I don't really agree with the reasons laid out in the articles. Some make a bit of sense but likely aren't the big cause, while others (divorce? sudden increase in sports? what?) are just silly.
I grew up in the 80s, and I never actually stopped watching cartoons. I watch old GI Joe and Transformers episodes whenever I can, and am always tuned to the new shows on Cartoon Network when I'm not watching the History Channel.
I remember watching Saturday morning cartoons die. As a teenager with no social life that spent way too much time at the computer, I would often stay up Friday night and turn on Saturday morning cartoons the next day. I watched as they became less targeted and less well written (I don't mean Shakespeare here, but they seemed to forget how to write toward kids).
You didn't have as many cool action shows, or witty comedies. You got a lot more patronizing or uninteresting marketing shows. There were still great shows like Animaniacs, but they were on in the afternoon as well so you didn't have to get up to see them.
Pretty soon, everything was Pokemon or a rip-off of a rip-off of some previously popular show. Even the later Animaniacs spin-offs lost their humour. The concepts they gave them were just dumb. Pinky, Elmira, and the Brain is a perfect example.
After a while, the only shows I could stand watching were Batman Beyond and Men in Black. Batman Beyond is just damn cool, as is expected from the guys that created the Batman: The Animated Series, and Men In Black was a lot like the Real Ghostbusters. Other than that, I can't even remember what they showed. I think two episodes of Pokemon, two episodes of some show a whole lot like Pokemon, then two episodes of Pokemon again.
Pretty soon, there was just nothing left. The people that made Batman Beyond moved to Cartoon Network for Justice League. Men in Black stopped airing. They were on the right track with Jackie Chan Adventures, but it can't carry things on its own. Other than that, they just lost the knack at making kids' shows.
So I think that's pretty much it. Due to budgeting, misplaced priorities, or better deals at cable networks, the broadcast networks just lost the ability to make shows that kids watch. Kids started watching less shows, Saturday became less important, broadcast networks stopped focusing on them as much, causing even less good shows to air. Now, there's just no point.
It is a little sad. Children will no longer experience the thrill of waking up at 6am on Saturday, grabbing a bowl of Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs, and sitting in wrapped in their blankets to see the newest superheroes or wisecracking animals. But with all the quality cartoons shown on other networks, often written as much for adults as for kids, it's not a big loss.
I went to one of those "special" schools for high school. I took the short bus and everything. I couldn't go to normal high school for a couple of reasons, some psychological, and some due to the fact that I learned the main book my English class was reading that year was about an anthropomorphic mouse and just refused to show up.
Both parts of the special school seemed to have a focus on living skills that you don't see other places. It was actually quite helpful, because it included a lot of stuff adults don't really think to teach teenagers, many of which were on your list.
The other nice thing was that the teachers were generally the unusual ones. The main teacher would talk about his trips to the Island of Komodo (those dragons smell horrible, apparently) or the Dread Zeppelin concert he went to the previous Friday. The science teacher and I would discuss Bruce Lee's philosophy of martial arts or a recent Marilyn Monroe layout in Playboy. (It was a reprint, I'm not that old) They even let me do book reports on Dostoevsky and George Orwell while the rest of the class worked on normal stuff.
Now that I think about it, I kind of wish I hadn't tested out at the end of the year. Though if I hadn't I may have been forced to go back to normal high school. Yuck.
If you need to "study" and "practice" beyond one run through, you really haven't learned anything and aren't prepared to do anything other than peform rote learning.
Which is what most students studying for the test are doing. A lot of people that did well on the SAT achieved that goal by spending a long time studying SAT guides and getting SAT tutoring. For them, at least, the test proved mostly that they had learned how to take the SAT.
What he's saying is that the developer made the program to solve a problem that he encountered, or to fill a need that he had. This developer has no need to put a large amount of extra work into this project to add in interoperability features that neither he nor most of his users would actually use.
People complain, expecting that since this guy put this program together in the first place, he should fix it so it works the way they want it to. But that's not how OSS works. If they themselves need this interoperability, they can add it in. The developer has no reason, responsibility, nor inclination to do so.
But you seem to be missing the main point of his post. Opensource isn't one group, that only approaches things one way.
Microsoft may have been able to go from ignoring the internet to being fully focused on it in a year, but opensource programmers were already using it. They weren't all directed to work on the same thing, so they worked on what seemed useful. They get into these areas without having to be directed.
For whatever application space, there are probably already a good few opensource programs being worked on before Microsoft or whatever company decided to make it their business plan.
