Look... I don't really care if I'm qualified to drive a train or not.
I create complex things that live inside the computer, using the constraints and software parts available, much like an engineer in the physical world works with constraints and existing parts to make something useful. Unless you want to narrowly define engineering as designing physical things, I don't see your point. Truth be told, I don't spend a lot of time worrying about semantics and titles --I earn too much money to care.
"the used game sale market is still depriving publishers of money because it gives consumers an all-too-easy alternative to buying a new game."
Logically, these geniuses will be going after sex, food, and sleep next --activities you could be engaged in (instead of gaming) that are stealing money from the pockets of $60+ video game makers.
Funny. Reminds me of the place I worked where all the little old ladies thought programs, screen savers, wallpaper, and almost anything else they could see on the screen was an "icon." Confused the hell out of me until I learned to translate.
Well... Stupid as the CueCat was, I finally found use for it years latter. For the price (free), it's a workable barcode scanner with just a little bit of coding.
This has got to be one of the dumber anti-Windows trolls presented as news I've seen in a while. An evil hacker could also put a post-it note on an idiot's computer telling them to type "FORMAT C:" at a command prompt. People too dumb to recognize icons or use AV software just shouldn't be using computers.
That all said, I've always thought that extension hiding default was one of the more annoying things I have to kill every time I install Windoze. Seems like Redmond just keeps dumbing down the interface, forcing me to work harder at getting the details I need.
Indeed, we should stop wasting money on the arts and entertainment completely. All of our time and attention should be devoted to industry and finding new ways to strip life of all enjoyment.
If all one values in life is money, I feel sorry for them. Their lives are truly impoverished.
I wanted to see it translated to the big screen. I still like the comic better, but they did an amazing job on the film and I absolutely enjoyed it. I'll be buying the DVD too.
When did money become the primary criteria for determining the merit of an artistic project? Sheesh, what a stupid society we live in.
Well... The best bosses for programmers are fellow coders, but things often don't work that way. The Catch-22 is that people who are passionate about technology rarely want to spend their time managing others. And when forced into such a position, they're often not very good at it. Somewhat opposed skill sets, I guess.
Keeping up with the rapidly changing field --and being really good at it-- requires spending most of your time actually doing it, so if you're spending the majority of your time managing people, it becomes very challenging to do much more than understand current trends. If a someone is good at management and they get the technology big picture, that's often sufficient.
The turf war could be endless, says Dan Jaffe, executive vice president of the Association of National Advertisers trade group of big marketers. "Think about some of the companies out there. Some have hundreds, maybe thousands of brands.... It's really open-ended."
It really, really makes me cringe to say this, but maybe the crappy concept of AOL keywords makes more sense than the potentially endless multiplication of TLDs and domains. If "the Google" and other S.E.s guaranteed search precedence to corporate trademark holders, owning all the permutations of products, brands, slogans, etc. wouldn't be necessary. We could dumb down the browser for the normals and hide the URLs (always there for advanced users). Bulletproof phishing protection would be critical, of course.
"The Obama administration argues that that continuation of the case will lead to the disclosure of important 'state secrets.'"
This is the only policy area where I'm disappointed in the Obama administration. I don't understand what the big deal is. We already know about Echelon. I really doubt, short of a working version of SkyNet, there are any secrets that we would find surprising --certainly nothing that would surprise the intelligence community. The "state secret" must just be the extent of the abuse.
I would be very happy to never see DRM again. I've been trying to play an old game from Ubisoft that requires a CD every fraking time it's played. This wouldn't be a problem, except that Ubisoft assumed I'm a criminal and created copy protection so oppressive, it prevents the CD from being recognized by the drive over 95% of the time (no exaggeration). Ironically, if I'd just pirated the game, it would work every time, instead of frustrating the hell out of me.
It's gonna be interesting when we finally move to a cashless society. Things like this will be unforgivable in such a society. That is, we will have to have solved this problem, by and large, of card theft and purchase fraud.
Perhaps the solution will be similar to that in the (underrated) world of Max Headroom, where credit fraud is punishable by televised public execution. And if you like American Idle (sic.), you're going to love "You, the Jury."
