Fuck that. As a software developer, I refuse to work at a company that doesn't give me the right to run my machine the way I see fit.
I've seen those companies that require you to get IT for every little thing. The usual result-- IT cops a major attitude, nothing gets installed, everything breaks, and no one gets a damned thing done.
Yeah, thanks for the tip.:) Got one of those too (more or less). You don't think it's a bit interesting to see if you can get the same engine running on it and the XBox? I do, and that's what I'm gonna try to do, assuming I ever make the time.
"It allows people to write new programs for it. I could write a recipie database, a web server, or GrandTheftSpaceShuttle3000 and sell it or give it away for free."
That's why I want it. Well, not for GTSS3K, but a different program. I've had lots of fun writing stuff for the GBA, but I'm ready for a more powerful platform now. I'm looking forward to writing a hobbyist game for the XBox.
Actually, it would bother me if I had to use my fingerprint everywhere I went-- to buy groceries, go to the movies, and so on. That hasn't happened in part because it's a real pain in the ass and takes too long. But now that hand scanners and iris scanners are becoming cheap, fast, and (mostly) reliable, it's a lot more possible for large chains to use them.
"At rottentomatoes.com they say that 96% of reviewers give Minority Report a positive review. Don't listen to them."
Hmm, maybe this is just for "I told you so" value, but do you really expect us to take your word for it over 96% of the movie critics on RT (and 100% of the "Cream of the Crop")?:P
Actually, it's time to stop listening to corporate music.
Civil disobedience? I'm supposed to think it's worth risking prison so I can listen to major label music?
Maybe some of you are out in the middle of nowhere, but here near San Francisco I can find all sorts of shows, unsigned artists selling their CDs for what it cost to make them, and DJs spinning tunes off indie labels that would be thrilled to have people stream their stuff over the net.
I've stopped buying CDs from any RIAA member; hell, I basically don't buy CDs. On the one hand you clamor against the RIAA, but on the other hand you can't wean yourself from their product? Why are you encouraging artists to limit access to their work by signing with these people?
Civil disobedience? Hmm, rather than go to jail, how about I listen to Free Music. Check out somesongs.com and songfight.com for starters.
So my Tivo broke. The tech knew exactly what the problem was after I called in and waited on hold for 40 minutes, but it wasn't anywhere on their site to help me before I sat on hold for 40 minutes.
Anyway, so it's $130 to basically get a new Tivo if I ship them mine, not a horrible price compared to new Tivo prices. But he didn't really say what was wrong; I'm curious if I can just fix it myself by replacing some hardware. Might call back.
The thing that pissed me off the most is that he asked if I wanted to fork over the cash, I said I needed to think about it. Did he have a number I could call back? Some priority thing so I don't have to sit on hold 40 minutes? Nope. Fuck you, sit on hold.
Not as egregious as, say, getting the cops on you for having cable modem without cable service, but I think waiting on hold for 40 minutes is fucking ridiculous. And having to do it twice for one issue-- well, I'm looking at competitors.
Actually, it's generally the opposite. You're not likely to want to read or trust any Phil Krugman if your a Limbaugh-ite, but he wrote a rather interesting editorial contrasting Republican and Democrat billionaires.*
The upshot was that Democrat billionaires, like Ted Turner, throw a lot of cash at things like the United Nations, world hunger, etc.. Whereas Republican billionaires, such as Rev Sun Myung Moon and Richard Mellon Scaife, use their power and money to run big-time smear campaigns.
While it sounds like a slanted view, there does seem to be a lot of evidence to back it up. There's actually a lot more evidence of Republican-run smear campaigns than anything about a "liberal media". Can you imagine what kind of right-wing furor and media buzz you'd be getting if it was Gore instead of Cheney who refused to give up records he'd been ordered to turn over? If it was Clinton's dad getting the fat defense contracts, and his buddies dictating policy that led to their enrichment and Enron's collapse?
