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Similar here. I used to work hard to clean up articles, add citations, and so forth, all carefully inside the rules & guidelines only to have my work reverted either without reason or (based on the reversions) because it wasn't slavishly praising the subject. Or even worse, work hard on an article, then see it deleted as "non-notable" (this commentary covers it well) because an editor & buddies uninterested in the overall topic hadn't heard of it. I don't have the energy to fight with them, and finally decided to do little more than tag articles/sections as needing work for various reasons.

Preach it, brother! Gay marriage is a new right that changes what marriage means, exactly like woman's suffrage would be a new right that changes what sufferage means!

http://www.highprogrammer.com/cgi-bin/uniqueid

Michigan does not use privately assigned numbers for our drivers license numbers. Our drivers license numbers are calculated using a method that's not secret or random or anything.

We use a system that combines soundex codes with date of birth. You can find anyones michigan driver's license number if you know:

First name, Middle Name, Last name, Month of Birth, year of birth.

If you're from michigan, get out your driver's license and see for yourself.
http://www.highprogrammer.com/cgi-bin/uniqueid/dl_ mi

There are only a few times where it might be a few numbers off. If you happen to share a first name middle name last name month of birth and year of birth, then the last 3 numbers will be off by 1. Besides that, this works really well.

This is great for catching fake ID's. None of the fake ID's bother to calculate the right number. Most bouncers who police doors are familiar enough with the codes to flag fakes quite easily.

The driver's license calculators worked to verify that the numbers on two of the IDs posted on Rachel's blog don't match the information on those IDs. Some of the numbers are close, but still completely off. If there's a cached version of the ID that prompted the DMCA abuse, I'd run the information through the Maryland calculator and see how they match up.

It may not be like running the ID through LEIN, but if that calculator spits out a completely different driver's license number based on the information, my hat goes off to Rachel, even if it is kind of a bitch move to post these things on the Internet. If the generated number matches, either the girl was also using that calculator (unlikely -- the Michigan and Florida fake IDs on her blog don't match the generated numbers), or the bartender was overzealous and confiscated a genuine ID. The latter is probably just as unlikely; I'd gladly wait for the cops to arrive, run my license, tell the bartender I really am old enough and hopefully get at least one drink on the house for the embarassment.

The driver's license calculators worked to verify that the numbers on two of the IDs posted on Rachel's blog don't match the information on those IDs. Some of the numbers are close, but still completely off. If there's a cached version of the ID that prompted the DMCA abuse, I'd run the information through the Maryland calculator and see how they match up.

It may not be like running the ID through LEIN, but if that calculator spits out a completely different driver's license number based on the information, my hat goes off to Rachel, even if it is kind of a bitch move to post these things on the Internet. If the generated number matches, either the girl was also using that calculator (unlikely -- the Michigan and Florida fake IDs on her blog don't match the generated numbers), or the bartender was overzealous and confiscated a genuine ID. The latter is probably just as unlikely; I'd gladly wait for the cops to arrive, run my license, tell the bartender I really am old enough and hopefully get at least one drink on the house for the embarassment.

And googling around, I found more info on how they are generated. It also has a java applet that will do name to number to name

http://www.highprogrammer.com/alan/numbers/dl_us_s hared.html

The way the industry works now, almost no developer can afford to self-fund a "full-size" game. For most of those who can, it's an all-or-nothing bet; if the game tanks (And many great games regrettably do), the developer goes out of business. So for the overwhelming majority of developers, to do a full game it means getting a publisher to fund development. Publishers are understandably cautious about funding more risky (but potentially great) games. As a result you tend to see lots of knock offs, sequels, and crappy movie licenses. Innovation is stifled. Add on that most developers exist only so long as they keep getting publishers to fund them.

One way to escape this is to simply develop smaller games. That's great if you like that sort of game, but not so good if you really want to develop a sprawling RPG, a large FPS, just about any adventure game, or something similar.

Episodic content is potentially a way forward. These days the overwhelming expense in a large game is the content, not the programming. A first episode that represents, say, 20% of a game may only need 40% of the content. (Even better, episode two probably only needs 15% more content to generate the next 20% of the game, assuming you're releasing episodes quickly enough that you don't need to update your engine or art.) It's a much lower risk. More developers can afford to self-fund in this model. More risky ideas can be tried. I'm quite confident that Bone and Sam & Max weren't going to be funded by a major publisher as full games. As the developer typically self-publishes, if the game is a success the developer can bank it to support future development, possibly even more traditional big-single-release games.

