also single out the return of the classic RPG 'conversation tree' as providing fresh gameplay ideas: "For example, your character may have excellent seduction skills, or be part of a specific clan that allows you to ask questions or offer responses otherwise unavailable to you, and these 'special' branches of the conversation will be shown in a different font to indicate this."
ISTR that service packs would say that after installing new software, you'd need to re-install the service pack. Of course, I might be remembering from back in the NT4 days.
Why? Because Windows applications, unfortunately, had a nasty habit of over-writing system files. Sad, but true. Still do, to a certain extent. Actually, not an unreasonable side-effect of having such a blurry line between app services and OS services.
Also, Microsoft has a habit of including system updates with software; a convenient way of silently upgrading people who might not have Internet access and the like.
I was bitterly disappointed by Fallout Tactics, the squad-based RTS/TBS version.
One of the hallmarks of the Fallout RPG was that you could do what you wanted; multiple solutions to puzzles, multiple paths, blah blah blah.
Well, in FT, my crack squad of spec-ops guys were thwarted by a waist-high pile of sandbags. They could not climb over them, move them, blow them up with C4, cut them open with knives to spill out the sand, nothing. Why not? Because each level isn't a map with an objective, it's a path on rails that you must follow.
Case in point; in a different comment, somebody posted a little program for Linux, must be run as root for the secure ports, which simply watches for the worm, and prints a line about it.
Somebody else pointed out that the code contained a buffer overflow.
Well, maybe they're waiting for the courts to find that SCO damn well knew they were talking out of their asses. Then, said Fortune 500 company sues the CRAP out of them for lying about ownership, extortion, blah blah blah.
The points don't appear out of 'thin air;' the points are what you get in exchange for graciously allowing your purchasing data to be sold to other companies.
MMMMmmmmMmMmmMM, pneumatic tube. One of my personal goals in life is, once I get into a house that I figure I'll be living in long enough for it to be worth while, is to make a pneumatic tube system.
The 'reinstall windows' line, although often a call avoidence technique, is also a nod of the head to the simple fact: you can install all sorts of crap onto your average Windows machine, especially Windows 9x/ME, that will fuck things up.
I've seen Windows boxes where you can drop to a command prompt and do name server lookups until the cows come home, but go into IE and try one, and it just won't work; some spyware, no doubt, has installed some sort of DNS proxy so they can log exactly what you're doing, something.
And some poor bastard who blindly clicks the 'yes, I'd trust these guys to install some whizzbang gizmo to improve my surfing experience!' is going to have a machine that is well and truly full of crap.
Ah, but if you have evidence that somebody else maliciously tampered with your brakes, suddenly, it's not your fault anymore. Especially if the tampering was done in such a way as to evade detection to some degree....
Just to make things clear, the reason the Xbox doesn't include the DVD functionality out of the box is so that you're not paying the $30 US licensing fees required to have a functional DVD player unless you actually want to use it to play DVDs.
I've yet to see, but maybe I'm not looking for, a web-programming langague that does auto-magic query caching.
What I mean is this. Say you've got a query that retrives comments from your database. This query gets run, with little to no adjustment (say, in the form of/., you basically pick your threshhold and your story) many many times.
So be able to define that as a recurring query in the web-programming language. Then, give some directives on how often that query should actually be run; say, once every five minutes, or every 300 executions. Then, when your code calls that query, it'll get a normal result set back, but that result-set will be either a) returned from memory, or b) an actual database hit, depending on conditions.
I know a good database will do lots of this on it's own end, but the ability to not even have data going from webserver to database and back would be good.
Most 'slashdottings' are either a) saturation of the bandwidth allocated to the server, which isn't very exciting, or b)misconfiguration/over-reliance on dynamic content resulting in a connection to a database barfing.
Yes, but some people are going to be more or less introverted than others. Somebody might be pure intuitive, or might have intuitive leanings. One can never be said to be 'one or the other.'
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If you a Win2K/XP network, use the intellimirror/SUS stuff built into and downloadable for Win2k server.
If you're a more heterogenous windows network, use SMS.
I spent yesterday afternoon in the office, running off of a generator plugged into natural gas, listening to CBC Radio One's streaming webcast.
Just like Great-Grandpa used to do...Grandpa, what was it like when you actually needed a radio to listen to radio broadcasts?
Go give Fatal Frame a try.
Constants are variables. They're just not writable during runtime.
What, like KOTOR? Or, gee, Fallout?
ISTR that service packs would say that after installing new software, you'd need to re-install the service pack. Of course, I might be remembering from back in the NT4 days.
