I've been using click to view since I first heard about it a few months or so ago. It's just awesome-- there's no more useful extension out there for casual web browsing. You have no excuse not to run it.
"A printed record of your vote is NOT acceptable, and NEVER will be. This comes up on Slashdot every week. Any record of who you voted for allows fraud and buying of votes."
I fail to see how that is possible if the voter is not allowed to leave with the record. One good, recent implementation printed the record (which included a voting record, but not the voter's name) behind a glass shield, which the voter could read it through. Once they approved it (or, I'd imagine, after some time out period-- I don't remember all the fine points), it went into a sealed box. So that it, conveniently, served as an auditable paper trail.
I don't see how that's any different from the current optical scan ballot; the record is much more easily human-readable, but it's still just a slip of paper indicating voting preferences that goes into a box.
"Free trade does work out well, but the problem is that it does involve both winners and losers, in the short term.... What was true 200 years ago is still true today: protectionism ends up leaving us all poorer."
Absolutely. Which is why we need a moderated approach that embraces the long-term benefits of free trade, but doesn't leave tens or hundreds of thousands of unemployed totally in the lurch.
It should be no surprise that some politicians are protectionist-- after all, they're elected to represent the people, and a lot of people stand to lose from outsourcing. A guy who's 55 and loses his entire sector to outsourcing might not care too much about the long-term benefits to people in other sectors and age groups-- he, entirely rationally from a self-interest point of view, will be quite upset with the movement of jobs overseas.
We could try strategies to slow down outsourcing, or at least to reap some money from it-- why are outsourcing costs tax deductible, for example? We could offer job training programs or tax incentives. There are numerous other strategies for mitigating the short-term pain of outsourcing, and we certainly need to do so.
Unfortunately, this issue is sufficiently charged that people who attempt to take moderate stances are often accused of protectionism, worker abandonment, or both simultaneously.
What I think is odd is that it takes so long for people to arrive at the obvious solutions: optical scan, or electronic voting with a printed record that the voter can review before leaving.
California has gradually come around to that way of thinking, over the protests of everyone responsible for buying an expensive, fraud-inviting, paperless e-voting machine. So now, barring anything unexpected, in 2006 they'll be great.
I guess that's the point of bureacracy-- slow down anything-- but it's still frustrating to see the long, slow process and the numerous small missteps.
What problems are you having? All our scripts execute at a well-defined stage in the pipeline, so race conditions and other tricky situations are nearly nonexistent. For the standard bugs, we get all the usual stuff and then some (better data monitoring and modification on the fly, although we don't get code edit and continue).
I can't off the top of my head think of anything that'd be easier to debug in C++ than script in our game, but perhaps there's a class of problems I'm not considering.
"It seems like there just aren't enough gamers interested in paying a monthly subscription to make it profitable for game makers."
Evidence seems to point to entirely the opposite conclusion. There's a massive glut of extremely similar games, and most of them are still succeeding to some degree (EQ, AO, DAoC, AC, SWG...). The fact that they don't even have to branch out to be successful makes MM games look like safer ripoffs that RTS used to be.
Take into consideration that this is a new genre, and with new genres people fuck up a lot at first, and they're doing pretty well. There are giant piles of money to be made once people figure out how to make these games well (and, well, they're already making giant piles of money now).
URU simply demonstrates that (pick one): a) URU Live was marketed so poorly that many people didn't even know it was part of the game b) URU Live didn't add enough to the regular game to bother paying for c) The people who buy URU aren't interested in online play d) all of the above
Actually, the problem with the XBox is that no one has one. If XBox Next were backwards compatible, how much would that really expand its library? Not much.
No, what they really need to do is make XBox Next backwards compatible with PS2.
"It's limiting government spending on stuff that can be covered better by others (like charity and welfare) and on stupid things (like research to tell us people who's parachutes don't open have a high risk of death)."
Ah, NOW I get it! Conservative doctrine supports not spending money on stupid things; liberal doctrine suggests spending money on the dumbest shit possible. Man, I'm gonna become conservative!
Wait, hold on a minute. I just talked to my liberal friend. He says liberal means helping the children, while conservative means hurting the children. Well, I'm no child-beater. I guess that makes me a liberal. But then I have to spend money on stupid things! Isn't there some alternative?
"Why was everybody turned off by the philosophy and world building in Reloaded/Revolutions?"
I was turned off by the two because I loved the fun philosophy in Reloaded, and the action in Revolutions. But Reloaded was a bore, and Revolutions had no intellectual content. Move some of the action into Reloaded, put more universe development into Revolutions (and ditch the crappy dialog-- "I'm scared, Trin"-- and the overused Christ symbols), and you've got a pair of well balanced movies. As it is, I've got Cola syrup in one cup, and soda water in another. What am I supposed to do, mix them?
