I'm not anti-regulation, but this is objectionable. Don't they have more important legislation to pass?
I'm the parent of a five year old, and I see him making food choices based on the 'prize' that he expects to receive with the food. It's my decision to say "No, you're not eating junk food today," or "OK - you had a healthy lunch, and you've behaved so yes we can go to McDonalds as a treat," and let him have that useless piece of plastic.
While I agree with you that the City was irresponsible in not taking precautions against this crime, it doesn't justify the act.
Childs essentially held the City IT hostage. I have little patience for this kind of crap, after firing a little BOFH for being a BOFH, and discovered that the little prick had set up a chron job that regularly checked for the presence of his account in the userid list, and if missing, wiped the entire boot volume.
Fortunately I had the presence of mind to backup the entire volume before allowing the new IT guy to touch anything. The poor guy was only on the job for about half a day before the entire system went down, and for a while there he was sure that would be his only day on the job.
Amazing how your insightful comment goes unmoderated, but the troll at the top of the tree gets "insightful" -- and how pointing out the kneejerk applehate on slashdot will earn this post a flamebait mod.
The difference between Apple's iPad team and a cult is that cults don't produce anything of commercial value.
A lot of you have said I'm "missing" the obvious aspect of this exercise.
No, I didn't miss it. When I hit reply, all of the other replies to the main article addressed it. So I chose to open another line of discussion.
Also you seem to have misinferred my comment into, simply, "what is the point of this contest?"
I'm not questioning the point of the contest. If I'm questioning anything, I'm questioning the sensationalism of the news that Sid Meier will be there, when he is famous for an entirely different kind of game.
But even then, it was really taking the opportunity to tell Sid, "moar Sid gaemz plz!"
While it's an intellectual challenge, and appeals to geek curiosity, how many really meaningful, influential games were written in one of these contests?
I mean, Sid's famous for writing games that required incredible amounts of research, iterative design, playtesting and balance. Those are what most grognards are interested in... not the next casual twitchfest, nor even another NP Hard gem no matter how elegant.
Sid, if your reading this, give us a modern, multiplayer version of NetHack (and not a click orgy like Diablo, but a "the dev team thinks of everything" masterpiece), or an updated turn-based strategy game like Fantasy General... I'm waiting for another trend of well balanced, challenging games to come along. Desperately.
The August 1977 Centerfold [mildly NSFW] was a scratch-and-sniff feature. The cover had a "Surgeon General" white box stating, WARNING: To be smelled in the privacy of your home. Not to be smelled by minors.
You're the second person in this thread to make that error. If we're talking about very large exponents for powers of one, we will never run out of prefixes.
That's because one to the Nth power is one... for all values of N.
An AC is not just a person, it's "something the size of a baby hippo, the color of a week-old boiled potato, that lives by itself, in the dark, in a double-wide on the outskirts of Tacoma. It's covered with eyes and it sweats constantly. The sweat runs into those eyes and makes them sting. It has no mouth... abraded genitals, and can only express its mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire by banging out trolls and flamebait on its wireless keyboard."
It's more like: fanboys (or locked in victims) who will (or must) pay for everything, cheapskates who won't/can't pay for anything, and discriminating customers who only pay for quality.
The first category you don't have to worry about. These are the ones who will buy your DRMed crap as long as it;s released for their platform, and it has enough "buzz." (Or in the case of the locked-in victims, these are the ones you've already captured.) And really, the same goes for the second category - you don't have to worry about them either, because no matter what you do you're not going to make a sale to them.
It's the third category that really is where you can make a return on investment. Either you can rely on DRM to force these people to pay to try your game/music/app, but if you sell them crap once, then forget about making any future sales to them. But if you make a quality product, then they'll come back and buy your products again, even without a demo/freebie.
But since making a quality product takes talent, many publishers see the first case as a more reachable goal. Quality and talent aren't part of their equation. But they still expect to make money...
I bought a Drobo to serve video and I had to return it. Even with four WD Caviar Green 1.5 TB drives in it, the Drobo simply could not serve up SD content fast enough. The video was constantly freezing and hiccuping at SD, and on HD it was unwatchable.
I had to return it and bought a Promise DS-4600 DAS enclosure and am now running RAID-10 on it instead. It works like a champ, and it was the same price as the Drobo.
The Drobo is probably fine as a backup solution but it sucked for use with my DVR software.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not anti-regulation, but this is objectionable. Don't they have more important legislation to pass?
I'm the parent of a five year old, and I see him making food choices based on the 'prize' that he expects to receive with the food. It's my decision to say "No, you're not eating junk food today," or "OK - you had a healthy lunch, and you've behaved so yes we can go to McDonalds as a treat," and let him have that useless piece of plastic.
My decision. My responsibility.
While I agree with you that the City was irresponsible in not taking precautions against this crime, it doesn't justify the act.
Childs essentially held the City IT hostage. I have little patience for this kind of crap, after firing a little BOFH for being a BOFH, and discovered that the little prick had set up a chron job that regularly checked for the presence of his account in the userid list, and if missing, wiped the entire boot volume.
Fortunately I had the presence of mind to backup the entire volume before allowing the new IT guy to touch anything. The poor guy was only on the job for about half a day before the entire system went down, and for a while there he was sure that would be his only day on the job.
