The moral of my story: if you're not a financial genius, marry someone who is:-)
Ugh. It really doesn't take a financial genius or a math major to live within your means. It's just common sense budgeting. You get paid X amount a month. You spend Y amount a month. Want to save money? Y < X. It amazes me that people can graduate high school and not understand basic finances.
Yeah, I recently played this. It looks just amazing (and really shows why the graphics capabilities of the next-gens are overhyped). Fun game, really well done.
The ad works when it leaves the audience wanting to know more, which leads to them coming to you to find out more. You've drawn them in.
Except in this case I don't think it's a matter of the audience wanting to know more. It's more like people found the ad distasteful, and now Sony has to explain/spin the ad into a positive light.
So, is this a case of any attention is good attention, or is it leaving people with a bad impression of the product? That baby spot is just awful. You've got this alien, obsidian overlord and a creepy baby from Uncanny Valley. Is this supposed to make the average consumer want to plunk down $500 to put this box in their living room?
My God but you are a karma whore. You resort to posting anonymously for follow-ups? Is there some prize for having a high karma history that I don't know about? Pathetic.
Ok, I can see his point of view. The checks were just uninteresting paperwork because he had no immediate need for the money, so he let them pile up. Interesting guy. Thanks for the follow up.
I don't get it. Are you saying he didn't cash his checks out of altruism? That he wanted to work for free? Maybe he was just rich and lazy? He's gotta pay his bills somehow, unless he was living with his parents.
Where in the article does it say he didn't get rich?
Yes, I was wondering the same thing. VisiCalc was generating millions in revenue. I'd be surprised if Bricklin didn't come out of it a multi-millionare. Not Bill Gates or Steve Jobs rich, but no pauper either.
I did some Googling, but unfortunately didn't find anything definitive.
In theory, in practice Java applets never worked well, and have been going the way of dodo pretty much since their inception, you rarely see one these days - fortunately, painful as they were.
I just wrote a new online game using Java applets. There really aren't that many options. Your choices are pretty much Flash, Java applets, or Javascript. Flash is too proprietary. Javascript is too painful.
Look at Yahoo Games. I think most of them are Java applets. Other than the game niche though, you're right, applets aren't used much. However, it is a big niche, and I don't expect applets to be "going the way of the dodo".
I've had this conversation with you before, but since you're repeating the same argument...
The page you link to says you can make a CD of Debian's distribution. It does not say you can make changes to their distrution and still call it Debian. In fact, they specifically want you to ask them first.
And so, how is Debian's software "free"? You can't modify and redistribute it without changing the name. Same thing with Mozilla Firefox. Why all this fuss over the image? The rest of the code is much more important.
Nope, because Sun still owns the trademark. So anything IBM or Microsoft did that Sun didn't approve of couldn't be called Java. Of course, somebody like Microsoft doesn't need the source to extend Java. Just look at C#.
But secretly I envy the resellers because they're making 1000-2000 dollar profit for sitting out 10-12 hours for a preorder slip.
I don't envy them. Standing in line is a crappy way to make a one-time profit. And of course something could go wrong. They could wait all that time in line and not get the pre-order slip. And then on launch day having the slip is no guarantee of a system.
The smart people who really made some easy dollars were the people in Japan who bought 360s when they launched there and sold them overseas. No lines!
I don't get why mono gets *SO* singled out here, and nobody raises an eyebrow at the former.
Probably because stuff like Wine, Samba, and FAT32 are used for compatibility reasons with existing Windows applications/machines. Most people developing for free platforms aren't going to do so using Win32 standards. However, Mono is different. It wants us to write free software using Microsoft's standards, and people are understandably nervous about this.
A better question is why Java has been given a much easier time than.NET. Sun has definitely gotten better about opening up, but it's taken years of prodding.
I think what happened is they saw what went down with the Xbox 360. They see every unit being scraped up and sold on Ebay for between $600 and $1000. Sony probably figures if anyone is going to profit from the craze, it's going to be them.
This is wrong. It costs so much because of the Blu-ray player. Even at the $500/$600 price, Sony is still losing tons of money by selling these players. They have to make the money back through games.
It would make more sense to me if Sony actually did what you described: cut out the middle man and put them up for auction until the demand dies down.
Beefy console specs are not for the user, they are for the developer, to allow the developer to achieve what they want in the title.
Most developers/publishers want to sell as many titles as possible. That's the bottom line. Sony is notorious for giving developers crappy dev kits, and yet the developers put up with it. XBox was more powerful than PS2, and yet developers didn't abondon the PS2.