Hmm, that could work.:) Phantom edit, cut the two decent films (they clearly weren't terrible, just disappointing after the amazing first one) into two good films.
No kidding. "Finally, the big guys are getting involved!"
Awesome. Replace the guys selling interesting, smaller time music (emusic, mp3.com) with people selling the same recycled top 40 crap.
Walmart getting into online music distribution? Finally; it's been so hard to find the latest Blink 182 album around here! I rejoice!
Bleah. The only possible upside is, as you said, artists cutting out the middle men. With a dedicated enough following, it might work out. The big labels still control most of the promotional channels.
Actually, pretty much everyone's saying Reloaded and Revolutions suck. If you're saying it'll get even worse in 5 years, I guess then people will say they really suck? Suck or really suck doesn't make much of a difference to me-- either one's in the "don't see it" category.
"The sales numbers for the Xbox and Game Cube are fairly comparable; however, the PS2, which was backwards compatible with the PS1, blows them both out of the water."
I disagree-- I'm pretty sure it's the blue LED that's responsible for the PS2's popularity.
"I guarantee that somewhere in some license agreement the users gave AOL permission to do this."
Indeed, but license agreements are highly restricted. You can't just put anything you want in there and expect it to hold up when you're hauled off to court. Kevorkian had them press the button themselves and he was still prosecuted; had he been the one to pull the trigger, so to speak, he would've been convicted of murder-- regardless what agreements his customers had signed.
Actually, they could blame the person who, you know, illegally accessed the machines and obtained a copy of the source code.
Just because someone's not terribly computer literate doesn't mean it's fine to fuck over their entire company. If I know a guy who can't fight, I don't go kick his ass on general principle.
"I just have to wonder if a serious delay was in the works anyway and the code theft gave Valve a publicly acceptable reason."
Right. They could say "the game has been delayed". Or they could involve the FBI in a fabricated code theft story, and hope they don't get thrown in federal themselves.
I haven't seen this many ridiculous conspiracy theories since the JFK assassination convention was in town.
"Yes I think this is the case. I have taken a look at the code, and I can say there is a hell of a lot of 'TODO:/BUG:' stuff in there. I'm no expert"
Software is never released when there are still TODOs, FIXMEs, HACKs, and BUGs in the comments. Oh, no. We look at every line and make sure it's absolutely perfect in the leisurely months of free time leading up to release.
There are several factors in deterrence. Two are perceived sentence, and perceived chance of getting caught.
After a point, perceived sentence stops having a significant deterrent effect. Death penalty generally has no statistically measurable effect beyond a life sentence. Similarly for, say, 10 years vs. 5 years. 5 years vs. $200 fine, I haven't seen studies, but I would imagine that yes-- if the penalty for speeding were 5 years, a lot fewer people would speed.
Perceived chance of getting caught can also make a huge swing. If you've hit the point where increasing the sentence really doesn't do much-- and it doesn't take long to hit that point-- this can be much more effective. If you know there's a 100% chance of getting caught, obviously you won't commit a crime with a significant penalty. If you know most people get caught, you'll look into other types of crime.
Given that penalties for most serious computer offenses are already extremely high, perhaps they should focus on catching and prosecuting people for reasonable sentences, rather than hitting the occasional jackpot and throwing the guy in jail for life.
Shit, if we kept on that trend, we might one day actually consider rehabilitation. Imagine, a prison doesn't guarantee a high recidivism rate!
But why bother? The studio mailing out the tapes is the studio whose movie gets illegally distributed. There's no need for an MPAA recommendation; if a studio thinks its movies are being distributed by screeners, they can stop mailing them out, or take whatever other measures they deem appropriate.
Part of this was exacerbated by the fact that the camera was "active" so "straight forward across the bridge" kept on moving slightly. The solution was to repeatedly "Z-target" or whatever to bring the camera back behind you so that forward remained up on the joystick and you didn't accidently find your "move forward" joystick position become "move slightly to the right and off the bridge."
Oh, crap-- NOW I have to go back to the Fire Temple and try that out.:)
And yeah, they did to something to fix a lot of the issues in Wind Waker. I should pay more attention to the particulars; good camera algorithms aren't easy to come up with (though theirs is still a good ways from perfect).
Slashdot Mirror
"So what you're saying is that because Microsoft is making it easier for it's developers to develop for all of its systems, it's a monopoly?"
No, Microsoft is a monopoly because it has nearly exclusive control over a market.
I've been using click to view since I first heard about it a few months or so ago. It's just awesome-- there's no more useful extension out there for casual web browsing. You have no excuse not to run it.
