Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Just counted the number of Apple computers in my tiny house right now: eleven of them. Ranging from very new to very old.
Say what you want about Apple, but I'll remember Steve Jobs as the person who, with the Macintosh, caused a paradigm shift in the world of personal computing. He was the first to realize that computers should be built with regular users in mind rather than people with a degree in computer science. He worked all his life to make personal computers more accessible.
He wasn't a saint, nor is the company he leaves behind exemplary in every aspect. But his contribution to the world of personal computers is nothing to underestimate.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
I'm currently encoding the WIP. It'll be up on Youtube later today.
edit: not up yet, but I'm posting this here in advance.
Link to video
it's processing now but should be done in a little while.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
We should not make it mandatory for people to encode their submissions. That just makes it far harder to submit runs to the site.
There are all sorts of problems that could arise for people making submissions. It's technically difficult to even make a half decent encode, there may be bandwidth or computer limitations to deal with, and it simply makes it less attractive to submit to this site (which might reject your run; if you simply put it on Youtube, since you have an encode anyway, you wouldn't have to deal with that).
We should keep it as easy as possible for people to make submissions. Keep the bar as low as we can.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Brandon wrote:
I'm not sure how many I would find in a college town, unless there are somehow start-ups that would have the funding to pay me. I'm also not a web designer; I'm all about back-end engines and stuff. Still, it'd be ideal to get returning clients on the internet, which is why I thought it'd be awesome to work with people here if they could use the help.
I'm actually not a web designer. Actually, I am, but I very rarely do that these days and it's not what I meant. The thing is, there's always a conversion takes place from graphic design to actual website, and it's that transition that a lot of programmers don't know how to handle.
If you can convince a design bureau that you're good at helping them make that transition, not just by perfectly emulating their design in a web setting but also modifying it ever so slightly so that it makes sense and actually works well, you've got a unique selling point. It also helps to mention that you want to be involved from the start, so that you can help them plan their websites out and consult them on what's useful for the people who will eventually start using them.
Of course, if you're all about backend programming that's okay too, I'm sure you could find work that way as well. I don't know exactly how it is where you live right now, but around here the web programmer business generally never really felt the economic downturn.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Brandon wrote:
Dada wrote:
If I have some extra work that I can't handle on my own I'll keep you in mind for sure.
That would be very nice, thank you. Where do you look for work, if you don't mind me asking? Maybe I've just been using the wrong sites, as Elance, the site I'm trying to use now, has very non-responsive buyers, and RentACoder, now VWorker, takes 15% of your profits, and like I said, has a lot of people trying to scam you. I could tell a lot of funny / tragic stories from that site, but maybe then I'd be crossing the line into personal drama. There was third site I had tried that I liked a lot, but it was really small and I don't think it'd still be around, not to mention I forgot its name.
That's the thing, actually. I would never use websites like RentACoder specifically because they have a reputation for being awful. I strongly suggest getting your own clients from your area. Try visiting graphic design studios, showing your work and telling them you're a forward-thinking, down-to-earth programmer who's new to the freelance world and would like to help them make great websites.
Most of my clients are actually graphic designers, and most of them are return clients with whom I've done a lot of projects. It's easier that way, and you'll be less likely to get scammed or otherwise cheated out of your fair reward.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
It's really too bad you had a bad experience working as a freelancer. I've been a freelancer for a few years now and love it. The only problem is I always take on more jobs than I can really handle, so I always work from early in the morning till late at night.
If I have some extra work that I can't handle on my own I'll keep you in mind for sure.
DarkKobold wrote:
I honestly had no problem with this thread being here, until this. Its a tough economy right now, and I think people saying "Hey, got any coding projects you need for a bit o' cash?" is not wrong. However, this almost seems to be "pay me or I stop volunteering." That isn't how volunteering works.
That's not how I interpreted this topic.
Besides, he's already done a lot of work for the site. Like he said, 450 encodes. Probably did a lot of site development as well, even though I can't see the extent to which.
If he's planning on quitting his work on the site, which isn't unrealistic given his situation, then instead of complaining about how all he thinks about is himself, we should thank him for his work.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
moozooh wrote:
No, I specifically meant that J giving Velitha informal permission of doing what he wants with her stuff can't suddenly be overruled by something even less formal. The circumstances stand in his favor, because even a month is more than a reasonable time to expect somebody to get their belongings back if they wanted to, let alone half a year. He is in no way expected to take care of them for so long, so if she wants to settle this through court (which I personally find pretty funny in the first place), he can go and counter it the same way.