Episodic content is problematic. As a customer you're left hanging mid-story. (Did we say you'd be playing Episode Two within six months of episode one? Did you purchase Episode One on that basis? Hope you don't mind waiting six more.) If the developer goes bankrupt or cancels an unprofitable line you may never see the conclusion. (Sucks to be you, Sin Episodes fans. Of course, you can suffer that even in "full" game releases.) While episodic content is almost exclusively sold online, reducing overhead and costs, you pay what overhead there is once per episode, driving costs up. I'm not a fan of episodic content for these reasons. But I believe at least some developers are embracing episodic content as a way to escape extremely cautious publishers.

Long story short, VSS is one of the worst piece of source-control software ever. This is a quite beaten to death horse, so here are 3 articles on the subject: Visual SourceSafe Version Control: Unsafe at any Speed?, Visual SourceSafe: Microsoft's Source Destruction System and Source Control: Anything But SourceSafe.

In case anyone in interested in spring of 1997 I visited TSR on a business trip. This was just after the Wizard's of the Coast buyout. For the curious here's my writeup on visiting TSR during the final days in which you can hear my perception of the mood (poor, but improving since the buyout) and learn useless things (Peter Adkison really likes ketchup. And why 50th level Dwarven Paladins, an illegal combination in 2nd ed, was a major test case.).

I agree with almost all of that article you mentioned. The web forum features I had in mind were the ability to delete posts, memberships, restrict member privileges viewing or posting or both, moderation and similar. These features are useful things like paid tech support, closed communities, educational uses etc.

It would be nice though if there were desktop clients as well for the forum software that would store data on harddisk, according to user settings as well as board policies. This would allow quick searching, viewing, sorting and other similar plus points of usenet clients

Web based forum software offer a lot more features than newsgroups.

Like "reading trough a web browser", "no threads" and "you remember what you have read, not your computer"?

Why would you base a case design on such a crappy movie?

Depending on the state, the license number can contain a significant amount of information, including birthdate and a significant portion of the person's name.

Here's an example.

Based on your sig, I think you might enjoy this Defense of Sufferage Act :)

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My first month at my first professional job I got to visit TSR on a business trip. This was after the Wizards of the Coast buyout but before the move out of the Lake Geneva office. If such a thing might interest you, I offer my observations on one of TSR's final days.

My first month at my first professional job I got to visit TSR on a business trip. This was after the Wizards of the Coast buyout but before the move out of the Lake Geneva office. If such a thing might interest you, I offer my observations on one of TSR's final days.

I'm not expecting to change anyone's mind, but just in case, here's my case for Why I'm Voting for Kerry. In the interests of keeping it brief and easy to skim it's mostly a bullet list of points.

If you want something longer, I think "100 Facts and 1 Opinion: The Non-Arguable Case Against the Bush Administration" by Judd Legum at The Nation is quite a good summary. Again, it's an easy to skim list.

Heh, no offense taken. Core Rules 1 and 2 were both full of compromises and had their weak points. That sort of compromise are why lots of money was invested in the goofy movie in CR1, why the interface is custom (and thus harder to use). I'm proud of lots of CR2, but there are big parts I wish could have been different, but it wasn't an option given the demands of TSR/WotC, the budget, and the release schedule. Still, for first job out of college, it rocked hard. (How many job interviews feature your future boss asking if you're willing to run a D&D game at the office? At one point Jim Ward played in a game I ran there.)

Similar compromises caused the 3e product (the Master Tools) to never really appear in a finished version. It's telling that eventually the E-Tools / Master Tools were taken from the original developer and handed to the open source group responsible for PCGen.

This seems as good a place to mention it as any... because I was working on the Core Rules 2.0, I got to visit TSR just as they were closing up and moving to Washington / Wizards of the Coast. I wrote up a bit about my visit to TSR, which might be interesting. It's still a draft (I'm hoping the co-worker mentioned in the story will give it a once-over), but it's reasonably polished at this point.

LucasArts also recently cancelled Full Throttle 2 . (Although good luck confirming it through official channels thanks to an incompetant web site at LucasArts.)

