If more companies used Formal Methods such as 'Z' when designing software, we would not have to endure the current deluge of patches and 'service packs'
The downside is that I know it costs a lot more money to develop using Formal Methods, but isn't it worth it to have better quality software?
Is he still working in the industry?
I'd add Team17 to your list too just for producing Worms (thank you Andy Davidson)
Not forgetting Black & White It's got to be one of the more original games to be produced lately and its a UK baby too!
p.s. If you worked on X-Com I salute you, UFO is still one of the most playable turn based strategy games yet.
Has anyone tried using the windoze versions of perl....nope thought if you're gonna use perl get a *nix.
Seriously though if you're stuck with an NT boxen at work, you'll find some perl scripts refuse to work with windows as its implementation is not completely compatible.
(I know the rant if you're gonna use a toy os you're asking for it...blame my boss for that, I'd rather use a PDP than NT)
"the act of voting -- which citizens increasingly see as pointless and meaningless, since they have such restricted options to choose between ".
Doesn't that just remind you of the episode in the Simpson's where the aliens land kidnap Bush and Clinton and assume their forms just in time to start campaining for the presidential elections ?
Theres also the Internet Archive who are building a library of snapshots of publicly accessible Internet sites, currently standing at 14 terrabytes of information stored on of information on digital linear tapes.
The Internet grows at a rate of 10 percent a month, according to the Archive's estimates, while the average life of a Web page is only 75 days. Obviously, a lot of data is being lost. Much of that comes from commerce and media sites that often kill pages containing obsolete information. But some of this information is still relevant to researchers and historians
For example The Internet Ecologies Area at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center is using multiple snapshots from the Internet Archive on disk -- "the Web in a box" -- as a kind of test tube for understanding the Web.
The ultimate goal of Internet Archive is to provide free access to the Internet's complete past, so that individuals looking for clues into how a culture changes will have one more medium to play around with.
There are other dead tree arhives that need saving.
Museums also hold important archives that will simply not be available to the public in the near future as older books and journals become too fragile to allow casual browsing.
For example the Natural History Museum in London contains archives dating back hundreds of years. The original diaries of Darwins voyages are held there but the pages are so fragile now that ordinary visitors can no longer examine them.
Paper sources do not have an indefinite life and if they were reproduced electronically they could be available online as a resource to be treasured and not let to wither away only accessible to a few select researchers. A system such as LOCKSS could provide a cheap method to preserve ancient tomes and to promote wider access.
The worst thing is that German neo Nazi's made a game that was effectively SimKampf (can't remember its real name)and distributed it via shareware sites. Going back a few years, it was all over the news that school kiddies could download filth like that so luckily it got pulled from any public sites. As freedom of speech not withstanding, no respecting ISP would knowingly want to host that kind of stuff.
I vote for Rise of The Robots as having one of the worst game designs ever. In fact you'd be hard placed to detect any game design at all. They created a beat 'em up where pressing one comimbination of attack keys would always make you win. They created a game with zero gameplay but which sold in droves due to its pretty graphics and big marketing push.
Would Apple now be rated as mostly harmless ? Would Microsoft marketing be comparable to Vogon poetry ? How would you descibe the Linux penguin fixation ? How would explain the concept of free software to a Vogon ?
As in CMOT Cut My Own Throat Dibbler ?. The greateest distributor of the art that is "music with rocks in" (according to Terry Pratchet anyway)
CMOT dibbler never cared about the fans, but he knew how to market music. Well music with rocks in anyway. I think CMOT would have disagreed going after fans IS the way to stay on the sales chart
When have you ever heard of music corporations caring about'the fans' anyway ?.
Why do people still pay a premium for cd's when they cost less to produce than older formats?. The answer is that trampling on the fans has never stopped the rise of music sales in the past. If music lovers were not prepared to be ripped off by faceless corporations, why then does ticketmaster still exist with a monopoly on music events ?.
You may sensibly copy MP3's of the net, but there are still enough 'consumers' out their that will pay for the convenience of a having a shiny new cd in their hands and who don't even know what MP3 is.
Its even worse when someone who should know what their talking about starts knocking open source:
Gorden Bell, President of QNX had this to say when quizzed about open-sorce kernel code:
"Open-source kernel code may have its advantages, but, for the majority of e-devices, it's the wrong model," said Bell.
"Rather than burden embedded teams with the time-consuming - and expensive - task of modifying and maintaining kernel code, we offer a more productive approach: an OS architecture that can be extended using application-level tools and developers. It's friendlier, faster, more cost-effective - and much more reliable."
Hmm, bad move lets assume ALL developers haven't the skills to hack the kernel and produce something productive...way to go QNX!
Slashdot Mirror
If more companies used Formal Methods such as 'Z' when designing software, we would not have to endure the current deluge of patches and 'service packs'
The downside is that I know it costs a lot more money to develop using Formal Methods, but isn't it worth it to have better quality software?
Wrong 90% of Software problems are caused by using Windows.
I use the Copernic search engine at work,which searches a range of search engines depending
on what criteria you wish to search on
It even has a search engine for programming,and of course slashdot is amongst the computer sites they search for content!
Its not particulary elegant, but it does seem to produce good results.
As it use google as well as many other search engines it provides a more comprehensive set of results than google on its own.
I use the Copernic search engine at work,which searches a range of search engines depending
on what criteria you wish to search on
It even has a search engine for programming,and of course slashdot is amongst the computer sites they search for content!
Its not particulary elegant, but it does seem to produce good results.
1)DeCSS could be put into the BIOS boot message (Or has someone already done it).
Much more fun than all those companies putting adverts into the bios 2)How about one long META tag with all the source code?
