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It's awaiting something more than an ad-hominem from you.

I found this page for you. It's at your level, with many very simple examples, clearly explained.

You've presented nothing else yet

You'll find that a couple posts back. You purposefully ignored the substance because you can't face it. I'm done. It's the finger print scanner all over again. I had thought that was just religious devotion. It was worse. You're willfully ignorant.

There's an article here http://plover.net/~bonds/ender.html that, once you get past the deliberately inflammatory intro, makes a heck of a lot of sense.

Ender's Game makes way more sense when you read it as a combination of nerd-wish-fulfillment and some weird-ass militant Jesus propaganda. He (and only he) can empathize with the people who are killed - he loves them so much, that he must destroy them. When he kills other children, it's because of his wonderful rationality - but it's okay, because he didn't _mean_ to, and besides, he's really, really sorry. He "sacrifices" himself with self-imposed exile at the end of the novel, ending up spreading his philosophy throughout the cosmos.

Ender is an endlessly-suffering figure, targeted for (what else) his greatness. He's a "Mary Sue" character through and through.

(It's also interesting to think about the imagined persecution of straight white christian (mormon in this case) men, and how it relates to Ender, whom everyone is necessarily against).

Why is this so damn difficult for people to understand?

Both of you, stop it!

http://plover.net/~bonds/ender.html

I'm assuming the parent never heard of the book and found this page http://plover.net/~bonds/ender.html

I guess the parent didn't read the end of that article. Stupidity in all its forms is an ugly festering chimera. When you stamp out the ignorance of one, two more pop up in its place.

At any rate, the teacher should be reinstated and the damned administrators should be fired.

Naw, I'm pretty sure it went like this:

Parent: This book is pornographic and the teacher is reading it to my 14 yr old!
Superintendent: Ender's Game? (thinking: I haven't read that) What parts are pornographic? (read: take quotes out of context and make them sound bad)
Parent: (thinking: shit! I haven't read it either! I just hate that teacher!) .... um.... (quickly googles ender's game pornographic) .... See! It's right there, at the top of google! Ender's Game is pornographic!
Superintendent: OH! Well! That changes everything! I will definitely fire that teacher! .... by the way, are you voting for Santorum? Google "Santorum" and let's see what comes up....

Here's one guy who thinks Ender's Game is porn, just not the "sex" kind.

This is the error of attacking the character or motives of a person who has stated an idea, rather than the idea itself.

Note that I do continue to attack your ideas. Furthermore, here's an explanation:

In reality, ad hominem is unrelated to sarcasm or personal abuse. Argumentum ad hominem is the logical fallacy of attempting to undermine a speaker's argument by attacking the speaker instead of addressing the argument.

Those "personal attacks" (to the extent that they were -- "don't be a dick" has never been a personal attack) were not attempts to undermine your argument -- I could do that well enough on my own.

However, you have been guilty of exactly this, haven't you? It seems every single claim I make, you counter with "Where's your degree that proves you have a right to say that?" You did it right here:

You're no expert in LOGIC, not in CSC/CIS/MIS, nor in English (per your 'grammar/spellcheck/writing style' forensics & critiques attempts, minus provable expertise in any of them yourself or degrees or licenses in them either), nor in Psychology (per your libel directed my way on that account also).

Show us degrees that show you are in those? I'll take it back... until then? LMAO!

In other words, "I'm not going to listen to anything you say unless you have a degree." How elitist and naive -- but it's also a perfect example of argumentum ad-hominem. Instead of addressing my argument, you attack my credentials, in an attempt to undermine my argument.

Another source, with its own citations:

Many people seem to think that any personal criticism, attack, or insult counts as an ad hominem fallacy...

People like you, apparently.

Each subfallacy listed on that page is explicit that it applies when such arguments are used as evidence against the position -- which again, I have not done, though you have.

Ad-hominem is described as the introduction of a red herring, which you commit often, which is described like this:

This is the most general fallacy of irrelevance. Any argument in which the premisses are logically unrelated to the conclusion commits this fallacy.

But I gave no conclusion about your arguments.

Finally, I'm not surprised you've forgotten:

when I brought up the fact that looking for faulty coding practices or risky compiler instructions like sscanf are easy to find... You were reduced to using ad hominem name calling

So you're implying that at this point, I had no argument, and all I did was ad-hom? Let's find out:

Linux always has more vulnerabilities publicly found and fixed due to it being open source, a process which leads to a more secure system -- wouldn't you rather have a vulnerability found and fixed, or even found and marked "unpatched" on Securina, than found and exploited (hidden) elsewhere?

