Actually I was being extremely sarcastic with the above response (Normally I wouldn't bother saying, but you can never be sure with some people around here...).
Anyway, I grew up in Belfast. For those of you who are unaware, we've had a spot of trouble there over the last few decades. It's not as bad these days as it has been, but still to this day there are certain areas you simply don't go near in case something happens.
One of these "flash points" was just down the road from me, it was at a bridge that linked a Protestant estate with a Catholic one. Naturally, people who tried to cross this bridge were usually targeted by those waiting at the other side.
Unfortunately, there wasn't really an alternative route to get from one side to the other, that was less than 90mins in the opposite direction.
Naturally, there was always fighting and/or rioting on this bloody bridge (which went over a motorway - I'm sure you can imagine the potential risks of falling bricks and bottles there) and more than a couple of people got seriously injured on it - some even died.
Then one day they put a CCTV camera there. Actually, they put a big post there for the CCTV camera to be attached to and it IMMEDIATELY stopped nearly all violence on and around this bridge. Even before the camera was attached, it was enough to scare the little shits that started all of this away and now it's relatively safe to walk by there.
That alone is enough for me to have faith in the CCTV systems. They may not help in solving crimes, but they definitely do help PREVENT them, which I think is much more important.
This is just my experience, though, yours may differ.
I've heard plenty of people use the term "billion" to mean "Million million".
I know, it's ambiguous and most people accept it as being a thousand million, but it's always worth keeping it in mind when people are arguing about what a billion of something is.
Remember, guys, "Billion" means two different things depending on which part of the world you're in, so make sure you're not getting into a debate between an american and a brit who are both probably right and wrong at the same time.
In case anyone's wondering, I'm being extremely sarcastic here. However, my absurdly ridiculous response is only half as ridiculous as what Blizzard is trying to say here.
I'm not exactly what you'd call a hardcore developer (I make games, not Applications), nor am I in any way familiar with developing on Mac OS X, but this article definitely seemed pretty inconsistent.
For those of you who CBA to RTFA, FYI here's a small summary of it:
It starts off saying there's basically 3 kinds of developers, 2 kinds that don't care what the code does as long as it works and 1 kind that cares deeply about "doing it right". It then says that this kind of developer doesn't matter because it's all hobbyists anyway. It says the first 2 kinds just want to get the job done and don't particularly want to or care to learn anything new to do it.
Next, the article has a complete bitchfest about the.Net framework. Nothing new there, but it's main complaint is that it's meant to be a shiny, new API, but it's roots are still buried deep within the old API's of Win32.
Then it bitches a bit about said Win32 API, but it's main point is that you don't learn anything new, it's just the same thing you've been doing "for the last 15 years", as the summary points out.
Then, curiously, it states that this suits the first two kinds of developer just fine and this is where I get a bit confused. It's trying to bitch about the framework, it's trying to point out how it's flawed, but all it's really done is point out that it works just fine for the only developers that (in the article's own words) "matter".
This leads me to the conclusion that the author really was just trying to start a flame war but instead of coming up with a reasonable argument (Of which, on the Windows platform, there are many - just like any other), he sort of just throws in a few keywords, rambles on without re-reading what he's wrote and then finishes it off by bitching about some of the quirks of the platform, quirks that are only there because people REFUSE to do anything different than what they've been doing for the last 15 years.
In other words, he's blaming Microsoft for catering to lazy, underpaid developers.
Does that make them the bad guys? Not if you've got a multi-million $$$ business to run and want to keep costs to a minimum so you can give yourself a big raise at the end of the year.
Can you blink faster than you can click a mouse button?
I'm not sure I can right now, but then I haven't exactly been practicing using my blinking techniques as much as I have been using my hands. If this technology really is more than some vapourware, I can see it finally making console FPS's rival PC FPS's. I mean, the biggest reason why the mouse is better for controlling those games is precision and speed, but if you could simply look at your enemy to target them, you'd be just as fast. Then all you need to worry about is moving your character, which analogue sticks are nearly perfect for anyway.
Apart from that, I'm not really sure I see much of a point of this technology, except maybe as a better way of navigating menus while controlling with the good ol' mouse.
