You say this as if there is one universal "US education system." Education standards are still managed by the States. (One of the few things the Feds haven't taken from us yet.)
I recall seeing the notation when I was in primary school (ages 5-11). It may have been too long ago for you to remember. The problem is only written like that because they haven't been introduced to the concept of adding all 3 numbers together at once!
Sez you. I have never seen that notation in my life, and if you handed me a sheet with that problem on it, I'd probably get the wrong answer as well. That doesn't mean I'm dumb, or I don't understand how algebra works.
So, I'm going to call bologna that "the vast, vast majority of people disagree", because it seems a large majority of people actually agree that Doom 3 was a decent game.
You're moving the goalposts. We were talking about users liking the lack of gun-flashlights, but whether Doom 3 was a decent game. You do realize that those two things are not mutually-exclusive, right? Apples do not compare to oranges.
I think it's clear that the vast, vast majority of people disagree with you. Of course, you're going to turn that around in your head to, "OMG I am so 1337 I *get* Doom 3, man, and nobody else does! I'm so fucking 1337!"
If the lack of gun-flashlights was the game's only issue, then it probably wouldn't be so generally mediocre. The truth of the matter is that there were tons of things wrong with Doom 3, the flashlight thing was just one of the most apparent.
So even if you *like* the lack of flashlights, and think it made the game better-- well, ok, but it still didn't make the game *good*.
It was actually pretty poor. I guess you you'd never played Tribes, or any of the Battlefield games you could think it was good... but Battlefield: 2142 basically did everything ET:QW did, with better balance, and was released earlier.
The funny thing is that the original Enemy Territory game on the Wolfenstein engine was actually really innovative. But by the time Quake Wars came out, everything they did was old-hat and they didn't improve on it at all. (And in some ways, they anti-improved on it! The grid system for laying out deployables? Welcome to 1995. Even 1997's Tribes let you plop them down anywhere there was a slightly-flat surface.)
Basically, it sold poorly because the balance wasn't very good, nothing in the experience was new, and since it was a latecomer it didn't have the established playerbase of games with identical features they had been released before it.
Now he should apologize for the hilariously outdated use of monster closets, terrible storyline, idiotic directorial decisions (no flashlight on guns, only 60 seconds of air!!) and extreme "meh"-ness of the entire Doom 3 experience.
Normally, you're happy when a game experience lasts 20+ hours. With Doom 3 it was more like, "there's more? Fuck me!" Especially after you beat the boss from hell, and have to go *back* to Mars for another few hours of tedium.
"Do one thing and do it well" depends strongly on your definition of "one thing."
You can have that "one thing" be "resize images" and another one be "draw lines in images" and another be "draw bezier curves on images" and so-on, or you can have that "one thing" be "edit raster images in an easy to use, fast, and powerful environment." KDE's "one thing" is "be a complete desktop environment on top of the Linux Kernel and GNU tools, such that a person can accomplish most or all normal daily tasks." This is subdivided into other projects, there are libraries, KDE games, KDE PIM, KOffice, etc, etc. Each sub-section has one well-defined task, which is sometimes subdivided into other tasks.
If you define "one thing" as "50,000 things all related to the same task", then the UNIX philosophy is suddenly entirely meaningless. The only meaning left is, "your program should work well." And that's a philosophy followed by every OS. (Yes, yes, snark aside, nobody purposefully makes their programs suck.)
In that case, what's the point of saying it at all? If you have to stretch the meaning that far to make it a useful statement, then we're right back to: "hey, maybe it's bunk."
I think it's more likely that he original poster is a hard-core CLI user, completely out-of-touch with computer uses that don't involve parsing large text files (which is to say, what 95% of the population does with their computer 95% of the time), and was repeating some clever slogan which probably had some practical value in 1975 but now is just silly.
This is marked troll, and we may be too far off topic here, but poster's point is valid.
You always get marked troll when you tell it how it is.
I think it's clear from the popularity of Windows and Mac OS that following the "UNIX philosophy" isn't always the best approach. Hell, GNOME and KDE don't follow it, either... so you wouldn't really expect saying "do one thing well" is buck is really that controversial.
I'd rather have both. One is far easier to script with standard issue tools since it's forced into a specific programmable interface.
