encouraged practices that made programs hard to read, like omitting comments and whitespace.
I think that is a bit unfair. Given the limited memory of the C64, best programming practice was to omit comments in favour of code. Remember, C64 BASIC was interpreted, not compiled, so comments chewed up memory... memory measured in KILObytes. Comments (actually, they were called REMarks back then) were a luxury.
I was a bit young to do any serious programming on the C64, but I do remember my father rewriting a line of code to save two BYTES of code. If you didn't use up all the single letter variables before using double letter variables, or you added spaces between commands, you were simply doing it wrong.
Now we have gigabytes of RAM and terabytes of hard disk space yet computer programs don't run any faster than they used to (if anything, slower!). I think modern programmers could do worse than writing a few programs for the C64 to expose them to resource-scarce programming.
Poor quality articles do no good for anyone. Wikipedia is, at its heart, darwinian. Good text will remain. Deleted text can be re-added with the click of a button. It only stays deleted if it deserves to.
A sprawling article of 350KB does no-one any good. Wikipedia articles should be concise summaries of the topic. Too many articles on WP are bullet point lists of referenced facts, with no overall narrative structure. Keeping a high signal-to-noise ratio requires filtering out all the noise. Too many wikipedians believe that a mention in a reliable source means something is notable. Newspaper quotes are the worst - newsworthy is not the same as noteworthy.
I am definitely a deletionist at WP. I take a similar attitude to the sculptor that removes all the bits of stone that don't look like the statue... I remove all the bits of text that don't look like encyclopedia articles.
...it'll only take 128MB of RAM and 30% of your processor!*
* Requirements in Vista may be higher
...and as a service to our customers, you will be automatically upgraded to the professional version which takes doubles the RAM and processor requirements for only a 50% increase in your monthly fee. You don't need to do anything*!
* Customers may opt out of this offer by finding checking the disabled checkbox that says "opt out" on the hidden page on our website. WARNING: If you somehow manage to opt out, we'll take it personally.
(I'm just waiting for the day my account gets automatically upgraded to the point where it starts automatically buying shares in McAfee)
That's my whole point -- its only value is that it's some standard that replaced the situation when no common standard existed. Actual quality of its design is still crap, it's written by wrong people, derived from wrong theoretical base and is implementing using wrong tools and techniques. I am not claiming that it's completely unusable, or that people shouldn't use it for user-oriented applications and interoperability.
In terms of 'quality of design', the optimised features are readability and understandability. In that, it is very good. Everything else can obviously be better done in another way, using a binary format or whatever. The fact that it can be validated by non-programmers is an important advantage of XML. If you are a customer with two vendors, each who claim the other's system is at fault, being able to look at the XML passing between them is a huge advantage. If it is a binary format, and you are not a computer programmer, then you are unable to referee the dispute.
I claim that the quality of the standard is total shit, and people who developed it are self-serving, ideologically blinded, dishonest, incompetent hacks.
Well I agree with you here. XML is useful DESPITE the standard, not because of it:-)
I think you are missing the point. XML is good where you want to receive data from other systems over which you have no control. So it doesn't matter how good you are as a programmer, and how well you write YOUR program, the issue is that you've got cabbages (or programmers who resemble cabbages) upstream sending you data.
You therefore need to specify the protocol in a format even a cabbage can read and format. XML is great for that. Yes you need to check each messages which wastes processor cycles, but you can't trust the data you are receiving, so you need to check it anyway. XML is fat, bloated and redundant, but it is the lowest common denominator* and that is why it is so useful.
* Actually it replaced the lowest common denominator - CSV. At least XML has a written standard, unlike CSV.
[blockquote]Dark Matter is a theoretical answer to "the universe has more matter than it looks like." If the universe, in fact, actually has more matter, then there's less, possibly zero, need for the hand-waving "Dark matter" theory.[/blockquote]
There has to be a Star Wars joke there somewhere about Dark Matter being a quicker, more seductive way to explain the missing mass, but for the moment it escapes me. (waves hand) this is not the mass you are looking for...
"At the final level, you have the conscientious developers. These are people who care about what they're doing. They might be writing business apps somewhere (although they probably hate it, unless they are on a team of like-minded individuals) but, probably more likely, they're writing programs in their own time."
In other words, "good programmers are unemployed".
Here I was gearing up to defend my favourite programming language, which I've been using since the eighties, against the inevitable "BASIC sucks, use a real language like C" flames, and... there aren't any?
Since when has/. accepted BASIC as a genuine programming language? Disappointed, slashdot. Very disappointed:-)
> I would not be surprised, if we could go back in time, to see early humans communicating primarily by signs, > with vocal communication only as a backup.
I don't really care either way, but I just don't see how it will work. The advertisers that will pay the most will be competitors i.e. Blizzard, etc. as well as goldfarmers.
I predict most of the ads will end up either from the userbase (ads for guilds) or spruiking NCSoft's other games. Neither of which will be very profitable.
If they make affordable ads available to the userbase, that would be of definite benefit to the game. Not quite user-generated content, but a step towards that. Cryptic and now NCSoft have so far looked after their players very well IMHO.
The game has been out for four years now, so I'm just glad the game is still viable and that the subscription fee hasn't ever been raised since release. I hope that introducing in-game ads isn't a sign that the game is becoming unprofitable. Champions Online is being designed by the former lead designer of "City Of", so chances are high that they will steal a lot of CoX's userbase away, at least for a few months.
Slashdot Mirror
I think it was OMNI magazine that had the cartoon:
"Bunsen, your work on chromatography is excellent. But what really impresses me is that cute little burner you have there."
