I tend to switch to IE when I hit a certificate issue. It does give a warning, but just one, and it's easy to bypass. I mostly use Firefox, I'm technically savvy enough to both know what's going on and to know how to get through the FF process for approving the site, but I still find it easier to just copy-paste into IE and deal with the one click.
I really dislike IE, I really like Firefox, but this will drive me to IE every time out of convenience.
Oh, and I hit this regularly, because my company has a number of internal web sites with bad certificates. We don't have any real incentive to fix them, and they're internal so we know they're safe. I've got to access them a couple of times a day, on average.
Crazy as it sounds, this might be good for indie game developers. If the mainstream gaming industry gets too obnoxious, indie gamers who have more reasonable approaches to theft might gain greater followings.
I have to admit I'm a little biased here, as the creator of a free web-based game. Copyright protection isn't at all when your format can't be copied--and doesn't even need to be since it's always available.
Also, pick nearly any other subject. Most sciences change significantly from decade to decade. Social sciences, too. Even many of the humanities (history, art, etc.) have new trends and perspectives on a frequent basis. Sure, math at the undergrad level doesn't change much, and I suppose most English classes just require lots of "regular" books, but almost any other subject does need updating frequently.
Nope. I haven't been to the house, and I'm not a law enforcer or lawyer intimate with the details of the case. But the quote in my initial post was direct from the article--it does say that he violated zoning laws. Another, vaguer quote from the same article doesn't negate the one I first quoted.
Now that we've established I'm just quoting the article and can't be sure on my own that a law was broken, here's one back for you: are you so sure that a law wasn't broken? If so, how?
40 years ago they thought thalidomide (sp?) and DDT were beneficial chemicals, safe to expose all kinds of people to. Asbestos, too. Now they're a little more cautious about making sure people aren't getting poisoned or blown up.
You may benefit by reading the article, which explains that the fire department was called, and when they discovered the 1500 jars of chemicals they determined it appeared to pose at least some risk in a residential home. Learning chemistry at home was not the crime, here. In fact, other than the enforced cleanup, it looks as if Deeb isn't going to be cited with anything.
I'm not arguing that the zoning law is necessarily good or bad or makes any sense whatsoever, just that it exists. Also, in a practical sense, there's quite a bit of difference between something like software that's essentially an intellectual endeavor, and this case, where 1500 jars of chemicals are sitting around--some of them mildly dangerous and/or explosive.
Using your example, if the fire department comes to your house to put out the fire, they have no reason to be concerned by your computer. If they come to your house and find a thousand canisters of gasoline strewn about the house, they have every right to tell you to evacuate while they analyze the situation.
From the article: "Mr. Deeb was doing scientific research and development in a residential area, which is a violation of zoning laws."
After reading the article, I'm pretty unimpressed with the selective quoting in the blurb. Not only were laws broken, but from the description of the house, it sounds like there was at least a little reason to want to investigate, if perhaps not launch a cleanup. Talk about making a mountain out of a molehill.
This makes me curious.... if a genetic "glitch" can make certain people less prone to learning from their mistakes, I wonder if there's something that makes a portion of the population overly sensitive to mistakes? You'd have symptoms of timidity, anxiety, an unwillingness to take risks, overreactions to negativity, etc. Wouldn't surprise me if another third of the population might fall into this category, too. It's just a guess, but it would be a pretty sensible distribution, it seems.
I think these paths are reasonable. Certainly better than the "just don't try, you can't win" suggestions. I've been on path #1 for a number of years, working on a very nonstandard game that nonetheless has been fairly profitable for me. Not only profitable, but educational, entertaining, and all-around rewarding. I've made great friends, learned a ton, and it's probably going to greatly improve my future job prospects, whether the game becomes a full-time business or I use the skills I've learned to work for someone else.
Don't listen to the naysayers. The same people who are telling you that it's not possible to get the game published would outright laugh at my own game's situation (text based, low tech, minimal graphics, in the twenty-first century? Profit from optional donations? Ha!). Assuming you have the time and energy, and the willingness to learn, it's definitely possible to do it yourself.
My mom was kicking my butt, 306 to 278, with just a few tiles to go. I guess I should consider this a reprieve. If you can't win, hope for a tie due to complete system shutdown, right?
I already own three Scrabble sets: deluxe, regular, and travel. I'm not going to buy another. And I never use any of the sets because:
1) Most of the people I would play with live out of state
2) It's actually a lot more boring in person because you have to sit and wait for them to play; with an online version you can do other things while your opponent thinks, and they're doing other things while it's your turn.