Which is pretty much exactly what Photoshop's plug-in interface is, frankly. Which is also way all image transformation tools (for certain values of 'all') are implemented as Photoshop plug-ins and not little CLI applications.
Write a script that for each of our 1200 technical drawings creates a pdf with the drawings, includes highlights and text about the part, requirements + specifications, include a 3d render of that part, and puts a company logo watermark. Can this be done so a human only needs to say "GO?"
Get ready for some more troll mods, but this is exactly the kind of task that Microsoft's PowerShell is intended to handle. It's not there yet, because of poor.net support for AutoCAD and PDF formats, but with a couple (admittedly probably expensive).net libraries you could definitely script something like this.
It was better than System 7.0.0... that was a crime against humanity. (Dragging a font from the System Folder/Fonts folder into the trash can *permanently destroyed your OS install*. I'm not exaggerating.)
But in doing all that, it does too much. The UNIX philosophy is "do one thing, and do it well". KDE has some great features, like KIO-slaves. But the GUI layer is exactly the wrong place to put such a feature. It's completely useless to any command line application.
Have you considered that the UNIX philosophy is complete bunk?
Would you rather have one image editor that contains everything you need? Or 520 different filters applications, all in different applications, all of which need to pipe data between each other? (Hint: the first one is superior in every way.)
Look, that philosophy, like everything in UNIX, was designed for a world where the *only* data was text. Even more specific, text laid out in columns. It doesn't work for images. It doesn't work for sound. It doesn't work for video. It doesn't work for relational databases. It doesn't even work for fancy text with formatting and embedded media.
It's obsolete-- get over it, and join the rest of us in the 21st century.
I never managed to make the audio system in Windows XP behave as i would like. I have 2 sound output devices(Headphones and an usb headset) and I never managed to control which software did output to which sound device. And I also miss a Windows application to control the sound level on an "per application" level. And features such as redirect audio to other computers.
When XP came out, could you do that in *any* OS? XP is really, really, really old... I'm kind of getting sick of reading posts like this, that basically treat XP as the end-all, be-all of Windows.
Microsoft added that for Vista. PulseAudio was close-behind, but I'm pretty sure Microsoft got the feature out the door first-- and definitely in a more stable form, considering how buggy PA was until recently.
The technology that annoyed me the most about Star Trek and TNG was cameras. Here you're sending people over to strange ships and planets and asking "What's going on? Can you describe to me what you see?" Give me a break! 400 years in the future and they can't envision wireless video, but wireless audio is everywhere.
What's even worse is they always replied in the most useless fashion imaginable:
Picard: "What happened? What do you see?" Riker (on planet): "Trouble!" (Commercial break)
What's funny is occasionally they use Geordi's visor as a remote camera, and it comes in super-handy. (It's even used against them in one of the movies, where Geordi's hacked visor was able to see what frequency the shields were set to and transmit it to an enemy ship.) Yet it never occurs to them to do that *all the time*.
I wouldn't mind playing a high-risk game, except that they're invariably filled with complete jerkwads. Even the PVP servers on WOW have a very high "jerkwad to human" ratio.
I used to have a MUD I played which was both high-risk, and full of nice human beings. But that seems to be an extremely rare combination.
Oh yeah, Anonymous Coward was like the first user.
Problem is it's directly connected to your own moderation. been modded up a lot lately? you get lots of mod points. get modded down a lot? less of a chance.
That's a real problem, because I don't worship Linux or particularly hate Microsoft products, so I don't get modded up just because of the message alone. (Every so often I get lucky.)
Go look at the code, it's clear in there how it works.
No thanks, I have better things to do with my time. I'm sure you're right, though.
Well, considering Mechanical Turk has been around since 2005, and your nightmarish scenario has yet to pass, I'm not going to be losing any sleep over it.
The real point is that if your only labor skill is doing the kinds of random tasks on Turk, then yes you're probably in trouble. Most jobs require things like, say, institutional knowledge and experience, things that the Mechanical Turk service can never provide employers.
Uh, wow... what is this? 9/10 of those posts weren't even moderated in the first place... and without any form of context it's impossible to figure out what I should be doing with the *one* relevant entry.
