I can't think of any better approach to a percieved problem than banning any depiction of that problem. Banning pictures of pot leafs on shirts in school sure cleared up all the drug problems, right? I heard everone quit smoking and drinking once advertisements for them were pulled. It's an excellent solution, I think...only this could really go much further:
Ban all pictures of food, then no one will be triggered to over-eat.
Ban all pictures of children under 18, who knows what sicko needed just that picture to set them off.
Ban all pictures of senior citizens, their appearance might make them appear like easy targets and trigger a robbery.
Ban all pictures of women, best not take any chances of triggering any sexual thoughts in a rapists head.
Ban all pictures of men, these days, you never know what could happen, maybe a gay or even a female rapist may be triggered.
Imagine all the problems that could be solved by banning pictures. It's these darn pictures that cause this behavior. No rape or violence used to happen before cameras and the internet came around. If there was, it was certainly the fault of painters and those scantily clad stick figures on the cave wall.
Politicians has been using this trick forever. If a program or idea doesn't fly, they don't change the idea, they change the name or packaging. Just recently, how many names did the War On Terror go through? How fast did the "Nuclear Option" turn into the "Constitutional Option"?
I can't say I blame HBO, maybe resent them a bit. Politicians have used this trick and proven it works. It's just always frustrating to watch them point out to us how collectively stupid we really are to fall for it over and over again.
But a little red switch. During class, I was sitting in the first row and stretching out a bit. I turns out the power strip was down there. Unfortunately, the smartboard and projector just happen to be plugged into the power strip. I cut off the instructor mid lecture. Even though I had worked with the professor outside of school and got along with him well, I've never seen him look so annoyed, except when a cell phone went off in class. Thought I was going to be kicked out.
A big middle finger in the air to all those Lucas haters out there.
There are alot of stories in the Star Wars universe that can be done and done well. The KOTOR games created some really good stories. There are lots of possibilities with the old republic, Mandalorian wars, Sith Lore, etc. that would make great stories.
Lucas wrote and directed some of the best movies ever made. Only in comparison to the Original trilogy can the new Star Wars movies be considered somehow weak. Lucas still makes great movies.
For those out there griping and complaining, all I can say is save your money and go watch Delta Farce 2, or whatever else it is you are going to be watching that is so darn great.
Would be nice to have such a list for all databases. Then again, it would be nice to have a list for all programming languages too. Then my wall would be covered in various colored charts and finding the right one would cause that same break in concentration I wished to avoid anyway. In reality, I think the web search is still the better choice in most cases. You can also find useful hints for functions that you don't find in any book or chart. Sometimes the break in concentration leads to some accidental learning that makes your program better.
Once you leave your mother's basement and discover that females do exist in other forms than internet porn and men pretending to be women in chat rooms, you might begin to understand. Until then, AC, there is little other help I can offer you.
I was wondering how I was going to get the wife to allow another computer purchase this year. It's much more likely that I can convince her in Q2 2008.
BTW, what is the record on longest development time for a game? In Q2 08, Spore will be just shy of a decade. IMO, anything Will Wright has spent nearly a decade on has to be truly awesome.
Well, if they are going to set me up on a desert island that presumably has a power source, internet connection, and is stocked with Mt. Dew and twinkies, my guess is they could also pull off an advance copy of SPORE.
I'm sure I'm not alone in waiting for a high powered flight game where Over-G failed to deliver. I have always loved the Ace Combat series, and by looking at the gamespot ratings, I'm not alone.
I'm not so sure about Huxley, but it has me very curious. It is a new premise, a MMORTS on a console. It's something new that has potential to be pretty cool.
Forza can attarct Grand Tourismo fans that like other 360 games but don't want to give up that franchise without a replacement. It's an important gap filler.
MS Games, IMO, has little to worry about. They have huge titles coming Q3 and Q4 of this year. I don't see how they could expect to be making money, they haven't released jack since Gears of War.
Several reasons MS doesn't have to worry (at least about game/console sales):
Forza
Halo 3
Halo Wars
Gears Of War 2
Ace Combat 6
Huxley
Spore
GTA4
They haven't released any compelling games, so sales are down. If there aren't games, people don't want to buy the console. That's the biggest problem the PS3 is facing as well. But looking at their announced line-up, I'm really impressed. Well, and depressed at the same time knowing I'm sitting here with a bunch of worn out games until then.