With all the adverse publicity Microsoft is facing over its monopolistic practices, what
can they possibly gain from doing this.
##humour mode on##
Oops Bill might be upset to find my homepage is new-warez.com
##humour mode off##
you forgot Big Brothers Nasty Nick (sadly only of relevance in the UK)
Is he still working in the industry? I'd add Team17 to your list too just for producing Worms (thank you Andy Davidson) Not forgetting Black & White It's got to be one of the more original games to be produced lately and its a UK baby too! p.s. If you worked on X-Com I salute you, UFO is still one of the most playable turn based strategy games yet.
Unless the Restaurant at the End of the Univers' will have a franchise in our solar system by then who's going to see it happen ?
Even funnier..
Fusion runs on Amiga too(only useable if you've got a PPC Amiga of course)
Has anyone tried using the windoze versions of perl....nope thought if you're gonna use perl get a *nix. Seriously though if you're stuck with an NT boxen at work, you'll find some perl scripts refuse to work with windows as its implementation is not completely compatible. (I know the rant if you're gonna use a toy os you're asking for it...blame my boss for that, I'd rather use a PDP than NT)
Pah
Who needs real life when you've got "Half Life"
"the act of voting -- which citizens increasingly see as pointless and meaningless, since they have such restricted options to choose between ".
Doesn't that just remind you of the episode in the Simpson's where the aliens land kidnap Bush and Clinton and assume their forms just in time to start campaining for the presidential elections ?
Theres also the Internet Archive who are building a library of snapshots of publicly accessible Internet sites, currently standing at 14 terrabytes of information stored on of information on digital linear tapes.
The Internet grows at a rate of 10 percent a month, according to the Archive's estimates, while the average life of a Web page is only 75 days. Obviously, a lot of data is being lost. Much of that comes from commerce and media sites that often kill pages containing obsolete information.
But some of this information is still relevant to researchers and historians
For example The Internet Ecologies Area at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center is using multiple snapshots from the Internet Archive on disk -- "the Web in a box" -- as a kind of test tube for understanding the Web.
The ultimate goal of Internet Archive is to provide free access to the Internet's complete past, so that individuals looking for clues into how a culture changes will have one more medium to play around with.
There are other dead tree arhives that need saving.
Museums also hold important archives that will simply not be available to the public in the near future as older books and journals become too fragile to allow casual browsing.
For example the Natural History Museum in London contains archives dating back hundreds of years. The original diaries of Darwins voyages are held there but the pages are so fragile now that ordinary visitors can no longer examine them.
Paper sources do not have an indefinite life and if they were reproduced electronically they could be available online as a resource to be treasured and not let to wither away only accessible to a few select researchers. A system such as LOCKSS could provide a cheap method to preserve ancient tomes and to promote wider access.
How about a text based Interactive fiction version of Quake.
Guess the most appropriate command to type at the command line or get fragged to death.
As well as being dull,it was written in BASIC so it was far too tempting to hack the code and rig the election
The worst thing is that German neo Nazi's made a game that was effectively SimKampf (can't remember its real name)and distributed it via shareware sites.
Going back a few years, it was all over the news that school kiddies could download filth like that so luckily it got pulled from any public sites.
As freedom of speech not withstanding, no respecting ISP would knowingly want to host that kind of stuff.
I vote for Rise of The Robots as having one of the worst game designs ever. In fact you'd be hard placed to detect any game design at all.
They created a beat 'em up where pressing one comimbination of attack keys would always make you win.
They created a game with zero gameplay but which sold in droves due to its pretty graphics and big marketing push.
In the HHGTTG what would the entries be for:
1) Linux
2) Apple
3) Microsoft
4) Free Software
Would Apple now be rated as mostly harmless ?
Would Microsoft marketing be comparable to Vogon poetry ?
How would you descibe the Linux penguin fixation ?
How would explain the concept of free software to a Vogon ?
As in CMOT Cut My Own Throat Dibbler ?.
The greateest distributor of the art that is "music with rocks in" (according to Terry Pratchet anyway)
CMOT dibbler never cared about the fans, but he knew how to market music. Well music with rocks in anyway. I think CMOT would have disagreed going after fans IS the way to stay on the sales chart
When have you ever heard of music corporations caring about'the fans' anyway ?.
Why do people still pay a premium for cd's when they cost less to produce than older formats?.
The answer is that trampling on the fans has never stopped the rise of music sales in the past. If music lovers were not prepared to be ripped off by faceless corporations, why then does ticketmaster still exist with a monopoly on music events ?.
You may sensibly copy MP3's of the net, but there are still enough 'consumers' out their that will pay for the convenience of a having a shiny new cd in their hands and who don't even know what MP3 is.
Its even worse when someone who should know what their talking about starts knocking open source:
Gorden Bell, President of QNX had this to say when quizzed about open-sorce kernel code:
"Open-source kernel code may have its advantages, but, for the majority of e-devices, it's the wrong model," said Bell.
"Rather than burden embedded teams with the time-consuming - and expensive - task of modifying and maintaining kernel code, we offer a more productive approach: an OS architecture that can be extended using application-level tools and developers. It's friendlier, faster, more cost-effective - and much more reliable."
Hmm, bad move lets assume ALL developers haven't the skills to hack the kernel and produce something productive...way to go QNX!
Are you sure it died ?
Remember the rules dont't feed it after midnight and never allow it near water
Ever wondered how a Firby looks unaturally like a Gremlin...
In shock new intel says the PII is the best overall choice for the majority of PC users and applications
So who's gonna stuff a PII into a MAC Classic or an i-Mac
Like sneaking GPL code into development versions of windows, waiting till the codes released and bang, hack the code and tell the world...