Guys always liked video games more. Even back when it was Space Invaders and Asteroids. Back before we had the technology or the market knowledge to back bloody games full of buxom women. In the past, many designers tried hard to carve a place for girl-oriented or gender-neutral games, and still women didn't pick up on them. There have always been girl-gamers, yes, but only recently have the numbers really increased. Accordingly, we are now starting to see a larger number of games that might appeal to them.
As an aside, I'm left-handed myself, and I don't really find it too hard to adapt. I can use a mouse right-handed with little to no trouble, and don't fumble around with can-openers. The only trouble I have is that scissors are sometimes uncomfortable and I can never hit the kick button quickly enough to get Chun-Li to do the lightning kick. Okay, I lied. That really pisses me off. The lightning kick rocks.
I don't play Ultima online, but I do play muds quite a bit. I find myself helping out female characters a lot, too. I don't think it's because I'm an idiot, or because I even think they're actually female. I just find that they tend to be more pleasant and are more apt to ask for help if they need it.
If I find a person of either gender sitting in a dungeon or wandering town looking confused, I'll buy them new armour, hone their weapons, and give them cash to train. It's often the women that will admit to needing some pointers in a new game, ask for help in getting out of a bad situation, or just converse pleasantly enough that I feel like giving them a hand. Guys on muds are usually more goal-oriented, aggressively independent, and less sociable. I know it took me long enough to get comfortable seeking help if I needed it.
I do agree that there are people out there that give girl characters nice stuff as a way of flirting or something, but it seems to me that most of the time it's just because they just like to help others. Females are more likely to receive this treatment because they're a lot less likely to be jerks.
There are differences between programmers and those other professions, though. Programmers' jobs require that they work mostly in their heads, dealing with concepts that are quite removed from the world around them. They also have to juggle a lot of different design ideas and variables and algorithms in their minds at once. The gist of the article is saying that they should be left to do this without getting bothered.
I agree that's it's not totally special to programmers. You have the same issue with authors writing a book, or theoretical physicists putting together thought experiments. Or graphic designers, which were mentioned in the article. They work best when they're comfortable and undisturbed.
As for the shower in the office, if you read it again you'll see that the author was talking about "a famous computer researcher who made a lot of discoveries in the field." He wasn't just any programmer. He was likely working on some very important projects for the company that would likely produce lots of revenue. In situations like that, it's not unheard of to go a little out of the way to provide an eccentric genius with what he needs to work best.
And the article is not saying that programmers are special and wonderful and better than everyone else. It's just trying to explain that due to the thought processes they use, they work as would writers and artists, and should be given the same treatment that companies give those professions.
Your experience doesn't go against what is said in the article.
When the author talks about interruptions, he's referring to people coming by and asking you something completely unrelated to what you're doing. The difficulty is when you're forced to lose your train of thought. He even mentions that it is acceptable to tap someone on the shoulder and ask about the work they're doing.
Of course, if someone comes up to me and taps me on the shoulder while I'm focussing on programming, I generally jump three feet in the air and yell at them. So there are some differences.
Well, the "Beat 'Em Up" genre is different from the shooter genre. I think the big difference these days is that most games have too much of a plot to count as a straight brawling game. Many games have a large brawling element to them, but there's usually other things that make it into more of an adventure type of thing. Still, I do miss Final Fight.
I do think graphical adventure games are still around, albeit in a mutated form. They're just more complex, and they blended with other genres. The article mentioned how many RPGs and such have graphical adventure elements. I don't really think "graphical adventure" is a valid genre in itself anyway. I know they're talking specifically about the type of games Sierra made, but I don't think that's really deserving of its own genre on the same level as "puzzle" and "space shooter." But adventure games are thriving currently, so I guess they had to narrow it down.
And I really liked text games. I'm still mudding after all these years.
Where does this idea that anime == no social life come from? I mean, there are a lot more girls into anime than, say, computers, percentage-wise. I met my girlfriend because she recognised me from an anime convention my friend took me to. I like anime and all, but she's really into it.
Sure, I know a few really socially-inept anime fans, and saw a frightening amount of fat guys dressed as sailor moon at the last convention, but that was more than off-set by the cute 20-year-old girls in schoolgirl outfits or skimpy sci-fi uniforms and bright pink hair. Most of the anime fans I've met are pretty cool people overall, and don't typify the stereotype at all.
Also, as an aside, I think posting on slashdot automatically takes away a person's right to deride others about not having a social life. Maybe I should just leave you to your attempts to feel better about yourself.
This is the first time I actually noticed the dates on all this software.
Back in the late-eighties/early-nineties I only knew Macs. I had family that worked at Apple so I had access to a lot of stuff. I finally moved over to a PC in 1998, when I got tired of connecting to shell accounts and wanted to get my own unix machine.