Yeah, in this specific case if the facts are as they seem then I doubt the judge will rule in his ex's favor.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
moozooh wrote:
Fun thing is, it would be near-impossible to force it that way without exploiting some kind of loophole (if it even exists), because Velitha's informal consent to having J keep her stuff at his premises has the same legal strength as her informal consent of him doing whatever he wants to it.
I don't think that's entirely true. For example, if someone suddenly decided to sell off his girlfriend's belongings, a judge could conclude that he was wrong to do so even if his girlfriend never told him not to, or never even told him to take good care of her things. Just the fact that they were in a relationship together and shared a room or house could well be enough for a judge to decide that his girlfriend could have reasonably expected him to not sell off her possessions, consent or no consent.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
ShadowWraith wrote:
This is not the best place to post this. Welcome back to the forums. Leave your real life drama behind.
There's no reason why he shouldn't be able to post this. There are plenty of other topics for you to see if you don't like this one.
moozooh wrote:
[...] you aren't (and can't be) expected to take care of property you don't legally own or bound to protect
Actually, I don't know exactly how this works in his jurisdiction but if someone leaves his or her property in your care, with your consent, you can't just go ahead and sell it off. You are expected, at least to some degree, to make sure it doesn't get broken or go missing as long as it's in your care. (I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know the specifics.)
Of course, that's no longer the case if someone leaves you and then says "I don't want it anymore", and then never talks about it again until months later. So if the facts of the case are as they appear to be, I'm pretty sure the judge isn't going to rule in her favor.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Warp wrote:
(You can discuss "fair use" all you like, but when the cease&desist demand drops into your inbox, you will most probably not discuss it anylonger. Let's avoid doing things that might get us to that point.)
There's a ton of game-related content on Youtube that uses ads, so I doubt this is anything we need to worry about. It's a risk, but one I think we should be able to take should we decide to go ahead with this.
(Although it seems to be a moot point now.)
Wak017 wrote:
I actually monetize my videos for the sake of it, and here are the things you need to know:
-Monetizing a video doesn't give much money. It will give you like 12$ at every 10,000 views.
That's not much. I haven't actually checked this but I doubt many of our videos have that many views. A few might, but not many. There should be a reasonable reward if we're going to force ads upon our users.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Speaking of funding, it's relatively important to know just how much we would be getting in return. Is it known how much you get per view for a monetized video? If it's only a very small amount of money, it might not be worth the trouble.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Interesting that you can submit specific videos for monetization. I think it would be a prerequisite to get permission from the author before we do that, because it's still their work, even if TASVideos adds value to the work by hosting it and putting it up on Youtube.
Personally, though, I lean towards a no unless the site has a funding problem.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Oh yeah, I also used ZSNES on my 60 MHz computer. Unlike Snes9x, it could actually play FF5 and Chrono Trigger at a decent enough speed with 16-bit colors. On just 60 MHz!
Had to boot into pure DOS mode to get a few extra FPS out of it, though. And it wasn't 60 FPS, more like 30-20.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Warp wrote:
Dada wrote:
if only to prevent having an argument with them about it.
Yeah, God forbid students having opinions of their own. They must obey, conform, submit and become part of the brainless collective. Resistance is futile.
I'm all for people deciding what to do for themselves. In fact, I doubt anyone got into as much trouble as I did during my school days simply because I wanted to do things my way.
But not everybody is up for that sort of thing. If you can avoid arguing with your teachers or even getting a lower grade by adhering to some arbitrary style rule, then that might not be a bad idea.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
The double spaces were used in the typewriter days, when it was considered good practice to do so, but even then it wasn't universal. These days it's solely a typographic consideration. However, it's generally thought to only be appropriate for monospaced fonts (like Courier).
But, you know, if your teachers are telling you to do it then you should probably follow their advice, if only to prevent having an argument with them about it.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
CoolKirby wrote:
I'm American and I thought it was weird when I was told that the "correct" way to write was with two spaces after a period before a new sentence starts. I never do, though; apparently, I'm "incorrect".