Besides, the digital version is significantly different than the real-world one. Automatic tile shuffling, built-in dictionary, automatic scoring: these things I would kill to have in the box set Scrabble and are much more pleasant to have done for me by the computer. I don't know if it constitutes a "difference" in the legal sense, but in terms of personal experience it's a phenomenal difference.
And leaving a game up for days or weeks, completely unattended, without having your cats nap on the middle of the board or eat the pieces? Priceless.
I've been playing a game called Kingdom of Loathing for several years now which works on this model. Play is completely free, advertising is nonexistent, but an optional donation system allows you to acquire some "nicer" stuff. There's an active in-game trading system, so if you earn enough game money you can get those items without donating, either. In this case the tradeoff is it's a VERY low-tech browser-based game (with humorous stick-figure art and exceptionally good writing) made by a small team, so the business setup is vastly different from a traditional game. Still, it works fantastically for them, and it seems to work reasonably well for some other copycat games as well.
"Song of the Dodo" is probably the most engaging science book I've read. "The Blind Watchmaker" was quite readable, too, and I look forward to more Dawkins. "Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos" was quite entertaining, even if it was as much biography as science.
Like others have mentioned, "Brief History of Time" and several books by Sagan have a lot of sticking power. (Even Sagan's novel, "Contact," got across a bit of science.)
Personally, the much mentioned "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman" is why I studied physics in college. There are others, that's just off the top of my head.
Technically, this is overkill. You get the exact same thing by running through all the possible colors for a single pixel. All you have to do is combine those pixels in an infinite number of combinations and you have everything in the world. Extrapolating to 255x255 tiles first doesn't get you anything that you don't have with the original pixels, other than a storage and sorting problem.
Your list, while funny (and yeah, I caught the subject line), seems to assume that there's no answer. Should we just give up and not bother trying to block spam?
First we'll just have a few ads at the beginning and the end. Then they'll sneak one in the middle as part of a video clip. Next thing we know they'll have them spaced throughout the game at save points every ten minutes.
In the worst case scenario they'll start deleting content from old games to insert more ads in its place, the way reruns of old shows are trimmed to fit the shorter time slot.
I honestly wouldn't object to a few-second ad right up front if that was it, but I don't believe for a second they'll be able to resist the temptation for advertising creep. I'd rather pay once and be done with it than deal with annoyances for eternity.
Agreed. In my case, I build web sites, so having two monitors is critical, something that the iMac and Mini won't support. However, I don't need a particularly powerful box to do the coding and some light graphics work. Because I want two monitors, I'm faced with the choice between a $600 Windows box or a $2500 Mac Pro. While I would gladly shell out extra money to have a Mac desktop--I'd pay $1000 or even $1500 for one, probably--I just cannot justify paying four times the price for the Pro.
Unfortunately for Apple, this situation is pushing me towards Windows in general. I've got an old iBook for travel, but there's something to be said for consistency, and when the iBook goes out I'm not sure if I'll go Mac or Windows with the next laptop.
First, I should say it's free to play, so while I obviously have self interest in the matter, this isn't a commercial plug. If it's against the rules anyway, my apologies. Terminate the post with extreme prejudice and I won't be mad. Just thought it might provide some holiday entertainment for some folks.
In October I launched the public beta of a browser-based superhero RPG, called Twilight Heroes (not surprisingly located at www.twilightheroes.com). It's a souped-up choose your own adventure story, primarily text based with illustrative graphics, written with a blend of dramatic storytelling and humorous filler. You start out as a "normal" person, a vigilante dressed in home-dyed pajamas, frustrated at the crime riddling the city, but soon develop super powers, gain more items and abilities, proceed through a series of quests, and begin to seriously challenge the criminal element in the fictional city of Twilight.
It's obviously low-tech as computer games go, but focuses on the areas where the format can best shine: story telling, humorous description, and use of language. There's an area filled with spoonerisms--a dank and rusty maze where you fall into a rank and musty daze and find yourself fighting cold bats and bold cats, slick thugs and thick slugs, and--despite the adage to the contrary--you fight the band that heeds you; there's a zone where the foes are based on Shakespearean characters, and you can take out old frustrations against whiny star-crossed lovers, and a wishy-washy Hamlet, or face down an insane high-school teacher who believes he's The Bard himself. Other opponents include a mutant squidopus (half squid, half octopus, nine deadly arms), intelligent robots, strange beings from other dimensions, and the like. As you adventure your hero gains skills: mastery of the elements, the ability to tap into animal powers, supercomputer skills, or psychic abilities, depending on your class.