Maybe most journalists have liberal leanings, but it doesn't have nearly the impact of a well-run smear organization. The liberals are horrible at media control, and have been for some time. They need to learn to play hardball, or they'll keep getting smacked around in the papers like they have been for decades. Clinton survived on his skill and charisma, but the rest of the liberal media-feeding organization doesn't have his talent.
* I don't have the article, and it costs money. But here's a link to the summary, I hope it works; it's a funky link.
Why doesn't the media cover anything of consequence any more? At least in the American media, it appears the assumption is that we don't care about international events, and we're too stupid to understand anything of consequence domestically.
Travelgate? Filegate? Vince Foster? WTF? Those are barrel-scraping attempts to dumb something down for general consumption. How about no TV coverage of genocide in Yugoslavia for almost two years after they knew it was going on? Hell, domestic current events haven't been covered substantively on TV for a good decade or so, and not in newspapers aside from the NYTimes and Washington Post.
No, the general media nowadays has no respectability. They cover nothing of substance. When's the last time I saw a mention in the paper about a bill going through my state's legislature? I'm lucky to see a mention of a federal bill outside of the budget, Medicare, or "terrorism". Meanwhile, there are giant cover stories on last year's dog mauling.
The media is covering Watergate for two reasons. One, of course, is they think it'll sell. This is a big thing that a lot of their audience lived through.
The other, more interesting, reason is that they're covering a time when they had respectability and impact. When investigative journalist meant something other than Geraldo Rivera. When journalistic careers were made by covering big events in a dangerous foreign country, or uncovering something big in political dealings at home. Now, foreign reporters get 5 minutes a day on CNN. Domestic reporters follow the police scanner to the site of the latest rich white babynapping or Chandra Levy's remains.
Nostalgia, then. Followups on a time when they had a function other than exposing sex scandals. Why would they follow up on something current, if no one cared about it in the first place? Yes, there are still respectable reporters doing significant work. But they're quite fringe, and mostly read by academics, politicians, "experts", and the tiny portion of the population that actually cares enough to read intelligent coverage on what's going on in the world. It's enough to support two newspapers and a handful of magazines.
"Suppose you walk into a teleportation chamber, it scans you completely and creates the identical copy at the destination. Then, it destroys the original you,"
Actually, most of these philosophical questions are conveniently solved by the fact that that's not at all what happens.
The scanning process involves destroying the original. At no point in time are there two of you, and we currently have no idea of how to do something like that.
"I didn't say you couldn't offer software for free, I said it may not be possible to offer it and then *totally* walk away from it."
Right, and I was saying your analogy didn't show anything.
"As an analogy, I've released some packages under both GPL and BSD licenses. If I discover I've made some horribly wrong assumption, I can and will make a honest effort to fix it, to contact people I know are using it, etc."
Now you're discussing why you shouldn't make software public domain. In most cases, I agree.
Still, I haven't seen any real legal argument why you can't put software into the public domain. Certainly, if software is viewed as speech (and currently that depends on which judge you ask), it would be ridiculous to say you had to maintain it. And something as trivial as a "Hello, world" program could doubtless be put into the public domain completely legally.
If you're not arguing legally, but practically, I see no problem there either-- it's not too difficult to release code anonymously, which would prevent anyone from tracking you down and asking you to fix things. Even if someone were to track you down, the absence of any legal requirement to do anything would mean you could just ignore them.
If you do have an argument about why it may be illegal to place software in the public domain, I'd be curious to hear it. But it's not terribly important, as I don't plan to release any code I write in that manner anyway. Something like the GPL seems much more appealing, at least in the current ridiculous IP climate.
"I love the US class action legal system. The lawyers get paid big bucks and the consumers wind up funding a new marketing program that locks them in even tighter to the guilty party!"
The fee system for class-actions is certainly in need of reform. But until that happens, the people involved in class-action lawsuits need to be as aware as possible of what's going on, and reject settlements that don't help them or remedy the problem.