Ok, now I'm completely agreeing with the people in this thread talking about how useless the meta-mod system has gotten. no wonder they don't promote it anymore.
Yeah, but Slashdot's system has a lot of stupidities and quirks (probably bugs) in it as well. For instance, stick around long enough and you'll: 1) Never be asked to meta-mod again 2) Never be given mod points
When I was new here, I got mod points and was asked to meta-mod pretty frequently. Now, neither happens-- for about the last 2-3 years. I'm assuming that getting mod points has something to do with participating in meta-mod, but that's kind of hard when the site doesn't let me meta-mod either.:) Maybe this is supposed to be a "reward"? (Like the ability to turn off ads?)
There's also the awful "overrated" and "underrated" mods, which I don't think should exist. Then of course, there's the modders, who will gladly assign "informative" to a post which is only a single sentence, or "insightful" to the same argument we've heard 50,000 different times-- but I guess there's nothing the code can do about that. And Flamebait is applied to everything.
Here are some ideas I have: 1) Fix the bug where longstanding users aren't involved in the mod system at all. Or, if that's done intentionally, give them the option to participate in modding again.
2) Negative mods should be harder to use than positive ones. I think a +1 should cost 1 mod point, and a -1 should cost 2 mod points. To prevent confusion, display a confirmation before a negative mod is made: "Moderating this post as -1 Flamebait will cost 2 mod points, continue? Yes/No"
3) Unrelated to modding, but please, please make Slashcode at least a *tiny* bit smarter. How about an integrated Preview tab, so we can preview our posts without having to reload a couple times? How about fixing the obvious bugs in the parser, like how it won't display a less-than even if typed in "Plain Old Text" mode? How about fixing the broken layout when submitting comments in Idle? How about fixing ANY of the bugs I put in your database 2-3 years ago now? (See: http://schend.net/images/index.php?path=screenshots/slashdot/ )
I'm sure Stephen Hawking totally stole the idea from you.
This actually kinda reminds me of a conversation we had last night....we watched the original V miniseries, and were talking about how stupid it was that they allowed the aliens into factories around the world simultaneously instead of just a factory or two at a time...but then, if they did that, countries would argue over who got to host them first.::shakes head:: stupid human beings...
This comment is about as coherant as the typical Timothy-posted story. Explains a lot.
I suspect there are a lot of things I would / one would / you might confess to, if the alternative was unshakable opinion by everyone you meet that you *actually* raped a 4-year-old last year,
I might be having trouble threading my way through the 47 commas in this sentence, but are you seriously suggesting that you would confess to owning child porn, just because the FBI says they have evidence of it? Even though it would almost certainly ruin your life?
You seriously have that much of an unshakable belief that the FBI couldn't possibly be wrong that you doubt your own memory?
Seriously, why would you: 1) Even post such a non-controversial, irrelevant thought 2) Not even bother to see if the product you're proposing already exists
Without telling us what year this took place, it's hard to judge how much of a WTF it is. I mean, when I was in grade 10, Mac OS 7 was brand-spanking new.
Are you kidding? They bought freakin' DoubleClick.
Re:Wave could still catch on
on
Why Wave Failed
·
· Score: 1
Microsoft has failed at many things initially, but they never give up. They do use many unfair advantages, but they also are persistent.
Not to counter your point (which I think is actually pretty astute), but Microsoft does give up. And in some cases for really, really stupid reasons: the Kin was killed due to internal politics, as far as I can work out.
But you're right in the majority of cases. Microsoft still supports the Expression Suite, which is excellent even though it doesn't sell at all. I'm hoping that after another year or two of Adobe shooting themselves in the foot, Expression can gain some foothold-- and the thing is, because it's a Microsoft product, it'll most likely still be around then.
Google is acting more like the Fox network. Cancelling all their shows/products before they have a chance to prove themselves.
Slashdot Mirror
Watch the movie My Life to prepare, and for tips. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107630/
And bring kleenex, you will cry.
This is the US education system.
You say this as if there is one universal "US education system." Education standards are still managed by the States. (One of the few things the Feds haven't taken from us yet.)
I recall seeing the notation when I was in primary school (ages 5-11). It may have been too long ago for you to remember. The problem is only written like that because they haven't been introduced to the concept of adding all 3 numbers together at once!