I suppose, but lets say it no nonger works to the advantage of the species. Natural selection should select the most fit to survive. That would be the smart, strong, fast, cunning, etc. Now, in this false environment we've created for ourselves, about the only people being selected for are the ones who don't use birth control. Natural selection assumes that the most desirable of the species will be the most prolific maters. While this still may be generally true, mating no longer means offspring. Which really screws up natural selection. I suppose it still occurs in the sense that there is a cross-section of the population being selected for, but I'd say we've broken the system.
Humans have been circumventing Darwin for centuries. The only thing left we don't control are viruses and cancer. And it's not like it's such a bad thing, with the exception of stupid people living so long. Modern society, with it's welfare, social security, laws, birth control, medicine, and safety regulations all fly in the face of natural selection. If you're stupid, we have all these laws and people looking out for you to keep you from doing something stupid and killing youself. If you're lazy, we'll make sure someone gets you food so you don't starve. If you're not a dominant member of the herd, we'll try to make sure those that are treat you fairly.
Once again, those aren't by any means bad things (unless Idiocracy was a doumentary), just saying we've been immune to most aspects of natural selection for a long time now.
But that assumes they can beat Xbox's game line-up. I'm pretty much played through all the good games on the xbox (a rather short list so far), and I am clamoring for the fall line-up they have announced for fall 07:
GTA 4
Halo 3 * exclusive
Ace Combat 6 *exclusive
Unreal Tournament III
Guitar Hero III
Huxley
Halo Wars *exclusive
Gears Of War 2
Xbox has a pretty awesome lineup for Q3 and Q4 2007. (if they all are released as expected) IMO, Sony cannot wait till late '07 to start putting out descent titles. In case they didn't notice, they are the ones behind. If they are waiting for Halo 3 before thay start competing, they're toast.
Well, when I say dumb down, I mean create forms that validate data and hold their hands while working and restricts the power of what they can do with the data to just what I allow them to do. Frankly, it is stuff I think people working in an Office setting on a computer all day should know how to do. You know, something that looks nice but is much less functional. But hey, can't complain too much about job security.
It's change. No one likes drastic change. When we turn filing cabinets full of paperwork into databases, people complain, even though it is much faster, and should make their job much easier, they don't like it and complain that it makes everything more complicated. To the point where you make a dumbed down interface for it, they will still complain. After several months of being forced to use it, they start to love it. It just takes a while to get over change.
Although I'm not sure the same will apply with the Land Warrior System. It's more gear to lug around, and it adds more complexity and responsibility to individual soldiers, rather than making things simpler for them. But seeing how it can give them alot more info that will help them survive, I still think it will catch on fairly quickly.
"The nerd factor is huge," Dr. Cuny said. According to a 2005 report by the National Center for Women and Information Technology, an academic-industry collaborative formed to address the issue, when high school girls think of computer scientists they think of geeks, pocket protectors, isolated cubicles and a lifetime of staring into a screen writing computer code.
Well, the pocket protectors, and I'd imagine think black glasses with white tape on them, are obviously not true, the rest of it is pretty accurate.
"They think of it as programming," Dr. Cuny said. "They don't think of it as revolutionizing the way we are going to do medicine or create synthetic molecules or study our impact on the climate of the earth."
Yeah, doing all sorts of cools stuff, through programming.
Maybe the problem isn't with computer science being nerdy or writing code, just maybe the problem is with assholes spouting off to media trying to make being nerdy into a negative stereotype, and trying to make sound as if writing code is somehow uninteresting.
What fun would that be? There is no such thing as a wanted level, the city occupants will always be ready to shoot back (or first), travel would be mostly walking because of driving bans and checkpoints, and everything that might be fun to destroy would have already been blown up. Baghdad would be a horrible setting for GTA.
I've already got the calls saying "But it said I won a free Ipod." (despite the fact they didn't know what it was but thought it would make a good Christmas present) If they are that trusting of a random pop-up, imagine how easy it would be for anyone with a.safe name to rip them off. I'd have to say think of the grandparents on this one and call it a bad idea. BTW, if you disagree with me, you hate the elderly.
Well, although it may be your right to manipulate your own RAM however you see fit, don't forget that if you manipulate the game to show a nipple or sexually suggestive positions, it is your parent's/crusader group's right to sue Blizzard for everything they're worth. Faced with the fact that Blizzard will be held liable for everything everyone else does to their game, what choice do they have but to pursue any messed up agressive ways of getting you to stop?
One can only reasonably assume that using such software would be your right. However, one would also reasonably assume that you are responsible for any modifications you make to game. I'm just saying that legal responsibilities surrounding software and computers are really fucked up. If I was a game manufacturer, I'd be scared to death of modders now that I've found out that the company can be liable for what they do. Thank you lawyers, crusaders, and politicians!
