Except that you tend to get the reverse situation also; I've met CS majors who couldn't make a simple top level user app in a relatively generic IDE.
In principle I agree with your basic assessment, the core skills should be as you listed, but by no stretch should they be the limits of what is taught in colleges. From what undergrad programs I have seen you tend to get either one or the other, with a few exceptions here and there.
I am personally a result of an undergraduate Software Engineering program that covered a portion of the CS curriculum, and to a lesser extent CE, along with just about everything else in the realm of top level programming from an SE point of view.
In my opinion, software is one of the fields that benefits from the jack of all trades route and I believe more collegiate programs should follow this model.
Personally, I've been waiting for the space sim that includes the usual X-Wing/TIE Fighter gameplay but also adds in the capital ships.
Re:It gives you something just as bad...
on
Review: Spore
·
· Score: 1
Actually...Folding at home is very bad example.
It just so happens that the Cell GPU's method of calculations is close to perfect for folding proteins. With a little custom software Folding@Home was born. This is actually a very specific application of the PS3. And while the PS3 is the closest currently to a purposefully general PC built console, it's still very far behind modern desktops outside of a few specific areas.
It does appear to be a play on words but he's also thinking about law as a set base with defined punishments. Which is not true, at least here in the US. Legally Binding contracts are just that, legally binding with the full force of law; they are laws with limited jurisdiction. Laws are themselves legally binding contracts between the people and the government.(At least in the US and similar systems)
Is their an "extra" punishment for breaking a legally binding contract aside from the contract's punishments? Usually no, however depending on the contract it's technically possible.
Of course you don't get sent to jail, that would not a be a stipulation of the contract. You are assuming that the only punishment for law breaking is jail. That is incorrect. Contract law is of the non-jailing variety of legal punishments, and the punishments only exist in the reference of the contract and if enforced by the contract holder. Contract law is a very large and relatively complex section of law with many, many, exceptions. (It's part of civil law if you are that curious to look it up.)
You are also mixing views of contracts. A legally binding contract is a specific type of contract, and is the only type of contract enforceable by law and they are generally only made in cases where the results are essentially guaranteed and large amounts of money are involved. If the contract is garnered as "unreasonable" it cannot be enforced by the courts. The example in question here is that THQ requires through their contract that Gas Powered Games final product must ship with Securom, they could ignore it but then must pay the "price" stipulated in their contract. If they did not, THQ would take them to court which would cost Gas Powered Games not only the contract's penalty, but also court fees.
Certainty is usually accounted for in a contract. In something as fickle as R&D yes, you may not have to deliver; you attempt something and if you succeed whoever funded you gets a cut or whatever the contract says. That is essentially a gamble and most definitely a possible contract type. In product investment such as video games, the contracts generally concern the final product and it's dispersion, such as the one we are discussing in this thread.
Sigh, breaking a legally binding contract is breaking the law of the contract because contract are only allowable specifically by contract law Breaking the contract thus brings you the punishment of the contract's "law". The contract is from a technical standpoint a limited law between you and the contract's holder for it's duration.
To summarize, breaking a legally binding contract is breaking the law, as it is enforced as law, by the courts, according to contract law. Breaking a contract is not necessarily against any law unless it's type is of the aforementioned variety.
I should add that the Legally Bound part is a requirement in most significant financial contracts, and is actually a distinct choice when setting up a contract. There are non-legally binding contracts, but for what we are discussing that would be a rarity.
Well actually, it technically is. You are legally bound to the terms of a contract you sign so long as the contract itself does not break any laws. Essentially when you break a contract you are taken to court, the contract is overlooked, and if nothing is wrong with it, the court forces you to fulfill the contract to the best of your ability. Meaning you may have to sell everything you own within reason and then file for bankruptcy, which then triggers another mess, and so forth and so on. Roughly, don't sign a contract that you might consider breaking if you can't afford to do so.
THQ (the publisher) forced Gas Powered Games (the developer) to use Securom. And the "law" part is just a turn of phrase in contemporary English, meaning they followed the exact wording of their contract. Thus allowing them to remove it later through a patch without breaking their agreement with THQ.
I'm not arguing a specific creationist model, just stating they all "believe" in some form of creationism. The general argument on these boards is not the specific creationism to be taught, but that it is being considered at all.
