MMO's are a totally different type of experience than what you get playing with a few friends. I played Planetside for over a year, and there's no first person shooter that can compare to 3 factions with 133 players per faction on a single continent. It's not the best graphics but it's the best team based experience I've ever had online. There were a lot of outfits that were very organized, and it was a lot of fun to play with a good team, choosing your own objective, making a plan, and executing it. The fact that your team was 30 people scattered over two continents didn't matter - if you play with the same guys repeatedly using voice chat programs like TeamSpeak, you get to know their personalities, and they become your friends (just not as close as IRL).
Imagine in a vaccuum that a pulse of light looks like a square wave (actually more like an impulse - a square wave of infinite thin-ness and therefore infinite magnitude). When you put this pulse of light through a material, the pulse is more like a bell curve (but not exactly). So they create different types of material that create wider and wider bell curves for the light that passes through them.
When a light pulse hits the material, the leading edge of the bell curve is observed in the material before the impulse (the "peak" of the curve) actually hits the material. The peak of the bell curve never travels anywhere faster than light, but the leading edge appears to happen BEFORE the cause.
So they create a material where the bell curve is so spread out that the leading edge starts to exit the other end of the fiber (and also reflects and goes back down the fiber) before the impulse hits the material at all. It's just a matter of how much you can stretch the "bell curve".
The thing is that the "information" can only be measured or used once the peak of the curve arrives because the pulse is a photon or made up of photons, and they need to interact with something to transmit information, and the interaction takes energy which requires all the energy from the pulse which requires at least the peak to arrive to effect some change on some other piece of matter, which means this is some novelty for some bored physics guys. (Just kidding).
I don't really know the theories, but after reading several articles about it, the above is my best stab at explaining it.
Still the suit is claiming at least a quater of all Google's revenue comes from Child Porn and similar nasties, which I think most would agree is quite a ridiculous claim to make.
I don't know if I would jump to that conclusion, but it does seem high. I wouldn't be surprised if they were confusing child porn with "normal" porn, and google's advertising income was heavily bolstered by pornography in general. The plaintiffs in these cases tend to try and smear the line between one and the other, knowing that the majority of the public probably doesn't differentiate too much between the two. This is most likely just an election year issue, and the guy wants to get his name in the news as fighting some kind of evil social problem. Therefore, facts don't really matter to him.
So Google has made more from Child Porn alone than it's actual net yearly income?
Someone needs a crash course on income vs. revenue. Google's *revenue* is in the $2.25 billion range for a single quarter of a year. If they spent $1.65 billion per quarter in expenses, then their income would be around $600 million. The plaintiff (or whatever he is) is claiming that substantial amounts of *revenue* is coming from child porn.
I was in Cuba a couple years ago and although they are very poor (everyone makes about $13 US per month) they were very very friendly and looked happy and healthy. They have highly trained doctors and other professionals.
So, I get myself on Google and discover that Cubans have a longer life expectancy than Americans. Well, that shocked me.
This is a place where I can't drink the water, and the beef looked pretty scary. It's certainly possible that the more expensive stuff we have available to us (more food, more highly processed food), the worse our health could be. I read once that in Rome the rich people had plumbing with lead pipes (it was a luxury) but it ended up killing them faster from lead poisoning. It's possible something similar is happening to us in industrialized nations right now.
It would be closer to say that the brain is very good a modelling a non-linear feedback control loop. Or, you could say that the brain really IS a bunch of non-linear feedback loops. Learning is just a matter of tuning the parameters of the loop.
You can build a machine that will balance itself on 2 wheels using a feedback control system, and it's similar to how we learn how to stand up on our own. The control system engineer has to "teach" the machine how to control itself by tuning parameters like P, I, and D. You can create a self-tuning system as well.
Part of modern control systems is "prediction". That is, the system maintains an internal model of the physical process it is trying to control, so it can do a better job of controlling it. This is also similar to how a brain works when trying to catch a ball. We develop an internal representation of the ball and our brain makes a prediction of where the ball will go based on experience.