That thinks this article was a tad poorly written?
For example...
Water forms in interstellar space at 10k
Forgive my possible ignorance, but 10k what? Degrees? (Celsius or Kelvin?) Pascals? Distance? Does a postfixed "K" represent something different within the scientific community that I simply didn't know about?
I don't suppose solar power would help solve that problem? After all real insects are attracted to light, so they may as well make these ones do the same. Since they're insects, you could have several of them on a site at any one time, just swapping them around for recharging when the batteries run low. Hell, combine that with some of the fancy swarming communication techniques we've been seeing lately so they can work together to get the best results at maximum efficiency. It's really starting to look as though the future war of mankind vs. machine will be less big tanks and robots and more big mechanical spiders and cockroaches. It'll be like Starship troopers meets terminator, except we'll probably lose.
I'm glad SOMEONE did, otherwise I'd be worried about Skynet taking out the human race using little more than the processing power of a speak-and-spell.
I've actually thought about this before. When you're growing up, as a young, naive kid, you tend to just believe what adults tell you. Then you get a little wiser and realise that not ALL adults actually know what they're talking about (and some just love to tell you complete lies for the fun of it, or to make you look stupid), so you typically start to question what most people tell you, but certain people (such as your parents or teachers) tend to keep a level of respect where you continually believe what they tell you. I had an old biology teacher who admitted to frequently abusing this trust, telling his pupils random, completely made-up facts purely for his own amusement because he knew they trusted him - after all, he was a teacher, but I digress.
After years of these people essentially telling you everything you know, you question very little of it (And for good reason, you're relying on them to teach you most of what you'll take into your adult life). But what if they teach you something wrong? You have no way of knowing for sure, but chances are you wont question it either because they've gained that level of respect from you.
Furthermore, even when you're a lot older, you still tend to believe the things you were taught as a kid, even though if someone told you it now, you'd be a lot more skeptical (well, for most people here at least, there are still plenty of gullible people out there).
I believe this is what happened here, because I distinctly remember people telling that story about NASA and their million-dollar-pens ever since I was very young and thus I didn't question it up until this day. I even remember several different primary school teachers and a couple of secondary school teachers reiterating it word for word.
Perhaps it's how the human brain develops and works. On a basic level, when you get a "fact" to process, when you're younger you go through some simple steps - Understand it if possible, remember it. But then someone slips you a bad "fact" and you then learn to add a new thing to do - Understand it, Question it, remember it. But what about all the "facts" you've learned previously? You've already processed them, you've already remembered them and as we all know we can't just loop through every memory we have and question them for their reliability, they just get...remembered as being fact, rather than questioned facts.
I'm sort of rambling here, it's 2am and I've been awake all day (I know this barely counts as mid-afternoon for most hardcore geeks, but I'm a working boy), plus I'm by no means a biologist or anything remotely similar, but I'd be interested to know if any studies on this have ever been made.
Unfortunately I don't have the time to check out every single "fact" people tell me, particularly the common ones (like this) that get reiterated all the time. I apologise for spreading FUD and I stand corrected (Although my main point remains the same), however I AM only human.
This does seem to be a prime example of over-engineering and tackling a problem that either doesn't exist or can be fixed via much simpler means, i.e. training the "user" to be better organised. It reminds me of NASA spending millions developing a pen that would work in space, while the Russians just used pencils....
I'd rather they spent the money they used researching this to develop glues that have the same properties as that used on post-it notes, but don't lose their stickiness over time, combine that with a reusable form of paper and you have yourself a winner.
Then again, I suppose you could just use small, magnetic whiteboards to achieve a similar result....hmmm...perhaps I should take a trip to the patent office...
If you wanted to be elaborate, you could probably set your machine up to perform this task automatically upon logging in with a certain username/password, then have it in your will for someone to log in with that user. Or just have it in your will, as far as I'm aware, they're legally bound to do what's possible.