Also, you can at least say they are taking a pro-active, even if they overstepped here, approach to cheating. Cheaters wreck the game for everyone.
My anecdotal evidence suggests that offshoring adds alot of costs that don't really show up without further analysis. In other words, it looks like you are saving money, but you are not. Luckily, we haven't tried to offshore our R&D (which includes software development), but based on our experiences with offshoring production, I don't think we would try.
From what I have seen, offshoring does save alot of money that shows up directly on the bottom line. You are paying much less for employees and benefits, so your overhead costs look much lower. However, we have seen quality suffer. The costs from that don't get reported as labor costs, and often don't show up until some time later, so it is hard to see a real correlation between these costs and offshore labor. So upper management, who are often somewhat removed from what actually occurs within the company do not notice the problem.
One of the biggest problems with offshoring is communication. When all the people in charge speak english, and the people doing the work can only speak marginal engrish, problems occur. Specs are not relayed properly or take much more time to communicate than they normally would. The problem is that even seemingly trivial specs are important, and they can mean a costly product return. We have seen one product return that costs as much as the employee saving for an entire year.
There are also overhead costs involved in setting up the offshore operation. I'd imaginge even moreso with engineering or R&D. Files and data must be able to relayed quickly and securely. With an oufit overseas you have little control over, this is can be very difficult. And if something goes wrong and important information doesn't make it, or doesn't make it in time, that can also mean costly losses.
The whole point is that while offshoring saves on employee costs, those savings can be quickly erased by communications or quality errors. In my experience, the cost savings just aren't all they are cracked up to be, although you wouldn't notice by looking at the accounting reports.
Well, the xbox 360 really only takes a couple minutes. Get your HD video settings, clock, and Xbox live setup and you hit the ground running.
Windows, on the other hand, takes at least a couple weeks. Even after creating a unattended install disc. Just too many little settings to change here and there.
Linux (Fedora), took me about 6 months, but I am somewhat a Linux novice, and I spend less time on my linux box. For a basic web or file server, it doesn't take long, but for an everyday PC, it does take alot of tweaking that isn't always easy to do. You have to install alot of Plug-ins manually, and getting the thing to be able to play certain media files can be a hassle if you're like me and just know enough about Linux to be dangerous. Linux tends to make the important things (web server, firewall, port management) easy to do, but the trivial things (media players, browser plug-ins, etc) that you want in a PC tend to be difficult. At least they seemed to be for me.
Slashdot Mirror
- Ban all pictures of food, then no one will be triggered to over-eat.
- Ban all pictures of children under 18, who knows what sicko needed just that picture to set them off.
- Ban all pictures of senior citizens, their appearance might make them appear like easy targets and trigger a robbery.
- Ban all pictures of women, best not take any chances of triggering any sexual thoughts in a rapists head.
- Ban all pictures of men, these days, you never know what could happen, maybe a gay or even a female rapist may be triggered.
Imagine all the problems that could be solved by banning pictures. It's these darn pictures that cause this behavior. No rape or violence used to happen before cameras and the internet came around. If there was, it was certainly the fault of painters and those scantily clad stick figures on the cave wall.Graphics don't matter, what is important is that the teabagging is slightly improved.
Politicians has been using this trick forever. If a program or idea doesn't fly, they don't change the idea, they change the name or packaging. Just recently, how many names did the War On Terror go through? How fast did the "Nuclear Option" turn into the "Constitutional Option"?
I can't say I blame HBO, maybe resent them a bit. Politicians have used this trick and proven it works. It's just always frustrating to watch them point out to us how collectively stupid we really are to fall for it over and over again.
But a little red switch. During class, I was sitting in the first row and stretching out a bit. I turns out the power strip was down there. Unfortunately, the smartboard and projector just happen to be plugged into the power strip. I cut off the instructor mid lecture. Even though I had worked with the professor outside of school and got along with him well, I've never seen him look so annoyed, except when a cell phone went off in class. Thought I was going to be kicked out.
A big middle finger in the air to all those Lucas haters out there.
There are alot of stories in the Star Wars universe that can be done and done well. The KOTOR games created some really good stories. There are lots of possibilities with the old republic, Mandalorian wars, Sith Lore, etc. that would make great stories.
Lucas wrote and directed some of the best movies ever made. Only in comparison to the Original trilogy can the new Star Wars movies be considered somehow weak. Lucas still makes great movies.
For those out there griping and complaining, all I can say is save your money and go watch Delta Farce 2, or whatever else it is you are going to be watching that is so darn great.
