From the story, in the section on sandbags: Al Arellanes... said, "can be used for flood-fighting, terrorist activities or any type of security situation."
Is he supplying terrorists with advanced weapons of mass sandbagging?
If UbiSoft did their part (By not doing buggy software) than the software would not need to be taken down.
I think this statement is at the heart of our disagreement.
This view of the world of software as the only law on the internet, and anything not explicitly denied is allowed, is pretty out of whack with the idea of property.
The fact that it seems to have taken months to find this exploit shows that it wasn't exactly simple to do. Even if it were obvious from a technical standpoint, it doesn't make it any less illegal or morally reprehensible for the attackers to disrupt the service this way.
There is actual no damage done, because they aren't billed per hour.
How else do you determine the value of the service? UBISoft isn't responsible for refunding money during outages, because its in their terms of service that there will be periodic outages.
In other systems with these kinds of provisions (like utilities), there have been cases where the service experienced excessive outages. In these cases, refunds were given based on the duration of the outages in question. If your cable is out of service for a week, you're entitled to a week's worth of compensation, even though you don't buy it by the day, minute, hour, etc.
The attackers have still denied some percentage of the service to its legitimate users. You can't call it valueless simply because UBISoft isn't responsible for refunding it.
Therefor(sic), the only damage done is actually the cause of UbiSoft's negligence.
To paraphrase your statments, any defense trying to blame this entire fiasco on UBISoft's "negligence" would be laughed out of court. This isn't something accidentaly stumbled upon, it was done intentionally, and with malice, by the attackers.
The actual damage was slightly worse than if someone had sent a friendly email detailing the exploit.
This is patently ridiculous. Ask any of the 15,000 people affected by this which option they'd prefer. I still don't understand why you assign no value to the time of the subscribers of this system.
And from a lot of the Shadowbane board comments and in this thread from the Shadowbane users, worse things have happened.
This is completely irrelevant, unless you're talking about some other breach of security.
The attackers broke the law, and disrupted the service, preventing thousands of paying users from using it. I don't see how damages aren't obvious.
They would only be liable for damages directly caused by their actions. This would be the $450 figure you listed above.
I think it would include at least a portion of the people who cancelled their accounts.
You also can only claim damage for those who attempted to login to the server, and those who were playing in the time (Probably much less than the 3,000).
Heh, the problem with long discussions is that sometimes the other person goes and does research:
From the Ubisoft post and elsewhere, I read that *all* the servers were taken down and reverted. This process took somewhere between two and six hours. Lets take five.
So, five hours plus the three-hour revert is eight hours of service interruption.
Now, since *all* the servers were taken down, and there are ten of them, you're talking about somewhere between 10,000 and 15,000 people. That amount of people is the number of people generally online, per server, as I understand it.
So, as before, 15 cents per hour..
15cents * 8 hours * 12,000 people = $14,400
Even if you're right that the lost registrations are indirect damages (although I disagree), you're still talking about felony-charges level of money here.
I think our disagreement is on a more fundamental level, though. Why do you feel the need to defend whatever miscreant did this? A lot of people seem to feel like its a harmless prank, but I think its pretty obviously more akin to vandalism.
For the record, if this is the person's first offense, I don't advocate a felony conviction. I don't think it should be laughed off or treated lightly, though. This person (or people) have affected thousands of people, and this action shouldn't be ignored.
However, I'm not saying they should be ignored. I'm saying they should be punished in accordance with the damage of the crime, ergo not much punishment. A firm slap on the wrist, a week of community service, and a "Don't do it again" is sufficient. Just like I'd expect them to do if some people spread toilet paper outside my office.
Okay, I think we basically agree, though I list the damage as the interruption of service to several thousand thousand people and the harming of a company's business a little higher than you do.
If one person causes about $100 in "damages" to a service, charging them extra is extortion.
Its a tangent I'm sure others are exploring elsewhere, but lets go anyway.
Hours: By what I've read, they're going to reset the servers in question back "several hours", and there was actual downtime after the hack. Lets round this amount of time off to five hours for easy calculation.
People: The boards I've read indicate that several servers were attacked, and that there are ~1200 people on a server. With the uncertainty factor (people saying "I'm not playing, my server might be next") I think we can count at least a nice round 3000 people affected.