One-client situations work quite well, because a single client simply isn't going to settle for anything other than cash except in rare circumstances, and if he doesn't like the settlement, the lawyer can't force him to take it. But since class-action suits are so unwieldy, and it's very difficult to get enough of the parties to agree, the plaintiff's lawyer and the defendants now hold much more power than in your typical one-client case.
Well, here's hoping that the class-action plaintiffs stick to their guns.
"While I this is a great move by NVIDIA to increase the use of Pixel and Vertex Shader in games, is this wholly proprietary?"
Cg compiles down to OpenGL and DirectX statements, which are not proprietary. Some of the statements are recent extensions to support the kind of stuff they want to do. So, yes, other companies can support these as well. However, they might be following a target being moved around at will by Nvidia. "Oh, you don't support DirectX 9.001's new pixel puking extensions?"
It remains to be seen how it's used. Obviously, Nvidia wants to use this to sell their cards. But MS doesn't have to listen to them when designing DirectX, either. It seems to me that at the very least, it'll be faster than writing separate old-school (last week) vertex and pixel shader code for each different brand.
"You can't abandon a car, you'll eventually be tracked down and made to pay for proper disposal. Same thing with real property - you will be tracked down and hit with cleanup fees for any toxic wastes you left behind."
Yes, but I won't be hit with disposal fees if I park my car in my garage. If I leave it in the middle of the street, I will-- but guess what, I don't own the street, and nobody told me I could leave it there indefinitely. If I left the car in some guy's driveway without asking him, he'd have it towed. If I ask my friend if I can leave my car in his garage indefinitely, and he says yes and I do so, that's entirely permissable (and I would be quite shocked if someone tracked me down for disposal fees!).
Similarly, if I break into some guy's server and start offering my source code, he's going to be understandably pissed, and I'll probably be prosecuted. But if I put it up on my server, or someone else's server with permission, that's perfectly fine.
We're quite fucked if it becomes illegal to make source code freely available. If you offer a beginner's C++ tutorial on your site, do you need to have people accept a EULA and/or pay you money if they want to see the "Hello, world" example?
I don't think you're familiar with how the game is set up. You don't have to go find a random server with strangers. You set up a server and play with your friends.
Actual fun with actual people-- I'm not sure what you're saying here. My friends aren't actual people? I'm pretty sure they are, unless I'm more insane than I thought. If you're referring to lack of voice, use GameVoice/RogerWilco/TeamSound. If you're referring to not having them in person, have a LAN party!
Not allowed to "cheat"-- I don't understand at all what you're talking about here. NWN should enforce the rules much better than any DM normally would, so the problem would almost be the other way.
Single player rpg-- you seem to be forgetting that there's supposed to be a very good single player RPG in NWN. Only time will tell, of course, but that's the same as any other single player RPG.
Save games/quick to play-- how do you lose that? This is way faster than P the only limit is that your friends will expect you to play more than 10 minutes.
Actual story (usually)-- aside from what ships, there will be lots of community-released adventures, or you can make your own. You'll have more (and in many cases better) stories than what you get in your typical single player rpg.
No evil DM's to ruin game-- get a better DM!
simple math doesn't bother me/isn't hard-- wow, you're in full denial mode now. Computer-run combat is a lot faster than P&P.
I play some P&P with friends locally, but we're really looking forward to NWN. Is it going to totally replace our P&P sessions? Of course not! But getting a group of us together online with NWN and voice is going to be awesome, for different reasons than P&P is awesome.
Everyone knows there are real tradeoffs to be made between this and P&P-- no need to make up fake reasons to justify your apprehensiveness. But people are excited about this game because it's doing something totally new. Games that try something new are one in a million these days.
Good CEOs are very scarce. Good CEOs build companies and produce profits. Therefore, good CEOs are worth a lot of money.
I agree. If businesses were paying CEOs and other top management based on performance, and they made a ton of money, good for them! It works for the CEO, it works for the shareholders, everyone's happy.
But the problem is staggeringly obvious to everyone. They're NOT paid based on performance-- if so, the top figures at Enron wouldn't have made shit.
