alternative propulsion system, which it used to return to base.
Not quite as good a story as "Windows NT kills battleship", but life is often a disappointment.
Of course, I can find no hard reports of this incident, so the above could be just as made up as the opposing viewpoint. Shrug:)
Slashdot Mirror
It comes from Victorian Britain, and is to do with sanitation. In public toilets, they used blocks of cleaning agent to wash the urinals - these blocks were commonly referred to as the cakes. Because they were small and could be sold on easily, the 'cake' was always held by whoever was in charge of the facility. So the person who 'holds the cake' is basically the guy who's in charge.
Tim
Hell, no wonder he can't get anything done - how the hell do people know who to contact? Is it Mr Rodey, Rodney or Rodeny? :-)
Tim
Hey, that's the plot of an episode of Friends! :-)
No, really - one of them claimed that there are 'no unselfish acts' - and used a similar argument - helping a charity makes you feel better.
I liked the the conclusion - Phoebe gave money to a charity that had pissed her off, so it gave her no pleasure to do so. Don't think about that one too much, or you'll go mad :-)
Tim
Although, in reply to myself :-), I will just say that 'The Sims' does seem to one PC game that bucks the trend. In a store the other day I counted 6 (six) add-on packs for The Sims - and those are unique add-ons - I'm not counting the bundles of two packs in one box, or special editions of The Sims including one or more add on packs, etc.
They've got to be shifting a lot of copies of that game.
Tim
...Mars bars are more popular than Ginseng, and Microsoft have decided to start charging for software.
I'm confused - the article and many comments here seem to give the impression that the PC was king of the block, but this report shows that it's now starting to lose.
The PC has been losing to consoles for a long time. I'm talking years and years. Console game sales have beaten the hell out of PC games for a long time. Some of the most successful console games sell millions of copies - Games like Donkey Kong Country etc sold in excess of 5 million units world wide. A million selling console game is doing pretty well - a million selling PC game is extremely rare. Super Mario Bros 3 sold over 7 million copies in the US alone. Nintendo sole about 9 million copies of Mario 64, 7 million copies of GoldenEye, and about 6 million copies of Zelda 64. I can't think of many/any PC games that approach those sales levels. And remember those are N64 games, and the N64 did not do nearly as well as the Playstation. I remember reading that a million copies of Starcraft (for PC) had been sold in Korea alone, and that was a stunning figure for anyone involved in PC game development/distribution.
As for advertising, I've always thought that adverts for console games have always been much more dominant than those for PC, especially on TV/at the cinema - but maybe this is specific to the UK?
In short, what's the fuss? Console games have always been more profitable/better selling, and it's not like it's news. PC game sales have been declining significantly for at least two years - that's certainly the message developers get from publishers, who are increasingly looking for PS2 games above anything else.
2p.
Tim
All fair points - but if you read the aricle, you'll see the guy is complaining about space being taken up, that people are not really using. They just have lots of characters that they use occasionally. So load balancing, bandwidth costs, etc don't come into it. They need a certain level of that for the game no matter how many characters are used - it seems to be a storage only issue.
Having said that, the admin, redundancy, backup etc are real issues. Most people seem to be missing the fact that if the servers/player data are mirrored, they're taking up that space many times over, in multiple hard drives and multiple tapes/backup systems, etc.
Tim
Well, for goodness' sake, why didn't he call Janie Porche? She saved Christmas!
You'd think a Mac user would know that :-)
Tim
PS. But, by God, the smug "I'm a Mac user - aren't we the coolest?!" wank really annoyed me in that article. I know he probably didn't mean it like that and was just a bit of fun, but I've heard so many Mac zealots beat that tired drum so often that silly comments like "Try getting a Dell user to do that!" wind me up no end now. Oh well, breathe, breathe. At least I'm not out $3000 like the poor guy was - I'll let him off for that reason :-)
PPS. But isn't it funny that the very people who noisily* claim that they 'Think Different' and are somehow better/more creative than anyone else who happens not to use a Mac are the very people demonstrating how foolish, prejudiced and intolerant they are? Hey ho.
* I emphasise that part - there's plenty of people who use Macs who are actually creative, and don't bang on about how great they are because of the computer manufacturer they chose.
50MHz.
Tim
Consult Dr Dan Streetmentioner's seminal work...
Not necessarily - depends how you implement it. For example, the SmartHeap library would use fixed size allocators for common small block sizes that worked in pretty much O(1) time (they just popped an item off the head of a list). This was used as a GP replacement for normal malloc/free libs. When you free a block, it just gets put on the head of the list.
Tim
No need to do that - a quick poke around on Netscape's site will find it - took me about a minute - have a look at this page. (From front page, go to Browser Central, then Product Archive).