Anyway, I can't believe the dates here. I always assumed that Windows 3.1 came out in 87/88, what with the horrible interface and lack of features. I remember playing with a Mac 128k in 1985 that worked better than 3.1, minus the color.
It really makes me wonder what they were thinking at Apple back then, making the machines so expensive rather than trying to take over the market when they had such a lead. It boggles the mind.
No, actually. That's just being a jerk. Let's look this up.
evil
\E"vil\ ([=e]"v'l) n. 1. Anything which impairs the happiness of a being or deprives a being of any good; anything which causes suffering of any kind to sentient beings; injury; mischief; harm; -- opposed to good.
2. Moral badness, or the deviation of a moral being from the principles of virtue imposed by conscience, or by the will of the Supreme Being, or by the principles of a lawful human authority; disposition to do wrong; moral offence; wickedness; depravity.
We're talking about a corporation taking someone's personal information and using it in a way that person feels to be harmful. The corporation is using the information in a manner which causes suffering in the individual. That is evil according to definition 1.
In this example, the company does this act in order to benefit itself. It is causing suffering in another for its own profit, with no regard to the well-being of others. This is considered immoral, and is therefore evil in the second sense.
I think you have evil confused with cartoon supervillainy.
In French, "mobilix" would be pronounced something like "mo-bee-leex" while "obélix" would be pronounced "o-bay-leex." (Well, sort of. E accent égu is a bit more clipped than the English "ay" sound.) The point is that they do sound different.
I suppose I do spend a pretty good amount of time in my seat, but I don't think I have to worry about this. I generally get up quite often, but even apart from that, I'm just restless as hell. I'll switch from sitting normally to sitting cross-legged to sitting with one leg crossed under me to sitting in half-lotus to sitting in full lotus and sometimes have to type around my knees because I'm using them as a chin-rest. I'm pretty damn active for a sedentary person.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't really agree with the reasons laid out in the articles. Some make a bit of sense but likely aren't the big cause, while others (divorce? sudden increase in sports? what?) are just silly.
I grew up in the 80s, and I never actually stopped watching cartoons. I watch old GI Joe and Transformers episodes whenever I can, and am always tuned to the new shows on Cartoon Network when I'm not watching the History Channel.
I remember watching Saturday morning cartoons die. As a teenager with no social life that spent way too much time at the computer, I would often stay up Friday night and turn on Saturday morning cartoons the next day. I watched as they became less targeted and less well written (I don't mean Shakespeare here, but they seemed to forget how to write toward kids).
You didn't have as many cool action shows, or witty comedies. You got a lot more patronizing or uninteresting marketing shows. There were still great shows like Animaniacs, but they were on in the afternoon as well so you didn't have to get up to see them.
Pretty soon, everything was Pokemon or a rip-off of a rip-off of some previously popular show. Even the later Animaniacs spin-offs lost their humour. The concepts they gave them were just dumb. Pinky, Elmira, and the Brain is a perfect example.
After a while, the only shows I could stand watching were Batman Beyond and Men in Black. Batman Beyond is just damn cool, as is expected from the guys that created the Batman: The Animated Series, and Men In Black was a lot like the Real Ghostbusters. Other than that, I can't even remember what they showed. I think two episodes of Pokemon, two episodes of some show a whole lot like Pokemon, then two episodes of Pokemon again.
Pretty soon, there was just nothing left. The people that made Batman Beyond moved to Cartoon Network for Justice League. Men in Black stopped airing. They were on the right track with Jackie Chan Adventures, but it can't carry things on its own. Other than that, they just lost the knack at making kids' shows.
So I think that's pretty much it. Due to budgeting, misplaced priorities, or better deals at cable networks, the broadcast networks just lost the ability to make shows that kids watch. Kids started watching less shows, Saturday became less important, broadcast networks stopped focusing on them as much, causing even less good shows to air. Now, there's just no point.
It is a little sad. Children will no longer experience the thrill of waking up at 6am on Saturday, grabbing a bowl of Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs, and sitting in wrapped in their blankets to see the newest superheroes or wisecracking animals. But with all the quality cartoons shown on other networks, often written as much for adults as for kids, it's not a big loss.
I went to one of those "special" schools for high school. I took the short bus and everything. I couldn't go to normal high school for a couple of reasons, some psychological, and some due to the fact that I learned the main book my English class was reading that year was about an anthropomorphic mouse and just refused to show up.
Both parts of the special school seemed to have a focus on living skills that you don't see other places. It was actually quite helpful, because it included a lot of stuff adults don't really think to teach teenagers, many of which were on your list.
