Let the governments buy the machines, and then hack them so Mickey Mouse (or some other fictional character) wins the presidental election in a landslide. Prove beyond a doubt to even the dullest mind that these machines are flawed in ways that can not be easily fixed.
Owner wanted to be seen as a player in the dot com age.
Had a lead programmer who lied about everything.
Had a side business which most likely wasn't on the up and up.
Went though 3 mid-range managers cause he felt he knew better than they how to get the job done.
Big roaches everywhere.
A block down the street from the women's state prison.
Refused to listen to his employees.
Spent his father's fortune to promote his business, not having a clue how to do it.
Ruined relationships with his brother, father, and friends over his vision and management style.
Rented high end hardware without any reason (I guess he wanted to know if the Java program 'Hello World' would run on an AS/400
The product was to place the warehouse DB on the internet without any safeguards or protection.
He'd ask about how long something would take, I'd say "4 weeks", he'd say "tomorrow" and mean it.
Computer illiterate
Found out I was part of the 4th team working on this project- 4 complete re-writes!
Our company web site was voted 'Worst of the Web' twice in one week. That was one of our 'award winning designs' promoted in our products.
Everything else that everyone else can think of.
In the end, I lasted 9 months, which was way too long for me. On the plus side, I got to know a few good people (nothing like friendship forged under fire), and have a war story that is hard to beat. Last I heard about the owner is he is now a spammer.
Sadly the one person who knew everything and anything about Science Fiction past away two years ago. He did have this to say about the music / lyrics for Star Trek: No. Those are the lyrics that Gene Roddenberry whipped out in a few minutes and pasted on top of Alexander Courage's music before he sent the material over for registration; by doing this, he was able to claim co-writer credit on the music, and nab 50% of the royalties for said music. So, no; the lyrics are not for real, they're just something that got slapped in, placed on file, and allowed Roddenberry to grab off half of Alexander Courage's money.
SINCE you asked.
Still miss the 'ld Brain in a Jar that was Gharlane of Eddore.
Do you really want to see what these girls look like at HDTV resolutions? (Wall Street Journal had an excellent article about how broadcastors are having a hard time dealing with the way people look on screen, IE, Not Good. These are the men and women of soap operas, lord help us with porn stars).
A RTS game and FPS game are two very different beasts, and how the AI acts in those types of games can either kill the game play or make the gmaer keep coming back.
One thought on this subject is that the game should know what the objectives are and allow the AI engine figure out the best way to achive the goal (as in RTS), which could generate interesting and unpredictable game play. Back when I was playing C&C, I quickly figured out that the AI could not deal with walls very well, which was a very simple solution to do a land grab by building walls everywhere.
For FPS, AI should control each monster / enemy and allow them to work as a team. A few games do this, but I don't think we'll see real inteligence until 64bit CPUs are more common and there are enough spare CPU cycles to compute their actions.
Another thought is to have the AI improve the more you play the game and allow the game the ability to learn from you as much as you learn from the game. But somehow I don't think we'd allow the game to spend the night analizing a few hours of Quake III playing just so the next time it can kick our ass...
With global communication so simple and easy, this only makes sense.
I'm honestly suprised that when movie companies green-light a project, they don't have the script translated and the sub-titles / voice overs ready for final production.
Matrix III was the first to do this, hopefully not the last.
Ah, the beauty of ADX- I own the Dreamcast version of the game and riped it to my HD, just so I could pull the songs out (plus all of my other DC games), and found that it's a pain to stich the music back together again. You see, they have about five or six ways they can play the music (I guess based on how well you are doing?)- so you have a huge amount of music files which turn out to be parts of the song. Cool to see it work though...
Other Sega games that have incredible musc: Crazy Taxi, I and II Ecco, starting back with the Sega CD version by Mark Nelson, up to the DC version. Rez MSR Mr. Bones (Saturn)
I work for a fairly large HMO in Boston, won't name any names to protect the guilty here, but I have to say that both SQL DBs and Access DBs are used in production or as front ends.