The power of the brain isn't just the ability to catch a ball (I could make a machine that would catch a ball if you gave me enough money), it's the ability to recognize an object as a ball, categorize it as being like other objects previously categorized as balls, then apply a predictive model to the recognized object that outputs a point on the ground where we should move to if we wanted to catch it (or move away from if we want to get out of the way), all in a fraction of a second.
Special Ops: - Combat Engineering (5), Infiltration suit (2), ATV (1), Misc(3) *I admit that this role really requires BR8 so you can get advanced hacking to be 100% effective*
Multi-role: - Air Cavalry Scout (3), Uni-MAX (6), Medium Assault (2)
Battleframe Robotics Pilot: - Armored Assault 1 & 2 (3), BFR (4), BFR AA (1), BFR AI (1), Misc (2)
Sure, it's a decent little diversion for the price you pay, but you're still going to get your face melted in about two seconds to most of the real players out there. Or at least, that was my experience when I tried it yesterday.
Please go to the US trademark website and do a trademark search for the term SuperHero or Superhero or Super Hero or SuperHeroes or whatever, and show me the one owned by Marvel and DC comics, because I can't find it.
Planetside already has that. They're not overly invasive, but they are noticeable in areas that people frequent (it's not like people's tanks have billboards on the side of them, a la nascar).
It's also very very easy to get rid of the ads. Apparently you just enter a line in your lmhosts file that tells the game to redirect all requests to the Massive Inc servers to some black hole. No more ads.
I have a hard time calling storytelling (such as movies) art. I guess most people would define art as the expression of an idea. Some video games do this, some do not. Perhaps second life is closer to art, but that's not really a game, is it?
Many or most video games are simulations (art immitating life?). The lifespan of a simulation ends when we can do a better simulation.
Excluding simulations, I would compare video games to other games like chess, which people have been playing in one form or another for thousands of years. I have to believe that people will probably still be playing some form of tetris a hundred or more years from now.
Meanwhile, grand theft auto will be as popular 500 years from now as the hallowe'en movies.
That kind of point and click gameplay always sucks. Successful imaginations of healers always let you do something else along with being a healer, like you still carry a decent weapon in BF2 or Planetside, or healing is one of many "spells" that you can cast, so you're not stuck following your mates around clicking on them when they get hit.
I don't know how easy it would be to make a minigame for a medic, but for engineering I think it would be easy. The mini-game is resource management.
Perhaps as a medical character you should be able to setup a field hospital where people can go to get healed automatically. Also, have the ability to do combat evacuations ("emergency medical beamouts") where you can pull a fallen soldier back to the field hospital you've setup using transporter technology. That's the equivalent of a resurrection in other games. So you're fighting along, see someone fall, you have to fight your way to them (or have team-mates help you) and then place a transponder on them that automatically beams them back to the medical point/sickbay, whatever.
Another cool idea is combat on the outer hull of the ship, like in First Contact. You could suit up, go out a hatch, and fight across the outside to get to another airlock and attack from an unexpected direction.
One of the critical systems that could be knocked out is artificial gravity, which would really mess up movement ability unless you had "gravity boots" like in ST VI.
Games like this would tend to have everyone piloting their own starship, so a guild would form a small fleet and do things together, but I could imagine another idea where ships over a certain size (like runabouts and up) allow you to have multiple crew onboard, and only become truly effective when staffed with multiple guildmates.
For instance, one person could command the enterprise with computer assistance to do everything, but you can only concentrate on one thing at a time. However, someone with tactical skill could take over at tactical and manage the weaponry, someone with engineering skill could handle the prioritization of battle damage (some kind of mini-game that simulates how you would manage dwindling resources to keep required systems running, etc.) and in the event of a boarding (once shields are down), everyone can pull out their phasers and fight off the boarding party, with people that specifically have security skill being better equipped with weaponry, etc.
I can imagine some amazing space battles where capital ships duke it out until the shields go down on one ship, or the engines are disabled, and then they start sending over boarding parties. The objective is to either disable critical systems like weapons, engines, or to capture areas like the transporter room which acts like a spawn point. The battle for control of a big capital ship could last over half an hour as you advance down the corridors and through cargo bays capturing and defending spawn points, disabling internal sensors and force fields, even capturing and stealing supplies (to create an active privateer faction). Obviously, the bridge would be one spawn point, perhaps engineering another.