Sez you. I have never seen that notation in my life, and if you handed me a sheet with that problem on it, I'd probably get the wrong answer as well. That doesn't mean I'm dumb, or I don't understand how algebra works.
So, I'm going to call bologna that "the vast, vast majority of people disagree", because it seems a large majority of people actually agree that Doom 3 was a decent game.
You're moving the goalposts. We were talking about users liking the lack of gun-flashlights, but whether Doom 3 was a decent game. You do realize that those two things are not mutually-exclusive, right? Apples do not compare to oranges.
I think it's clear that the vast, vast majority of people disagree with you. Of course, you're going to turn that around in your head to, "OMG I am so 1337 I *get* Doom 3, man, and nobody else does! I'm so fucking 1337!"
If the lack of gun-flashlights was the game's only issue, then it probably wouldn't be so generally mediocre. The truth of the matter is that there were tons of things wrong with Doom 3, the flashlight thing was just one of the most apparent.
So even if you *like* the lack of flashlights, and think it made the game better-- well, ok, but it still didn't make the game *good*.
vastly smoother and more natural (read: Quake-like)
Maybe it's because I played Tribes first, but I never particularly thought Quake could be called "more natural". Maybe if you're hopped-up on crack.
But the real point, while there is value to that (although we disagree), it's vastly outweighed by the other problems with the game.
CrazyJim! You're losing your edge! That was actually clever and funny. Where's the crazy?!
Tell us about your comic about the guy with rocket-katanas! Tell us how you single-handedly invented every single popular video game!
It was actually pretty poor. I guess you you'd never played Tribes, or any of the Battlefield games you could think it was good... but Battlefield: 2142 basically did everything ET:QW did, with better balance, and was released earlier.
The funny thing is that the original Enemy Territory game on the Wolfenstein engine was actually really innovative. But by the time Quake Wars came out, everything they did was old-hat and they didn't improve on it at all. (And in some ways, they anti-improved on it! The grid system for laying out deployables? Welcome to 1995. Even 1997's Tribes let you plop them down anywhere there was a slightly-flat surface.)
Basically, it sold poorly because the balance wasn't very good, nothing in the experience was new, and since it was a latecomer it didn't have the established playerbase of games with identical features they had been released before it.
Now he should apologize for the hilariously outdated use of monster closets, terrible storyline, idiotic directorial decisions (no flashlight on guns, only 60 seconds of air!!) and extreme "meh"-ness of the entire Doom 3 experience.
Normally, you're happy when a game experience lasts 20+ hours. With Doom 3 it was more like, "there's more? Fuck me!" Especially after you beat the boss from hell, and have to go *back* to Mars for another few hours of tedium.
"Do one thing and do it well" depends strongly on your definition of "one thing."
You can have that "one thing" be "resize images" and another one be "draw lines in images" and another be "draw bezier curves on images" and so-on, or you can have that "one thing" be "edit raster images in an easy to use, fast, and powerful environment." KDE's "one thing" is "be a complete desktop environment on top of the Linux Kernel and GNU tools, such that a person can accomplish most or all normal daily tasks." This is subdivided into other projects, there are libraries, KDE games, KDE PIM, KOffice, etc, etc. Each sub-section has one well-defined task, which is sometimes subdivided into other tasks.
If you define "one thing" as "50,000 things all related to the same task", then the UNIX philosophy is suddenly entirely meaningless. The only meaning left is, "your program should work well." And that's a philosophy followed by every OS. (Yes, yes, snark aside, nobody purposefully makes their programs suck.)
In that case, what's the point of saying it at all? If you have to stretch the meaning that far to make it a useful statement, then we're right back to: "hey, maybe it's bunk."
I think it's more likely that he original poster is a hard-core CLI user, completely out-of-touch with computer uses that don't involve parsing large text files (which is to say, what 95% of the population does with their computer 95% of the time), and was repeating some clever slogan which probably had some practical value in 1975 but now is just silly.
This is marked troll, and we may be too far off topic here, but poster's point is valid.
You always get marked troll when you tell it how it is.