For the love of god and all the is good, teach SQL, not Access. Part of my job is to convert all the Access DBs into front ends and the designs that I see every day are nightmare-ish at best. General design concepts and best-particies are not followed at all, and forget about transactional controls or any sort of secuirty.
I'd ask the IT Department the following question: Pretend that you are a bank and you have to move $10 Million dollars from account A to account B. You run the following steps. Subtract money from account A. Add the money to account B. Now what if the power goes out inbetween the steps? Now what if the DB is Access?
I used to work for a company called Epsilon Data Management[1], in Burlington MA. They've been bought since I left them a while ago, but they where the keeper of AmEx customer transaction database for data mining and direct marketing (junk mail and phone calls). Big. 7 data silos big. Each silo holds 50k tapes, each tape was 30gb, and it usually took 4 days to load.
[1] Epsilon was originally an AmEx division, which was spun off to keep other customers happy (banks and other CC companies).
I used to do PC repairs for this guy who had the support contract for a local coal mine. The coal mine owned a bunch of IBM PS/2 model 60s and 80s which where down the shaft, and their job was to record the incoming coal trains with the load information (ran coax back to the shaft). I had to open them a few times and I learned after the first time to wear clothes that I didn't care about since the coal dust was everywhere. Power supplies where stuffed, about 4 inches of the crap on every surface inside the case. Everything still worked though, and after a good cleaning I'd return the system to the mine and someone else would take it back down.
But how does the GLP play in other courts of law- outside of the US jurdiction. And if they happen to take a stand on the GPL which is different than the US legal view, how would that effect all of the work done under the GPL?
To take this question to the next step, I'd also have to wonder how it would be played out in the political realm.
A bonus is nice, and certainly would be welcomed, but if you offer a 401(k)[1], put a huge hunk of the money into that.
[1] If you don't, why not? Mutual companies do offer very simple 401(k) plans with low administration fees, and you could just offer a few index funds.
Plus, you have to remember that there's a good chance any random judge will have SCO or one of it's alliances somewhere in their investment portfolio.
Which is why judges have to fill out forms stating which companies they own stocks in every year (and made public). It's called a conflict of interest, and is grounds to have a judge removed from a case by either party to the suite. This is also why there are 'blind trusts' which are in effect a black box- neither party (the judge and the investment company) knows who the other person is, thus limiting any chance of corruption; real or imagined.
I'd suggest that you listen to NPR's Nina Totenberg'sarchives so you have some idea on how the courts work.
That in the end the game system is the same: Do x to get y OR Kill n monsters to level up.
So in the end, you're doing highly receptivity tasks for less and less return. This is not to say that these types of tasks don't have a place in the game play (or in real life either, you don't start out as an Karate black belt and must practice to perform better and better, but after a while, you've done it all and your skill doesn't rise - a gross simplification, but a useful one).
Where I think these games fail is in team building and community building. Most of these games have falling into this trap, and I think the industry is waking up to this fact and are trying to actively advoid it by designing new adventures (content) which focus on the players and their interaction with each other.
I actually think that W:ET has the right idea with XP increases, you can level up quickly in your class, after that, your skills are how fast you can 'twitch' and shoot (and that it is TEAM based! and Yes there is kill to level up, but these are limited (But I hate the run the clock down theme there, but I'm digressing!)).
It doesn't allow for mobs to tear the spammers limb from limb, lynching, or any other fun group activities.
(Grim) Humor aside, the only thing that I can see this doing is forcing spammers to move off shore, open shell companies in spam havens, and generally make things harder to do.
Hate to say it, but I think it is time to move beyond email.
The plastic was called Star[something] - and the inventor was a Brittish man who came up with the idea after seeing a news report on an airline cabin fire that killed a large number of people.
If I am recalling this correctly, the stuff was made from recyled plastics, which he 'blended' in a blender in his kitchen.