Cost of Service: I've read that people pay $20/mo for this game. Two minutes on shadowbane.com couldn't confirm anything, so I'll just forge ahead.
If you say there's 30 days in a month, 24 hours a day, that's 720 hours a month.
$20 / 720 = 0.027777 or just about three cents an hour. Lets round up to.03 for easier math.
The Math: We have five hours of interruption, so that's 15 cents for each person. Doesn't sound like a big deal, but...
3000 people times.15 brings us to $450 in direct service-interruption damages.
Now, if the game is, in fact $20/mo, and 0.5% (one half of one percent--a pretty darn low estimate) of the people affected cancel their account, then in the next month, 15 people will no longer subscribe. That's a direct loss of another $300 each month. Even if all those people would have quit in three months (far below the norm in MMORPGs), you're talking about $900. Add that to the $450 in damages above, and you're at nearly $1500 (1350).
All this is before trying to calculate the far more nebulous amount of loss from people who *heard* about this, and as a result, never signed up for the game. Any number I give here would be pure speculation on my part, but due to the subscription nature of the game, just a few dozen people can be rather serious.
So, yeah, I think these people did at least a couple thousand dollars worth of damage with this stunt. I think that my leniency would be to offer them a misdemeanor conviction and two weeks of jail time in return for a guilty plea. If they tried to plead not guilty, I think you've got an easy case for a felonious amount of damage.
When you're talking about popular servers, and actual businesses, things get serious in a hurry. Given the amount of damage involved, I don't think its unreasonable to treat this as a criminal action.
A game that releases patches like this one is beta quality software. I can call a Chevy Baretta a Corvette, doesn't make it so...
So... if I crash your lousy car, it was just a lousy car and deserved to crash anyway? I think we can pretty safely say that this is more than "using the magic system creatively".
ISP outages are especially poingant to this situation, as UBISoft also has outages. I think you have to agree, that any outage has a harm. UBISoft has their own outages, caused by themselves, but this is something entirely different, because UBISoft at most indirectly caused this outage. And, UBISoft owns the game, and the service. As such, they're entitled to cause outages, etc.
Since we've established that outages have harms, why should the perpetrators not be held responsible for this harm? I think that its pretty clear that UBISoft's image has been/will be tarnished from this. One piece of clear evidence of this is the posting of this news on Slashdot, when the game itself hasn't warranted any articles. This is a big deal.
"obivous negligence" doesn't cut it either. The hackers who did this had to set out with malicous intent in order to do it. Its not like they found a button that says "god mode" and pressed it.
Lastly, why would you discount the experiences of over a thousand people? Somehow your (or others*) derision for the game that they were playing at the time makes their time and rights to protection under the law invalid?
I don't understand your "Its funny, and they're unimportant" defense. Fortunately, I suspect that the judges in the case won't either.
-Zipwow
* I should clarify that you haven't specifically said any of the "get a life!" comments that have been rampant in other comments. However, given your sentiment that the perpetrators of this mess should be ignored, effectively encouraging them, I've lumped you in with them. Apologies if this isn't correct.
Besides the fact that the game is in full release (as I understand it), how can you ignore the value of an entertainment service?
What if someone interrupted an hour of home internet service for everyone in a city? With a few exceptions, home use of the internet is still entertainment.
Even more, there's direct harm to their business. Would you sign up with an ISP that has just had a major disruption like this? What if it happens again? What are they doing to prevent it?
You can't joke around with 10,000 people and not expect to have some repercussions. I'm not saying we put the cracker to death or anything, but a fine, a month in jail and some community service is probably a good idea.
Every time this argument is made "that electricity has to be made somewhere!", someone has to reply "Yes, but it can be done more efficiently if its all in one place."
Just like when you're coding, if you have one function in once place, you can tune its performance, if you have your power generation in one place, you can tune its efficiency and polution.
Even if we stay with our current very dirty approach to making power, electric vehicles would still greatly reduce pollution. Small gas-burning engines pollute much more than large plants, which can have scrubbers, specialized parts, etc.
And when you're ready to swap out your file-reader for a SQL database, there's only one place to fix. Same goes with energy production. When we finally run out of oil and are ready to move onto something else (whatever it is), we only have to upgrade the plants, rather than 10 hojillion individual cars on the road.