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I tend to switch to IE when I hit a certificate issue. It does give a warning, but just one, and it's easy to bypass. I mostly use Firefox, I'm technically savvy enough to both know what's going on and to know how to get through the FF process for approving the site, but I still find it easier to just copy-paste into IE and deal with the one click.
I really dislike IE, I really like Firefox, but this will drive me to IE every time out of convenience.
Oh, and I hit this regularly, because my company has a number of internal web sites with bad certificates. We don't have any real incentive to fix them, and they're internal so we know they're safe. I've got to access them a couple of times a day, on average.
Crazy as it sounds, this might be good for indie game developers. If the mainstream gaming industry gets too obnoxious, indie gamers who have more reasonable approaches to theft might gain greater followings.
I have to admit I'm a little biased here, as the creator of a free web-based game. Copyright protection isn't at all when your format can't be copied--and doesn't even need to be since it's always available.
Also, pick nearly any other subject. Most sciences change significantly from decade to decade. Social sciences, too. Even many of the humanities (history, art, etc.) have new trends and perspectives on a frequent basis. Sure, math at the undergrad level doesn't change much, and I suppose most English classes just require lots of "regular" books, but almost any other subject does need updating frequently.
Nope. I haven't been to the house, and I'm not a law enforcer or lawyer intimate with the details of the case. But the quote in my initial post was direct from the article--it does say that he violated zoning laws. Another, vaguer quote from the same article doesn't negate the one I first quoted.
Now that we've established I'm just quoting the article and can't be sure on my own that a law was broken, here's one back for you: are you so sure that a law wasn't broken? If so, how?
40 years ago they thought thalidomide (sp?) and DDT were beneficial chemicals, safe to expose all kinds of people to. Asbestos, too. Now they're a little more cautious about making sure people aren't getting poisoned or blown up.
You may benefit by reading the article, which explains that the fire department was called, and when they discovered the 1500 jars of chemicals they determined it appeared to pose at least some risk in a residential home. Learning chemistry at home was not the crime, here. In fact, other than the enforced cleanup, it looks as if Deeb isn't going to be cited with anything.
I'm not arguing that the zoning law is necessarily good or bad or makes any sense whatsoever, just that it exists. Also, in a practical sense, there's quite a bit of difference between something like software that's essentially an intellectual endeavor, and this case, where 1500 jars of chemicals are sitting around--some of them mildly dangerous and/or explosive. Using your example, if the fire department comes to your house to put out the fire, they have no reason to be concerned by your computer. If they come to your house and find a thousand canisters of gasoline strewn about the house, they have every right to tell you to evacuate while they analyze the situation.
From the article: "Mr. Deeb was doing scientific research and development in a residential area, which is a violation of zoning laws."
After reading the article, I'm pretty unimpressed with the selective quoting in the blurb. Not only were laws broken, but from the description of the house, it sounds like there was at least a little reason to want to investigate, if perhaps not launch a cleanup. Talk about making a mountain out of a molehill.
This makes me curious .... if a genetic "glitch" can make certain people less prone to learning from their mistakes, I wonder if there's something that makes a portion of the population overly sensitive to mistakes? You'd have symptoms of timidity, anxiety, an unwillingness to take risks, overreactions to negativity, etc. Wouldn't surprise me if another third of the population might fall into this category, too. It's just a guess, but it would be a pretty sensible distribution, it seems.
I think these paths are reasonable. Certainly better than the "just don't try, you can't win" suggestions. I've been on path #1 for a number of years, working on a very nonstandard game that nonetheless has been fairly profitable for me. Not only profitable, but educational, entertaining, and all-around rewarding. I've made great friends, learned a ton, and it's probably going to greatly improve my future job prospects, whether the game becomes a full-time business or I use the skills I've learned to work for someone else. Don't listen to the naysayers. The same people who are telling you that it's not possible to get the game published would outright laugh at my own game's situation (text based, low tech, minimal graphics, in the twenty-first century? Profit from optional donations? Ha!). Assuming you have the time and energy, and the willingness to learn, it's definitely possible to do it yourself.
My mom was kicking my butt, 306 to 278, with just a few tiles to go. I guess I should consider this a reprieve. If you can't win, hope for a tie due to complete system shutdown, right?