I don't see why people think this is a bad thing. A big company like Dell can bankrupt smaller companies overnight just by failing to renew a contract or not ordering more parts. They already squeeze them tight for the best prices and only pay them for any components they use - those stocks taking up space in Dell's warehouse don't cost them a penny until they go into a machine (That's already been paid for by the buyer). So imagine if two companies had say...wireless cards. One has a major deal with Dell, but no Open Drivers, then the other announces they suddenly have Open Drivers. Is it anything on Dell's head to tell the first company to either cough up some open drivers or come and pick up their unused parts before they get discarded? I don't think so. All it takes is for one company to start releasing open drivers and the rest will have to fall in line or risk loosing a lot of business practically overnight. In the end, everyone will benefit.
Interestingly enough, google didn't recognise the word "unbibium", the name given to a recently discovered element in the periodic table (According to wikipedia) and instead asked if I meant unbiunium, the temporary name given to an as-yet undiscovered element of the periodic table.
Surely it's not really a fair indication just because it's web presence is dropping? I could easily argue that Java is only so "popular" because more people are posting with problems they're having using the language and that C\C++ are only loosing ground because better information on using the language is already out there.
I've always wondered why botnets always seemed to be created by black hats. I think it'd be cool to have a competition where some whitehats try to exploit a vulnerability in some software in order to patch it FROM that vulnerability. Even if it just forced a windows update, it'd still be quite useful, but it seems nobody with the skills to pull off such a feat can be bothered to do it. Surely there's some benign genius out there who could exploit an existing botnet to send it a shutdown command, rather akin to how captain Picard defeated the Borg after he was captured by them, once again proving that Star Trek has given us great insight into the future and, of course, that Picard is better than Kirk will ever be?
I've actually wanted to own a.su domain for quite some time, but I can't seem to find a registrar that'll do them to someone outside of russia for a REASONABLE sum. A lot of the ones that do seem to offer them want 3-figure amounts for some reason.
Does anyone actually know of a decent registrar that's not stupidly expensive for.su domains?
Slashdot Mirror
Actually I was being extremely sarcastic with the above response (Normally I wouldn't bother saying, but you can never be sure with some people around here...).
Anyway, I grew up in Belfast. For those of you who are unaware, we've had a spot of trouble there over the last few decades. It's not as bad these days as it has been, but still to this day there are certain areas you simply don't go near in case something happens.
One of these "flash points" was just down the road from me, it was at a bridge that linked a Protestant estate with a Catholic one. Naturally, people who tried to cross this bridge were usually targeted by those waiting at the other side.
Unfortunately, there wasn't really an alternative route to get from one side to the other, that was less than 90mins in the opposite direction.
Naturally, there was always fighting and/or rioting on this bloody bridge (which went over a motorway - I'm sure you can imagine the potential risks of falling bricks and bottles there) and more than a couple of people got seriously injured on it - some even died.
Then one day they put a CCTV camera there. Actually, they put a big post there for the CCTV camera to be attached to and it IMMEDIATELY stopped nearly all violence on and around this bridge. Even before the camera was attached, it was enough to scare the little shits that started all of this away and now it's relatively safe to walk by there.
That alone is enough for me to have faith in the CCTV systems. They may not help in solving crimes, but they definitely do help PREVENT them, which I think is much more important.
This is just my experience, though, yours may differ.
Obviously if the CCTV cameras we have today only help prevent 3% of crimes, then we need about 33x more cameras!
All hail our great overseers!
I've heard plenty of people use the term "billion" to mean "Million million".
I know, it's ambiguous and most people accept it as being a thousand million, but it's always worth keeping it in mind when people are arguing about what a billion of something is.
Remember, guys, "Billion" means two different things depending on which part of the world you're in, so make sure you're not getting into a debate between an american and a brit who are both probably right and wrong at the same time.
In case anyone's wondering, I'm being extremely sarcastic here.
However, my absurdly ridiculous response is only half as ridiculous as what Blizzard is trying to say here.
I do the second uTorrent is finished with it.
Did anyone else read the title and, quite literally, laugh out loud?
Just me, then?
I'll just go stand over in the corner where I belong, then....
I'm not exactly what you'd call a hardcore developer (I make games, not Applications), nor am I in any way familiar with developing on Mac OS X, but this article definitely seemed pretty inconsistent.