Now, I'm not saying this in itself is an airtight argument, but it's also one that addresses your claim that merely having the source available naturally leads to a less secure system.

Revealing specific techniques for searching through source code, versus analyzing binary, are irrelevant. I never once claimed that vulnerabilities are harder to find in open source. My claim was that the fact that vulnerabilities are easy to find in open source makes it more secure in the long run.

Of course, that wasn't the post where I supposedly ad-hom'd you. Let's look at that one:

if I have the

As opposed to simply reeling off ad hominems

Please read this and come back when you grow up: http://plover.net/~bonds/adhominem.html

While that was an ad-hominem

It was not.

Time to review the "ad hominem fallacy" fallacy.

http://plover.net/~bonds/adhominem.html

Cliff notes version: calling you an idiot doesn't invalidate the rest of my argument. (You idiot.)

"Apparently your belief in individual responsibility doesn't extend to the level that you refuse to post AC."

Apparently you have to resort to Ad Hominem attacks (or are you unaware that you did that?) when you can't make a coherent argument.

Referring to qualities of a speaker does not make it an ad hominem attack. In this case, I was noting a possible instance of hypocrisy in the difference between your posting AC and championing individual responsibility. To learn more about why this is not an ad hominem attack, I would suggest you read this article.

And why is it you assholes who hide behind pseudonyms think that makes you so much more credible than AC's?

And, believe it or not, even your use of 'asshole' here does not qualify as ad hominem. (See the linked article). To answer your question, I'm not claiming 'much' more credibility, but merely 'some'; I've posted a fair bit, and interested parties can at least decide if what I'm posting in this thread is consistent with what I've held elsewhere. Even that (fairly low) level of personal identity is not met by ACs.

"The government is responsible because it equipped this person with a uniform, badge, gun, and (most importantly) training, as well as giving him a mandate to enforce the law."

Except THAT IS NOT THE LEGAL TEST YOU DULLARD SO STOP PRESUMING YOUR OPINION ABOUT THE LAW HAS ANY BEARING ON THE ACTUAL LAW ITSELF.

I'm still not getting your point. Perhaps a larger font size would help?

I never said anything about a legal test. The one point that I was trying to make is that I don't find it 'sad' that the relevant government may have to offer financial restitution in this case, because it is apparently the only efficacious way to hold a government, and by extension the citizens who voted that government into office, responsible for its role in the violation of civil rights that occurred. You don't believe that the government holds any responsibility; fine. I happen to think that your opinion can't be made consistent with most reasonable ideas about government. Our disagreement, at least as I see it, is one of political philosophy, not one about the current state of law.

"But he 'arrested' someone, which is the act of a government..."

No, IT IS NOT. Citizen's arrest is an example that shows you're full of shit.

So now you're claiming that this 'individual', employed as a police officer, on duty, was actually making a citizen's arrest, because he was in error? If you read up on citizen's arrest, you will find that among the many restrictions on this concept is the requirement to turn the 'arrestee' over to proper authorities as soon as is practicable. There is no "citizen's judicial system" of which citizen's arrest is a part; it's merely a stopgap measure to hold the guy until you call a cop.

But because you're clearly too dimwittd to grasp the point, being an agent of the government DOES NOT ALWAYS AND IRREVOCABLY MAKE THE GOVERNMENT RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR ACTIONS.

Ah, finally an actual ad hominem! Unfortunately, your grammar makes it somewhat of a nonsequitur -- my level of dimwittedness, whatever it is, clearly has no effect on whether or not 'being an agent of the government, etc., etc. ' Further, I never claimed that it was 'always and irrevocably' so, I just was claiming that in this case -- an officer, on duty, in uniform, dispached to the scene in response to a call to the police -- was acting in his capacity as an agent of the government. I'll concede that there are many actions performed by someone who is an agent of the government for which the governm

Irritating Windoze defender

http://plover.net/~bonds/adhominem.html

This wouldn't work in emulation (or with any modern Z-code interpreter), but there is a Japenese Zork port for the Sega Saturn. The Real videos aren't working for me and the screenshots at if-legends.org are offline, so I can't tell how it's played. I imagine a menu would work just fine as an interface to the not-so-sophisticated Zork-era parser and world model, but the game does have its "secret" word(s) - how do you offer those up for selection without giving them away? Oh well.