"God will dwell with man forever in a world of peace, free of greed and anger and malice and war and poverty and hunger."
I don't mean to start anything, but... really?
Maybe I'm a little cynical, but don't our negative characteristics and our difficulties define what it is to be human too? If we had none of the flaws, none of the struggles, in what sense would we even be the same individuals?
Honestly, it's always made my head hurt trying to imagine a world that was all rewards and no pain --especially for eternity. Without bad times, how do you even define good times? Meaningful existence is about challenges, triumphs, and occasionally defeats.
What's the point of promiscuity if it doesn't make babies? It might be entertaining for its participants, well, one of them anyway, but it doesn't actually accomplish anything useful. It's just self indulgence.
Well... I'm certainly glad I'm not your significant other.;)
What other completely enjoyable activities are causing you horrible self-loathing?
Re:Parents choose their baby's name
on
Designer Babies
·
· Score: 1
Sorry. I'm a lawyer and you're only partly right. Passwords may not be "property" but it can still be potentially harmful to withhold them. If a plaintiff could prove harm or even better, immediate irreparable injury, a court would say give 'em up or go to jail, go directly to jail, do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars.
Sounds simple, but could the judge really punish someone if they just used the Reagan ("I don't remember.") defense? This "get out of jail free" card worked again and again for various Bush cronies. I've promptly forgotten entire books of material immediately after final exams myself.
That's right folks, you heard it here on/. If you don't renounce all your worldly possessions and spend the rest of your life helping the poor of Calcutta, you can't take a moral stand on ANYTHING! That would be hypocrisy!!! (If you're a simple-minded, black-and-white thinker.)
Nobody loves criticizing others' ideas as much as I do, but this whole thread is unnecessarily negative. I haven't read the article, but I have used Photosynth and I can see some appealing uses --maybe not shopping, but there are definitely some cool things that could be done. Like the "digital convergence" hype, it'll probably take a decade to reach viability and creep into general use.
I had a friend many years ago, working for an undisclosed company in Redmond, who I told about the Internet and all the cool, timely news and information you would be able to find there some day. He looked at me incredulously and said "that's stupid! Who's going to enter all that information?"
Could you imagine Google Maps, online FPS games, and video conferencing back when you were browsing BBS systems on a 300 baud modem? Isn't it more interesting to consider the possibilities rather than quickly dismissing ideas because you lack the imagination to see their potential?
More importantly, why do we mark as "Insightful" dishonest (or perhaps just inept) attempts to make others think that the ignorance of some Republican politicians proves that all politicians are idiots? One might also point out that the smart, qualified people, from outside Washington, being tapped to re-examine policy are NOT politicians, but experts on the subject.
Re:a bunch of questions
on
C# In-Depth
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· Score: 1
So true. I use both C# and VB.Net. It blows my mind how the ignants out there blast VB.Net, while happily code away in C#, a language that at best is slightly syntactically dissimilar. Actually I guess it doesn't. Ignorance is ignorance after all.
Actually, there's some divergence there. VB.net has quite a few nice syntactic shortcuts in the "My" namespace, optional type safety, XML literals, and other features to speed up development. However, I think for those coming from a VB6 or VBscript background there's the danger of staying mired in the old ways rather than really internalizing OOP. I made the switch to C# several years back and have to say, it really made me approach problems in an OO way that I hadn't done before (with the exception of a couple awkward semesters of Java in undergrad). No offense to VB fans out there, but I think using C# has actually made me a better developer. It's elegant, succinct and, now that I'm used to it, seems to work better with Visual Studio, IMHO.
> because the "movement" won't be in office. The politician will. > > "Yes we can" is a crap soundbite
The governments of several foreign countries thank you for your viral cynicism. It will be very helpful when all Americans believe their government can't fix anything and reject appeals for them to take any responsibility for their country. The best way to defeat an empire is to let it rot from within.
Slashdot Mirror
> No engineering degree = no engineer
Look... I don't really care if I'm qualified to drive a train or not.
I create complex things that live inside the computer, using the constraints and software parts available, much like an engineer in the physical world works with constraints and existing parts to make something useful. Unless you want to narrowly define engineering as designing physical things, I don't see your point. Truth be told, I don't spend a lot of time worrying about semantics and titles --I earn too much money to care.