Nothing correct or incorrect about it. It's a typographic style choice, nothing more.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
NESticle back in 1997. It was the first good non-commercial NES emulator, as I recall it. Allowed me to play NES games with decent accuracy on my 60 MHz computer.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Flygon wrote:
They were otherwise amazingly insistent on the nuances of Australian English and got pissed off when someone wrote in American.
Same here, actually. The internet taught me US English, but they didn't like that very much. Failed a lot of tests because of it (well, also because I never studied for English class). Fortunately they didn't seem to mind it during the final exam because I passed with a 9 out of 10 eventually.
Wish I could use international English, though. I just think it looks better and makes a bit more sense.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Yeah, we'd need to edit the forum code to generate one (non-breaking space character) for that to work. It's just a basic limitation of HTML, but for a good reason: it would otherwise be impossible to nicely format the source markup without huge spaces appearing everywhere.
Personally I think it's an outdated practice that doesn't really look any better typographically.
Warp wrote:
In some contexts it's customary to put two spaces at the beginning of each paragraph, while in other contexts it's not. I'm not really sure of the exact situations and rules where this might apply.
An indent of the first line is not necessarily two spaces. Could be more, could be less. In CSS this would be done with the text-indent attribute. It's solely a typographical consideration made to look the paragraph text look more legible.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Warp wrote:
And please tell me exactly where have I denied, doubted or in any way disregarded the existence of islamophobia and prejudice against islam in Europe. Also please show me exactly where I have said that opposing islamophobia and prejudice against islam is being brainwashed. I would like to know, because I do not remember writing those things, nor anything like it.
If you don't consider what I said to be accurate then maybe you could explain to me why you keep muttering on about the "multiculturalist religion" having brainwashed me. Because I certainly never claimed that all criticism of Islam is hatred or racism or what have you. I'm certainly no fan of any religion and I can see the atrocities and the vile hatred and violence that exists in the Islamic part of the world and I'm not exactly partial to it. And I see what the extreme right-wing Islam is capable of doing here in Europe, although I'm more fearful of crazy anti-Islamists like Anders Breivik who have quite a lot more support across the continent.
We can't escape from the idea that there's now a significant political drive to demonize Muslims. If you didn't know about that you haven't been living in Europe for the past decade. And as a direct result, people feel compelled to focus not on people like Anders Breivik and the extreme right-wing Islamophobes that exist and whose political arms, such as my Netherlands' own native Geert Wilders, wield a lot of influence. Contrary to the political influence of right-wing Muslims which is practically zero, both in domestic and European parliaments.
So yeah, is the criticism of Islam valid that people keep flinging at it? Some of it is, some of it isn't, some of it is mostly based on misinterpretations, red herrings, the belief that Muslims are one homogenous group or that the extremists in the Middle-East are the same as the far more secular Muslims here in Europe. And a lot of it is just the same old anti-immigration nonsense that we've heard for generations, blaming immigrants for either "stealing jobs", or not taking jobs and living off of the government, and then blaming "the Muslims" for refusing to get jobs, ignoring entirely the fact that economic realities and a lack of opportunity are far more accurate demographic indicators.
The problem is that this extraordinary sentiment is backed by a faux liberal interpretation that it's perfectly okay to keep demonizing Muslims because that's "standing up for our democratic, Judeo-Christian values" and if you say anything about it, you're just "against criticism of Islam", and obviously just a shill for the "leftist multicultural dream" that has been "proven to be a failure". Frankly, that claim is so outrageous I don't even want to discuss it. I literally think it's too outrageous to even warrant a response. To me, it's on the same level of moral standing as climate change denial.
So yeah, when you claim that I've been "brainwashed" by the "multiculturalist religion"—your exact words—then I see no reason to try and convince you. I wrote this post because I don't want someone else to misinterpret me. And frankly, I hope we can call it a day after this. This topic isn't about our disagreement.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Warp wrote:
I think it's sad that the multiculturalist religion has brainwashed you so completely and so successfully that you see nothing but hatred, hatred and more hatred everywhere. You filter any criticism of islam or multiculturalism through a filter that says "hatred, prejudice, bigotry, racism, discrimination, conspiracy theories".