I already own three Scrabble sets: deluxe, regular, and travel. I'm not going to buy another. And I never use any of the sets because: 1) Most of the people I would play with live out of state 2) It's actually a lot more boring in person because you have to sit and wait for them to play; with an online version you can do other things while your opponent thinks, and they're doing other things while it's your turn. Besides, the digital version is significantly different than the real-world one. Automatic tile shuffling, built-in dictionary, automatic scoring: these things I would kill to have in the box set Scrabble and are much more pleasant to have done for me by the computer. I don't know if it constitutes a "difference" in the legal sense, but in terms of personal experience it's a phenomenal difference. And leaving a game up for days or weeks, completely unattended, without having your cats nap on the middle of the board or eat the pieces? Priceless.
I've been playing a game called Kingdom of Loathing for several years now which works on this model. Play is completely free, advertising is nonexistent, but an optional donation system allows you to acquire some "nicer" stuff. There's an active in-game trading system, so if you earn enough game money you can get those items without donating, either. In this case the tradeoff is it's a VERY low-tech browser-based game (with humorous stick-figure art and exceptionally good writing) made by a small team, so the business setup is vastly different from a traditional game. Still, it works fantastically for them, and it seems to work reasonably well for some other copycat games as well.
"Song of the Dodo" is probably the most engaging science book I've read. "The Blind Watchmaker" was quite readable, too, and I look forward to more Dawkins. "Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos" was quite entertaining, even if it was as much biography as science. Like others have mentioned, "Brief History of Time" and several books by Sagan have a lot of sticking power. (Even Sagan's novel, "Contact," got across a bit of science.) Personally, the much mentioned "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman" is why I studied physics in college. There are others, that's just off the top of my head.
Technically, this is overkill. You get the exact same thing by running through all the possible colors for a single pixel. All you have to do is combine those pixels in an infinite number of combinations and you have everything in the world. Extrapolating to 255x255 tiles first doesn't get you anything that you don't have with the original pixels, other than a storage and sorting problem.
Your list, while funny (and yeah, I caught the subject line), seems to assume that there's no answer. Should we just give up and not bother trying to block spam?
Funny, I avoid the office whenever possible for the exact same reason.
First we'll just have a few ads at the beginning and the end. Then they'll sneak one in the middle as part of a video clip. Next thing we know they'll have them spaced throughout the game at save points every ten minutes. In the worst case scenario they'll start deleting content from old games to insert more ads in its place, the way reruns of old shows are trimmed to fit the shorter time slot. I honestly wouldn't object to a few-second ad right up front if that was it, but I don't believe for a second they'll be able to resist the temptation for advertising creep. I'd rather pay once and be done with it than deal with annoyances for eternity.
Agreed. In my case, I build web sites, so having two monitors is critical, something that the iMac and Mini won't support. However, I don't need a particularly powerful box to do the coding and some light graphics work. Because I want two monitors, I'm faced with the choice between a $600 Windows box or a $2500 Mac Pro. While I would gladly shell out extra money to have a Mac desktop--I'd pay $1000 or even $1500 for one, probably--I just cannot justify paying four times the price for the Pro. Unfortunately for Apple, this situation is pushing me towards Windows in general. I've got an old iBook for travel, but there's something to be said for consistency, and when the iBook goes out I'm not sure if I'll go Mac or Windows with the next laptop.
First, I should say it's free to play, so while I obviously have self interest in the matter, this isn't a commercial plug. If it's against the rules anyway, my apologies. Terminate the post with extreme prejudice and I won't be mad. Just thought it might provide some holiday entertainment for some folks. In October I launched the public beta of a browser-based superhero RPG, called Twilight Heroes (not surprisingly located at www.twilightheroes.com). It's a souped-up choose your own adventure story, primarily text based with illustrative graphics, written with a blend of dramatic storytelling and humorous filler. You start out as a "normal" person, a vigilante dressed in home-dyed pajamas, frustrated at the crime riddling the city, but soon develop super powers, gain more items and abilities, proceed through a series of quests, and begin to seriously challenge the criminal element in the fictional city of Twilight. It's obviously low-tech as computer games go, but focuses on the areas where the format can best shine: story telling, humorous description, and use of language. There's an area filled with spoonerisms--a dank and rusty maze where you fall into a rank and musty daze and find yourself fighting cold bats and bold cats, slick thugs and thick slugs, and--despite the adage to the contrary--you fight the band that heeds you; there's a zone where the foes are based on Shakespearean characters, and you can take out old frustrations against whiny star-crossed lovers, and a wishy-washy Hamlet, or face down an insane high-school teacher who believes he's The Bard himself. Other opponents include a mutant squidopus (half squid, half octopus, nine deadly arms), intelligent robots, strange beings from other dimensions, and the like. As you adventure your hero gains skills: mastery of the elements, the ability to tap into animal powers, supercomputer skills, or psychic abilities, depending on your class.