There are roughly 4 billion public IPv4 addresses, which at $11.25 each values the IPv4 internet at about $45 Billion.
Pissed on powered! Geddit? ahahaha
I think that is a bit unfair. Given the limited memory of the C64, best programming practice was to omit comments in favour of code. Remember, C64 BASIC was interpreted, not compiled, so comments chewed up memory... memory measured in KILObytes. Comments (actually, they were called REMarks back then) were a luxury.
I was a bit young to do any serious programming on the C64, but I do remember my father rewriting a line of code to save two BYTES of code. If you didn't use up all the single letter variables before using double letter variables, or you added spaces between commands, you were simply doing it wrong.
Now we have gigabytes of RAM and terabytes of hard disk space yet computer programs don't run any faster than they used to (if anything, slower!). I think modern programmers could do worse than writing a few programs for the C64 to expose them to resource-scarce programming.
Poor quality articles do no good for anyone. Wikipedia is, at its heart, darwinian. Good text will remain. Deleted text can be re-added with the click of a button. It only stays deleted if it deserves to.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Isomorphic/Essays/Deletionism/ is a good essay on the subject.
A sprawling article of 350KB does no-one any good. Wikipedia articles should be concise summaries of the topic. Too many articles on WP are bullet point lists of referenced facts, with no overall narrative structure. Keeping a high signal-to-noise ratio requires filtering out all the noise. Too many wikipedians believe that a mention in a reliable source means something is notable. Newspaper quotes are the worst - newsworthy is not the same as noteworthy.
I am definitely a deletionist at WP. I take a similar attitude to the sculptor that removes all the bits of stone that don't look like the statue... I remove all the bits of text that don't look like encyclopedia articles.
* Customers may opt out of this offer by finding checking the disabled checkbox that says "opt out" on the hidden page on our website. WARNING: If you somehow manage to opt out, we'll take it personally.
(I'm just waiting for the day my account gets automatically upgraded to the point where it starts automatically buying shares in McAfee)
Red Sun, High Gravity, it's Krypton, right?
Apparently "Tales of the Black Freighter" and "Under the Hood" will be released as Special Features on the DVD. Genius move, IMHO.
Fools, don't you know that all you have to do is make sure you scan any flopp
Buy Viagra Cheap at http://myipaddres/viaga
They did this with the BSG webisodes too :-(
In terms of 'quality of design', the optimised features are readability and understandability. In that, it is very good. Everything else can obviously be better done in another way, using a binary format or whatever. The fact that it can be validated by non-programmers is an important advantage of XML. If you are a customer with two vendors, each who claim the other's system is at fault, being able to look at the XML passing between them is a huge advantage. If it is a binary format, and you are not a computer programmer, then you are unable to referee the dispute.
Well I agree with you here. XML is useful DESPITE the standard, not because of it :-)
I think you are missing the point. XML is good where you want to receive data from other systems over which you have no control. So it doesn't matter how good you are as a programmer, and how well you write YOUR program, the issue is that you've got cabbages (or programmers who resemble cabbages) upstream sending you data.
You therefore need to specify the protocol in a format even a cabbage can read and format. XML is great for that. Yes you need to check each messages which wastes processor cycles, but you can't trust the data you are receiving, so you need to check it anyway. XML is fat, bloated and redundant, but it is the lowest common denominator* and that is why it is so useful.
* Actually it replaced the lowest common denominator - CSV. At least XML has a written standard, unlike CSV.
You've deflated the Earth!!!
[blockquote]Dark Matter is a theoretical answer to "the universe has more matter than it looks like." If the universe, in fact, actually has more matter, then there's less, possibly zero, need for the hand-waving "Dark matter" theory.[/blockquote]
There has to be a Star Wars joke there somewhere about Dark Matter being a quicker, more seductive way to explain the missing mass, but for the moment it escapes me. (waves hand) this is not the mass you are looking for...
My favourite quote from TFA:
"At the final level, you have the conscientious developers. These are people who care about what they're doing. They might be writing business apps somewhere (although they probably hate it, unless they are on a team of like-minded individuals) but, probably more likely, they're writing programs in their own time."
In other words, "good programmers are unemployed".
An interesting thesis to say the least.
Stack full! Oh noes, you did a GOTO 2008 instead of a RETURN! In a loop!
Here I was gearing up to defend my favourite programming language, which I've been using since the eighties, against the inevitable "BASIC sucks, use a real language like C" flames, and... there aren't any?
/. accepted BASIC as a genuine programming language? Disappointed, slashdot. Very disappointed :-)
Since when has
> I would not be surprised, if we could go back in time, to see early humans communicating primarily by signs,
.-. /
> with vocal communication only as a backup.
|-|
| |
_.-|=|-.
/ | | | |
| |\
|
\ /`
| |
...to roll percentile dice?
Don't you love second derivatives?
I don't really care either way, but I just don't see how it will work. The advertisers that will pay the most will be competitors i.e. Blizzard, etc. as well as goldfarmers.
I predict most of the ads will end up either from the userbase (ads for guilds) or spruiking NCSoft's other games. Neither of which will be very profitable.
If they make affordable ads available to the userbase, that would be of definite benefit to the game. Not quite user-generated content, but a step towards that. Cryptic and now NCSoft have so far looked after their players very well IMHO.
The game has been out for four years now, so I'm just glad the game is still viable and that the subscription fee hasn't ever been raised since release. I hope that introducing in-game ads isn't a sign that the game is becoming unprofitable. Champions Online is being designed by the former lead designer of "City Of", so chances are high that they will steal a lot of CoX's userbase away, at least for a few months.
No wikipedia entry for ORDB, so they never existed.
Binary.