While I agree in principle; I find the fact that you and many others are lambasting her when all the candidates belong to Christian churches and claim to be "faithful". Yet this would imply they all believe in creationism, or that they are lying to get the religious vote.
So whats more reprehensible, having a belief that will get fought tooth and nail, and most likely never get passed in a federal law, or someone who is purposefully deceitful in an attempt to win the arguably most powerful position in the world? I think too many here are focusing on the wrong aspects of these arguments.
You realize she has signed bills in Alaska that directly contradict her religious views (and without trying to fight them or alter them) specifically because they were constitutional? I don't know about you, but thats a pretty big point in my opinion considering the number of illegal laws that get passed and sometimes (thankfully) shot down around the US.
You are technically talking about different goals, not about games being repetitive actions, and in that regard I can agree with you. Grinds are a goal, a very bad goal in my opinion and many others'. Using them as an excuse for progress is well, dumb. Luckily, WoW has started to move away from these actions more and more, it's not perfect yet but they are trying to remove the grinds.
This does not change my basic comment, everything is repetitve, what matters is what you experience in the process. If you experience nothing but the repetitive actions, then the game has lost it's value to you.
If you can find one MMO that isn't repetitive, or hell even one game that isn't repetitive I will declare you the winner of this conversation. Even better, find an action irl that isn't also incredibly repetitive and you win. Now that I think of it, I've made this post several times too!!!
As a side note, I generally stop playing a game once all I notice is the repetitiveness of playing, which usually only happens when I run out of new things/story to try/experience or on the rare chance that a game is so shallow and lackluster that I don't even play through it. WoW is the type of game I play in spurts, quit till something new comes along then go back until I run out of stuff to do again. It's the type of game that keeps on giving. Then again I love the ongoing story so I'm probably a rare exception of MMO players now a days .
You also have a hidden point in there. A lot code is just not useful for more then the app it was originally designed for, and breaking it down into smaller modules and functions usually just creates simple loops or recursive functions, and thus no point in saving them for later use as they can be replicated in the same amount of code space.
I don't really understand what the OP is trying to convey, anyone who has learned programming in the last 5-10 years (probably longer) from a half way decent school should be familiar with OO design, which is all he's blathering on about. I mean, almost anything I develop relies on a collection of APIs and libraries to do a majority of the functionality, its just a matter of combining the blocks to get the desired effect. The "tedious" functions in most development enviroments have already been done for us, hell the only time I can recall adding anything to the development libraries was when I added a split function to the dumb Delphi Pascal crap we were using.
I'm all for code reuse, as long as it makes sense.
First of all, I apologize for my earlier block of text, forgot to switch to plain text. Secondly, well said.
I pretty much agree with you on the points concerning revenue, and even then my minor qualms are just possibilities, not quantifiable without statistics from Blizzard.
However I find it interesting and worth mentioning the difference in guild demographics. My raiding guild is made up of about 50/50 professional adults and, for lack of a better term, adolescents/pre-professional adults. Several are married and have children, we even have a couple that raids together. Now, from my previous experience up until I joined this guild, I was generally in the same boat as you described, either wholly casual or wholly hardcore raiders. The major contributing factor to our somewhat unique demographic and success, I think, stems from a simple raid schedule. Monday through Thursday, from 8pm-11pm; the "prime time" slot. Basically time that the average professional is wasting away in some form of relaxed entertainment anyways.
Just an interesting demographic, once more we require fun statistics we don't have to see any interesting trends.
As for the hardcore being the most vocal, my immediate reaction is to disagree, thought again I can only go off personal experience. The separation of PvE and PvP I believe diminished a large amount of complaints on both sides, and was the correct choice to remove the inherent competition between the casual and hardcore styles of play. Hopefully, WotLK will continue this trend, I think they are going the right way with 10 and 25 man raid progressions. As I said earlier, striking the balance will be the key to success.
Also, since you've brought it up, I'm curious if the change is not solely for casuals but to also for a possible dwindling in the hardcore population.
Problem is they removed straight up grinding for the most part with the first expansion. There is still rep, but if you actually just play the game normally you will find yourself maxing them out pretty easily. Those few traditional rep grinds still in existence are generally for extra trivial content, like a different mount. You are not forced to do any of the rep grinds to proceed in the game anymore.