Lastly, the subsidy comment. From what I've read, Corbin's books didn't have large government grants. There are a few tax breaks and other, pretty minor, incentives out there. However, given the above statements about reductions in pollution and the easing of the future transition to cleaner energy, I'd say that more subsidies is what we need.
I keep reading that the National Aerospace Plane was cancelled in 1993 because it was "too soon for the scramjet".
Is that still the case? That was a decade ago, have no other improvements been made? The idea of something that takes off and lands just like a plane still seems very, very appealing.
My suspicion is that this is another one of those cases where the too-early version failed, and now everyone's afraid to try it again.
I thought, naively of course, that since he was on the side of the "right" in the former case that maybe he had a clue.
This one is so obviously stupid though, that I think I'll have to relegate him to the ranks of "greedy parasites" with most (not all!) of the lawyers I know or have heard of.
Jackson set up the federal bank? Or not. From "A Time Line of the National Bank", Jackson vetoed the National Bank's recharter in 1832.
Lastly, I think that in retrospect, the deportation of the Cherokee (and the thousands of deaths incurred during the process), despite a Supreme Court Ruling in their favor, slides down that hill from "controversial" to plain out and out "wrong"
If they'd just take Jackson off the twenty, I'd be happy.
If you're not aware, this is the guy that was responsible for deporting many of the native americans to Oklahoma. You might recall that the Cherokee were pretty well "integrated" into society at the time, and they did what any other wronged group would do: they sued in court.
And won. The Supreme Court ruled that "the laws of the state of Georgia 'can have no force' within Cherokee boundaries."
This fine president, who we honor by putting his name on our money, said "John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it!"
Are you referring to the Old or New testaments? The Old Testament has a lot of historical info, and talks about a different system of faith (the law). Its a pretty scary thing. Some of it doesn't make sense without context, like Jericho for example.
When Jericho fell, (if I remember right) the Israelites were told to take nothing from the city, take no treasure and no slaves. Every man, woman, child, animal, and thing in the city was burned. Damn scary stuff. However, this was supposed to set and example for the Israelites, as other nations gained an easier lifestyle with the riches and slaves of the conquered, the Israelites gained only land to work, and some dead from the battle.
The message in the New Testament is pretty radically different (grace). There are some gender issues, but as far as I can tell, most of these come from the colorings of the apostles at the time, rather than the words of JC.
Now, if you're interpreting everything as literally as possible, then, yeah, it sounds pretty stupid. But then, I don't read it that way. Its not a science textbook, and its not a manual of things to do and things not to do.
I guess its the same sort of things as calling next twice, but having that iterator variable be anonymous will be helpful.
Actually, I wonder how this works with the ListIterator, or how removal will work. Hopefully in that case you'll just do it manually and have done, I'm assuming that you won't have some 'magic variable' (*cough*$_*cough) or something.
The null-to-zero thing is pretty weird though, I agree. I think I'd rather deal with the nulls than have the magic cause me problems.
I think your view would be valid if the patents awarded were only for valid and innovative software applications.
If the current state of patent review continues, though, I think that the problem that arises is that the legal fees necessary to overturn patents awarded on trivial applications is prohibative. Pretty quickly, there isn't much worth doing that isn't patent-protected, even if the patent is absurd.
Perhaps I'm being overly pessimistic, though. Besides PR, I can't see what's stopping "some company" from doing that now.
The difference is that there are likely (or at least potentially) people on any street in America.
People who will see you opening the mailbox that isn't yours, people who will see you "watching the house". These aren't foolproof, but they're at least possible.
Conversely, there isn't anyone watching you troll the Amazon boards looking for kids giving away information.
If the statistics I've heard are correct, TheSims from Maxis is the best selling (PC) game of all time. It also is one of the few games to have mor women players than men.
TheSims, and all its add-ons, is a pretty nice market in itself. It managed to do something fun, and avoid overt sexism, even while approaching the idea of sex itself.
I'd say its commercially viable, the problem is that its risky. For a while, making a game with big-breasted women that beat things up is a more "sure bet" than going the other way. As with most things, competition is changing that, and I think we're starting to see more people willing to take a chance on writing games that appeal to both sexes. I for one, think we're better off for it.
Now if only the medieval rpgs would get the idea that a hole right over a woman's chest is not really an intelligent way to build plate armor...
Its not just that the fact the system is automated that is causing the problem, its the fact that the system is automated stupidly that casues problems.
