[H]e couldn't leave it unattended, he still had to be sitting there pressing the programmed keys. He just wasn't paying attention while he was doing that.
So although he was pressing the buttons he wasn't actually attending to the game, so the game was effectively unattended. Blizzard think it looks like a bot, no matter what he says in defence its his word against their evidence.
Have the people who understand the engineering write pseudocode algorithms and work hand in hand with real programmers.
Even better, get them to pair-program. I heard a talk at XPDay London recently by a guy from a company who build gear boxes. They had similar problems where either developers didn't understand the engineering well enough or the engineers produced poor code.
They began to implement XP (which we don't need to go into) and had developers and engineers pair-program on the tasks. This was a huge benefit for them as not only did they get well developed code that worked in terms of the engineering, but they also began to spread the domain knowledge around the team. The engineers started to get a better appreciation of development, and the developers were starting to pick up some of the domain knowledge from the engineers.
it's newest proprietary programming language (Photoshop like , so they say)
The programming language is LabVIEW from National Instruments. Its a "graphical" building block language. I haven't used it much, and not for several years. Its used mainly to interface with automatic test equipment to write tests for various equipment. I remember it being quite fun, if a little clunky.
You have to remember that LEGO's products have to be accessible to children.
I also forgot to mention that VisualWorks has installers for Windows/MacOs/Linux amongst others, so you don't need to worry about the whole platform thing, just use it on your current system.
Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software, Gamma et al Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code, Fowler et al Domain-driven Design: Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software, Eric Evans Test Driven Development: A Practical Guide, Dave Astels Working Effectively with Legacy Code, Michael Feathers
The whole Test Driven Development idea takes this a step further. Instead of thinking about what you want to code and writing it as pseudo-code, you write some code that will test it once its written. Then as soon as you've written you can make sure that it does what you intended it to do, plus you've got a runnable specification to go with it. Not only does this help protect you from introducing bugs at a later date, it explains fairly well what your code does, and HOW you intended it to be used.
Sometimes, when written, you will see an or a used in front of an abbreviation, where if the full words were used in place of the shortened letters the abbreviation would start with a vowel sound.
e.g. A MSc - meaning A Master of Science.
but that doesn't follow in this case as it's A Universal Serial Bus.
I tend to do this as I abbreviate to save writing.
The whole problem with this argument is that the only reason that person has eaten the prison food and used the prison bed is because they were wrongfully imprisoned.
Gaming is a specialised application, as such you'll buy specialised hardware to run it. Whether that specialised hardware is a console, or simply a video accelerator it doesn't matter. A system where a game runs from a DVD wouldn't be impossible, with save data being saved to your central repository. It can all still fit into the model.
You're probably right that a 1GB of storage won't be enough for everything though... but then storage will be much cheaper by then anyway.
The MOT was the Ministry of Transport in the UK, sometime in the UK they started annual safety tests for cars over three years old. So the gradparent actually meant an MOT Test, although it is colloquially shortened to MOT.
A hacker is a skilled, passionate computer programmer -- nothing more
In My experience when people 'hack' they tend to produce unreadable, unmaintainable, undocumented code. I'd rather work with, and employ, programmers who are able to produce code that in 5 years time the new boy, fresh from uni, will still be able to work out what its doing (or trying to do) and fix any bugs that may have crept, or add new features.
I think its worth noting that "child" porn is different to abuse that happens in the home. Although obviously related to some extent, child pornography is in a way more sinister. It is like any other black market product, it is produced to make a profit. Blocking child pornography may not have an effect on the abuse of children at home by trusted adults, but it may reduce the market for criminal gangs that seek to make a profit by abusing children. This type of systematic abuse is what BT are trying to prevent. But the media, as usual, are unable differentiate - which means the masses can't either.
In addition, the Secretary of State has statutory powers to require us to take certain actions in the interests of national security, international relations and the detection of crime.
That's certainly interesting, but I still don't think I'd call it control. Don't forget that BT was at one point a nationalised public service, and almost all of the UK telephone infrastructure is managed by BT.
I'd imagine that this clause relates to phone taps , etc., and that the Secretary of State cannot order "certain actions" on a whim. Of course you'ld have to look into what the statutory powers actually are before you can be sure.
The article briefly mentions converging land line and mobile services. Tie that in with recent articles about bluephone and BT OpenZone and things start to look very interesting for telephony in the uk!
Slashdot Mirror
[H]e couldn't leave it unattended, he still had to be sitting there pressing the programmed keys. He just wasn't paying attention while he was doing that.
So although he was pressing the buttons he wasn't actually attending to the game, so the game was effectively unattended. Blizzard think it looks like a bot, no matter what he says in defence its his word against their evidence.
Have the people who understand the engineering write pseudocode algorithms and work hand in hand with real programmers.
Even better, get them to pair-program. I heard a talk at XPDay London recently by a guy from a company who build gear boxes. They had similar problems where either developers didn't understand the engineering well enough or the engineers produced poor code.
They began to implement XP (which we don't need to go into) and had developers and engineers pair-program on the tasks. This was a huge benefit for them as not only did they get well developed code that worked in terms of the engineering, but they also began to spread the domain knowledge around the team. The engineers started to get a better appreciation of development, and the developers were starting to pick up some of the domain knowledge from the engineers.