The other nice thing was that the teachers were generally the unusual ones. The main teacher would talk about his trips to the Island of Komodo (those dragons smell horrible, apparently) or the Dread Zeppelin concert he went to the previous Friday. The science teacher and I would discuss Bruce Lee's philosophy of martial arts or a recent Marilyn Monroe layout in Playboy. (It was a reprint, I'm not that old) They even let me do book reports on Dostoevsky and George Orwell while the rest of the class worked on normal stuff.
Now that I think about it, I kind of wish I hadn't tested out at the end of the year. Though if I hadn't I may have been forced to go back to normal high school. Yuck.
Which is what most students studying for the test are doing. A lot of people that did well on the SAT achieved that goal by spending a long time studying SAT guides and getting SAT tutoring. For them, at least, the test proved mostly that they had learned how to take the SAT.
I don't think that's what he's saying at all.
What he's saying is that the developer made the program to solve a problem that he encountered, or to fill a need that he had. This developer has no need to put a large amount of extra work into this project to add in interoperability features that neither he nor most of his users would actually use.
People complain, expecting that since this guy put this program together in the first place, he should fix it so it works the way they want it to. But that's not how OSS works. If they themselves need this interoperability, they can add it in. The developer has no reason, responsibility, nor inclination to do so.
Sun's stock fell 92% in the past three years? Jesus.
Oh wait. Everyone's stock fell around 92% in the past three years.
The latter. I just wanted to get in on the argument that people always bring up in BSD articles.
I didn't need that karma anyway.
Why does anyone even bother with BSD these days? Everyone uses Linux. Developing for BSD is just wasting talent!
Why does everyone use Linux, anyway? I mean, OpenBSD is more robust, stable, and far more secure. Linux is just a second-rate knock-off!
Discuss.
I don't believe this. No Vulcan would build such an illogical keyboard. ... I'm so sorry.
But you seem to be missing the main point of his post. Opensource isn't one group, that only approaches things one way.
Microsoft may have been able to go from ignoring the internet to being fully focused on it in a year, but opensource programmers were already using it. They weren't all directed to work on the same thing, so they worked on what seemed useful. They get into these areas without having to be directed.
For whatever application space, there are probably already a good few opensource programs being worked on before Microsoft or whatever company decided to make it their business plan.
Guys always liked video games more. Even back when it was Space Invaders and Asteroids. Back before we had the technology or the market knowledge to back bloody games full of buxom women. In the past, many designers tried hard to carve a place for girl-oriented or gender-neutral games, and still women didn't pick up on them. There have always been girl-gamers, yes, but only recently have the numbers really increased. Accordingly, we are now starting to see a larger number of games that might appeal to them.
As an aside, I'm left-handed myself, and I don't really find it too hard to adapt. I can use a mouse right-handed with little to no trouble, and don't fumble around with can-openers. The only trouble I have is that scissors are sometimes uncomfortable and I can never hit the kick button quickly enough to get Chun-Li to do the lightning kick. Okay, I lied. That really pisses me off. The lightning kick rocks.
I don't play Ultima online, but I do play muds quite a bit. I find myself helping out female characters a lot, too. I don't think it's because I'm an idiot, or because I even think they're actually female. I just find that they tend to be more pleasant and are more apt to ask for help if they need it.
If I find a person of either gender sitting in a dungeon or wandering town looking confused, I'll buy them new armour, hone their weapons, and give them cash to train. It's often the women that will admit to needing some pointers in a new game, ask for help in getting out of a bad situation, or just converse pleasantly enough that I feel like giving them a hand. Guys on muds are usually more goal-oriented, aggressively independent, and less sociable. I know it took me long enough to get comfortable seeking help if I needed it.
I do agree that there are people out there that give girl characters nice stuff as a way of flirting or something, but it seems to me that most of the time it's just because they just like to help others. Females are more likely to receive this treatment because they're a lot less likely to be jerks.
There are differences between programmers and those other professions, though. Programmers' jobs require that they work mostly in their heads, dealing with concepts that are quite removed from the world around them. They also have to juggle a lot of different design ideas and variables and algorithms in their minds at once. The gist of the article is saying that they should be left to do this without getting bothered.
I agree that's it's not totally special to programmers. You have the same issue with authors writing a book, or theoretical physicists putting together thought experiments. Or graphic designers, which were mentioned in the article. They work best when they're comfortable and undisturbed.
As for the shower in the office, if you read it again you'll see that the author was talking about "a famous computer researcher who made a lot of discoveries in the field." He wasn't just any programmer. He was likely working on some very important projects for the company that would likely produce lots of revenue. In situations like that, it's not unheard of to go a little out of the way to provide an eccentric genius with what he needs to work best.