Why can other systems (telemarketers, for example) tell that you've got an answering machine, but the phone company's can't?
And the article claims that they're happy with it that way:
Diamond said AT&T has no plans to change the automated system, "which has proven to be extremely reliable for many, many years."
I'll bet the people with the $12k bills wouldn't describe it as "extremely reliable"...
In one of the more recent issues (read: not more than a year ago), Aunt May finds out about Peter being Spiderman. Peter asks how she's doing, and she says that she's somewhat releived. Relieved, he says? Then she says something like
"Well, we knew there was something you were keeping from us, and you were always so clumsy around girls. There was obviously something in the closet, I didn't know it was spandex rather than taffeta.."
She's clear that she's not extremely opposed to it (something like "we'd still love you the same"). She does mention taffeta, though, which is the part that cracked me up.
While I'm sure you're correct that two analog sticks can be very precise, its been my experience that its the *turning speed* that you lose when you move away from the mouse.
This is the same story on the keyboard. The keyboard is easier to aim (you can move in one direction at a time), but turning around is limited to a particular speed.
Granted, its limited on a mouse as well, but because you can make more dramatic motions, as well as just plain *faster* motions, you make up for it.
I assume you can go faster with analog as well by adjusting the sensitivity, but its a far more direct tradeoff between turning speed and accuracy..
Or, as another posted out, have the kid you hired (for the same money) run out of his little cottage and do it for you, and get you a beer while he's at it.
Slashdot Mirror
From the story, in the section on sandbags: ... said, "can be used for flood-fighting, terrorist activities or any type of security situation."
Al Arellanes
Is he supplying terrorists with advanced weapons of mass sandbagging?
-Zipwow
If UbiSoft did their part (By not doing buggy software) than the software would not need to be taken down.
I think this statement is at the heart of our disagreement.
This view of the world of software as the only law on the internet, and anything not explicitly denied is allowed, is pretty out of whack with the idea of property.
The fact that it seems to have taken months to find this exploit shows that it wasn't exactly simple to do. Even if it were obvious from a technical standpoint, it doesn't make it any less illegal or morally reprehensible for the attackers to disrupt the service this way.
There is actual no damage done, because they aren't billed per hour.
How else do you determine the value of the service? UBISoft isn't responsible for refunding money during outages, because its in their terms of service that there will be periodic outages.
In other systems with these kinds of provisions (like utilities), there have been cases where the service experienced excessive outages. In these cases, refunds were given based on the duration of the outages in question. If your cable is out of service for a week, you're entitled to a week's worth of compensation, even though you don't buy it by the day, minute, hour, etc.
The attackers have still denied some percentage of the service to its legitimate users. You can't call it valueless simply because UBISoft isn't responsible for refunding it.
Therefor(sic), the only damage done is actually the cause of UbiSoft's negligence.
To paraphrase your statments, any defense trying to blame this entire fiasco on UBISoft's "negligence" would be laughed out of court. This isn't something accidentaly stumbled upon, it was done intentionally, and with malice, by the attackers.
The actual damage was slightly worse than if someone had sent a friendly email detailing the exploit.
This is patently ridiculous. Ask any of the 15,000 people affected by this which option they'd prefer. I still don't understand why you assign no value to the time of the subscribers of this system.
And from a lot of the Shadowbane board comments and in this thread from the Shadowbane users, worse things have happened.
This is completely irrelevant, unless you're talking about some other breach of security.
The attackers broke the law, and disrupted the service, preventing thousands of paying users from using it. I don't see how damages aren't obvious.
-Zipwow
They would only be liable for damages directly caused by their actions. This would be the $450 figure you listed above.
I think it would include at least a portion of the people who cancelled their accounts.
You also can only claim damage for those who attempted to login to the server, and those who were playing in the time (Probably much less than the 3,000).
Heh, the problem with long discussions is that sometimes the other person goes and does research:
From the Ubisoft post and elsewhere, I read that *all* the servers were taken down and reverted. This process took somewhere between two and six hours. Lets take five.
So, five hours plus the three-hour revert is eight hours of service interruption.
Now, since *all* the servers were taken down, and there are ten of them, you're talking about somewhere between 10,000 and 15,000 people. That amount of people is the number of people generally online, per server, as I understand it.