"In general, they're the best business men in the world." Yes, and that's why they end up making so much money. But if your compensation plan isn't perfect, it's easy for them to make money while the company goes down the tubes. And, like you said, they're great at business-- so they'll excel at maximizing their own return, whether or not it's in the shareholders' best interests.
Not many people complain about CEO salaries when they're riding the wave too. If someone sees a fat return on their investment in company X, they don't bitch that the CEO made a ton of cash too. But when they've invested in bullshit.com which just went out of business while the CEO made off with $200 million, they're going to complain, and rightfully so.
"CNET's review of IE6 [cnet.com] gave it a score of 7, same as Mozilla 1.0 on XP."
Yup. I think they're just one of those rare sites that uses the entire review spectrum, instead of restricting themselves to giving everything an 8, 9, or 10 (like most gaming sites).
If you look at their cell phone reviews, they're similar. They give decent cell phones 5 and 6 ratings, and good ones 7s 8s and 9s.
The article poster's idea of 7 being a C- is a bunch of crap-- do they claim that their rating of 7 is slighly below average anywhere on the site? No. 5.5 should be average; though I'd guess that their average rating is a bit higher than that.
I think people are just looking for things to bitch about. It's a good review on a major site. Could it be an 8? Sure, but even a 10 wouldn't get most casual users to download it. And it doesn't change my experience with it-- I'm loving it!
My favorite part is the "?!?!". It looks like you're expressing disbelief. How could someone with such a low username be surprised at this? Are they e-baying low user #s again?
"So NASA needs some Sustainable Computing and they spent $23million of their budget to get it. Where is the problem here?"
We give gov money. Gov gives NASA money. NASA gives SCC money. SCC develops cool software, and gives businesses a great deal on it.
Well, if corps were the only ones paying taxes, no problem. But I pay taxes, too. And here's what they claim Sustainable Computing is supposed to do: The environment we characterize as sustainable computing is one in which: Software is developed with quality, dependability and security in mind from inception, and these attributes can be accurately measured and validated Software is resilient in the face of unexpected challenges; and Developers, users, and policymakers interact based on fairness, precision, and a shared interest in the vitality and competitiveness of the software industry.
Sounds totally sweet. Sounds useful for everyone. Why not open it up?
"Is this trying to imply that all NASA software should be free?"
That argument could be made, but this is a much simpler argument. I don't want to quibble about hardware-specific software for some hacked-together satellite. The question is, should we open up broadly useful software to the people who paid for it? I say: why not? Hell, make it free for commercial use. Here's the SCC's argument again: "Recent estimates suggest that defective software accounted for 45% of computer downtime and cost U.S. companies over $100 billion annually".
Okay. They claim it's very important to the entire U.S.. Well guess who paid for it: that's right, everyone. So give it to us already! I could care less about some hardware-specific code for some hacked-together satellite; quibble about that amongst yourselves. But "improvements in software quality and security" would benefit everyone. If they're not going to hand it out for free, cut out the corporate welfare and make them develop their own damned software-- maybe then these things would get developed in the private sector, and NASA could get it a hell of a lot cheaper.
"A few years ago (and yes, this is turning into a ramble, so what?), I and many others were waiting for the (next) big "Privacy Chernobyl" to hit, because surely that would be the one to make people wake up."
That's an interesting bit of speculation-- what exactly would we have to do to make the next Privacy Chernobyl? Something legitimate, that pissed off millions of people and made them feel totally violated. And of course, make sure they knew we got all of their information from, say, yahoo.
He said his company had built defensive measures into its products that would make them invulnerable to such an attack. However, he said he was unwilling to be specific about the nature of the security system, because such information would be valuable to someone who was attempting to break the security of the Atmel smart cards.
Great! They've solved the problem by adding a thin layer of obscurity! I feel secure now.
Slashdot Mirror
Fuck that. As a software developer, I refuse to work at a company that doesn't give me the right to run my machine the way I see fit.
I've seen those companies that require you to get IT for every little thing. The usual result-- IT cops a major attitude, nothing gets installed, everything breaks, and no one gets a damned thing done.