As far as being "beefy" enough, I imagine the Wii is at least as powerful as the old Xbox. Play some of the later games on the XBox and you'll see that the graphics compare pretty favorably to the next gens. Unless you've got a 50" high res TV the graphics aspect of the next gens are oversold.
Basically programmers gave up Lisp not because of syntax, but because they aren't eager to learn new ways of programming.
Don't discount the syntax issue. When your average programmer has been ingrained with years of Algol-like syntax, coming to Lisp is not easy. And yes, the overload of parenthesis can make the language harder to read, because there are fewer cues to pick up on. Consider that humans work by visually scanning and picking out noticable features: Preattentive Processing
It has been noted that a program is written only once yet read many times. Thus program readability has to be a primary concern of the programmer. It's likely that the person reading your code will have far less knowledge of how you've solved the problem at hand than you have at the time you wrote the code. Thus you must strive to make your code readable by someone with little knowledge of the code.
I've found that the key to readability in Lisp functions is an obvious structure or framework to the code. With a glance you should be able to see where objects are bound, iteration is done and most importantly where conditional branching is done. The conditionals are the most important since this is where the program is deciding what to do next. Bugs often occur when the conditional can't handle all possible cases. If you're planning on extending the function you need a clear idea of the possible inputs it's willing to accept and what you can assert to be true for each branch of the conditional.
Java is truly an incredible cross-platform development language and environment, and with upcoming native widget support
Do you have a link for this? I've been poking around, but haven't found anything definitive. Does this mean they're moving to the SWT model? I hope so, because Swing has always been behind on look and feel, and I'm tired of the incremental improvements instead of having stuff behave and look right from the beginning.
Then I learned how to use Swing interfaces and some obscure features within the abstract classes I discovered by reading the source code (documented but not in a way that is very comprehensible).
I had no idea you could do that.
How does that work exactly?
What if there was a fraudulent charge on your card? Would you pay for it? No, you would call your credit card company and they would reverse the charges. What if you ordered an item online, but it never showed up? Guess what, you can call your credit card company about that too. What if you called to cancel your account, but the merchant refused to do so? Right again, you can get those charges reversed as well.
My CC company will care if I tell them I said "cancel my account" and hang up?
Not the way you describe it. But if you said you made it extremely clear that you wanted your account cancelled, and they refused to listen, then they will care. Staying on the phone for half an hour begging the service person to cancel your account is ridiculous and unnecessary. In fact, the service people know this, and they will probably just cancel the account once you hang up. If not, they know they can get dinged.
Is this where you shift the argument? Do you know what real genocide is?
For one, I never said the intention was genocide.
Then why bring it up? Most of the deaths in Iraq are due to sectarian violence. To talk about genocide and mention white phosphorous is bullshit. The evidence does not support the US military is seeking to wipe out the civilian population.
Slashdot Mirror
Ugh. It really doesn't take a financial genius or a math major to live within your means. It's just common sense budgeting. You get paid X amount a month. You spend Y amount a month. Want to save money? Y < X. It amazes me that people can graduate high school and not understand basic finances.
What are the better alternatives?
Yeah, I recently played this. It looks just amazing (and really shows why the graphics capabilities of the next-gens are overhyped). Fun game, really well done.
Machismo? Camping out for a game console? Showing off to girls? Umm, yeah.
I'm willing to bet that an "early adopter of HDTV" can plunk down $2,000 to get one from Ebay if he really wanted it.
Except in this case I don't think it's a matter of the audience wanting to know more. It's more like people found the ad distasteful, and now Sony has to explain/spin the ad into a positive light.
So, is this a case of any attention is good attention, or is it leaving people with a bad impression of the product? That baby spot is just awful. You've got this alien, obsidian overlord and a creepy baby from Uncanny Valley. Is this supposed to make the average consumer want to plunk down $500 to put this box in their living room?
My God but you are a karma whore. You resort to posting anonymously for follow-ups? Is there some prize for having a high karma history that I don't know about? Pathetic.
Ok, I can see his point of view. The checks were just uninteresting paperwork because he had no immediate need for the money, so he let them pile up. Interesting guy. Thanks for the follow up.
I don't get it. Are you saying he didn't cash his checks out of altruism? That he wanted to work for free? Maybe he was just rich and lazy? He's gotta pay his bills somehow, unless he was living with his parents.
The easiest way is probably to put a sleep inside your Java program and then use top or ps.
Yes, I was wondering the same thing. VisiCalc was generating millions in revenue. I'd be surprised if Bricklin didn't come out of it a multi-millionare. Not Bill Gates or Steve Jobs rich, but no pauper either.
I did some Googling, but unfortunately didn't find anything definitive.
I just wrote a new online game using Java applets. There really aren't that many options. Your choices are pretty much Flash, Java applets, or Javascript. Flash is too proprietary. Javascript is too painful.