That is of course unless you refuse to quest/run instances, in which case you are asking for it and making the process needlessly hard on yourself.
I've been wondering about that myself. It always comes down to who stays subscribed the longest, and unfortunately we have no way to track such a statistic. If my friend's that play the game are any indication, they make more money on the hardcore group because they never cancel their subscription, where as the casuals will cancel a month here or there, or even a few. Of course there are more casuals then hardcore, so the difference might be made up, but I'd still be curious to the actual numbers. Not to mention there is the hardcore burn out factor to consider.
Personally, I believe that making a purely casual MMORPG is asking for failure. The hardcore group, while smaller, probably makes up the largest steady portion of your revenue. Not to mention they are the ones most likely to buy your full priced expansions immediately. Again, we lack the hard numbers, but from the trend in WoWs development, I think it's safe to say that the hardcore make up enough to warrant development time along with the casuals. The nice thing about casuals tho, is you can throw them lots of little bones (development time wise) opposed to having to focus on a whole new raid instance to satisfy your hardcore group, however that instance lasts longer for them. It's an interesting trade off.
Ultimately the successful game will balance the two. WoW appears to be getting better and better at this, the expansion will be the immediate decider in whether or not they have achieved this goal.
A. Wrong
B. Wrong
C. Wrong
Congratulations, you successfully misinterpreted an action flick's relatively low-brow moral points. Thus proving you are in fact the very thing you appear to be complaining about.
Now to clarify:
A. In fact they never really answer this question or at all really touch on it. Since they used the backdrop of current world events to weave the story you assume this is an "approval" of war movie, which by the end you discover it is far from it. Your point should actually reference one corporation and one man in that corporation (the main bad guy Jebbediah). Unless you are insanely liberal and hate all corporations; the correct statement to infer from the movie would be that corporations aren't all that bad, but sometimes a few can ruin it for everyone. If you disagree, I would like 100% proof from all existing corporations for verification.
B. He actually proceeds to stop creating weapons expressly after discovering what they can do to innocent people when sold under the table to mercenary terrorist groups without his knowledge.
C. Now this is hilarious considering every character gives the impression they don't approve of his lifestyle, and that those women who "love" (and I use that term loosely) him are actually called "trash" in direct dialogue. Through the movie Tony himself realizes that he doesn't really like who he is that much and thus develops the Iron Man aspect of himself in an attempt to redeem himself. Tony Stark is a flawed character, that's the whole point to character development. If they aren't flawed how can you go anywhere at all with the plot? That's Superman's big problem in movies. He always does the right thing because he is, in his film essence, the perfect hero.
As for racism, I got nothing. You're just wrong. I can't think of a single racist moment in the movie without trying very hard to create one or blow something out of proportion.
Consumerism is just a hilarious concept to mock and I'm just gonna laugh about it and not waste anymore space clarifying it to you.
Since our town recently put up a couple of those giant windmills, we now generate an amount of power that must be sold to the grid, they being the only buyers available. Now, the theory of course was that it's cheaper and cleaner. And it probably is, too bad they raised out rates.02kw/h when we put them up. That's right, instead of making power cheaper for us because we sold them what we make, they just increased our power costs to cover the difference. Why do they do shit like this? Because they can.
Now this could have been salvaged if the City cut some tax or costs somewhere to offset the difference (granted it would have just evened out to where we were before the dam windmills) but they botched the deal pretty bad, and since they are idiots, thats never gonna happen.
Actually, if you stay till after the credits it turns out Rob and Beth are alive and apparently so is the creature (sound clip). The odds of 2 humans surviving a nuclear blast from ground-zero are not good, not to mention using a nuke on US soil is an incredibly bad idea, fallout etc... and not likely considering the monster only destroyed 1 city. Not to mention nukes create an EMP blast that would erase the SD card the "film" was located on. A nuke would be far from the first big bomb they would try. Probably was a fuel-air bomb or something of that caliber.
I find it incredibly ironic that these debates exist in public school forums. Especially when I and several other people I know were taught Evolution in several different Catholic Schools.
Slashdot Mirror
They are already doing this, the prototype could do simple left, right, forward, back and jump last I saw.