I think it's clear from the popularity of Windows and Mac OS that following the "UNIX philosophy" isn't always the best approach. Hell, GNOME and KDE don't follow it, either... so you wouldn't really expect saying "do one thing well" is buck is really that controversial.
I'd rather have both. One is far easier to script with standard issue tools since it's forced into a specific programmable interface.
Which is pretty much exactly what Photoshop's plug-in interface is, frankly. Which is also way all image transformation tools (for certain values of 'all') are implemented as Photoshop plug-ins and not little CLI applications.
Write a script that for each of our 1200 technical drawings creates a pdf with the drawings, includes highlights and text about the part, requirements + specifications, include a 3d render of that part, and puts a company logo watermark. Can this be done so a human only needs to say "GO?"
Get ready for some more troll mods, but this is exactly the kind of task that Microsoft's PowerShell is intended to handle. It's not there yet, because of poor .net support for AutoCAD and PDF formats, but with a couple (admittedly probably expensive) .net libraries you could definitely script something like this.
It was better than System 7.0.0... that was a crime against humanity. (Dragging a font from the System Folder/Fonts folder into the trash can *permanently destroyed your OS install*. I'm not exaggerating.)
But in doing all that, it does too much. The UNIX philosophy is "do one thing, and do it well". KDE has some great features, like KIO-slaves. But the GUI layer is exactly the wrong place to put such a feature. It's completely useless to any command line application.
Have you considered that the UNIX philosophy is complete bunk?
Would you rather have one image editor that contains everything you need? Or 520 different filters applications, all in different applications, all of which need to pipe data between each other? (Hint: the first one is superior in every way.)
Look, that philosophy, like everything in UNIX, was designed for a world where the *only* data was text. Even more specific, text laid out in columns. It doesn't work for images. It doesn't work for sound. It doesn't work for video. It doesn't work for relational databases. It doesn't even work for fancy text with formatting and embedded media.
It's obsolete-- get over it, and join the rest of us in the 21st century.
I never managed to make the audio system in Windows XP behave as i would like. I have 2 sound output devices(Headphones and an usb headset) and I never managed to
control which software did output to which sound device. And I also miss a Windows application to control the sound level on an "per application" level. And features such as redirect audio to other computers.
When XP came out, could you do that in *any* OS? XP is really, really, really old... I'm kind of getting sick of reading posts like this, that basically treat XP as the end-all, be-all of Windows.
Microsoft added that for Vista. PulseAudio was close-behind, but I'm pretty sure Microsoft got the feature out the door first-- and definitely in a more stable form, considering how buggy PA was until recently.
The technology that annoyed me the most about Star Trek and TNG was cameras. Here you're sending people over to strange ships and planets and asking "What's going on? Can you describe to me what you see?" Give me a break! 400 years in the future and they can't envision wireless video, but wireless audio is everywhere.
What's even worse is they always replied in the most useless fashion imaginable:
Picard: "What happened? What do you see?"
Riker (on planet): "Trouble!"
(Commercial break)
What's funny is occasionally they use Geordi's visor as a remote camera, and it comes in super-handy. (It's even used against them in one of the movies, where Geordi's hacked visor was able to see what frequency the shields were set to and transmit it to an enemy ship.) Yet it never occurs to them to do that *all the time*.
I wouldn't mind playing a high-risk game, except that they're invariably filled with complete jerkwads. Even the PVP servers on WOW have a very high "jerkwad to human" ratio.
I used to have a MUD I played which was both high-risk, and full of nice human beings. But that seems to be an extremely rare combination.
I have been around a LOT longer than you
Oh yeah, Anonymous Coward was like the first user.
Problem is it's directly connected to your own moderation. been modded up a lot lately? you get lots of mod points. get modded down a lot? less of a chance.
That's a real problem, because I don't worship Linux or particularly hate Microsoft products, so I don't get modded up just because of the message alone. (Every so often I get lucky.)
Go look at the code, it's clear in there how it works.
No thanks, I have better things to do with my time. I'm sure you're right, though.
Well, considering Mechanical Turk has been around since 2005, and your nightmarish scenario has yet to pass, I'm not going to be losing any sleep over it.
The real point is that if your only labor skill is doing the kinds of random tasks on Turk, then yes you're probably in trouble. Most jobs require things like, say, institutional knowledge and experience, things that the Mechanical Turk service can never provide employers.