"A printed record of your vote is NOT acceptable, and NEVER will be. This comes up on Slashdot every week. Any record of who you voted for allows fraud and buying of votes."
I fail to see how that is possible if the voter is not allowed to leave with the record. One good, recent implementation printed the record (which included a voting record, but not the voter's name) behind a glass shield, which the voter could read it through. Once they approved it (or, I'd imagine, after some time out period-- I don't remember all the fine points), it went into a sealed box. So that it, conveniently, served as an auditable paper trail.
I don't see how that's any different from the current optical scan ballot; the record is much more easily human-readable, but it's still just a slip of paper indicating voting preferences that goes into a box.
"Free trade does work out well, but the problem is that it does involve both winners and losers, in the short term.... What was true 200 years ago is still true today: protectionism ends up leaving us all poorer."
Absolutely. Which is why we need a moderated approach that embraces the long-term benefits of free trade, but doesn't leave tens or hundreds of thousands of unemployed totally in the lurch.
It should be no surprise that some politicians are protectionist-- after all, they're elected to represent the people, and a lot of people stand to lose from outsourcing. A guy who's 55 and loses his entire sector to outsourcing might not care too much about the long-term benefits to people in other sectors and age groups-- he, entirely rationally from a self-interest point of view, will be quite upset with the movement of jobs overseas.
We could try strategies to slow down outsourcing, or at least to reap some money from it-- why are outsourcing costs tax deductible, for example? We could offer job training programs or tax incentives. There are numerous other strategies for mitigating the short-term pain of outsourcing, and we certainly need to do so.
Unfortunately, this issue is sufficiently charged that people who attempt to take moderate stances are often accused of protectionism, worker abandonment, or both simultaneously.
What I think is odd is that it takes so long for people to arrive at the obvious solutions: optical scan, or electronic voting with a printed record that the voter can review before leaving.
California has gradually come around to that way of thinking, over the protests of everyone responsible for buying an expensive, fraud-inviting, paperless e-voting machine. So now, barring anything unexpected, in 2006 they'll be great.
I guess that's the point of bureacracy-- slow down anything-- but it's still frustrating to see the long, slow process and the numerous small missteps.
What problems are you having? All our scripts execute at a well-defined stage in the pipeline, so race conditions and other tricky situations are nearly nonexistent. For the standard bugs, we get all the usual stuff and then some (better data monitoring and modification on the fly, although we don't get code edit and continue).
I can't off the top of my head think of anything that'd be easier to debug in C++ than script in our game, but perhaps there's a class of problems I'm not considering.
"There's NO WAY to blow air into a tube wihout it coming from a human lung. Billows do not exist."
Cops don't catch everyone, but they still have 'em. People can bust down my door, but I still lock it.
"It seems like there just aren't enough gamers interested in paying a monthly subscription to make it profitable for game makers."
Evidence seems to point to entirely the opposite conclusion. There's a massive glut of extremely similar games, and most of them are still succeeding to some degree (EQ, AO, DAoC, AC, SWG...). The fact that they don't even have to branch out to be successful makes MM games look like safer ripoffs that RTS used to be.
Take into consideration that this is a new genre, and with new genres people fuck up a lot at first, and they're doing pretty well. There are giant piles of money to be made once people figure out how to make these games well (and, well, they're already making giant piles of money now).
URU simply demonstrates that (pick one):
a) URU Live was marketed so poorly that many people didn't even know it was part of the game
b) URU Live didn't add enough to the regular game to bother paying for
c) The people who buy URU aren't interested in online play
d) all of the above
Actually, the problem with the XBox is that no one has one. If XBox Next were backwards compatible, how much would that really expand its library? Not much.
No, what they really need to do is make XBox Next backwards compatible with PS2.
Yeah, and you didn't read what I wrote, because I wrote a comeback to what you wrote before you wrote it. So there. Also, what you wrote was stupid.
"It's limiting government spending on stuff that can be covered better by others (like charity and welfare) and on stupid things (like research to tell us people who's parachutes don't open have a high risk of death)."
Ah, NOW I get it! Conservative doctrine supports not spending money on stupid things; liberal doctrine suggests spending money on the dumbest shit possible. Man, I'm gonna become conservative!
Wait, hold on a minute. I just talked to my liberal friend. He says liberal means helping the children, while conservative means hurting the children. Well, I'm no child-beater. I guess that makes me a liberal. But then I have to spend money on stupid things! Isn't there some alternative?
Yeah, but it won't be finished if you don't stop posting to /. and get back to work! :)
"Why was everybody turned off by the philosophy and world building in Reloaded/Revolutions?"
:) Phantom edit, cut the two decent films (they clearly weren't terrible, just disappointing after the amazing first one) into two good films.