And the article is not saying that programmers are special and wonderful and better than everyone else. It's just trying to explain that due to the thought processes they use, they work as would writers and artists, and should be given the same treatment that companies give those professions.
Your experience doesn't go against what is said in the article.
When the author talks about interruptions, he's referring to people coming by and asking you something completely unrelated to what you're doing. The difficulty is when you're forced to lose your train of thought. He even mentions that it is acceptable to tap someone on the shoulder and ask about the work they're doing.
Of course, if someone comes up to me and taps me on the shoulder while I'm focussing on programming, I generally jump three feet in the air and yell at them. So there are some differences.
Well, the "Beat 'Em Up" genre is different from the shooter genre. I think the big difference these days is that most games have too much of a plot to count as a straight brawling game. Many games have a large brawling element to them, but there's usually other things that make it into more of an adventure type of thing. Still, I do miss Final Fight.
I do think graphical adventure games are still around, albeit in a mutated form. They're just more complex, and they blended with other genres. The article mentioned how many RPGs and such have graphical adventure elements. I don't really think "graphical adventure" is a valid genre in itself anyway. I know they're talking specifically about the type of games Sierra made, but I don't think that's really deserving of its own genre on the same level as "puzzle" and "space shooter." But adventure games are thriving currently, so I guess they had to narrow it down.
And I really liked text games. I'm still mudding after all these years.
I've just got one word for you:
BARF!
Where does this idea that anime == no social life come from? I mean, there are a lot more girls into anime than, say, computers, percentage-wise. I met my girlfriend because she recognised me from an anime convention my friend took me to. I like anime and all, but she's really into it.
Sure, I know a few really socially-inept anime fans, and saw a frightening amount of fat guys dressed as sailor moon at the last convention, but that was more than off-set by the cute 20-year-old girls in schoolgirl outfits or skimpy sci-fi uniforms and bright pink hair. Most of the anime fans I've met are pretty cool people overall, and don't typify the stereotype at all.
Also, as an aside, I think posting on slashdot automatically takes away a person's right to deride others about not having a social life. Maybe I should just leave you to your attempts to feel better about yourself.
Yeah, I guessed the dates on those. I'm talking about the older versions. =P
What the hell? I don't see the message body, but then when I reply it's there.
This is the first time I actually noticed the dates on all this software.
Back in the late-eighties/early-nineties I only knew Macs. I had family that worked at Apple so I had access to a lot of stuff. I finally moved over to a PC in 1998, when I got tired of connecting to shell accounts and wanted to get my own unix machine.
Anyway, I can't believe the dates here. I always assumed that Windows 3.1 came out in 87/88, what with the horrible interface and lack of features. I remember playing with a Mac 128k in 1985 that worked better than 3.1, minus the color.
It really makes me wonder what they were thinking at Apple back then, making the machines so expensive rather than trying to take over the market when they had such a lead. It boggles the mind.
Yeah, I'd hope so. Your average user probably wouldn't make the connection between broken file sharing and virus, though.
Read the article. In addition to turning off file sharing, it installs a backdoor into the system.
No, actually. That's just being a jerk. Let's look this up. evil \E"vil\ ([=e]"v'l) n. 1. Anything which impairs the happiness of a being or deprives a being of any good; anything which causes suffering of any kind to sentient beings; injury; mischief; harm; -- opposed to good. 2. Moral badness, or the deviation of a moral being from the principles of virtue imposed by conscience, or by the will of the Supreme Being, or by the principles of a lawful human authority; disposition to do wrong; moral offence; wickedness; depravity. We're talking about a corporation taking someone's personal information and using it in a way that person feels to be harmful. The corporation is using the information in a manner which causes suffering in the individual. That is evil according to definition 1.
In this example, the company does this act in order to benefit itself. It is causing suffering in another for its own profit, with no regard to the well-being of others. This is considered immoral, and is therefore evil in the second sense.
I think you have evil confused with cartoon supervillainy.
Not quite.
In French, "mobilix" would be pronounced something like "mo-bee-leex" while "obélix" would be pronounced "o-bay-leex." (Well, sort of. E accent égu is a bit more clipped than the English "ay" sound.) The point is that they do sound different.
I suppose I do spend a pretty good amount of time in my seat, but I don't think I have to worry about this. I generally get up quite often, but even apart from that, I'm just restless as hell. I'll switch from sitting normally to sitting cross-legged to sitting with one leg crossed under me to sitting in half-lotus to sitting in full lotus and sometimes have to type around my knees because I'm using them as a chin-rest. I'm pretty damn active for a sedentary person.