It lends itself very well to instancing. Different ships have different layouts that you could learn. Wow I'm actually interested.
Too bad it's actually going to be a game where you have to kill 800 tribbles before you can level up to a phaser of pwnage.
Finally, someone with an insightful reply to my post. Thanks.:)
In my post I was more annoyed with people over-using the term "slippery slope" where it really shouldn't be used, like "want their cake and eat it too". People hear a term and don't know where it comes from or what the real definition is, and you get the Alanis Morissette (sp?) "Ironic" effect.
I certainly think that when it comes to limiting government powers, precedent is a big worry. Especially when you look at current events like domestic spying in the US.
Still, the fact they're no longer doing this just "for the children", lends weight to the slippery slope arguments that said a ban for minors would lead to a ban affecting adults as well. Scary stuff actually.
Just for future reference... "slippery slope" is not a valid argument. In fact, it is the name of a logical fallacy. When someone says "new legislation such and such could lead us down a very slippery slope", that's when you can stop listening because they have decisively abandoned logic.
The logic is like this. If I wanted to walk to the crack house, I have to go one block south, then one block east, so that means I shouldn't go to the blockbuster one block south because that just takes me half way to the crack house. That logic is invalid because it contains a slippery slope falacy - the idea that I shouldn't walk one block south because it is on the way to the crack house.
To discuss it in your terms, we have existed for many decades in a society that bans alcohol for minors, but allows alcohol for people over a certain age. At one point, alcohol was banned for everyone by democratic choice, and then by democratic choice (and practicality) it was overturned. But most people are ok with minors not being allowed to buy alcohol, even though it would be a step in the direction of banning it for everyone.
When we draw a line in the sand, we have to know exactly why we're drawing it at that spot. It has to be the right spot. To argue that we can't draw the line because someone in the future might move the line is an invalid argument.
Personally, I'm against censorship or bans, but think that rating games for their content and restricting sales to minors is the right way to go.
In VB6 they have these things called "modules", and also things called "class modules" if you can't pry yourself away from objects, and they have user controls. All of which can be part of a shared library or shared repository of code, especially since it integrates just fine with source safe or whatever version control system you want to tack on, like CVS. You don't have to put any of your business logic in the forms.
You obviously don't know what you're talking about. Why don't you stop embarrassing yourself and stick to topics you know. So you picked up a "Learn.NET in 21 Days" book and now you're a one trick pony... congrats!
I can tell by your attitude that you're going to get along really well with the middle/upper management types. Guess what: you WIN a mundane career with no chance of advancement, because you keep trying to dazzle the CEO at the Xmas party with how important polymorphism is to the company's future success.
What I meant was that a program should be reusable. With vb6 it is very hard to write applications that are reusable.
I guess I'm just really really good at it then, because I consider it easy to create reusable code in any language. It's called modular programming. We did it before object oriented was all the rage with the tweenies.
I agree,.NET can scale all the way up, sorry for getting your blood pressure so high.:)
I just think that Java is more of a beginner's language because Java is designed as more of an academic language and when you're learning you should start with the general and work toward the specific. I can see how C# is almost as general, and other than syntax there is no difference between C#.NET and VB.NET (except this rather obscure VB compiler option that is missing when you're trying to compile a user control for the compact framework).
You sure are angry... do you think it's normal to get emotional about a newsgroup posting? Did it ever occur to you that a rational response would be more appropriate than slamming your fist on the desk and grunting? Or are you just having a bad day and decided to try and deride someone online that you don't even know?
I don't think that anything.NET, or VB6, is really a good beginner's language, just like I don't think Perl is a good beginner's language. I think you should start with a very general language that enforces good behavior, like Java.
You move from Java to.NET, VB6, or Perl basically for the added features and simplicities that each one brings to the table..NET if you want to write a quick windows application, VB6 if you need a rapidly developed windows application that is mostly GUI, and Perl if you need to write a text parser. You take what you learned from Java and you can apply it anywhere else, and you know what pitfalls to avoid. If you start with a language for a specific application, you will always see all your programming through that lense.