Would be nice to have such a list for all databases. Then again, it would be nice to have a list for all programming languages too. Then my wall would be covered in various colored charts and finding the right one would cause that same break in concentration I wished to avoid anyway. In reality, I think the web search is still the better choice in most cases. You can also find useful hints for functions that you don't find in any book or chart. Sometimes the break in concentration leads to some accidental learning that makes your program better.
Well, there is always a chance that they may miscalculate the scale of us Earthings and get swallowed by a small dog upon arrival.
Once you leave your mother's basement and discover that females do exist in other forms than internet porn and men pretending to be women in chat rooms, you might begin to understand. Until then, AC, there is little other help I can offer you.
BTW, what is the record on longest development time for a game? In Q2 08, Spore will be just shy of a decade. IMO, anything Will Wright has spent nearly a decade on has to be truly awesome.
Well, if they are going to set me up on a desert island that presumably has a power source, internet connection, and is stocked with Mt. Dew and twinkies, my guess is they could also pull off an advance copy of SPORE.
No one?
I'm sure I'm not alone in waiting for a high powered flight game where Over-G failed to deliver. I have always loved the Ace Combat series, and by looking at the gamespot ratings, I'm not alone.
I'm not so sure about Huxley, but it has me very curious. It is a new premise, a MMORTS on a console. It's something new that has potential to be pretty cool.
Forza can attarct Grand Tourismo fans that like other 360 games but don't want to give up that franchise without a replacement. It's an important gap filler.
I also forgot Unreal Tournament.
MS Games, IMO, has little to worry about. They have huge titles coming Q3 and Q4 of this year. I don't see how they could expect to be making money, they haven't released jack since Gears of War.
Several reasons MS doesn't have to worry (at least about game/console sales):
They haven't released any compelling games, so sales are down. If there aren't games, people don't want to buy the console. That's the biggest problem the PS3 is facing as well. But looking at their announced line-up, I'm really impressed. Well, and depressed at the same time knowing I'm sitting here with a bunch of worn out games until then.
I suppose, but lets say it no nonger works to the advantage of the species. Natural selection should select the most fit to survive. That would be the smart, strong, fast, cunning, etc. Now, in this false environment we've created for ourselves, about the only people being selected for are the ones who don't use birth control. Natural selection assumes that the most desirable of the species will be the most prolific maters. While this still may be generally true, mating no longer means offspring. Which really screws up natural selection. I suppose it still occurs in the sense that there is a cross-section of the population being selected for, but I'd say we've broken the system.
Humans have been circumventing Darwin for centuries. The only thing left we don't control are viruses and cancer. And it's not like it's such a bad thing, with the exception of stupid people living so long. Modern society, with it's welfare, social security, laws, birth control, medicine, and safety regulations all fly in the face of natural selection. If you're stupid, we have all these laws and people looking out for you to keep you from doing something stupid and killing youself. If you're lazy, we'll make sure someone gets you food so you don't starve. If you're not a dominant member of the herd, we'll try to make sure those that are treat you fairly.
Once again, those aren't by any means bad things (unless Idiocracy was a doumentary), just saying we've been immune to most aspects of natural selection for a long time now.
But that assumes they can beat Xbox's game line-up. I'm pretty much played through all the good games on the xbox (a rather short list so far), and I am clamoring for the fall line-up they have announced for fall 07:
Xbox has a pretty awesome lineup for Q3 and Q4 2007. (if they all are released as expected) IMO, Sony cannot wait till late '07 to start putting out descent titles. In case they didn't notice, they are the ones behind. If they are waiting for Halo 3 before thay start competing, they're toast.
Well, when I say dumb down, I mean create forms that validate data and hold their hands while working and restricts the power of what they can do with the data to just what I allow them to do. Frankly, it is stuff I think people working in an Office setting on a computer all day should know how to do. You know, something that looks nice but is much less functional. But hey, can't complain too much about job security.
It's change. No one likes drastic change. When we turn filing cabinets full of paperwork into databases, people complain, even though it is much faster, and should make their job much easier, they don't like it and complain that it makes everything more complicated. To the point where you make a dumbed down interface for it, they will still complain. After several months of being forced to use it, they start to love it. It just takes a while to get over change.
Although I'm not sure the same will apply with the Land Warrior System. It's more gear to lug around, and it adds more complexity and responsibility to individual soldiers, rather than making things simpler for them. But seeing how it can give them alot more info that will help them survive, I still think it will catch on fairly quickly.