"the used game sale market is still depriving publishers of money because it gives consumers an all-too-easy alternative to buying a new game."
Logically, these geniuses will be going after sex, food, and sleep next --activities you could be engaged in (instead of gaming) that are stealing money from the pockets of $60+ video game makers.
> Give me a few years and a grand for $1,000,000 and I'll do a study that proves this.
A grand for $1M? That's a great return over a few years! And I get a study too. Where do I sign up?
Um... Any relation to Bernie Madoff?
Funny. Reminds me of the place I worked where all the little old ladies thought programs, screen savers, wallpaper, and almost anything else they could see on the screen was an "icon." Confused the hell out of me until I learned to translate.
Well... Stupid as the CueCat was, I finally found use for it years latter. For the price (free), it's a workable barcode scanner with just a little bit of coding.
http://linux.wareseeker.com/Internet/cueact-0.1.1.zip/318832
http://freshmeat.net/search/?q=cuecat
http://blogs.msdn.com/coding4fun/archive/2007/03/06/1815618.aspx
Now if I could just find a use for all those damn AOL CDs in the attic.
This has got to be one of the dumber anti-Windows trolls presented as news I've seen in a while. An evil hacker could also put a post-it note on an idiot's computer telling them to type "FORMAT C:" at a command prompt. People too dumb to recognize icons or use AV software just shouldn't be using computers.
That all said, I've always thought that extension hiding default was one of the more annoying things I have to kill every time I install Windoze. Seems like Redmond just keeps dumbing down the interface, forcing me to work harder at getting the details I need.
Indeed, we should stop wasting money on the arts and entertainment completely. All of our time and attention should be devoted to industry and finding new ways to strip life of all enjoyment.
If all one values in life is money, I feel sorry for them. Their lives are truly impoverished.
> Anyone remember SIM0NE?
Hmmm... I was thinking further back to Looker.
I wanted to see it translated to the big screen. I still like the comic better, but they did an amazing job on the film and I absolutely enjoyed it. I'll be buying the DVD too.
When did money become the primary criteria for determining the merit of an artistic project? Sheesh, what a stupid society we live in.
Well... The best bosses for programmers are fellow coders, but things often don't work that way. The Catch-22 is that people who are passionate about technology rarely want to spend their time managing others. And when forced into such a position, they're often not very good at it. Somewhat opposed skill sets, I guess.
Keeping up with the rapidly changing field --and being really good at it-- requires spending most of your time actually doing it, so if you're spending the majority of your time managing people, it becomes very challenging to do much more than understand current trends. If a someone is good at management and they get the technology big picture, that's often sufficient.
The turf war could be endless, says Dan Jaffe, executive vice president of the Association of National Advertisers trade group of big marketers. "Think about some of the companies out there. Some have hundreds, maybe thousands of brands. ... It's really open-ended."
It really, really makes me cringe to say this, but maybe the crappy concept of AOL keywords makes more sense than the potentially endless multiplication of TLDs and domains. If "the Google" and other S.E.s guaranteed search precedence to corporate trademark holders, owning all the permutations of products, brands, slogans, etc. wouldn't be necessary. We could dumb down the browser for the normals and hide the URLs (always there for advanced users). Bulletproof phishing protection would be critical, of course.
"The Obama administration argues that that continuation of the case will lead to the disclosure of important 'state secrets.'"
This is the only policy area where I'm disappointed in the Obama administration. I don't understand what the big deal is. We already know about Echelon. I really doubt, short of a working version of SkyNet, there are any secrets that we would find surprising --certainly nothing that would surprise the intelligence community. The "state secret" must just be the extent of the abuse.
I would be very happy to never see DRM again. I've been trying to play an old game from Ubisoft that requires a CD every fraking time it's played. This wouldn't be a problem, except that Ubisoft assumed I'm a criminal and created copy protection so oppressive, it prevents the CD from being recognized by the drive over 95% of the time (no exaggeration). Ironically, if I'd just pirated the game, it would work every time, instead of frustrating the hell out of me.