Slashdot Mirror
Let the governments buy the machines, and then hack them so Mickey Mouse (or some other fictional character) wins the presidental election in a landslide. Prove beyond a doubt to even the dullest mind that these machines are flawed in ways that can not be easily fixed.
In the end, I lasted 9 months, which was way too long for me. On the plus side, I got to know a few good people (nothing like friendship forged under fire), and have a war story that is hard to beat.
Last I heard about the owner is he is now a spammer.
Maybe I've said too much....
Band and Olufsen phones have the scroll wheel for a while too.
http://www.bang-olufsen.com/sw1623.asp
Sadly the one person who knew everything and anything about Science Fiction past away two years ago. He did have this to say about the music / lyrics for Star Trek:
No. Those are the lyrics that Gene Roddenberry whipped out in a
few minutes and pasted on top of Alexander Courage's music before
he sent the material over for registration; by doing this, he was
able to claim co-writer credit on the music, and nab 50% of the
royalties for said music. So, no; the lyrics are not for real,
they're just something that got slapped in, placed on file, and
allowed Roddenberry to grab off half of Alexander Courage's money.
SINCE you asked.
Still miss the 'ld Brain in a Jar that was Gharlane of Eddore.
Thank god.
As May West would say, 'Too much of a good thing is still too much.' and that's where the Star Trek shows have ended up being- too much.
I haven't caught much of this year's seasion, really don't care one way or the other, but then again, I feel the same way about most of TV.
I remember reading about it in People Magazine back in the 1980s that Star Wars was going to be 9 eps. long.
However, after seeing 1 & 2 and the 'enhanced versions', I wonder if GL shouldn't let it go.
Simply make the program follow the laws as stated?
Not really hard to do?
Do you really want to see what these girls look like at HDTV resolutions?
(Wall Street Journal had an excellent article about how broadcastors are having a hard time dealing with the way people look on screen, IE, Not Good. These are the men and women of soap operas, lord help us with porn stars).
While not an ad outright, they did mimic the Marboro logo too closely on billboards along the race course, and ended up losing a law suite.
A RTS game and FPS game are two very different beasts, and how the AI acts in those types of games can either kill the game play or make the gmaer keep coming back.
One thought on this subject is that the game should know what the objectives are and allow the AI engine figure out the best way to achive the goal (as in RTS), which could generate interesting and unpredictable game play. Back when I was playing C&C, I quickly figured out that the AI could not deal with walls very well, which was a very simple solution to do a land grab by building walls everywhere.
For FPS, AI should control each monster / enemy and allow them to work as a team. A few games do this, but I don't think we'll see real inteligence until 64bit CPUs are more common and there are enough spare CPU cycles to compute their actions.
Another thought is to have the AI improve the more you play the game and allow the game the ability to learn from you as much as you learn from the game. But somehow I don't think we'd allow the game to spend the night analizing a few hours of Quake III playing just so the next time it can kick our ass...
With global communication so simple and easy, this only makes sense.
I'm honestly suprised that when movie companies green-light a project, they don't have the script translated and the sub-titles / voice overs ready for final production.
Matrix III was the first to do this, hopefully not the last.
Ah, the beauty of ADX- I own the Dreamcast version of the game and riped it to my HD, just so I could pull the songs out (plus all of my other DC games), and found that it's a pain to stich the music back together again. You see, they have about five or six ways they can play the music (I guess based on how well you are doing?)- so you have a huge amount of music files which turn out to be parts of the song. Cool to see it work though...
Other Sega games that have incredible musc:
Crazy Taxi, I and II
Ecco, starting back with the Sega CD version by Mark Nelson, up to the DC version.
Rez
MSR
Mr. Bones (Saturn)
I work for a fairly large HMO in Boston, won't name any names to protect the guilty here, but I have to say that both SQL DBs and Access DBs are used in production or as front ends.
For the love of god and all the is good, teach SQL, not Access. Part of my job is to convert all the Access DBs into front ends and the designs that I see every day are nightmare-ish at best. General design concepts and best-particies are not followed at all, and forget about transactional controls or any sort of secuirty.