A strategy guide for a skill/twitch based game is usually useless, but I know that my wife is really into the Sims 2, and knew a LOT, and then I got her the strategy guide and was surprised that there was quite a bit in there that she didn't know about.
So I think it depends on the game and the quality of the author.
I really don't know what your problem is with me. Somehow my choice of programming tools offends you. That's pretty sad.
Before you young'ins had objects everywhere, we did the same thing but we called it modular programming. It's how Linux got written actually... no C++ needed.
We had a guy at work like you... you got him in a meeting and he went on and on and on about architecture, interfaces, objects, API's, whatever, and the reason he's fired is that he was too dumb to realize that you actually had to get something done. The language is to the product as the hammer is to the house.
Hi, Wow. Let me know where I am wrong: 1. You and yours migrated from pascal or foxpro to vb6. 2. You never acquired formal education regarding a well designed application. Let me know how many lines of code it would take for you to create an xml file from a sql query which contains a few tables with relationships. You are exactly why MS and the developers that use their software are the brunt of most conversations here. Thanks!
1. I used pascal once. I have a strong C background, but have used Perl, assembly, a little BASIC back in high school before I worked here. Most of what our industry does is proprietary GUI stuff like LabView, Citect, or panelviews/RSView. I definitely have more programming knowledge than what the job requires, but that gives me an edge.
2. I have a computer engineering degree from the Univeristy of Waterloo. I specialized in power systems and control system theory, and about 50% of my job is hardware, 50% is software (but pretty simple stuff - GUI, ASP, PHP, SQL, the odd embedded application, tons of ladder logic and flowchart stuff, and definitely some proprietary motion control and other languages out of germany that your adolescent brain couldn't even conceive of). I used to work for QNX. I have written a USB driver for an obscure operating sytem that's no longer in use.
While you're busy writing hash tables and optimizing a sort algorithm that saves 0.18 milliseconds for a user whose machine runs the idle process for 99.999% of the time, I'm designing the electrical and software control systems for machines that automate the handling 2 ton cartons of product, paint car parts, convey engines, track downtime, store federally mandated safety information, and generally cost upwards of $5000 per minute when they don't work right. So why don't you go kiss my maple leaf emblazoned ass?
We use VB6 for some specialized tasks... basically a nice colorful user interface where we need the use of a PC to store some data. The actual mission critical stuff is usually performed by some underlying real time control system. In that respect, what vb6 gives us is a rapid GUI development that can do all the things that LabView and Citect can do but has a lot more user support on the internet, and can integrate better with everything else. It's a good fit.
Then we tried moving to VB.NET. I didn't have much problem with it since I have a hardware/software background, but most of the engineers around here are more focused on hardware and even though they "get" object oriented programming, see no need for it when all they want is a few pretty buttons on a screen for the user to start and stop some process.
The nice thing about VB6 was anything I wrote could be debugged by someone with a basic level of programming knowledge. The stuff we wrote in VB.NET was more cryptic, and took longer to write. Even the concept of references confuses some people. We've had a very hard time switching over.
Now if we only wrote desktop applications or shrinkwrapped software, I never would have suggested using VB6 in the first place, but for what we do, VB6 is a perfect fit, and VB.NET completely fails to fill that niche that we've been using it for (rapid GUI development). We've gone back to VB6 now, and we're keeping our eyes open for alternatives....and honestly, if we had to go to.NET, I'd rather switch to C#. I see no reason to have both VB.NET and C#.NET as separate languages - they're almost identical!
Slashdot Mirror
MMO's are a totally different type of experience than what you get playing with a few friends. I played Planetside for over a year, and there's no first person shooter that can compare to 3 factions with 133 players per faction on a single continent. It's not the best graphics but it's the best team based experience I've ever had online. There were a lot of outfits that were very organized, and it was a lot of fun to play with a good team, choosing your own objective, making a plan, and executing it. The fact that your team was 30 people scattered over two continents didn't matter - if you play with the same guys repeatedly using voice chat programs like TeamSpeak, you get to know their personalities, and they become your friends (just not as close as IRL).