The programming language is LabVIEW from National Instruments. Its a "graphical" building block language. I haven't used it much, and not for several years. Its used mainly to interface with automatic test equipment to write tests for various equipment. I remember it being quite fun, if a little clunky.
You have to remember that LEGO's products have to be accessible to children.
I also forgot to mention that VisualWorks has installers for Windows/MacOs/Linux amongst others, so you don't need to worry about the whole platform thing, just use it on your current system.
Download a smalltalk
http://smalltalk.cincom.com/ - VisualWorks is free for non-commercial use.
Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software, Gamma et al
Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code, Fowler et al
Domain-driven Design: Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software, Eric Evans
Test Driven Development: A Practical Guide, Dave Astels
Working Effectively with Legacy Code, Michael Feathers
And slightly off the wall...
Object Thinking, David West
Visual Studio .NET isn't bad, but it isn't the best. JetBrains IDEA is the best Java IDE available, and it makes VS.NET look painful to use.
.NET developers is that JetBrains are planning to release a .NET IDE around the same time as VS.NET 2005.
The good news for
SmallTalk could be a good option.
Squeak is a SmallTalk implementation: http://www.squeak.org/
http://www.squeakland.org/ has a whole load of resources for teachers and students.
This is exactly what comments are for!
Self documenting code (e.g. well named variables) to explain the what, comments to explain the WHY.
The whole Test Driven Development idea takes this a step further. Instead of thinking about what you want to code and writing it as pseudo-code, you write some code that will test it once its written. Then as soon as you've written you can make sure that it does what you intended it to do, plus you've got a runnable specification to go with it. Not only does this help protect you from introducing bugs at a later date, it explains fairly well what your code does, and HOW you intended it to be used.
British English is vowel sound as well.
Sometimes, when written, you will see an or a used in front of an abbreviation, where if the full words were used in place of the shortened letters the abbreviation would start with a vowel sound.
e.g. A MSc - meaning A Master of Science.
but that doesn't follow in this case as it's A Universal Serial Bus.
I tend to do this as I abbreviate to save writing.
Here's an annotated version of the license:
_ GPL_Exception_License
http://directory.fedora.redhat.com/wiki/Annotated
Shouldn't you be exporting to the live site? Otherwise you'll be getting .svn folders with all your metadata available to the world?
Yep happened for me with .co.uk in Safari
The whole problem with this argument is that the only reason that person has eaten the prison food and used the prison bed is because they were wrongfully imprisoned.
Well strictly speaking, java always passes by value, it just so happens, for things that aren't basic types, that the value passed is a reference.
Gaming is a specialised application, as such you'll buy specialised hardware to run it. Whether that specialised hardware is a console, or simply a video accelerator it doesn't matter. A system where a game runs from a DVD wouldn't be impossible, with save data being saved to your central repository. It can all still fit into the model.
You're probably right that a 1GB of storage won't be enough for everything though... but then storage will be much cheaper by then anyway.
it's meant to be ironic, not funny
There's something deliciously ironic about this statement.
What, pray tell, is an MOT?
The MOT was the Ministry of Transport in the UK, sometime in the UK they started annual safety tests for cars over three years old. So the gradparent actually meant an MOT Test, although it is colloquially shortened to MOT.
A hacker is a skilled, passionate computer programmer -- nothing more
In My experience when people 'hack' they tend to produce unreadable, unmaintainable, undocumented code. I'd rather work with, and employ, programmers who are able to produce code that in 5 years time the new boy, fresh from uni, will still be able to work out what its doing (or trying to do) and fix any bugs that may have crept, or add new features.
I get exactly what you're driving at, but its unlikely that the powers the Secretary of State has in this respect are unlimited.
But we're both speculating as neither of us has been bothered to actually look it up.
I think its worth noting that "child" porn is different to abuse that happens in the home. Although obviously related to some extent, child pornography is in a way more sinister. It is like any other black market product, it is produced to make a profit. Blocking child pornography may not have an effect on the abuse of children at home by trusted adults, but it may reduce the market for criminal gangs that seek to make a profit by abusing children. This type of systematic abuse is what BT are trying to prevent. But the media, as usual, are unable differentiate - which means the masses can't either.
Whether its the right strategy is another matter.
In addition, the Secretary of State has statutory powers to require us to take certain actions in the interests of national security, international relations and the detection of crime.
That's certainly interesting, but I still don't think I'd call it control. Don't forget that BT was at one point a nationalised public service, and almost all of the UK telephone infrastructure is managed by BT.
I'd imagine that this clause relates to phone taps , etc., and that the Secretary of State cannot order "certain actions" on a whim. Of course you'ld have to look into what the statutory powers actually are before you can be sure.
Out of interest, what do you mean when you say that BT is "to a certain extent" controlled by the UK government?
There is certainly regulation of the telecommunications industry, but I struggle to see how it can be called control.
The article briefly mentions converging land line and mobile services. Tie that in with recent articles about bluephone and BT OpenZone and things start to look very interesting for telephony in the uk!