Why? Because Windows applications, unfortunately, had a nasty habit of over-writing system files. Sad, but true. Still do, to a certain extent. Actually, not an unreasonable side-effect of having such a blurry line between app services and OS services.
Also, Microsoft has a habit of including system updates with software; a convenient way of silently upgrading people who might not have Internet access and the like.
To quote The Gord, from IBM to SCO, "Just because you say it doesn't make it so."
That line is an instant classic!
Hrm. Seems to me you patch the OS after you install all the apps, so the second way makes sense.
As an aside, ISTR that Visio is a third party app that Microsoft bought, slapped a sticker on, and started selling.
I was bitterly disappointed by Fallout Tactics, the squad-based RTS/TBS version.
One of the hallmarks of the Fallout RPG was that you could do what you wanted; multiple solutions to puzzles, multiple paths, blah blah blah.
Well, in FT, my crack squad of spec-ops guys were thwarted by a waist-high pile of sandbags. They could not climb over them, move them, blow them up with C4, cut them open with knives to spill out the sand, nothing. Why not? Because each level isn't a map with an objective, it's a path on rails that you must follow.
Case in point; in a different comment, somebody posted a little program for Linux, must be run as root for the secure ports, which simply watches for the worm, and prints a line about it.
Somebody else pointed out that the code contained a buffer overflow.
Well, maybe they're waiting for the courts to find that SCO damn well knew they were talking out of their asses. Then, said Fortune 500 company sues the CRAP out of them for lying about ownership, extortion, blah blah blah.
Tell that to the kids who are victimized to create said porn. If there wasn't a market for it, there wouldn't be so much of it.
The points don't appear out of 'thin air;' the points are what you get in exchange for graciously allowing your purchasing data to be sold to other companies.
MMMMmmmmMmMmmMM, pneumatic tube. One of my personal goals in life is, once I get into a house that I figure I'll be living in long enough for it to be worth while, is to make a pneumatic tube system.
Wrong. You'd check to see if somebody turned the thermostat down, you'd check to see if there's a box sitting on the air vent.
Or, you'd be explaining to your boss why they just had to pay the aircon guy a hundred bucks to come flip the on switch.
If the modem is fucked, unplugging the cable isn't going to unfuck it. Unpowering it, however, might.
Also, I have NEVER heard somebody call a auto repair shop and say 'My car won't start; can you walk me through how to fix it?'
Keep a copy of the Windows Startup sound on your desktop, so you can play it after a minute or two..'Yup, computer's rebooted.'
The 'reinstall windows' line, although often a call avoidence technique, is also a nod of the head to the simple fact: you can install all sorts of crap onto your average Windows machine, especially Windows 9x/ME, that will fuck things up.
I've seen Windows boxes where you can drop to a command prompt and do name server lookups until the cows come home, but go into IE and try one, and it just won't work; some spyware, no doubt, has installed some sort of DNS proxy so they can log exactly what you're doing, something.
And some poor bastard who blindly clicks the 'yes, I'd trust these guys to install some whizzbang gizmo to improve my surfing experience!' is going to have a machine that is well and truly full of crap.
Ah, but if you have evidence that somebody else maliciously tampered with your brakes, suddenly, it's not your fault anymore. Especially if the tampering was done in such a way as to evade detection to some degree....
Just to make things clear, the reason the Xbox doesn't include the DVD functionality out of the box is so that you're not paying the $30 US licensing fees required to have a functional DVD player unless you actually want to use it to play DVDs.
I've yet to see, but maybe I'm not looking for, a web-programming langague that does auto-magic query caching.
What I mean is this. Say you've got a query that retrives comments from your database. This query gets run, with little to no adjustment (say, in the form of /., you basically pick your threshhold and your story) many many times.
So be able to define that as a recurring query in the web-programming language. Then, give some directives on how often that query should actually be run; say, once every five minutes, or every 300 executions. Then, when your code calls that query, it'll get a normal result set back, but that result-set will be either a) returned from memory, or b) an actual database hit, depending on conditions.
I know a good database will do lots of this on it's own end, but the ability to not even have data going from webserver to database and back would be good.
Most 'slashdottings' are either a) saturation of the bandwidth allocated to the server, which isn't very exciting, or b)misconfiguration/over-reliance on dynamic content resulting in a connection to a database barfing.
Yes, but some people are going to be more or less introverted than others. Somebody might be pure intuitive, or might have intuitive leanings. One can never be said to be 'one or the other.'