Yeah, thanks for the tip. :) Got one of those too (more or less). You don't think it's a bit interesting to see if you can get the same engine running on it and the XBox? I do, and that's what I'm gonna try to do, assuming I ever make the time.
"It allows people to write new programs for it. I could write a recipie database, a web server, or GrandTheftSpaceShuttle3000 and sell it or give it away for free."
That's why I want it. Well, not for GTSS3K, but a different program. I've had lots of fun writing stuff for the GBA, but I'm ready for a more powerful platform now. I'm looking forward to writing a hobbyist game for the XBox.
Actually, it would bother me if I had to use my fingerprint everywhere I went-- to buy groceries, go to the movies, and so on. That hasn't happened in part because it's a real pain in the ass and takes too long. But now that hand scanners and iris scanners are becoming cheap, fast, and (mostly) reliable, it's a lot more possible for large chains to use them.
"At rottentomatoes.com they say that 96% of reviewers give Minority Report a positive review. Don't listen to them."
:P
Hmm, maybe this is just for "I told you so" value, but do you really expect us to take your word for it over 96% of the movie critics on RT (and 100% of the "Cream of the Crop")?
Actually, it's time to stop listening to corporate music.
Civil disobedience? I'm supposed to think it's worth risking prison so I can listen to major label music?
Maybe some of you are out in the middle of nowhere, but here near San Francisco I can find all sorts of shows, unsigned artists selling their CDs for what it cost to make them, and DJs spinning tunes off indie labels that would be thrilled to have people stream their stuff over the net.
I've stopped buying CDs from any RIAA member; hell, I basically don't buy CDs. On the one hand you clamor against the RIAA, but on the other hand you can't wean yourself from their product? Why are you encouraging artists to limit access to their work by signing with these people?
Civil disobedience? Hmm, rather than go to jail, how about I listen to Free Music. Check out somesongs.com and songfight.com for starters.
So my Tivo broke. The tech knew exactly what the problem was after I called in and waited on hold for 40 minutes, but it wasn't anywhere on their site to help me before I sat on hold for 40 minutes.
Anyway, so it's $130 to basically get a new Tivo if I ship them mine, not a horrible price compared to new Tivo prices. But he didn't really say what was wrong; I'm curious if I can just fix it myself by replacing some hardware. Might call back.
The thing that pissed me off the most is that he asked if I wanted to fork over the cash, I said I needed to think about it. Did he have a number I could call back? Some priority thing so I don't have to sit on hold 40 minutes? Nope. Fuck you, sit on hold.
Not as egregious as, say, getting the cops on you for having cable modem without cable service, but I think waiting on hold for 40 minutes is fucking ridiculous. And having to do it twice for one issue-- well, I'm looking at competitors.
If you want to engage in rational debate, get a nick and cut the personal attacks. If you just want to hear yourself talk, by all means, flame on.
" I'm sure they're out there, but I don't personally know anyone who codes much client-side Java anymore"
Hey!
:)
Windows-only, but that's what we're talking about here. Write once, run anywhere my ass.
Actually, it's generally the opposite. You're not likely to want to read or trust any Phil Krugman if your a Limbaugh-ite, but he wrote a rather interesting editorial contrasting Republican and Democrat billionaires.*
The upshot was that Democrat billionaires, like Ted Turner, throw a lot of cash at things like the United Nations, world hunger, etc.. Whereas Republican billionaires, such as Rev Sun Myung Moon and Richard Mellon Scaife, use their power and money to run big-time smear campaigns.
While it sounds like a slanted view, there does seem to be a lot of evidence to back it up. There's actually a lot more evidence of Republican-run smear campaigns than anything about a "liberal media". Can you imagine what kind of right-wing furor and media buzz you'd be getting if it was Gore instead of Cheney who refused to give up records he'd been ordered to turn over? If it was Clinton's dad getting the fat defense contracts, and his buddies dictating policy that led to their enrichment and Enron's collapse?