LucasArts has consistently shipped some of the best adventure games ever. The worst adventure games from LucasArts are still fun. They sell at least tolerably well. The most recent Monkey Island game did, I understand, quite well when ported to the PS2, even though it had been available on PC for a year or two at that point. Full Throttle and Sam & Max Hit the Road are two of the most creative adventure games ever; I know I wasn't the only person eagerly anticipating the sequels. (Sequels suck in general, yes, but LucasArts has proven that it's possible to buck the trend by releasing 4 great Monkey Island games.) Adventure gamers have gone from being able to look forward to two great games to zero. Feh. At least we can look forward to Dreamfall and Syberia 2 .

I was thinking more of a website being able to track things such as search requests.

What's wrong with that? I find such information extremely useful as a webmaster. I get a sense of what people are looking for. I maintain a site about number encoding (pretty much just driver's license numbers at the moment. The section of my site discussing the algorithm for Wisconsin used to be broken into two pages. Thanks to referrer logs I learned that many people searching for "wisconsin driver's license number" ended up on the second, less useful page. By breaking the page up into two parts I had confused Google and visitors ended up on an unnecessary diversion. That information allowed me to tweak things (folding the second page into the first) to improve my visitor's experiences.

Similarly my referrer logs suggest that many visitors to my "Microsoft Visual C++ Tips and Tricks" are searching for certain "magic numbers" like "0xFDFDFDFD". I really need to reorganize the page some to make it easier for people to find the section discussing those numbers; my logs make it clear that it's a popular topic.

Maybe in theory there is some risk, but it's a small risk and the benefit of referrer information is just so big.

I was thinking more of a website being able to track things such as search requests.

What's wrong with that? I find such information extremely useful as a webmaster. I get a sense of what people are looking for. I maintain a site about number encoding (pretty much just driver's license numbers at the moment. The section of my site discussing the algorithm for Wisconsin used to be broken into two pages. Thanks to referrer logs I learned that many people searching for "wisconsin driver's license number" ended up on the second, less useful page. By breaking the page up into two parts I had confused Google and visitors ended up on an unnecessary diversion. That information allowed me to tweak things (folding the second page into the first) to improve my visitor's experiences.

Similarly my referrer logs suggest that many visitors to my "Microsoft Visual C++ Tips and Tricks" are searching for certain "magic numbers" like "0xFDFDFDFD". I really need to reorganize the page some to make it easier for people to find the section discussing those numbers; my logs make it clear that it's a popular topic.

Maybe in theory there is some risk, but it's a small risk and the benefit of referrer information is just so big.

I personally can't stand web forums and that ubiquitous UBB.

Preach it brother. Web forums are a giant step backward.

Most web forums are full of twelve year olds perfectly willing to take someone elses content and claim it on their own, or to leech bandwidth by posting a img link to a different site.

I hate (most) web forums.

It's pretty clear that the page you link to is just such a site. He just took a bunch of screenshots of another web page and produced them (clearly infringing copyright).

This appears to be the original SWAT team hand gestures page.

So how can we know, how say, Open Office compares to MS Office? I really think we can't, and likely won't.

How can we know? In a philosophical sense, we can't. But you can find out for practical purposes. Personally I know people who used to work for Microsoft. I heard that the code, while not bad, wasn't that good. I learned about the constant political infighting between groups and an irrational refusal to use external code. This led to such silliness as no major project in Microsoft actually using their own source control system. This lead to the the Office project maintaining their own forked version of the compiler. While none of this actively says their code is bad, it does suggest problems in their system that might be reflected in their code. Of course, while this is second hand to me, it's third hand to you, so you might not trust it. Reasonable enough. But my point is that one way to learn is to get the information from someone who really does know and who you trust.

Relatedly, you can make a certain level of judgement based on the software you receive and work with. If the software is buggy crap, chances are that the code isn't the Mona Lisa of the programming world.

Try renting two (relatively low-budget, unknown) sci-fi flicks. - Cube,... Cube 2: Hypercube.

Egad, I hope you're kidding! I'm pretty sure that there is a UN resolution being debated that will specifically put Cube and Cube 2 on the list of crimes against humanity.Do not watch either Cube movie, here's why!