Amazing how your insightful comment goes unmoderated, but the troll at the top of the tree gets "insightful" -- and how pointing out the kneejerk applehate on slashdot will earn this post a flamebait mod.
The difference between Apple's iPad team and a cult is that cults don't produce anything of commercial value.
He appears to be referencing an hirsute ceramicist of some variety.
It sounds to me like he saw a voluntarily handicapped tubby on a scooter that should have been reserved for your involuntarily handicapped mother.
As in "In Soviet Russia, invisibility cloaks look through you... after blasting a hole in you?"
A lot of you have said I'm "missing" the obvious aspect of this exercise.
No, I didn't miss it. When I hit reply, all of the other replies to the main article addressed it. So I chose to open another line of discussion.
Also you seem to have misinferred my comment into, simply, "what is the point of this contest?"
I'm not questioning the point of the contest. If I'm questioning anything, I'm questioning the sensationalism of the news that Sid Meier will be there, when he is famous for an entirely different kind of game.
But even then, it was really taking the opportunity to tell Sid, "moar Sid gaemz plz!"
if your reading this
[mimes shooting self in head]
While it's an intellectual challenge, and appeals to geek curiosity, how many really meaningful, influential games were written in one of these contests?
I mean, Sid's famous for writing games that required incredible amounts of research, iterative design, playtesting and balance. Those are what most grognards are interested in... not the next casual twitchfest, nor even another NP Hard gem no matter how elegant.
Sid, if your reading this, give us a modern, multiplayer version of NetHack (and not a click orgy like Diablo, but a "the dev team thinks of everything" masterpiece), or an updated turn-based strategy game like Fantasy General... I'm waiting for another trend of well balanced, challenging games to come along. Desperately.
I also recommend KW Jeter's Noir for a rather cynical look at a consumer dystopia taken to absurd extremes.
Your 'sarcasm' comes across more as knee-jerk Applehate, so yea, he's forgiven.
Oh, someone has. It was Larry Flynt, of course.
The August 1977 Centerfold [mildly NSFW] was a scratch-and-sniff feature. The cover had a "Surgeon General" white box stating, WARNING: To be smelled in the privacy of your home. Not to be smelled by minors.
Fortunately, according to Wikipedia, it smelled more like lilacs than labia... can you imagine collecting enough pussy juice to scent 2 million copies [very NSFW]?
(I remember finding a copy when I was about 15. It was three years old by then, and the smelly part was all scratched out.)
Few can command respect by being simultaneously resourceful and comical. Aussies seem to accomplish this feat regularly.
Hats off, mates! Seriously, as an engineer, I think this is awesome.
It's somehow Pythonesque, but I can't put my finger on it.
Learn not to grab hot soldering iron by the barrel or tip.
Universal Rule: Every electronic technician and engineer will inevitably burn themselves with the solder iron at least once.
Corollary: Keep a live aloe plant in a pot in your lab. Apply the juice from a small piece immediately to a burn.
Here's an excellent phototour from a visit made there last summer.
http://firesuite.com/chernobyl-exclusion-zone-2008-09.html
People who use those prefixes in spoken English wind up sounding like Bruce Cosby's Mushmouth character.
You're the second person in this thread to make that error. If we're talking about very large exponents for powers of one, we will never run out of prefixes.
That's because one to the Nth power is one... for all values of N.
Umm.... that would be equal to one.
This represents the first solar-powered flights ever.
And we're still working on them.
An AC is not just a person, it's "something the size of a baby hippo, the color of a week-old boiled potato, that lives by itself, in the dark, in a double-wide on the outskirts of Tacoma. It's covered with eyes and it sweats constantly. The sweat runs into those eyes and makes them sting. It has no mouth... abraded genitals, and can only express its mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire by banging out trolls and flamebait on its wireless keyboard."
(With apologies to William Gibson and Cory Doctorow)
Talk about compensation... dude, your microphallus is showing.
Put that away before you owe someone a new keyboard.
It's more like: fanboys (or locked in victims) who will (or must) pay for everything, cheapskates who won't/can't pay for anything, and discriminating customers who only pay for quality.
The first category you don't have to worry about. These are the ones who will buy your DRMed crap as long as it;s released for their platform, and it has enough "buzz." (Or in the case of the locked-in victims, these are the ones you've already captured.) And really, the same goes for the second category - you don't have to worry about them either, because no matter what you do you're not going to make a sale to them.
It's the third category that really is where you can make a return on investment. Either you can rely on DRM to force these people to pay to try your game/music/app, but if you sell them crap once, then forget about making any future sales to them. But if you make a quality product, then they'll come back and buy your products again, even without a demo/freebie.
But since making a quality product takes talent, many publishers see the first case as a more reachable goal. Quality and talent aren't part of their equation. But they still expect to make money...
I bought a Drobo to serve video and I had to return it. Even with four WD Caviar Green 1.5 TB drives in it, the Drobo simply could not serve up SD content fast enough. The video was constantly freezing and hiccuping at SD, and on HD it was unwatchable.
I had to return it and bought a Promise DS-4600 DAS enclosure and am now running RAID-10 on it instead. It works like a champ, and it was the same price as the Drobo.
The Drobo is probably fine as a backup solution but it sucked for use with my DVR software.
I believe the point was more about influence on the career choices of youth, not statistical likelihood.
Because we know that no one can stop kitties from dancing, that's how.