Look at Yahoo Games. I think most of them are Java applets. Other than the game niche though, you're right, applets aren't used much. However, it is a big niche, and I don't expect applets to be "going the way of the dodo".
I've had this conversation with you before, but since you're repeating the same argument...
The page you link to says you can make a CD of Debian's distribution. It does not say you can make changes to their distrution and still call it Debian. In fact, they specifically want you to ask them first.
And so, how is Debian's software "free"? You can't modify and redistribute it without changing the name. Same thing with Mozilla Firefox. Why all this fuss over the image? The rest of the code is much more important.
Oh come on, it only takes 10 megs or so for Hello World :)
Nope, because Sun still owns the trademark. So anything IBM or Microsoft did that Sun didn't approve of couldn't be called Java. Of course, somebody like Microsoft doesn't need the source to extend Java. Just look at C#.
I don't envy them. Standing in line is a crappy way to make a one-time profit. And of course something could go wrong. They could wait all that time in line and not get the pre-order slip. And then on launch day having the slip is no guarantee of a system.
The smart people who really made some easy dollars were the people in Japan who bought 360s when they launched there and sold them overseas. No lines!
Probably because stuff like Wine, Samba, and FAT32 are used for compatibility reasons with existing Windows applications/machines. Most people developing for free platforms aren't going to do so using Win32 standards. However, Mono is different. It wants us to write free software using Microsoft's standards, and people are understandably nervous about this.
A better question is why Java has been given a much easier time than .NET. Sun has definitely gotten better about opening up, but it's taken years of prodding.
This is wrong. It costs so much because of the Blu-ray player. Even at the $500/$600 price, Sony is still losing tons of money by selling these players. They have to make the money back through games.
It would make more sense to me if Sony actually did what you described: cut out the middle man and put them up for auction until the demand dies down.
Most developers/publishers want to sell as many titles as possible. That's the bottom line. Sony is notorious for giving developers crappy dev kits, and yet the developers put up with it. XBox was more powerful than PS2, and yet developers didn't abondon the PS2.
As far as being "beefy" enough, I imagine the Wii is at least as powerful as the old Xbox. Play some of the later games on the XBox and you'll see that the graphics compare pretty favorably to the next gens. Unless you've got a 50" high res TV the graphics aspect of the next gens are oversold.
Don't discount the syntax issue. When your average programmer has been ingrained with years of Algol-like syntax, coming to Lisp is not easy. And yes, the overload of parenthesis can make the language harder to read, because there are fewer cues to pick up on. Consider that humans work by visually scanning and picking out noticable features: Preattentive Processing
Don't just take my word for it, as an admitted non-Lisper. Read what an industry insider thinks, and why he coded his own "if" macro: http://www.franz.com/~jkf/coding_standards.html
It has been noted that a program is written only once yet read many times. Thus program readability has to be a primary concern of the programmer. It's likely that the person reading your code will have far less knowledge of how you've solved the problem at hand than you have at the time you wrote the code. Thus you must strive to make your code readable by someone with little knowledge of the code.
I've found that the key to readability in Lisp functions is an obvious structure or framework to the code. With a glance you should be able to see where objects are bound, iteration is done and most importantly where conditional branching is done. The conditionals are the most important since this is where the program is deciding what to do next. Bugs often occur when the conditional can't handle all possible cases. If you're planning on extending the function you need a clear idea of the possible inputs it's willing to accept and what you can assert to be true for each branch of the conditional.
Do you have a link for this? I've been poking around, but haven't found anything definitive. Does this mean they're moving to the SWT model? I hope so, because Swing has always been behind on look and feel, and I'm tired of the incremental improvements instead of having stuff behave and look right from the beginning.
Could you provide details?
Unfortunately, the article summary is up to Slashdot standards.
What if there was a fraudulent charge on your card? Would you pay for it? No, you would call your credit card company and they would reverse the charges. What if you ordered an item online, but it never showed up? Guess what, you can call your credit card company about that too. What if you called to cancel your account, but the merchant refused to do so? Right again, you can get those charges reversed as well.
Not the way you describe it. But if you said you made it extremely clear that you wanted your account cancelled, and they refused to listen, then they will care. Staying on the phone for half an hour begging the service person to cancel your account is ridiculous and unnecessary. In fact, the service people know this, and they will probably just cancel the account once you hang up. If not, they know they can get dinged.
Is this where you shift the argument? Do you know what real genocide is?
Then why bring it up? Most of the deaths in Iraq are due to sectarian violence. To talk about genocide and mention white phosphorous is bullshit. The evidence does not support the US military is seeking to wipe out the civilian population.