What to replace it with? At home and at work I use CVS. Sure, CVS has lots of problems, but at least they're well known problems with easy workarounds. At its core CVS is solid, if dated, software. There are other products I've heard good things about other packages, but I lack the experience with them to judge them. What I do know is that CVS is far and away superior to SourceSafe.

Rational Clearcase competes with Visual Sourcesafe....

Only to the extent that a bank competes with random strangers as a reasonable place to keep my money. SourceSafe may be viewed by many as a reasonable alternative for Clearcase, but that's a horrible mistake. SourceSafe is deeply flawed and inappropriate for any but the most trivial situations. I've written a paper on Visual SourceSafe's many flaws. Spread the word! Friends don't let friends use SourceSafe!

The lack of an snprintf method in the DevStudio standard C lib...

If the service is bad, then don't use it, full stop. If you use anti-banner software you are effectively cheating the webmaster into providing you his service, without paying for it. It's like going to a restaurant and not paying because you didn't want to see the ads on the inside cover of the menu.

Yeah! It's exactly like that. Expect for the part where it's nothing like that.

Where did you come up with that bizarre comparison? Theft of product (food in your example), has nothing to do with refusing to to look at ads.

Am I thief because when I get a magazine I rip out pages with advertisements on both sides? Have I stolen anything when I pay a clipping service to cut articles out of papers and send them to me, allowing me to avoid seeing the ads? When I fast forward through ads when I tape the Simpsons, have I stolen college money from some network exec's child? Egad, I never knew that all these years I've been using the restroom during ads on live television, that's I've actually been stealing programming.

Bah, humbug. I'm free to ignore ads however I want. Once you've provided your copyright protected material to me, I'm free to mangle that copy any way I want for my personal use. This includes using automated tools to do it. Your web site asked to my computer to display an ad. I've asked my computer to decline to do so. My call, not yours.

Will this spell the death of the web? No. The non-commercial part has blundered along happily without ads of any sort for some time. The commericial part will simply have to grow up and stop whining. Perhaps the answer is less aggressive advertising so users don't seek out anti-ad technology (I block heavily animated ads and popup ads, but I'll leave minimally animated, non-flash banner ads alone. I even like Google's text ads). Perhaps the answer is more pay-for-subscription sites. (I pay for two sites of value to me). Maybe the margins will be smaller, maybe fewer sites will be financially possible. That's life. Branding your users as theives for taking control of their own computer is just stupid.

I suspect that the anonymous coward is joking, but please, if you care about your source code at all, do not use Visual SourceSafe. Visual SourceSafe is awful software that plagued my existance for five years. If you are using Visual SourceSafe, or are considering it, please see this page on Visual SourceSafe's faults.

I suspect that the anonymous coward is joking, but please, if you care about your source code at all, do not use Visual SourceSafe. Visual SourceSafe is awful software that plagued my existance for five years. If you are using Visual SourceSafe, or are considering it, please see this page on Visual SourceSafe's faults.

I believe this is entirely possible. In the mid 90's (we are talking 1995-1997) there was a belieft that Congress was going to force states to set the DL numbers to the SSN. Some states changing their license making equipment at the time, like Connecticut, Pennsylvania and New York, decided to set themselves up for this possiblity.

The DL numbers in those states are 9 digits long--but are *not* the Social Security Number. They are spaced out all funny to indicate such (as opposed to xxx xx xxxx a PA license reads something like xx xxxx xxx or something like that.) I guess their thinking was, at some point, they may have to change, so might as well be ready for it.

My theory is that it's entirely possible that you'll either find

a.) a person with a DL number which matches another individual's SSN

or...

b.) a person with a DL number with matches not only their SSN, but also their DL number if they live in a state which still uses the SSN as a DL number (which in about 5 years will probably be elminiated by all states.)

A bunch of states (IL, MI, NK, WI, MN, FL--just to mention a few) use a stardardized (long) number which is a hash of your name in Soundex, bdate and a few digits at the end. It is entirely possible that you could move from one state using this system to another state with this system--and have the exact same DL number. Obviously, two people with the same name and bdates in two separate states could have the same number as well.

Let me make a prediction--in 10 years, some state is going to stop printing DL numbers on licenses because of identity fraud risks--and the license number will be encyrpted into machine readable form.