So, as before, 15 cents per hour..
15cents * 8 hours * 12,000 people = $14,400
Even if you're right that the lost registrations are indirect damages (although I disagree), you're still talking about felony-charges level of money here.
I think our disagreement is on a more fundamental level, though. Why do you feel the need to defend whatever miscreant did this? A lot of people seem to feel like its a harmless prank, but I think its pretty obviously more akin to vandalism.
For the record, if this is the person's first offense, I don't advocate a felony conviction. I don't think it should be laughed off or treated lightly, though. This person (or people) have affected thousands of people, and this action shouldn't be ignored.
-Zipwow
However, I'm not saying they should be ignored. I'm saying they should be punished in accordance with the damage of the crime, ergo not much punishment. A firm slap on the wrist, a week of community service, and a "Don't do it again" is sufficient. Just like I'd expect them to do if some people spread toilet paper outside my office.
.03 for easier math.
.15 brings us to $450 in direct service-interruption damages.
Okay, I think we basically agree, though I list the damage as the interruption of service to several thousand thousand people and the harming of a company's business a little higher than you do.
If one person causes about $100 in "damages" to a service, charging them extra is extortion.
Its a tangent I'm sure others are exploring elsewhere, but lets go anyway.
Hours:
By what I've read, they're going to reset the servers in question back "several hours", and there was actual downtime after the hack. Lets round this amount of time off to five hours for easy calculation.
People:
The boards I've read indicate that several servers were attacked, and that there are ~1200 people on a server. With the uncertainty factor (people saying "I'm not playing, my server might be next") I think we can count at least a nice round 3000 people affected.
Cost of Service:
I've read that people pay $20/mo for this game. Two minutes on shadowbane.com couldn't confirm anything, so I'll just forge ahead.
If you say there's 30 days in a month, 24 hours a day, that's 720 hours a month.
$20 / 720 = 0.027777 or just about three cents an hour. Lets round up to
The Math:
We have five hours of interruption, so that's 15 cents for each person. Doesn't sound like a big deal, but...
3000 people times
Now, if the game is, in fact $20/mo, and 0.5% (one half of one percent--a pretty darn low estimate) of the people affected cancel their account, then in the next month, 15 people will no longer subscribe. That's a direct loss of another $300 each month. Even if all those people would have quit in three months (far below the norm in MMORPGs), you're talking about $900. Add that to the $450 in damages above, and you're at nearly $1500 (1350).
All this is before trying to calculate the far more nebulous amount of loss from people who *heard* about this, and as a result, never signed up for the game. Any number I give here would be pure speculation on my part, but due to the subscription nature of the game, just a few dozen people can be rather serious.
So, yeah, I think these people did at least a couple thousand dollars worth of damage with this stunt. I think that my leniency would be to offer them a misdemeanor conviction and two weeks of jail time in return for a guilty plea. If they tried to plead not guilty, I think you've got an easy case for a felonious amount of damage.
When you're talking about popular servers, and actual businesses, things get serious in a hurry. Given the amount of damage involved, I don't think its unreasonable to treat this as a criminal action.
-Zipwow
A game that releases patches like this one is beta quality software. I can call a Chevy Baretta a Corvette, doesn't make it so...
So... if I crash your lousy car, it was just a lousy car and deserved to crash anyway? I think we can pretty safely say that this is more than "using the magic system creatively".
ISP outages are especially poingant to this situation, as UBISoft also has outages. I think you have to agree, that any outage has a harm. UBISoft has their own outages, caused by themselves, but this is something entirely different, because UBISoft at most indirectly caused this outage. And, UBISoft owns the game, and the service. As such, they're entitled to cause outages, etc.
Since we've established that outages have harms, why should the perpetrators not be held responsible for this harm? I think that its pretty clear that UBISoft's image has been/will be tarnished from this. One piece of clear evidence of this is the posting of this news on Slashdot, when the game itself hasn't warranted any articles. This is a big deal.
"obivous negligence" doesn't cut it either. The hackers who did this had to set out with malicous intent in order to do it. Its not like they found a button that says "god mode" and pressed it.
Lastly, why would you discount the experiences of over a thousand people? Somehow your (or others*) derision for the game that they were playing at the time makes their time and rights to protection under the law invalid?
I don't understand your "Its funny, and they're unimportant" defense. Fortunately, I suspect that the judges in the case won't either.