Imagine in a vaccuum that a pulse of light looks like a square wave (actually more like an impulse - a square wave of infinite thin-ness and therefore infinite magnitude). When you put this pulse of light through a material, the pulse is more like a bell curve (but not exactly). So they create different types of material that create wider and wider bell curves for the light that passes through them.
When a light pulse hits the material, the leading edge of the bell curve is observed in the material before the impulse (the "peak" of the curve) actually hits the material. The peak of the bell curve never travels anywhere faster than light, but the leading edge appears to happen BEFORE the cause.
So they create a material where the bell curve is so spread out that the leading edge starts to exit the other end of the fiber (and also reflects and goes back down the fiber) before the impulse hits the material at all. It's just a matter of how much you can stretch the "bell curve".
The thing is that the "information" can only be measured or used once the peak of the curve arrives because the pulse is a photon or made up of photons, and they need to interact with something to transmit information, and the interaction takes energy which requires all the energy from the pulse which requires at least the peak to arrive to effect some change on some other piece of matter, which means this is some novelty for some bored physics guys. (Just kidding).
I don't really know the theories, but after reading several articles about it, the above is my best stab at explaining it.
Still the suit is claiming at least a quater of all Google's revenue comes from Child Porn and similar nasties, which I think most would agree is quite a ridiculous claim to make.
I don't know if I would jump to that conclusion, but it does seem high. I wouldn't be surprised if they were confusing child porn with "normal" porn, and google's advertising income was heavily bolstered by pornography in general. The plaintiffs in these cases tend to try and smear the line between one and the other, knowing that the majority of the public probably doesn't differentiate too much between the two. This is most likely just an election year issue, and the guy wants to get his name in the news as fighting some kind of evil social problem. Therefore, facts don't really matter to him.
So Google has made more from Child Porn alone than it's actual net yearly income?
Someone needs a crash course on income vs. revenue. Google's *revenue* is in the $2.25 billion range for a single quarter of a year. If they spent $1.65 billion per quarter in expenses, then their income would be around $600 million. The plaintiff (or whatever he is) is claiming that substantial amounts of *revenue* is coming from child porn.
Source: here
I was in Cuba a couple years ago and although they are very poor (everyone makes about $13 US per month) they were very very friendly and looked happy and healthy. They have highly trained doctors and other professionals.
So, I get myself on Google and discover that Cubans have a longer life expectancy than Americans. Well, that shocked me.
This is a place where I can't drink the water, and the beef looked pretty scary. It's certainly possible that the more expensive stuff we have available to us (more food, more highly processed food), the worse our health could be. I read once that in Rome the rich people had plumbing with lead pipes (it was a luxury) but it ended up killing them faster from lead poisoning. It's possible something similar is happening to us in industrialized nations right now.
Doesn't this kind of overlap with Pirates of the Burning Sea?
It would be closer to say that the brain is very good a modelling a non-linear feedback control loop. Or, you could say that the brain really IS a bunch of non-linear feedback loops. Learning is just a matter of tuning the parameters of the loop.
You can build a machine that will balance itself on 2 wheels using a feedback control system, and it's similar to how we learn how to stand up on our own. The control system engineer has to "teach" the machine how to control itself by tuning parameters like P, I, and D. You can create a self-tuning system as well.
Part of modern control systems is "prediction". That is, the system maintains an internal model of the physical process it is trying to control, so it can do a better job of controlling it. This is also similar to how a brain works when trying to catch a ball. We develop an internal representation of the ball and our brain makes a prediction of where the ball will go based on experience.
The power of the brain isn't just the ability to catch a ball (I could make a machine that would catch a ball if you gave me enough money), it's the ability to recognize an object as a ball, categorize it as being like other objects previously categorized as balls, then apply a predictive model to the recognized object that outputs a point on the ground where we should move to if we wanted to catch it (or move away from if we want to get out of the way), all in a fraction of a second.