Maybe most journalists have liberal leanings, but it doesn't have nearly the impact of a well-run smear organization. The liberals are horrible at media control, and have been for some time. They need to learn to play hardball, or they'll keep getting smacked around in the papers like they have been for decades. Clinton survived on his skill and charisma, but the rest of the liberal media-feeding organization doesn't have his talent.
* I don't have the article, and it costs money. But here's a link to the summary, I hope it works; it's a funky link.
Why doesn't the media cover anything of consequence any more? At least in the American media, it appears the assumption is that we don't care about international events, and we're too stupid to understand anything of consequence domestically.
Travelgate? Filegate? Vince Foster? WTF? Those are barrel-scraping attempts to dumb something down for general consumption. How about no TV coverage of genocide in Yugoslavia for almost two years after they knew it was going on? Hell, domestic current events haven't been covered substantively on TV for a good decade or so, and not in newspapers aside from the NYTimes and Washington Post.
No, the general media nowadays has no respectability. They cover nothing of substance. When's the last time I saw a mention in the paper about a bill going through my state's legislature? I'm lucky to see a mention of a federal bill outside of the budget, Medicare, or "terrorism". Meanwhile, there are giant cover stories on last year's dog mauling.
The media is covering Watergate for two reasons. One, of course, is they think it'll sell. This is a big thing that a lot of their audience lived through.
The other, more interesting, reason is that they're covering a time when they had respectability and impact. When investigative journalist meant something other than Geraldo Rivera. When journalistic careers were made by covering big events in a dangerous foreign country, or uncovering something big in political dealings at home. Now, foreign reporters get 5 minutes a day on CNN. Domestic reporters follow the police scanner to the site of the latest rich white babynapping or Chandra Levy's remains.
Nostalgia, then. Followups on a time when they had a function other than exposing sex scandals. Why would they follow up on something current, if no one cared about it in the first place? Yes, there are still respectable reporters doing significant work. But they're quite fringe, and mostly read by academics, politicians, "experts", and the tiny portion of the population that actually cares enough to read intelligent coverage on what's going on in the world. It's enough to support two newspapers and a handful of magazines.
"Suppose you walk into a teleportation chamber, it scans you completely and creates the identical copy at the destination. Then, it destroys the original you,"
Actually, most of these philosophical questions are conveniently solved by the fact that that's not at all what happens.
The scanning process involves destroying the original. At no point in time are there two of you, and we currently have no idea of how to do something like that.
"I didn't say you couldn't offer software for free, I said it may not be possible to offer it and then *totally* walk away from it."
Right, and I was saying your analogy didn't show anything.
"As an analogy, I've released some packages under both GPL and BSD licenses. If I discover I've made some horribly wrong assumption, I can and will make a honest effort to fix it, to contact people I know are using it, etc."
Now you're discussing why you shouldn't make software public domain. In most cases, I agree.
Still, I haven't seen any real legal argument why you can't put software into the public domain. Certainly, if software is viewed as speech (and currently that depends on which judge you ask), it would be ridiculous to say you had to maintain it. And something as trivial as a "Hello, world" program could doubtless be put into the public domain completely legally.
If you're not arguing legally, but practically, I see no problem there either-- it's not too difficult to release code anonymously, which would prevent anyone from tracking you down and asking you to fix things. Even if someone were to track you down, the absence of any legal requirement to do anything would mean you could just ignore them.
If you do have an argument about why it may be illegal to place software in the public domain, I'd be curious to hear it. But it's not terribly important, as I don't plan to release any code I write in that manner anyway. Something like the GPL seems much more appealing, at least in the current ridiculous IP climate.
"I love the US class action legal system. The lawyers get paid big bucks and the consumers wind up funding a new marketing program that locks them in even tighter to the guilty party!"
The fee system for class-actions is certainly in need of reform. But until that happens, the people involved in class-action lawsuits need to be as aware as possible of what's going on, and reject settlements that don't help them or remedy the problem.