.Net framework. Nothing new there, but it's main complaint is that it's meant to be a shiny, new API, but it's roots are still buried deep within the old API's of Win32.
For those of you who CBA to RTFA, FYI here's a small summary of it:
It starts off saying there's basically 3 kinds of developers, 2 kinds that don't care what the code does as long as it works and 1 kind that cares deeply about "doing it right". It then says that this kind of developer doesn't matter because it's all hobbyists anyway. It says the first 2 kinds just want to get the job done and don't particularly want to or care to learn anything new to do it.
Next, the article has a complete bitchfest about the
Then it bitches a bit about said Win32 API, but it's main point is that you don't learn anything new, it's just the same thing you've been doing "for the last 15 years", as the summary points out.
Then, curiously, it states that this suits the first two kinds of developer just fine and this is where I get a bit confused. It's trying to bitch about the framework, it's trying to point out how it's flawed, but all it's really done is point out that it works just fine for the only developers that (in the article's own words) "matter".
This leads me to the conclusion that the author really was just trying to start a flame war but instead of coming up with a reasonable argument (Of which, on the Windows platform, there are many - just like any other), he sort of just throws in a few keywords, rambles on without re-reading what he's wrote and then finishes it off by bitching about some of the quirks of the platform, quirks that are only there because people REFUSE to do anything different than what they've been doing for the last 15 years.
In other words, he's blaming Microsoft for catering to lazy, underpaid developers.
Does that make them the bad guys? Not if you've got a multi-million $$$ business to run and want to keep costs to a minimum so you can give yourself a big raise at the end of the year.
Can you blink faster than you can click a mouse button?
I'm not sure I can right now, but then I haven't exactly been practicing using my blinking techniques as much as I have been using my hands.
If this technology really is more than some vapourware, I can see it finally making console FPS's rival PC FPS's. I mean, the biggest reason why the mouse is better for controlling those games is precision and speed, but if you could simply look at your enemy to target them, you'd be just as fast. Then all you need to worry about is moving your character, which analogue sticks are nearly perfect for anyway.
Apart from that, I'm not really sure I see much of a point of this technology, except maybe as a better way of navigating menus while controlling with the good ol' mouse.
That thinks this article was a tad poorly written?
For example...
Water forms in interstellar space at 10k
Forgive my possible ignorance, but 10k what? Degrees? (Celsius or Kelvin?) Pascals? Distance? Does a postfixed "K" represent something different within the scientific community that I simply didn't know about?
I don't suppose solar power would help solve that problem? After all real insects are attracted to light, so they may as well make these ones do the same.
Since they're insects, you could have several of them on a site at any one time, just swapping them around for recharging when the batteries run low.
Hell, combine that with some of the fancy swarming communication techniques we've been seeing lately so they can work together to get the best results at maximum efficiency.
It's really starting to look as though the future war of mankind vs. machine will be less big tanks and robots and more big mechanical spiders and cockroaches. It'll be like Starship troopers meets terminator, except we'll probably lose.
To be fair, Paul could see most things coming...
I'm glad SOMEONE did, otherwise I'd be worried about Skynet taking out the human race using little more than the processing power of a speak-and-spell.
They have detailed files on human anatomy.
I've actually thought about this before. When you're growing up, as a young, naive kid, you tend to just believe what adults tell you. Then you get a little wiser and realise that not ALL adults actually know what they're talking about (and some just love to tell you complete lies for the fun of it, or to make you look stupid), so you typically start to question what most people tell you, but certain people (such as your parents or teachers) tend to keep a level of respect where you continually believe what they tell you.
I had an old biology teacher who admitted to frequently abusing this trust, telling his pupils random, completely made-up facts purely for his own amusement because he knew they trusted him - after all, he was a teacher, but I digress.
After years of these people essentially telling you everything you know, you question very little of it (And for good reason, you're relying on them to teach you most of what you'll take into your adult life). But what if they teach you something wrong? You have no way of knowing for sure, but chances are you wont question it either because they've gained that level of respect from you.
Furthermore, even when you're a lot older, you still tend to believe the things you were taught as a kid, even though if someone told you it now, you'd be a lot more skeptical (well, for most people here at least, there are still plenty of gullible people out there).