It's gonna be interesting when we finally move to a cashless society. Things like this will be unforgivable in such a society. That is, we will have to have solved this problem, by and large, of card theft and purchase fraud.
Perhaps the solution will be similar to that in the (underrated) world of Max Headroom, where credit fraud is punishable by televised public execution. And if you like American Idle (sic.), you're going to love "You, the Jury."
I don't mean to start anything, but... really?
Maybe I'm a little cynical, but don't our negative characteristics and our difficulties define what it is to be human too? If we had none of the flaws, none of the struggles, in what sense would we even be the same individuals?
Honestly, it's always made my head hurt trying to imagine a world that was all rewards and no pain --especially for eternity. Without bad times, how do you even define good times? Meaningful existence is about challenges, triumphs, and occasionally defeats.
What's the point of promiscuity if it doesn't make babies? It might be entertaining for its participants, well, one of them anyway, but it doesn't actually accomplish anything useful. It's just self indulgence.
Well... I'm certainly glad I'm not your significant other. ;)
What other completely enjoyable activities are causing you horrible self-loathing?
Funny. I always thought this is why Cassius Clay and Evander Holyfield did O.K. too.
Sounds simple, but could the judge really punish someone if they just used the Reagan ("I don't remember.") defense? This "get out of jail free" card worked again and again for various Bush cronies. I've promptly forgotten entire books of material immediately after final exams myself.
That's right folks, you heard it here on /. If you don't renounce all your worldly possessions and spend the rest of your life helping the poor of Calcutta, you can't take a moral stand on ANYTHING! That would be hypocrisy!!! (If you're a simple-minded, black-and-white thinker.)
Nobody loves criticizing others' ideas as much as I do, but this whole thread is unnecessarily negative. I haven't read the article, but I have used Photosynth and I can see some appealing uses --maybe not shopping, but there are definitely some cool things that could be done. Like the "digital convergence" hype, it'll probably take a decade to reach viability and creep into general use.
I had a friend many years ago, working for an undisclosed company in Redmond, who I told about the Internet and all the cool, timely news and information you would be able to find there some day. He looked at me incredulously and said "that's stupid! Who's going to enter all that information?"
Could you imagine Google Maps, online FPS games, and video conferencing back when you were browsing BBS systems on a 300 baud modem? Isn't it more interesting to consider the possibilities rather than quickly dismissing ideas because you lack the imagination to see their potential?
Something younger technical people forget is that managing a group of people requires more skills than knowing how to obfuscate a perl script.
Doesn't it come already obfuscated?
Or maybe that's just my code...
> Let me get this straight, the media says x > y, therefore x must be greater than y.
Some might argue that reality says "x > y" but some people, due to their biases, can't honestly acknowledge as much.
Does anyone think Reagan was picked over Carter because of media bias too?
More importantly, why do we mark as "Insightful" dishonest (or perhaps just inept) attempts to make others think that the ignorance of some Republican politicians proves that all politicians are idiots? One might also point out that the smart, qualified people, from outside Washington, being tapped to re-examine policy are NOT politicians, but experts on the subject.
So true. I use both C# and VB .Net. It blows my mind how the ignants out there blast VB.Net, while happily code away in C#, a language that at best is slightly syntactically dissimilar. Actually I guess it doesn't. Ignorance is ignorance after all.
Actually, there's some divergence there. VB.net has quite a few nice syntactic shortcuts in the "My" namespace, optional type safety, XML literals, and other features to speed up development. However, I think for those coming from a VB6 or VBscript background there's the danger of staying mired in the old ways rather than really internalizing OOP. I made the switch to C# several years back and have to say, it really made me approach problems in an OO way that I hadn't done before (with the exception of a couple awkward semesters of Java in undergrad). No offense to VB fans out there, but I think using C# has actually made me a better developer. It's elegant, succinct and, now that I'm used to it, seems to work better with Visual Studio, IMHO.
> because the "movement" won't be in office. The politician will.
>
> "Yes we can" is a crap soundbite
The governments of several foreign countries thank you for your viral cynicism. It will be very helpful when all Americans believe their government can't fix anything and reject appeals for them to take any responsibility for their country. The best way to defeat an empire is to let it rot from within.