One-client situations work quite well, because a single client simply isn't going to settle for anything other than cash except in rare circumstances, and if he doesn't like the settlement, the lawyer can't force him to take it. But since class-action suits are so unwieldy, and it's very difficult to get enough of the parties to agree, the plaintiff's lawyer and the defendants now hold much more power than in your typical one-client case.
Well, here's hoping that the class-action plaintiffs stick to their guns.
"While I this is a great move by NVIDIA to increase the use of Pixel and Vertex Shader in games, is this wholly proprietary?"
Cg compiles down to OpenGL and DirectX statements, which are not proprietary. Some of the statements are recent extensions to support the kind of stuff they want to do. So, yes, other companies can support these as well. However, they might be following a target being moved around at will by Nvidia. "Oh, you don't support DirectX 9.001's new pixel puking extensions?"
It remains to be seen how it's used. Obviously, Nvidia wants to use this to sell their cards. But MS doesn't have to listen to them when designing DirectX, either. It seems to me that at the very least, it'll be faster than writing separate old-school (last week) vertex and pixel shader code for each different brand.
"You can't abandon a car, you'll eventually be tracked down and made to pay for proper disposal. Same thing with real property - you will be tracked down and hit with cleanup fees for any toxic wastes you left behind."
Yes, but I won't be hit with disposal fees if I park my car in my garage. If I leave it in the middle of the street, I will-- but guess what, I don't own the street, and nobody told me I could leave it there indefinitely. If I left the car in some guy's driveway without asking him, he'd have it towed. If I ask my friend if I can leave my car in his garage indefinitely, and he says yes and I do so, that's entirely permissable (and I would be quite shocked if someone tracked me down for disposal fees!).
Similarly, if I break into some guy's server and start offering my source code, he's going to be understandably pissed, and I'll probably be prosecuted. But if I put it up on my server, or someone else's server with permission, that's perfectly fine.
We're quite fucked if it becomes illegal to make source code freely available. If you offer a beginner's C++ tutorial on your site, do you need to have people accept a EULA and/or pay you money if they want to see the "Hello, world" example?
I don't think you're familiar with how the game is set up. You don't have to go find a random server with strangers. You set up a server and play with your friends.
Actual fun with actual people-- I'm not sure what you're saying here. My friends aren't actual people? I'm pretty sure they are, unless I'm more insane than I thought. If you're referring to lack of voice, use GameVoice/RogerWilco/TeamSound. If you're referring to not having them in person, have a LAN party!
Not allowed to "cheat"-- I don't understand at all what you're talking about here. NWN should enforce the rules much better than any DM normally would, so the problem would almost be the other way.
Single player rpg-- you seem to be forgetting that there's supposed to be a very good single player RPG in NWN. Only time will tell, of course, but that's the same as any other single player RPG.
Save games/quick to play-- how do you lose that? This is way faster than P the only limit is that your friends will expect you to play more than 10 minutes.
Actual story (usually)-- aside from what ships, there will be lots of community-released adventures, or you can make your own. You'll have more (and in many cases better) stories than what you get in your typical single player rpg.
No evil DM's to ruin game-- get a better DM!
simple math doesn't bother me/isn't hard-- wow, you're in full denial mode now. Computer-run combat is a lot faster than P&P.
I play some P&P with friends locally, but we're really looking forward to NWN. Is it going to totally replace our P&P sessions? Of course not! But getting a group of us together online with NWN and voice is going to be awesome, for different reasons than P&P is awesome.
Everyone knows there are real tradeoffs to be made between this and P&P-- no need to make up fake reasons to justify your apprehensiveness. But people are excited about this game because it's doing something totally new. Games that try something new are one in a million these days.
Don't worry. Given the standard computer game release cycle, you'll likely get the Linux version around the time the game finally becomes playable.
Good CEOs are very scarce. Good CEOs build companies and produce profits. Therefore, good CEOs are worth a lot of money.
I agree. If businesses were paying CEOs and other top management based on performance, and they made a ton of money, good for them! It works for the CEO, it works for the shareholders, everyone's happy.