Granted, I knew it would probably be there, because I know Netscape are pretty cool about keeping old versions available for download. You probably just assumed it wouldn't be on Netscape's site, which isn't surprising.
Hope this helps. The links seem to actually work, too - I just downloaded 3.04 for Linux, just to check the links weren't dead.
Tim
See? Now was it really so hard?
If only all /. articles did not assume basic telepathy on the part of the reader.
Tim
Er, why do I need to do that, when you say things like this:
Of course a sound card is useless for listening to music.
This may come as a shock to you, but the vast majority of people who listen to music on their computers would consider that a ridiculous statement. No extrapolation is necessary on my part - that's a direct quote.
Note the word listening.
Wow, I'm so confused as to why I've been playing mp3s on my PC up to now...I thought I was listening to music. Guess not.
Nice troll yourself :)
Tim
Wow, are you sure?
An internal sound card is worthless for listening to music
Ah, yes, I see what you mean.
Well, we'd better get on the case and let those millions of people around the world who think they're listening to music on their computers that they're not. I know I've been hallucinating for the past 3 years - I could have sworn that I listened to music using my internal sound card. I was so deluded that I thought it sounded fine to me. I bet those millions of other people thought so too.
The poor deranged fools.
Tim
PS. You know that JPEGs are useless for looking at graphics, too, right?
To me, it seemed hugely obvious, and I wasn't surprised at all.
But then, I didn't guess what the twist was in Sixth Sense, and other people say they thought it was really obvious.
That's the way it goes, I suppose.
Tim
Tim
I'm curious as to what constitutes penetration. Are you saying that if I got an 'average' handgun as sold in the US, aimed it at someone's chest from a few yards away and shot them, then they (usually) wouldn't suffer any damage to, e.g. heart, lungs, stomach, or ribcage?
What happens to the bullet? 'Tis but a flesh wound? Sounds unlikely. I hadn't realised skin and muscle were so resilient.
Or by penetration, do you mean that the bullet exits the body as well? (I can well believe a bullet fired from a handgun would often stop inside the body).
Tim
Obligatory Simpsons quote:
Sales guy: Well, you probably want the accessories kit. Holster. Vendalier. Silencer. Loudener. Speed cocker.
Homer: Ohh, I like the sound of that.
Sales guy: And this is for shooting down police helicopters.
Homer: Oh. I don't need anything like that...yet.
And who can forget:
Sales guy: Sorry, the law requires a five-day waiting period. We've got to run a background check.
Homer: Five days? But I'm mad now!
Tim
Precisely.
Tim
I hope you used the "I am not a crook" line when they said it was to counter fraud :-)
Tim
Wow, those are some scary stories. It must be tough in retail.
Still, at least retail outlets themselves are squeaky clean, and would never employ people who are "too fucking stupid" to know the difference between VHS and SVHS VCRs. Or push expensive extended warranties onto people using scare tactics like telling the customer how unreliable the item they've decided to buy is (just after telling them how reliable it is in order to get them to buy it). Or force their staff to describe extended warranty schemes to every customer, even if the customer says they're not interested, on pain of losing their job if they don't. Or routinely misrepresent items that they sell. Or point you towards an item that is not really what you want, but they get better commission on it. Or argue that a software glitch in your STB is not a valid reason to return it, because "everything has bugs in it these days". Or put up "No Refunds" signs which are illegal (in the UK). Or take 12 weeks to service an item under warranty. Or put a hold on your account without telling you because they screwed up and undercharged you by $50, when you have put about $30,000 worth of business their way in the past year. Or sell you a DVD and AV amp together that they know have an incompatibility, and refuse to refund the money for either item. Or refuse to accept a return of a reference book on the grounds that it is factually inaccurate in many important ways.
You're right - customers are a real problem, damn them.
Tim
No, that's not spelled right. I'm sure there's an 'x' in dyslexia somewhere...
Tim
Which is in itself an example of poor diction.
:)
Which is another word that means different things to different people
Tim
Microsoft products and revenue channels are for joe six-pack. If you disagree with this, YOU ARE joe six-pack.
An incisive argument indeed! How can we argue with such breathtaking sophistry :)
As an ex military tech, I am disgusted that a Navy ship was put in a position so that it could be disabled, dead in the water, by a single instance of a Microsoft product.
I just researched this (via the incredibly in-depth and accurate research tool known as Google), and it seems that much quoted story has been embellished a bit, i.e.:
Not quite as good a story as "Windows NT kills battleship", but life is often a disappointment.
Of course, I can find no hard reports of this incident, so the above could be just as made up as the opposing viewpoint. Shrug :)
Tim
Hey, I thought the slashdot groupthink was that EULAs are unenforceable? :-)
Tim