Here are some great combinations you could have with 11 cert points (BR6):
Heavy Trooper:
- Reinforced eXosuit (3), Medium Assault (2), Heavy Assault (4), Misc (2)
Grenadier/Support:
- Reinforced eXosuit (3), Medium Assault (2), Special Assault (3), Engineering (3)
Sniper:
- Medium Assault (2), Sniper (3), Misc (6)
Pilot:
- Air Cavalry Scout (3), Air Cavalry Assault (2), Air support (3), Misc (3)
Armor Driver:
- Armored Assault 1 & 2 (3), Ground Transport (2), Engineering (3), Flail (artillery) (1), Misc (2)
Combat Medic:
- Advanced Medic (5), Engineering (3), Medium Assault (2), Misc (1)
Special Ops:
- Combat Engineering (5), Infiltration suit (2), ATV (1), Misc(3) *I admit that this role really requires BR8 so you can get advanced hacking to be 100% effective*
Multi-role:
- Air Cavalry Scout (3), Uni-MAX (6), Medium Assault (2)
Battleframe Robotics Pilot:
- Armored Assault 1 & 2 (3), BFR (4), BFR AA (1), BFR AI (1), Misc (2)
There are a LOT of possibilities. Check this out: (a cert point calculator).
Sure, it's a decent little diversion for the price you pay, but you're still going to get your face melted in about two seconds to most of the real players out there. Or at least, that was my experience when I tried it yesterday.
:)
n00b!
Please go to the US trademark website and do a trademark search for the term SuperHero or Superhero or Super Hero or SuperHeroes or whatever, and show me the one owned by Marvel and DC comics, because I can't find it.
Well, I own a copy. That's hard data. :)
Planetside already has that. They're not overly invasive, but they are noticeable in areas that people frequent (it's not like people's tanks have billboards on the side of them, a la nascar).
It's also very very easy to get rid of the ads. Apparently you just enter a line in your lmhosts file that tells the game to redirect all requests to the Massive Inc servers to some black hole. No more ads.
I have a hard time calling storytelling (such as movies) art. I guess most people would define art as the expression of an idea. Some video games do this, some do not. Perhaps second life is closer to art, but that's not really a game, is it?
Many or most video games are simulations (art immitating life?). The lifespan of a simulation ends when we can do a better simulation.
Excluding simulations, I would compare video games to other games like chess, which people have been playing in one form or another for thousands of years. I have to believe that people will probably still be playing some form of tetris a hundred or more years from now.
Meanwhile, grand theft auto will be as popular 500 years from now as the hallowe'en movies.
That kind of point and click gameplay always sucks. Successful imaginations of healers always let you do something else along with being a healer, like you still carry a decent weapon in BF2 or Planetside, or healing is one of many "spells" that you can cast, so you're not stuck following your mates around clicking on them when they get hit.
I don't know how easy it would be to make a minigame for a medic, but for engineering I think it would be easy. The mini-game is resource management.
Perhaps as a medical character you should be able to setup a field hospital where people can go to get healed automatically. Also, have the ability to do combat evacuations ("emergency medical beamouts") where you can pull a fallen soldier back to the field hospital you've setup using transporter technology. That's the equivalent of a resurrection in other games. So you're fighting along, see someone fall, you have to fight your way to them (or have team-mates help you) and then place a transponder on them that automatically beams them back to the medical point/sickbay, whatever.
Another cool idea is combat on the outer hull of the ship, like in First Contact. You could suit up, go out a hatch, and fight across the outside to get to another airlock and attack from an unexpected direction.
One of the critical systems that could be knocked out is artificial gravity, which would really mess up movement ability unless you had "gravity boots" like in ST VI.
Games like this would tend to have everyone piloting their own starship, so a guild would form a small fleet and do things together, but I could imagine another idea where ships over a certain size (like runabouts and up) allow you to have multiple crew onboard, and only become truly effective when staffed with multiple guildmates.
For instance, one person could command the enterprise with computer assistance to do everything, but you can only concentrate on one thing at a time. However, someone with tactical skill could take over at tactical and manage the weaponry, someone with engineering skill could handle the prioritization of battle damage (some kind of mini-game that simulates how you would manage dwindling resources to keep required systems running, etc.) and in the event of a boarding (once shields are down), everyone can pull out their phasers and fight off the boarding party, with people that specifically have security skill being better equipped with weaponry, etc.