Except that you tend to get the reverse situation also; I've met CS majors who couldn't make a simple top level user app in a relatively generic IDE.
In principle I agree with your basic assessment, the core skills should be as you listed, but by no stretch should they be the limits of what is taught in colleges. From what undergrad programs I have seen you tend to get either one or the other, with a few exceptions here and there.
I am personally a result of an undergraduate Software Engineering program that covered a portion of the CS curriculum, and to a lesser extent CE, along with just about everything else in the realm of top level programming from an SE point of view.
In my opinion, software is one of the fields that benefits from the jack of all trades route and I believe more collegiate programs should follow this model.
Yea, I meant playable.
Personally, I've been waiting for the space sim that includes the usual X-Wing/TIE Fighter gameplay but also adds in the capital ships.
Actually...Folding at home is very bad example.
It just so happens that the Cell GPU's method of calculations is close to perfect for folding proteins. With a little custom software Folding@Home was born. This is actually a very specific application of the PS3. And while the PS3 is the closest currently to a purposefully general PC built console, it's still very far behind modern desktops outside of a few specific areas.
It does appear to be a play on words but he's also thinking about law as a set base with defined punishments. Which is not true, at least here in the US. Legally Binding contracts are just that, legally binding with the full force of law; they are laws with limited jurisdiction. Laws are themselves legally binding contracts between the people and the government.(At least in the US and similar systems)
Is their an "extra" punishment for breaking a legally binding contract aside from the contract's punishments? Usually no, however depending on the contract it's technically possible.
Of course you don't get sent to jail, that would not a be a stipulation of the contract. You are assuming that the only punishment for law breaking is jail. That is incorrect. Contract law is of the non-jailing variety of legal punishments, and the punishments only exist in the reference of the contract and if enforced by the contract holder. Contract law is a very large and relatively complex section of law with many, many, exceptions. (It's part of civil law if you are that curious to look it up.)
You are also mixing views of contracts. A legally binding contract is a specific type of contract, and is the only type of contract enforceable by law and they are generally only made in cases where the results are essentially guaranteed and large amounts of money are involved. If the contract is garnered as "unreasonable" it cannot be enforced by the courts. The example in question here is that THQ requires through their contract that Gas Powered Games final product must ship with Securom, they could ignore it but then must pay the "price" stipulated in their contract. If they did not, THQ would take them to court which would cost Gas Powered Games not only the contract's penalty, but also court fees.
Certainty is usually accounted for in a contract. In something as fickle as R&D yes, you may not have to deliver; you attempt something and if you succeed whoever funded you gets a cut or whatever the contract says. That is essentially a gamble and most definitely a possible contract type. In product investment such as video games, the contracts generally concern the final product and it's dispersion, such as the one we are discussing in this thread.
Sigh, breaking a legally binding contract is breaking the law of the contract because contract are only allowable specifically by contract law Breaking the contract thus brings you the punishment of the contract's "law". The contract is from a technical standpoint a limited law between you and the contract's holder for it's duration.
To summarize, breaking a legally binding contract is breaking the law, as it is enforced as law, by the courts, according to contract law. Breaking a contract is not necessarily against any law unless it's type is of the aforementioned variety.
I should add that the Legally Bound part is a requirement in most significant financial contracts, and is actually a distinct choice when setting up a contract. There are non-legally binding contracts, but for what we are discussing that would be a rarity.
Well actually, it technically is. You are legally bound to the terms of a contract you sign so long as the contract itself does not break any laws. Essentially when you break a contract you are taken to court, the contract is overlooked, and if nothing is wrong with it, the court forces you to fulfill the contract to the best of your ability. Meaning you may have to sell everything you own within reason and then file for bankruptcy, which then triggers another mess, and so forth and so on. Roughly, don't sign a contract that you might consider breaking if you can't afford to do so.
THQ (the publisher) forced Gas Powered Games (the developer) to use Securom. And the "law" part is just a turn of phrase in contemporary English, meaning they followed the exact wording of their contract. Thus allowing them to remove it later through a patch without breaking their agreement with THQ.
I'm not arguing a specific creationist model, just stating they all "believe" in some form of creationism. The general argument on these boards is not the specific creationism to be taught, but that it is being considered at all.