I believe this is what happened here, because I distinctly remember people telling that story about NASA and their million-dollar-pens ever since I was very young and thus I didn't question it up until this day. I even remember several different primary school teachers and a couple of secondary school teachers reiterating it word for word.
Perhaps it's how the human brain develops and works. On a basic level, when you get a "fact" to process, when you're younger you go through some simple steps - Understand it if possible, remember it. But then someone slips you a bad "fact" and you then learn to add a new thing to do - Understand it, Question it, remember it. But what about all the "facts" you've learned previously? You've already processed them, you've already remembered them and as we all know we can't just loop through every memory we have and question them for their reliability, they just get...remembered as being fact, rather than questioned facts.
I'm sort of rambling here, it's 2am and I've been awake all day (I know this barely counts as mid-afternoon for most hardcore geeks, but I'm a working boy), plus I'm by no means a biologist or anything remotely similar, but I'd be interested to know if any studies on this have ever been made.
Unfortunately I don't have the time to check out every single "fact" people tell me, particularly the common ones (like this) that get reiterated all the time. I apologise for spreading FUD and I stand corrected (Although my main point remains the same), however I AM only human.
Or to put it in simpler terms...
"if it ain't broke..."
This does seem to be a prime example of over-engineering and tackling a problem that either doesn't exist or can be fixed via much simpler means, i.e. training the "user" to be better organised. It reminds me of NASA spending millions developing a pen that would work in space, while the Russians just used pencils....
I'd rather they spent the money they used researching this to develop glues that have the same properties as that used on post-it notes, but don't lose their stickiness over time, combine that with a reusable form of paper and you have yourself a winner.
Then again, I suppose you could just use small, magnetic whiteboards to achieve a similar result....hmmm...perhaps I should take a trip to the patent office...
That slash got dotted.
It's getting harder and harder to tell the difference between subterfuge and sheer incompetence.
If you wanted to be elaborate, you could probably set your machine up to perform this task automatically upon logging in with a certain username/password, then have it in your will for someone to log in with that user.
Or just have it in your will, as far as I'm aware, they're legally bound to do what's possible.
I don't see why people think this is a bad thing. A big company like Dell can bankrupt smaller companies overnight just by failing to renew a contract or not ordering more parts.
They already squeeze them tight for the best prices and only pay them for any components they use - those stocks taking up space in Dell's warehouse don't cost them a penny until they go into a machine (That's already been paid for by the buyer).
So imagine if two companies had say...wireless cards. One has a major deal with Dell, but no Open Drivers, then the other announces they suddenly have Open Drivers. Is it anything on Dell's head to tell the first company to either cough up some open drivers or come and pick up their unused parts before they get discarded? I don't think so.
All it takes is for one company to start releasing open drivers and the rest will have to fall in line or risk loosing a lot of business practically overnight. In the end, everyone will benefit.
Interestingly enough, google didn't recognise the word "unbibium", the name given to a recently discovered element in the periodic table (According to wikipedia) and instead asked if I meant unbiunium, the temporary name given to an as-yet undiscovered element of the periodic table.
Surely it's not really a fair indication just because it's web presence is dropping? I could easily argue that Java is only so "popular" because more people are posting with problems they're having using the language and that C\C++ are only loosing ground because better information on using the language is already out there.
I've always wondered why botnets always seemed to be created by black hats. I think it'd be cool to have a competition where some whitehats try to exploit a vulnerability in some software in order to patch it FROM that vulnerability.
Even if it just forced a windows update, it'd still be quite useful, but it seems nobody with the skills to pull off such a feat can be bothered to do it.
Surely there's some benign genius out there who could exploit an existing botnet to send it a shutdown command, rather akin to how captain Picard defeated the Borg after he was captured by them, once again proving that Star Trek has given us great insight into the future and, of course, that Picard is better than Kirk will ever be?
I've actually wanted to own a .su domain for quite some time, but I can't seem to find a registrar that'll do them to someone outside of russia for a REASONABLE sum. A lot of the ones that do seem to offer them want 3-figure amounts for some reason.
.su domains?
Does anyone actually know of a decent registrar that's not stupidly expensive for