I can imagine some amazing space battles where capital ships duke it out until the shields go down on one ship, or the engines are disabled, and then they start sending over boarding parties. The objective is to either disable critical systems like weapons, engines, or to capture areas like the transporter room which acts like a spawn point. The battle for control of a big capital ship could last over half an hour as you advance down the corridors and through cargo bays capturing and defending spawn points, disabling internal sensors and force fields, even capturing and stealing supplies (to create an active privateer faction). Obviously, the bridge would be one spawn point, perhaps engineering another.
It lends itself very well to instancing. Different ships have different layouts that you could learn. Wow I'm actually interested.
Too bad it's actually going to be a game where you have to kill 800 tribbles before you can level up to a phaser of pwnage.
Finally, someone with an insightful reply to my post. Thanks. :)
In my post I was more annoyed with people over-using the term "slippery slope" where it really shouldn't be used, like "want their cake and eat it too". People hear a term and don't know where it comes from or what the real definition is, and you get the Alanis Morissette (sp?) "Ironic" effect.
I certainly think that when it comes to limiting government powers, precedent is a big worry. Especially when you look at current events like domestic spying in the US.
Still, the fact they're no longer doing this just "for the children", lends weight to the slippery slope arguments that said a ban for minors would lead to a ban affecting adults as well. Scary stuff actually.
Just for future reference... "slippery slope" is not a valid argument. In fact, it is the name of a logical fallacy. When someone says "new legislation such and such could lead us down a very slippery slope", that's when you can stop listening because they have decisively abandoned logic.
The logic is like this. If I wanted to walk to the crack house, I have to go one block south, then one block east, so that means I shouldn't go to the blockbuster one block south because that just takes me half way to the crack house. That logic is invalid because it contains a slippery slope falacy - the idea that I shouldn't walk one block south because it is on the way to the crack house.
To discuss it in your terms, we have existed for many decades in a society that bans alcohol for minors, but allows alcohol for people over a certain age. At one point, alcohol was banned for everyone by democratic choice, and then by democratic choice (and practicality) it was overturned. But most people are ok with minors not being allowed to buy alcohol, even though it would be a step in the direction of banning it for everyone.
When we draw a line in the sand, we have to know exactly why we're drawing it at that spot. It has to be the right spot. To argue that we can't draw the line because someone in the future might move the line is an invalid argument.
Personally, I'm against censorship or bans, but think that rating games for their content and restricting sales to minors is the right way to go.
Dude, too much caffeine there...
.NET in 21 Days" book and now you're a one trick pony... congrats!
In VB6 they have these things called "modules", and also things called "class modules" if you can't pry yourself away from objects, and they have user controls. All of which can be part of a shared library or shared repository of code, especially since it integrates just fine with source safe or whatever version control system you want to tack on, like CVS. You don't have to put any of your business logic in the forms.
You obviously don't know what you're talking about. Why don't you stop embarrassing yourself and stick to topics you know. So you picked up a "Learn
I can tell by your attitude that you're going to get along really well with the middle/upper management types. Guess what: you WIN a mundane career with no chance of advancement, because you keep trying to dazzle the CEO at the Xmas party with how important polymorphism is to the company's future success.
What I meant was that a program should be reusable.
With vb6 it is very hard to write applications that are reusable.
I guess I'm just really really good at it then, because I consider it easy to create reusable code in any language. It's called modular programming. We did it before object oriented was all the rage with the tweenies.
I agree, .NET can scale all the way up, sorry for getting your blood pressure so high. :)
I just think that Java is more of a beginner's language because Java is designed as more of an academic language and when you're learning you should start with the general and work toward the specific. I can see how C# is almost as general, and other than syntax there is no difference between C#.NET and VB.NET (except this rather obscure VB compiler option that is missing when you're trying to compile a user control for the compact framework).
You sure are angry... do you think it's normal to get emotional about a newsgroup posting? Did it ever occur to you that a rational response would be more appropriate than slamming your fist on the desk and grunting? Or are you just having a bad day and decided to try and deride someone online that you don't even know?