I was turned off by the two because I loved the fun philosophy in Reloaded, and the action in Revolutions. But Reloaded was a bore, and Revolutions had no intellectual content. Move some of the action into Reloaded, put more universe development into Revolutions (and ditch the crappy dialog-- "I'm scared, Trin"-- and the overused Christ symbols), and you've got a pair of well balanced movies. As it is, I've got Cola syrup in one cup, and soda water in another. What am I supposed to do, mix them?
Hmm, that could work.
No kidding. "Finally, the big guys are getting involved!"
Awesome. Replace the guys selling interesting, smaller time music (emusic, mp3.com) with people selling the same recycled top 40 crap.
Walmart getting into online music distribution? Finally; it's been so hard to find the latest Blink 182 album around here! I rejoice!
Bleah. The only possible upside is, as you said, artists cutting out the middle men. With a dedicated enough following, it might work out. The big labels still control most of the promotional channels.
Actually, pretty much everyone's saying Reloaded and Revolutions suck. If you're saying it'll get even worse in 5 years, I guess then people will say they really suck? Suck or really suck doesn't make much of a difference to me-- either one's in the "don't see it" category.
"The sales numbers for the Xbox and Game Cube are fairly comparable; however, the PS2, which was backwards compatible with the PS1, blows them both out of the water."
I disagree-- I'm pretty sure it's the blue LED that's responsible for the PS2's popularity.
"I guarantee that somewhere in some license agreement the users gave AOL permission to do this."
Indeed, but license agreements are highly restricted. You can't just put anything you want in there and expect it to hold up when you're hauled off to court. Kevorkian had them press the button themselves and he was still prosecuted; had he been the one to pull the trigger, so to speak, he would've been convicted of murder-- regardless what agreements his customers had signed.
Oops, sorry. Been reading too much brain-damaged 1337 on IRC; lost ability to comprehend normal english.
Agreed-- so they both fucked up. Valve's getting punished already, which leaves one party yet to be caught.
Actually, they could blame the person who, you know, illegally accessed the machines and obtained a copy of the source code.
Just because someone's not terribly computer literate doesn't mean it's fine to fuck over their entire company. If I know a guy who can't fight, I don't go kick his ass on general principle.
"I just have to wonder if a serious delay was in the works anyway and the code theft gave Valve a publicly acceptable reason."
Right. They could say "the game has been delayed". Or they could involve the FBI in a fabricated code theft story, and hope they don't get thrown in federal themselves.
I haven't seen this many ridiculous conspiracy theories since the JFK assassination convention was in town.
"Yes I think this is the case. I have taken a look at the code, and I can say there is a hell of a lot of 'TODO:/BUG:' stuff in there. I'm no expert"
Software is never released when there are still TODOs, FIXMEs, HACKs, and BUGs in the comments. Oh, no. We look at every line and make sure it's absolutely perfect in the leisurely months of free time leading up to release.
There are several factors in deterrence. Two are perceived sentence, and perceived chance of getting caught.
After a point, perceived sentence stops having a significant deterrent effect. Death penalty generally has no statistically measurable effect beyond a life sentence. Similarly for, say, 10 years vs. 5 years. 5 years vs. $200 fine, I haven't seen studies, but I would imagine that yes-- if the penalty for speeding were 5 years, a lot fewer people would speed.
Perceived chance of getting caught can also make a huge swing. If you've hit the point where increasing the sentence really doesn't do much-- and it doesn't take long to hit that point-- this can be much more effective. If you know there's a 100% chance of getting caught, obviously you won't commit a crime with a significant penalty. If you know most people get caught, you'll look into other types of crime.
Given that penalties for most serious computer offenses are already extremely high, perhaps they should focus on catching and prosecuting people for reasonable sentences, rather than hitting the occasional jackpot and throwing the guy in jail for life.
Shit, if we kept on that trend, we might one day actually consider rehabilitation. Imagine, a prison doesn't guarantee a high recidivism rate!
But why bother? The studio mailing out the tapes is the studio whose movie gets illegally distributed. There's no need for an MPAA recommendation; if a studio thinks its movies are being distributed by screeners, they can stop mailing them out, or take whatever other measures they deem appropriate.
Part of this was exacerbated by the fact that the camera was "active" so "straight forward across the bridge" kept on moving slightly. The solution was to repeatedly "Z-target" or whatever to bring the camera back behind you so that forward remained up on the joystick and you didn't accidently find your "move forward" joystick position become "move slightly to the right and off the bridge."
:)
Oh, crap-- NOW I have to go back to the Fire Temple and try that out.
And yeah, they did to something to fix a lot of the issues in Wind Waker. I should pay more attention to the particulars; good camera algorithms aren't easy to come up with (though theirs is still a good ways from perfect).