While I agree in principle; I find the fact that you and many others are lambasting her when all the candidates belong to Christian churches and claim to be "faithful". Yet this would imply they all believe in creationism, or that they are lying to get the religious vote.
So whats more reprehensible, having a belief that will get fought tooth and nail, and most likely never get passed in a federal law, or someone who is purposefully deceitful in an attempt to win the arguably most powerful position in the world? I think too many here are focusing on the wrong aspects of these arguments.
Here's the one I read about earlier, I could dig through some more but I don't recall any keywords to ease my search:
http://gov.state.ak.us/print_news-23157.html/
You realize she has signed bills in Alaska that directly contradict her religious views (and without trying to fight them or alter them) specifically because they were constitutional? I don't know about you, but thats a pretty big point in my opinion considering the number of illegal laws that get passed and sometimes (thankfully) shot down around the US.
You are technically talking about different goals, not about games being repetitive actions, and in that regard I can agree with you. Grinds are a goal, a very bad goal in my opinion and many others'. Using them as an excuse for progress is well, dumb. Luckily, WoW has started to move away from these actions more and more, it's not perfect yet but they are trying to remove the grinds. This does not change my basic comment, everything is repetitve, what matters is what you experience in the process. If you experience nothing but the repetitive actions, then the game has lost it's value to you.
If you can find one MMO that isn't repetitive, or hell even one game that isn't repetitive I will declare you the winner of this conversation. Even better, find an action irl that isn't also incredibly repetitive and you win. Now that I think of it, I've made this post several times too!!! As a side note, I generally stop playing a game once all I notice is the repetitiveness of playing, which usually only happens when I run out of new things/story to try/experience or on the rare chance that a game is so shallow and lackluster that I don't even play through it. WoW is the type of game I play in spurts, quit till something new comes along then go back until I run out of stuff to do again. It's the type of game that keeps on giving. Then again I love the ongoing story so I'm probably a rare exception of MMO players now a days .
You also have a hidden point in there. A lot code is just not useful for more then the app it was originally designed for, and breaking it down into smaller modules and functions usually just creates simple loops or recursive functions, and thus no point in saving them for later use as they can be replicated in the same amount of code space.
I don't really understand what the OP is trying to convey, anyone who has learned programming in the last 5-10 years (probably longer) from a half way decent school should be familiar with OO design, which is all he's blathering on about. I mean, almost anything I develop relies on a collection of APIs and libraries to do a majority of the functionality, its just a matter of combining the blocks to get the desired effect. The "tedious" functions in most development enviroments have already been done for us, hell the only time I can recall adding anything to the development libraries was when I added a split function to the dumb Delphi Pascal crap we were using.
I'm all for code reuse, as long as it makes sense.
First of all, I apologize for my earlier block of text, forgot to switch to plain text. Secondly, well said. I pretty much agree with you on the points concerning revenue, and even then my minor qualms are just possibilities, not quantifiable without statistics from Blizzard. However I find it interesting and worth mentioning the difference in guild demographics. My raiding guild is made up of about 50/50 professional adults and, for lack of a better term, adolescents/pre-professional adults. Several are married and have children, we even have a couple that raids together. Now, from my previous experience up until I joined this guild, I was generally in the same boat as you described, either wholly casual or wholly hardcore raiders. The major contributing factor to our somewhat unique demographic and success, I think, stems from a simple raid schedule. Monday through Thursday, from 8pm-11pm; the "prime time" slot. Basically time that the average professional is wasting away in some form of relaxed entertainment anyways. Just an interesting demographic, once more we require fun statistics we don't have to see any interesting trends. As for the hardcore being the most vocal, my immediate reaction is to disagree, thought again I can only go off personal experience. The separation of PvE and PvP I believe diminished a large amount of complaints on both sides, and was the correct choice to remove the inherent competition between the casual and hardcore styles of play. Hopefully, WotLK will continue this trend, I think they are going the right way with 10 and 25 man raid progressions. As I said earlier, striking the balance will be the key to success. Also, since you've brought it up, I'm curious if the change is not solely for casuals but to also for a possible dwindling in the hardcore population.