I'd ask the IT Department the following question:
Pretend that you are a bank and you have to move $10 Million dollars from account A to account B. You run the following steps.
Subtract money from account A.
Add the money to account B.
Now what if the power goes out inbetween the steps?
Now what if the DB is Access?
I used to work for a company called Epsilon Data Management[1], in Burlington MA. They've been bought since I left them a while ago, but they where the keeper of AmEx customer transaction database for data mining and direct marketing (junk mail and phone calls).
Big. 7 data silos big. Each silo holds 50k tapes, each tape was 30gb, and it usually took 4 days to load.
[1] Epsilon was originally an AmEx division, which was spun off to keep other customers happy (banks and other CC companies).
I used to do PC repairs for this guy who had the support contract for a local coal mine.
The coal mine owned a bunch of IBM PS/2 model 60s and 80s which where down the shaft, and their job was to record the incoming coal trains with the load information (ran coax back to the shaft).
I had to open them a few times and I learned after the first time to wear clothes that I didn't care about since the coal dust was everywhere. Power supplies where stuffed, about 4 inches of the crap on every surface inside the case.
Everything still worked though, and after a good cleaning I'd return the system to the mine and someone else would take it back down.
But how does the GLP play in other courts of law- outside of the US jurdiction.
And if they happen to take a stand on the GPL which is different than the US legal view, how would that effect all of the work done under the GPL?
To take this question to the next step, I'd also have to wonder how it would be played out in the political realm.
A bonus is nice, and certainly would be welcomed, but if you offer a 401(k)[1], put a huge hunk of the money into that.
[1] If you don't, why not? Mutual companies do offer very simple 401(k) plans with low administration fees, and you could just offer a few index funds.
Stunned.
Hats off to the guy for the game. I should pass it around the office... Or not and keep my job!
Which is why judges have to fill out forms stating which companies they own stocks in every year (and made public). It's called a conflict of interest, and is grounds to have a judge removed from a case by either party to the suite.
This is also why there are 'blind trusts' which are in effect a black box- neither party (the judge and the investment company) knows who the other person is, thus limiting any chance of corruption; real or imagined.
I'd suggest that you listen to NPR's Nina Totenberg's archives so you have some idea on how the courts work.
So I'll just spend another $45 for a good heat gun to melt off the epoxy.
Shit, did I just break the DMCA?
Wolfenstien:Enemy Terrority.
That in the end the game system is the same:
Do x to get y
OR
Kill n monsters to level up.
So in the end, you're doing highly receptivity tasks for less and less return. This is not to say that these types of tasks don't have a place in the game play (or in real life either, you don't start out as an Karate black belt and must practice to perform better and better, but after a while, you've done it all and your skill doesn't rise - a gross simplification, but a useful one).
Where I think these games fail is in team building and community building.
Most of these games have falling into this trap, and I think the industry is waking up to this fact and are trying to actively advoid it by designing new adventures (content) which focus on the players and their interaction with each other.
I actually think that W:ET has the right idea with XP increases, you can level up quickly in your class, after that, your skills are how fast you can 'twitch' and shoot (and that it is TEAM based! and Yes there is kill to level up, but these are limited (But I hate the run the clock down theme there, but I'm digressing!)).
It doesn't allow for mobs to tear the spammers limb from limb, lynching, or any other fun group activities.
(Grim) Humor aside, the only thing that I can see this doing is forcing spammers to move off shore, open shell companies in spam havens, and generally make things harder to do.
Hate to say it, but I think it is time to move beyond email.
From Microsoft's site I was getting a full 1066k for the download. 3 mintues tops for the whole thing.
The plastic was called Star[something] - and the inventor was a Brittish man who came up with the idea after seeing a news report on an airline cabin fire that killed a large number of people.
If I am recalling this correctly, the stuff was made from recyled plastics, which he 'blended' in a blender in his kitchen.