It may also be worth mentioning that maps:
http://infodoc.plover.net/maps/

and solutions:
http://ifarchive.org/if-archive/solutions/infocom/ solutions/

to these games are also available online.

Hmm. I may be missing something, but I think you're confusing Choose Your Own Adventure type multiple choice games with the more simulationist, finer-grained parser-based text adventures; the grand-parent post quoted the very first of the latter - the venerable (if primitive) Adventure/Colossal Cave from 1975 (or one of its various, er, mods.)

Popular companies were Infocom, Magnetic Scrolls and Level 9, among others; these days, the form is kept alive by enthusiasts and frequently taken into directions more experimental and/or literary than throw the axe at the dwarf then pick up the gold.

Baf's Guide to the IF-Archive is a good place to start searching; as is the IF Review Conspiracy. Poke around and you'll notice most good games require either a "Z-Code" or "TADS" interpreter (VM); refer to the Inform homepage for a list of UNIX Z-Code interpreters or just go with Zoom right away (link has pretty picture). As for TADS games, here're the Linux TADS 2/3 Playkit and, alternatively, a QT-based TADS 2/3 interpreter.

TADS and Inform, incidentally, are the two most widely used Interactive Fiction programming languages. And although that's not their intended purpose, both have also been used for multiple choice games on occasion.

If you're interested, Brass Lantern has a collection of articles for beginners. If you're not, oh well ;)

Inform isn't the only system available for creating IF -- see the rec.arts.int-fiction Authorship FAQ.

On a related note, the Interactive Fiction Competition is apparently still going strong after over a decade, with entries sorted by authoring system.

Excellent links!

Looks like the comic was from this one:
http://infodoc.plover.net/nzt/NZT7.3.pdf

Haven't seen those newsletters in 16 years... Wow.

Read all the infocom newsletters at http://infodoc.plover.net/nzt/!

or http://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXinfoco mXNZT+TSL.html

They even include the fan comics they published...

-If

If you like Infocom adventures you should Download Frotz! 2.4.1. This interpreter installs into /usr/local/bin and runs in the Terminal. It would be nice to have a Cocoa front-end for this. Perhaps some cool Mac Geek will find the time....

Frotz! 2.4.3 is also available in source code form if you're into building from source. You just have to make sure you have the ncurses library installed (Fink helps). I had to rename the "init_process" function (in src/common/process.c and src/main.c) to "my_init_process" before it would build. Some kind of symbol conflict with libSystem....

You can play Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy on the web but I don't think it allows you to save the game.

Fortunately you can download the HHGG data file (option-click) right off the web and play it in Frotz!

As for other Infocom and Z-engine games, here are some links to resources straight out of the Mac Frotz readme file:

• Interactive Fiction Archive
• Baf's Guide
• XYZZYnews
• Infocom (unofficial)
• Infocom (unofficial)
• Infocom Documentation Project
• Infocom Gallery
• InterData Development
• Ye Olde Infocomme Shoppe
• IF Database
• Doe's IF Page
• "Infocom Games"

Doh... nevermind, I just answered my own question and ended the idea of the project in one blow... I just found this site The Infocom Documentation Project - Newsletters.

Cool...

I haven't found that guys code but here is a page that is still alive.

I get *so* tired of the endless yapping about Quake IV, Monkey Island XIII, and other churn-out-a-rehash crap...

Anyway, there are plenty of Infocom interpreter knock-offs available. The IF (Interactive Fiction) Archive's main site is an FTP site in Germany that's bog-slow; a list of mirrors follows.

Go to the subdirectory "infocom" then "interpreters" and pick your poison -- my personal favorite is Frotz. Happy adventuring.

in the USA:
http://wuarchive.wustl.edu/doc/misc /if-archive/
http://ftp.nodomainname.net/pub /mirrors/if-archive/
http://ifarchive.org/
ftp://www.plover.net/pub/ifarchive/

in Finland:
ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/misc/if-archive/

in Australia:
http://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/if-arch ive/

in the UK:
http://www.firedrake.org/if-archive/
or ftp://ftp.firedrake.org/if-arch ive/