Problem is they removed straight up grinding for the most part with the first expansion. There is still rep, but if you actually just play the game normally you will find yourself maxing them out pretty easily. Those few traditional rep grinds still in existence are generally for extra trivial content, like a different mount. You are not forced to do any of the rep grinds to proceed in the game anymore.
That is of course unless you refuse to quest/run instances, in which case you are asking for it and making the process needlessly hard on yourself.
I've been wondering about that myself. It always comes down to who stays subscribed the longest, and unfortunately we have no way to track such a statistic. If my friend's that play the game are any indication, they make more money on the hardcore group because they never cancel their subscription, where as the casuals will cancel a month here or there, or even a few. Of course there are more casuals then hardcore, so the difference might be made up, but I'd still be curious to the actual numbers. Not to mention there is the hardcore burn out factor to consider. Personally, I believe that making a purely casual MMORPG is asking for failure. The hardcore group, while smaller, probably makes up the largest steady portion of your revenue. Not to mention they are the ones most likely to buy your full priced expansions immediately. Again, we lack the hard numbers, but from the trend in WoWs development, I think it's safe to say that the hardcore make up enough to warrant development time along with the casuals. The nice thing about casuals tho, is you can throw them lots of little bones (development time wise) opposed to having to focus on a whole new raid instance to satisfy your hardcore group, however that instance lasts longer for them. It's an interesting trade off. Ultimately the successful game will balance the two. WoW appears to be getting better and better at this, the expansion will be the immediate decider in whether or not they have achieved this goal.
A. Wrong B. Wrong C. Wrong Congratulations, you successfully misinterpreted an action flick's relatively low-brow moral points. Thus proving you are in fact the very thing you appear to be complaining about. Now to clarify: A. In fact they never really answer this question or at all really touch on it. Since they used the backdrop of current world events to weave the story you assume this is an "approval" of war movie, which by the end you discover it is far from it. Your point should actually reference one corporation and one man in that corporation (the main bad guy Jebbediah). Unless you are insanely liberal and hate all corporations; the correct statement to infer from the movie would be that corporations aren't all that bad, but sometimes a few can ruin it for everyone. If you disagree, I would like 100% proof from all existing corporations for verification. B. He actually proceeds to stop creating weapons expressly after discovering what they can do to innocent people when sold under the table to mercenary terrorist groups without his knowledge. C. Now this is hilarious considering every character gives the impression they don't approve of his lifestyle, and that those women who "love" (and I use that term loosely) him are actually called "trash" in direct dialogue. Through the movie Tony himself realizes that he doesn't really like who he is that much and thus develops the Iron Man aspect of himself in an attempt to redeem himself. Tony Stark is a flawed character, that's the whole point to character development. If they aren't flawed how can you go anywhere at all with the plot? That's Superman's big problem in movies. He always does the right thing because he is, in his film essence, the perfect hero. As for racism, I got nothing. You're just wrong. I can't think of a single racist moment in the movie without trying very hard to create one or blow something out of proportion. Consumerism is just a hilarious concept to mock and I'm just gonna laugh about it and not waste anymore space clarifying it to you.
Funny story about the electric companies.
.02kw/h when we put them up. That's right, instead of making power cheaper for us because we sold them what we make, they just increased our power costs to cover the difference. Why do they do shit like this? Because they can.
Since our town recently put up a couple of those giant windmills, we now generate an amount of power that must be sold to the grid, they being the only buyers available. Now, the theory of course was that it's cheaper and cleaner. And it probably is, too bad they raised out rates
Now this could have been salvaged if the City cut some tax or costs somewhere to offset the difference (granted it would have just evened out to where we were before the dam windmills) but they botched the deal pretty bad, and since they are idiots, thats never gonna happen.
Actually, if you stay till after the credits it turns out Rob and Beth are alive and apparently so is the creature (sound clip). The odds of 2 humans surviving a nuclear blast from ground-zero are not good, not to mention using a nuke on US soil is an incredibly bad idea, fallout etc... and not likely considering the monster only destroyed 1 city. Not to mention nukes create an EMP blast that would erase the SD card the "film" was located on. A nuke would be far from the first big bomb they would try. Probably was a fuel-air bomb or something of that caliber.
I find it incredibly ironic that these debates exist in public school forums. Especially when I and several other people I know were taught Evolution in several different Catholic Schools.