"The nerd factor is huge," Dr. Cuny said. According to a 2005 report by the National Center for Women and Information Technology, an academic-industry collaborative formed to address the issue, when high school girls think of computer scientists they think of geeks, pocket protectors, isolated cubicles and a lifetime of staring into a screen writing computer code.
Well, the pocket protectors, and I'd imagine think black glasses with white tape on them, are obviously not true, the rest of it is pretty accurate.
"They think of it as programming," Dr. Cuny said. "They don't think of it as revolutionizing the way we are going to do medicine or create synthetic molecules or study our impact on the climate of the earth."
Yeah, doing all sorts of cools stuff, through programming.
Maybe the problem isn't with computer science being nerdy or writing code, just maybe the problem is with assholes spouting off to media trying to make being nerdy into a negative stereotype, and trying to make sound as if writing code is somehow uninteresting.
What fun would that be? There is no such thing as a wanted level, the city occupants will always be ready to shoot back (or first), travel would be mostly walking because of driving bans and checkpoints, and everything that might be fun to destroy would have already been blown up. Baghdad would be a horrible setting for GTA.
Yeah, I pretty much botched it, but that's what I was thinking of.
You're still on that? I'm on 3240z, it's higher def than real life.
I've already got the calls saying "But it said I won a free Ipod." (despite the fact they didn't know what it was but thought it would make a good Christmas present) If they are that trusting of a random pop-up, imagine how easy it would be for anyone with a .safe name to rip them off. I'd have to say think of the grandparents on this one and call it a bad idea. BTW, if you disagree with me, you hate the elderly.
Well, although it may be your right to manipulate your own RAM however you see fit, don't forget that if you manipulate the game to show a nipple or sexually suggestive positions, it is your parent's/crusader group's right to sue Blizzard for everything they're worth. Faced with the fact that Blizzard will be held liable for everything everyone else does to their game, what choice do they have but to pursue any messed up agressive ways of getting you to stop?
One can only reasonably assume that using such software would be your right. However, one would also reasonably assume that you are responsible for any modifications you make to game. I'm just saying that legal responsibilities surrounding software and computers are really fucked up. If I was a game manufacturer, I'd be scared to death of modders now that I've found out that the company can be liable for what they do. Thank you lawyers, crusaders, and politicians!
Also, you can at least say they are taking a pro-active, even if they overstepped here, approach to cheating. Cheaters wreck the game for everyone.
My anecdotal evidence suggests that offshoring adds alot of costs that don't really show up without further analysis. In other words, it looks like you are saving money, but you are not. Luckily, we haven't tried to offshore our R&D (which includes software development), but based on our experiences with offshoring production, I don't think we would try.
From what I have seen, offshoring does save alot of money that shows up directly on the bottom line. You are paying much less for employees and benefits, so your overhead costs look much lower. However, we have seen quality suffer. The costs from that don't get reported as labor costs, and often don't show up until some time later, so it is hard to see a real correlation between these costs and offshore labor. So upper management, who are often somewhat removed from what actually occurs within the company do not notice the problem.
One of the biggest problems with offshoring is communication. When all the people in charge speak english, and the people doing the work can only speak marginal engrish, problems occur. Specs are not relayed properly or take much more time to communicate than they normally would. The problem is that even seemingly trivial specs are important, and they can mean a costly product return. We have seen one product return that costs as much as the employee saving for an entire year.
There are also overhead costs involved in setting up the offshore operation. I'd imaginge even moreso with engineering or R&D. Files and data must be able to relayed quickly and securely. With an oufit overseas you have little control over, this is can be very difficult. And if something goes wrong and important information doesn't make it, or doesn't make it in time, that can also mean costly losses.
The whole point is that while offshoring saves on employee costs, those savings can be quickly erased by communications or quality errors. In my experience, the cost savings just aren't all they are cracked up to be, although you wouldn't notice by looking at the accounting reports.
Well, the xbox 360 really only takes a couple minutes. Get your HD video settings, clock, and Xbox live setup and you hit the ground running.
Windows, on the other hand, takes at least a couple weeks. Even after creating a unattended install disc. Just too many little settings to change here and there.
Linux (Fedora), took me about 6 months, but I am somewhat a Linux novice, and I spend less time on my linux box. For a basic web or file server, it doesn't take long, but for an everyday PC, it does take alot of tweaking that isn't always easy to do. You have to install alot of Plug-ins manually, and getting the thing to be able to play certain media files can be a hassle if you're like me and just know enough about Linux to be dangerous. Linux tends to make the important things (web server, firewall, port management) easy to do, but the trivial things (media players, browser plug-ins, etc) that you want in a PC tend to be difficult. At least they seemed to be for me.