I don't think that anything .NET, or VB6, is really a good beginner's language, just like I don't think Perl is a good beginner's language. I think you should start with a very general language that enforces good behavior, like Java.
.NET, VB6, or Perl basically for the added features and simplicities that each one brings to the table. .NET if you want to write a quick windows application, VB6 if you need a rapidly developed windows application that is mostly GUI, and Perl if you need to write a text parser. You take what you learned from Java and you can apply it anywhere else, and you know what pitfalls to avoid. If you start with a language for a specific application, you will always see all your programming through that lense.
You move from Java to
A strategy guide for a skill/twitch based game is usually useless, but I know that my wife is really into the Sims 2, and knew a LOT, and then I got her the strategy guide and was surprised that there was quite a bit in there that she didn't know about.
So I think it depends on the game and the quality of the author.
I really don't know what your problem is with me. Somehow my choice of programming tools offends you. That's pretty sad.
Before you young'ins had objects everywhere, we did the same thing but we called it modular programming. It's how Linux got written actually... no C++ needed.
We had a guy at work like you... you got him in a meeting and he went on and on and on about architecture, interfaces, objects, API's, whatever, and the reason he's fired is that he was too dumb to realize that you actually had to get something done. The language is to the product as the hammer is to the house.
I hope you make it back to the real world soon.
Hi, Wow. Let me know where I am wrong: 1. You and yours migrated from pascal or foxpro to vb6. 2. You never acquired formal education regarding a well designed application. Let me know how many lines of code it would take for you to create an xml file from a sql query which contains a few tables with relationships. You are exactly why MS and the developers that use their software are the brunt of most conversations here. Thanks!
1. I used pascal once. I have a strong C background, but have used Perl, assembly, a little BASIC back in high school before I worked here. Most of what our industry does is proprietary GUI stuff like LabView, Citect, or panelviews/RSView. I definitely have more programming knowledge than what the job requires, but that gives me an edge.
2. I have a computer engineering degree from the Univeristy of Waterloo. I specialized in power systems and control system theory, and about 50% of my job is hardware, 50% is software (but pretty simple stuff - GUI, ASP, PHP, SQL, the odd embedded application, tons of ladder logic and flowchart stuff, and definitely some proprietary motion control and other languages out of germany that your adolescent brain couldn't even conceive of). I used to work for QNX. I have written a USB driver for an obscure operating sytem that's no longer in use.
While you're busy writing hash tables and optimizing a sort algorithm that saves 0.18 milliseconds for a user whose machine runs the idle process for 99.999% of the time, I'm designing the electrical and software control systems for machines that automate the handling 2 ton cartons of product, paint car parts, convey engines, track downtime, store federally mandated safety information, and generally cost upwards of $5000 per minute when they don't work right. So why don't you go kiss my maple leaf emblazoned ass?
We use VB6 for some specialized tasks... basically a nice colorful user interface where we need the use of a PC to store some data. The actual mission critical stuff is usually performed by some underlying real time control system. In that respect, what vb6 gives us is a rapid GUI development that can do all the things that LabView and Citect can do but has a lot more user support on the internet, and can integrate better with everything else. It's a good fit.
.NET. I didn't have much problem with it since I have a hardware/software background, but most of the engineers around here are more focused on hardware and even though they "get" object oriented programming, see no need for it when all they want is a few pretty buttons on a screen for the user to start and stop some process.
.NET was more cryptic, and took longer to write. Even the concept of references confuses some people. We've had a very hard time switching over.
.NET completely fails to fill that niche that we've been using it for (rapid GUI development). We've gone back to VB6 now, and we're keeping our eyes open for alternatives. ...and honestly, if we had to go to .NET, I'd rather switch to C#. I see no reason to have both VB .NET and C# .NET as separate languages - they're almost identical!
Then we tried moving to VB
The nice thing about VB6 was anything I wrote could be debugged by someone with a basic level of programming knowledge. The stuff we wrote in VB
Now if we only wrote desktop applications or shrinkwrapped software, I never would have suggested using VB6 in the first place, but for what we do, VB6 is a perfect fit, and VB