But the problem is staggeringly obvious to everyone. They're NOT paid based on performance-- if so, the top figures at Enron wouldn't have made shit.
"In general, they're the best business men in the world." Yes, and that's why they end up making so much money. But if your compensation plan isn't perfect, it's easy for them to make money while the company goes down the tubes. And, like you said, they're great at business-- so they'll excel at maximizing their own return, whether or not it's in the shareholders' best interests.
Not many people complain about CEO salaries when they're riding the wave too. If someone sees a fat return on their investment in company X, they don't bitch that the CEO made a ton of cash too. But when they've invested in bullshit.com which just went out of business while the CEO made off with $200 million, they're going to complain, and rightfully so.
"CNET's review of IE6 [cnet.com] gave it a score of 7, same as Mozilla 1.0 on XP."
Yup. I think they're just one of those rare sites that uses the entire review spectrum, instead of restricting themselves to giving everything an 8, 9, or 10 (like most gaming sites).
If you look at their cell phone reviews, they're similar. They give decent cell phones 5 and 6 ratings, and good ones 7s 8s and 9s.
The article poster's idea of 7 being a C- is a bunch of crap-- do they claim that their rating of 7 is slighly below average anywhere on the site? No. 5.5 should be average; though I'd guess that their average rating is a bit higher than that.
I think people are just looking for things to bitch about. It's a good review on a major site. Could it be an 8? Sure, but even a 10 wouldn't get most casual users to download it. And it doesn't change my experience with it-- I'm loving it!
Why is it ironic?
"Political Bias on Slashdot?!?!"
My favorite part is the "?!?!". It looks like you're expressing disbelief. How could someone with such a low username be surprised at this? Are they e-baying low user #s again?
"So NASA needs some Sustainable Computing and they spent $23million of their budget to get it. Where is the problem here?"
We give gov money. Gov gives NASA money. NASA gives SCC money. SCC develops cool software, and gives businesses a great deal on it.
Well, if corps were the only ones paying taxes, no problem. But I pay taxes, too. And here's what they claim Sustainable Computing is supposed to do:
The environment we characterize as sustainable computing is one in which:
Software is developed with quality, dependability and security in mind from inception, and these attributes can be accurately measured and validated
Software is resilient in the face of unexpected challenges; and
Developers, users, and policymakers interact based on fairness, precision, and a shared interest in the vitality and competitiveness of the software industry.
Sounds totally sweet. Sounds useful for everyone. Why not open it up?
"Is this trying to imply that all NASA software should be free?"
That argument could be made, but this is a much simpler argument. I don't want to quibble about hardware-specific software for some hacked-together satellite. The question is, should we open up broadly useful software to the people who paid for it? I say: why not? Hell, make it free for commercial use. Here's the SCC's argument again: "Recent estimates suggest that defective software accounted for 45% of computer downtime and cost U.S. companies over $100 billion annually".
Okay. They claim it's very important to the entire U.S.. Well guess who paid for it: that's right, everyone. So give it to us already! I could care less about some hardware-specific code for some hacked-together satellite; quibble about that amongst yourselves. But "improvements in software quality and security" would benefit everyone. If they're not going to hand it out for free, cut out the corporate welfare and make them develop their own damned software-- maybe then these things would get developed in the private sector, and NASA could get it a hell of a lot cheaper.
"A few years ago (and yes, this is turning into a ramble, so what?), I and many others were waiting for the (next) big "Privacy Chernobyl" to hit, because surely that would be the one to make people wake up."
That's an interesting bit of speculation-- what exactly would we have to do to make the next Privacy Chernobyl? Something legitimate, that pissed off millions of people and made them feel totally violated. And of course, make sure they knew we got all of their information from, say, yahoo.
From the article:
"We've already looked at this area."
He said his company had built defensive measures into its products that would make them invulnerable to such an attack. However, he said he was unwilling to be specific about the nature of the security system, because such information would be valuable to someone who was attempting to break the security of the Atmel smart cards.
Great! They've solved the problem by adding a thin layer of obscurity! I feel secure now.