Uh, wow... what is this? 9/10 of those posts weren't even moderated in the first place... and without any form of context it's impossible to figure out what I should be doing with the *one* relevant entry.
Ok, now I'm completely agreeing with the people in this thread talking about how useless the meta-mod system has gotten. no wonder they don't promote it anymore.
Yeah, but Slashdot's system has a lot of stupidities and quirks (probably bugs) in it as well. For instance, stick around long enough and you'll:
1) Never be asked to meta-mod again
2) Never be given mod points
When I was new here, I got mod points and was asked to meta-mod pretty frequently. Now, neither happens-- for about the last 2-3 years. I'm assuming that getting mod points has something to do with participating in meta-mod, but that's kind of hard when the site doesn't let me meta-mod either. :) Maybe this is supposed to be a "reward"? (Like the ability to turn off ads?)
There's also the awful "overrated" and "underrated" mods, which I don't think should exist. Then of course, there's the modders, who will gladly assign "informative" to a post which is only a single sentence, or "insightful" to the same argument we've heard 50,000 different times-- but I guess there's nothing the code can do about that. And Flamebait is applied to everything.
Here are some ideas I have:
1) Fix the bug where longstanding users aren't involved in the mod system at all. Or, if that's done intentionally, give them the option to participate in modding again.
2) Negative mods should be harder to use than positive ones. I think a +1 should cost 1 mod point, and a -1 should cost 2 mod points. To prevent confusion, display a confirmation before a negative mod is made: "Moderating this post as -1 Flamebait will cost 2 mod points, continue? Yes/No"
3) Unrelated to modding, but please, please make Slashcode at least a *tiny* bit smarter. How about an integrated Preview tab, so we can preview our posts without having to reload a couple times? How about fixing the obvious bugs in the parser, like how it won't display a less-than even if typed in "Plain Old Text" mode? How about fixing the broken layout when submitting comments in Idle? How about fixing ANY of the bugs I put in your database 2-3 years ago now? (See: http://schend.net/images/index.php?path=screenshots/slashdot/ )
I'm sure Stephen Hawking totally stole the idea from you.
This actually kinda reminds me of a conversation we had last night....we watched the original V miniseries, and were talking about how stupid it was that they allowed the aliens into factories around the world simultaneously instead of just a factory or two at a time...but then, if they did that, countries would argue over who got to host them first. ::shakes head:: stupid human beings...
To be fair, the V aliens looked like this: http://enjoy.eastday.com/e/20081014/images/01415100.jpg
I'd let her in my factory any day.
This comment is about as coherant as the typical Timothy-posted story. Explains a lot.
I suspect there are a lot of things I would / one would / you might confess to, if the alternative was unshakable opinion by everyone you meet that you *actually* raped a 4-year-old last year,
I might be having trouble threading my way through the 47 commas in this sentence, but are you seriously suggesting that you would confess to owning child porn, just because the FBI says they have evidence of it? Even though it would almost certainly ruin your life?
You seriously have that much of an unshakable belief that the FBI couldn't possibly be wrong that you doubt your own memory?
Like this one: http://www.macworld.com/appguide/article.html?article=142206
Seriously, why would you:
1) Even post such a non-controversial, irrelevant thought
2) Not even bother to see if the product you're proposing already exists
Without telling us what year this took place, it's hard to judge how much of a WTF it is. I mean, when I was in grade 10, Mac OS 7 was brand-spanking new.
Are you kidding? They bought freakin' DoubleClick.
Microsoft has failed at many things initially, but they never give up. They do use many unfair advantages, but they also are persistent.
Not to counter your point (which I think is actually pretty astute), but Microsoft does give up. And in some cases for really, really stupid reasons: the Kin was killed due to internal politics, as far as I can work out.
But you're right in the majority of cases. Microsoft still supports the Expression Suite, which is excellent even though it doesn't sell at all. I'm hoping that after another year or two of Adobe shooting themselves in the foot, Expression can gain some foothold-- and the thing is, because it's a Microsoft product, it'll most likely still be around then.
Google is acting more like the Fox network. Cancelling all their shows/products before they have a chance to prove themselves.