-Zipwow
* I should clarify that you haven't specifically said any of the "get a life!" comments that have been rampant in other comments. However, given your sentiment that the perpetrators of this mess should be ignored, effectively encouraging them, I've lumped you in with them. Apologies if this isn't correct.
Besides the fact that the game is in full release (as I understand it), how can you ignore the value of an entertainment service?
What if someone interrupted an hour of home internet service for everyone in a city? With a few exceptions, home use of the internet is still entertainment.
Even more, there's direct harm to their business. Would you sign up with an ISP that has just had a major disruption like this? What if it happens again? What are they doing to prevent it?
You can't joke around with 10,000 people and not expect to have some repercussions. I'm not saying we put the cracker to death or anything, but a fine, a month in jail and some community service is probably a good idea.
-Zipwow
Every time this argument is made "that electricity has to be made somewhere!", someone has to reply "Yes, but it can be done more efficiently if its all in one place."
Just like when you're coding, if you have one function in once place, you can tune its performance, if you have your power generation in one place, you can tune its efficiency and polution.
Even if we stay with our current very dirty approach to making power, electric vehicles would still greatly reduce pollution. Small gas-burning engines pollute much more than large plants, which can have scrubbers, specialized parts, etc.
And when you're ready to swap out your file-reader for a SQL database, there's only one place to fix. Same goes with energy production. When we finally run out of oil and are ready to move onto something else (whatever it is), we only have to upgrade the plants, rather than 10 hojillion individual cars on the road.
Lastly, the subsidy comment. From what I've read, Corbin's books didn't have large government grants. There are a few tax breaks and other, pretty minor, incentives out there. However, given the above statements about reductions in pollution and the easing of the future transition to cleaner energy, I'd say that more subsidies is what we need.
-Zipwow
I keep reading that the National Aerospace Plane was cancelled in 1993 because it was "too soon for the scramjet".
Is that still the case? That was a decade ago, have no other improvements been made? The idea of something that takes off and lands just like a plane still seems very, very appealing.
My suspicion is that this is another one of those cases where the too-early version failed, and now everyone's afraid to try it again.
-Zipwow
I thought, naively of course, that since he was on the side of the "right" in the former case that maybe he had a clue.
This one is so obviously stupid though, that I think I'll have to relegate him to the ranks of "greedy parasites" with most (not all!) of the lawyers I know or have heard of.
Just remember to take off your suspenders and at least trim your beard...
-Zipwow
(seemed fitting while we're throwing around sterotypes)
Jackson set up the federal bank? Or not. From "A Time Line of the National Bank", Jackson vetoed the National Bank's recharter in 1832.
Lastly, I think that in retrospect, the deportation of the Cherokee (and the thousands of deaths incurred during the process), despite a Supreme Court Ruling in their favor, slides down that hill from "controversial" to plain out and out "wrong"
-Zipwow
How about we limit the filter from "without flaw or disputed reputation" to "hasn't flagrantly disobeyed the constitution"?
I'm sure this would bring in some candidates.
-Zipwow
If they'd just take Jackson off the twenty, I'd be happy.
If you're not aware, this is the guy that was responsible for deporting many of the native americans to Oklahoma. You might recall that the Cherokee were pretty well "integrated" into society at the time, and they did what any other wronged group would do: they sued in court.
And won. The Supreme Court ruled that "the laws of the state of Georgia 'can have no force' within Cherokee boundaries."
This fine president, who we honor by putting his name on our money, said "John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it!"
What a fine example of our American politics.
-Zipwow
Are you referring to the Old or New testaments? The Old Testament has a lot of historical info, and talks about a different system of faith (the law). Its a pretty scary thing. Some of it doesn't make sense without context, like Jericho for example.
When Jericho fell, (if I remember right) the Israelites were told to take nothing from the city, take no treasure and no slaves. Every man, woman, child, animal, and thing in the city was burned. Damn scary stuff. However, this was supposed to set and example for the Israelites, as other nations gained an easier lifestyle with the riches and slaves of the conquered, the Israelites gained only land to work, and some dead from the battle.
The message in the New Testament is pretty radically different (grace). There are some gender issues, but as far as I can tell, most of these come from the colorings of the apostles at the time, rather than the words of JC.