Blah blah blah blah blah let me repeat again that I really don't care too much about what you think. I'm sorry, but I just don't. I regard you as an extremely bigoted individual. Someone who's apparently incapable of seeing that Islamophobia even exists, let alone to a significant degree in Europe, where it has become a mainstream political position. Those who dare speak out against this new form of hatred have, apparently, been "brainwashed by the multiculturalist religion".
Why on earth should I spend even two seconds trying to convince someone like you?
I think my analysis of the video was fair. Maybe I was wrong to infer anything about Bisqwit's personal opinion, but I'll leave that aside. Let whoever is interested read my post and yours and decide for themselves what they want to think.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Bisqwit wrote:
Dada wrote:
Bisqwit wrote:
I regret not being always at my politest to everyone, and being prolongedly neglectful at times. Though in my defense, I still did to the best of my abilities.
You are one of the most polite and helpful people I've ever known
Thank you for the testimony, but my politeness is not as omnilateral as I would like it to be. I am not beyond deriving sadistic pleasure through verbal means from people whom I consider intentionally failing at one or more tenets related to communication, common sense and/or courteous social interaction, and I did not always remember to thank or apologize where either was due, or to encourage contributors.
I noticed that you didn't respond to what I mentioned about the signature, but that's just fine. I actually think it's for the best. Here's another thing I regret: talking about politics on this forum. I thought of this place as a site where I wouldn't have to worry about those things, but since it was brought up a few times I couldn't resist.
It should be noted that one of the reasons TASVideos's forum thrived is because I think you did a good job running the site an an apolitical and diplomatic manner, particularly in the early days when it was still NESVideos.
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Warp wrote:
Dada wrote:
You are one of the most polite and helpful people I've ever known, which is why I find it so strange that you have this as one of your signatures. You should know better than to ascribe such damning attributes to huge, heterogeneous groups of people (numbering more than 1 billion individuals in this case). I don't think it befits you.
You are judging his signature without actually watching the video. Neither the signature nor the video are criticism against islam, but against the United States government. In other words, you are showing a great deal of prejudice based on a superficial glance (which is really ironic), and jumping to conclusions.
First of all, I did watch the video. I found it a rather unremarkable and incoherent paranoid rant by an Islamophobe. I won't bore you with the details.
But the most important thing to note here is that there's a considerable campaign of hatred going on against Muslims here in the West, primarily fueled by the extreme right in Europe and the religious right in the US, that shows similarities with the way antisemitic groups spoke about Jews in late Weimar Germany. Of course, the situations aren't the same, and the Jews were eventually harassed in a way that has no equal in history, but when you look at the language that was used against them, we can certainly draw a comparison.
Muslims are being stigmatized and stereotyped, they're being accused of being segregated, of being usurpers, that they don't want to integrate and are happy to simply enjoy the advantages of living at the cost of the majority. There are even conspiracy theories that say Muslims are out to take over all of Europe and impose Sharia law and turn the continent into a caliphate.
Islamophobia is truly the new antisemitism, and it's sharply on the rise in Europe.
This video seems to push the idea that the US government is somehow compromised, that Sharia law is already implemented and that the Establishment Clause has been violated by giving Muslims special treatment.
Now, since it's in Bisqwit's signature, and he links to the video itself, I'm going to assume he agrees with that video's conclusions.
Well, that's what I think is wrong here. It's true that there was an incident whereby a Quran was burned that had disastrous consequences, but those were extreme right-wing Islamists that don't represent the mainstream. To say that burning a Quran causes "Muslims to go on a killing spree" is to ascribe the actions of the few to the group as a whole. I could easily do the same with the actions of the right-wing orthodox Jews who reacted violently to a gay pride parade, and say that gay pride parades cause Jews to start stabbing people, and that would be exactly as bigoted and wrong.
If that's what Bisqwit thinks, then that's a disappointment to me. Especially since I do consider him to be a smart and polite individual. I'd rather not disagree with him on that, but if that's how it is then that's how it is.
Do you think it's polite to throw a tirade of accusations at someone, and then not even give them the courtesy of reading their response? (My response was based on reputable sources, which I linked, and I expected you to give your reputable sources for your claims.)
Frankly, I don't care too much. I regret getting angry over it, but I don't regret the claims I made about you and I stand by them. I took a brief glance at the topic earlier today and it seems to have settled, so I'm not going to stir the pot again.