Now, if you're interpreting everything as literally as possible, then, yeah, it sounds pretty stupid. But then, I don't read it that way. Its not a science textbook, and its not a manual of things to do and things not to do.
I know, don't feed the troll...
-Zipwow
Actually, the bug I hit with iterators the most often is this one:
Iterator iterator = collection.iterator()
while(iterator.hasNext()) {
otherCollection = (Collection)iterator.next();
otherIterator = otherCollection.iterator()
while(iterator.hasNext()) {
Thing realThing = (Thing)otherIterator.next();
}
}
I guess its the same sort of things as calling next twice, but having that iterator variable be anonymous will be helpful.
Actually, I wonder how this works with the ListIterator, or how removal will work. Hopefully in that case you'll just do it manually and have done, I'm assuming that you won't have some 'magic variable' (*cough*$_*cough) or something.
The null-to-zero thing is pretty weird though, I agree. I think I'd rather deal with the nulls than have the magic cause me problems.
-Zipwow
Hey Planesdragon,
I think your view would be valid if the patents awarded were only for valid and innovative software applications.
If the current state of patent review continues, though, I think that the problem that arises is that the legal fees necessary to overturn patents awarded on trivial applications is prohibative. Pretty quickly, there isn't much worth doing that isn't patent-protected, even if the patent is absurd.
Perhaps I'm being overly pessimistic, though. Besides PR, I can't see what's stopping "some company" from doing that now.
-Zipwow
aaaaaugh, get it out of my head!
-Zipwow
The difference is that there are likely (or at least potentially) people on any street in America.
People who will see you opening the mailbox that isn't yours, people who will see you "watching the house". These aren't foolproof, but they're at least possible.
Conversely, there isn't anyone watching you troll the Amazon boards looking for kids giving away information.
To clarify: were you saying COPPA is a bad thing?
-Zipwow
I'm still trying to come up with ways to automate signaling, acceleration, etc
:P
I recommend supporting mass transit. I automate all acceleration, signaling, etc when I get on the bus in the morning.
Non-professional drivers are far too stupid to be allowed to drive (myself included). Lets all take the monorail!
-Zipwow
If the statistics I've heard are correct, TheSims from Maxis is the best selling (PC) game of all time. It also is one of the few games to have mor women players than men.
TheSims, and all its add-ons, is a pretty nice market in itself. It managed to do something fun, and avoid overt sexism, even while approaching the idea of sex itself.
I'd say its commercially viable, the problem is that its risky. For a while, making a game with big-breasted women that beat things up is a more "sure bet" than going the other way. As with most things, competition is changing that, and I think we're starting to see more people willing to take a chance on writing games that appeal to both sexes. I for one, think we're better off for it.
Now if only the medieval rpgs would get the idea that a hole right over a woman's chest is not really an intelligent way to build plate armor...
-Zipwow
Why can other systems (telemarketers, for example) tell that you've got an answering machine, but the phone company's can't?
And the article claims that they're happy with it that way:
I'll bet the people with the $12k bills wouldn't describe it as "extremely reliable"...
-Zipwow
In one of the more recent issues (read: not more than a year ago), Aunt May finds out about Peter being Spiderman. Peter asks how she's doing, and she says that she's somewhat releived. Relieved, he says? Then she says something like
"Well, we knew there was something you were keeping from us, and you were always so clumsy around girls. There was obviously something in the closet, I didn't know it was spandex rather than taffeta.."
She's clear that she's not extremely opposed to it (something like "we'd still love you the same"). She does mention taffeta, though, which is the part that cracked me up.
If someone can correct the quote, feel free...
-Zipwow
While I'm sure you're correct that two analog sticks can be very precise, its been my experience that its the *turning speed* that you lose when you move away from the mouse.
This is the same story on the keyboard. The keyboard is easier to aim (you can move in one direction at a time), but turning around is limited to a particular speed.
Granted, its limited on a mouse as well, but because you can make more dramatic motions, as well as just plain *faster* motions, you make up for it.
I assume you can go faster with analog as well by adjusting the sensitivity, but its a far more direct tradeoff between turning speed and accuracy..
-Zipwow
Or, as another posted out, have the kid you hired (for the same money) run out of his little cottage and do it for you, and get you a beer while he's at it.
-Zipwow
Thanks for the article reference...
-Zipwow