Unions are the source of all evil? No, they're not. They're just a hefty chunk of it, being in industries they have absolutely no business being in, and having far more power than they ever should have. The amount of times I've seen incompetent people who don't deserve what they're getting payed get raises because of unions makes me sick. Unions should only be involved when the workers are ACTUALLY being abused, and not when they're just whining.
But back on topic.
Frankly, whoever is responsible for this, should be held accountable at least to the level of losing their job. In any PROFESSION (programming is NOT a profession, it's a job), the person responsible would be held completely liable. Yes, insurance would probably be there to cover the monetary costs (and if not, well, expect personal bankruptcy), but that person would never be able to work in that profession again, at least not in the same province/state/country/however far up the ladder the profession is administered. THAT is realistic, as it DOES exist already.
Doctor found liable for a patient's death? Can't practice medicine there anymore. Lawyer disbarred for something? Can't pratice law there anymore. Get it?
That kind of system should be in place for any "critical" system, including anything that deals with life and death (not applicable directly to this discussion, but worth mentioning for completeness), or is (as in this case) somewhat central to the smooth (or at least as smooth as usual) functioning of society. SOMEONE should have had to sign off on that upgrade and take responsibility for it. That someone SHOULD have been someone who was actually involved in the process, and not a PHB.
For TWO MONTHS? And that's a minimum. RBC handles it's OWN collection at one month overdue. A collection agency wouldn't be hired until at least 2 months.
If it's illness (bad enough to cause them to not be able to afford $30 for a minimum payment) for that long, then they should be on disability leave. For unemployment, they shouldn't be racking up credit card bills.
Yeah, I DO blame the person in this case. This computer glitch has absolutely NOTHING to do with this person being called by a collection agency. Odds are the contract was already given to the collection agency BEFORE the glitch occurred.
And even if - and this is a major stretch - that wouldn't have happened without the glitch, then arrangements would have been made on the FIRST call from the agency, as they were surely notified by the bank about the difficulties.
95% of the evidence points to this person being a deadbeat who will blame ANYBODY but themselves for their current troubles.
You know, if she's been contacted THREE TIMES this week about payment, then she's at LEAST 2 months overdue. Going to blame the other 2+ months on the computer glitch that started on Monday? Besides, their Visa bills aren't actually DUE until about 7 working days into the month, so if she was up to date, then her payment wouldn't even be due yet.
No, that's just somebody who thinks the world owes them everything taking the opportunity to complain because it might get them something they don't really deserve.
I just hope their programmers aren't unionized. Heads should roll for this one. In cases like this, you should be lucky if you aren't held 100% liable.
Well, Turing is NOT Pascal. Its syntax is based on Pascal, it uses a modified Pascal compiler, but it's NOT Pascal.
What it comes down to is that the Turing syntax isn't really meant for complex usage. To make the language easier to learn, and more like english, they focused on the more basic useage. Technically, it's still there, it's just a lot easier to do complex tasks in Pascal than in Turing.
I'd rather live near a nuclear power plant than a fossil fuel one.
Sure, solar and wind power would be preferable to either, but aren't viable on their own, and not just for economic reasons. They just take up too much SPACE. Off-shore wind farms? Better check the environmental impact on those. Affects the fish & such. Not so environmentally friendly anymore!
And, as I understand it, enough use of solar power could, theoretically, lead to global cooling, as heat provided by the sun would be converted into energy rather than absorbed by the atmosphere... though I admit that's a bit of a stretch, and the heat generated by the use of that electricity may be more than enough to offset that heat loss.
All he gave in response were sarcastic comments light on ANYTHING factual. Well, I suppose it did have substance, as he's someone I intend to completely ignore in the future.
Like others are said, he seems to be confusing nuclear power with nuclear weapons many times over. The two, while based on the same early research and sharing very basic principles, are very different. The main difference I'd say, other than purpose, is that one is a CONTROLLED reaction, the other is specifically an uncontrolled one. Never mind that the whole bag of effects for the detonation of a nuclear weapon, and fallout from a power plant are for the most part different.
Or the fact that Nuclear power plants have been operationg perfectly fine for a long time now without ANY screw-ups. Last one was Chernobyl (or Three Mile Island, can't remember which was more recent).
He displays very bad knowledge of nuclear power, and even less sense than most *enviro-nuts who argue against nuclear power do.
*NB: Not all people who argue against nuclear power are enviro-nuts. There ARE good arguements to be made against its use, and there are sensible, informed people who use them. Enviro-nuts don't use those however, because they're too busy protesting against nuclear power to actually become informed enough on the subject to make any good arguements against it.
But as for a language, try Turing. It's a little old, a little underpowered, but it's entire purpose as far as I've been able to tell was as a learning language. The syntax is closer to actual english than most languages, and it's fairly forgiving in that it's error messages are fairly understandable.
It's basically a higher level of Pascal, so it's not completely underpowered either.
You know what? The game was made more for the fans of the originals than the fans of the genre in general, otherwise it would have been called something else instead of dragging out a name that people who weren't fans of the original wouldn't care about. Not making it require high amounts of skill to get through would have annoyed many of that target audience, and I know THAT for a fact. The Ninja Gaiden series has NEVER been easy, and was never meant for the casual gamer.
I suspect many fans of the original NES Ninja Gaiden games, like myself, would have been annoyed if it HADN'T been more difficult than most games these days.
The original is one of my favourite NES games of all time, even though I was never able to finish it. Just too hard. It wasn't uncommon to have trouble getting past the first area of the first world if you were new to the game.
Gamers now are spoiled by excessive (and therefore forgiving of dying) save points, and difficulty through gimmics. Once you figure out the gimmic, it tends to get a LOT easier. It's nice to see a game that's just HARD.
What, did you just look at the pretty pictures? It says where FFXI is about 1/3rd of the way down the page!
These numbers also do not take into account the most recent games to hit the market, Final Fantasy XI and Lineage 2, as their impact has not yet been fully realized in North America. In four months, the numbers in this article will need to be revised.
When a comedian makes a crack at people who live in their parents' bedroom and play on the computer all night, it's Everquest he's referring to.
Parents' BEDROOM? Shouldn't that be parents' basement? Parents' bedroom would open up whole new areas of psychological issues.
Because almost nobody would use them?
on
OS Independent Games?
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
I can see this being a good idea for places like gaming cafes, but that's about it. For personal computers? There just isn't a big enough market for it.
I had a dual boot Linux/Windows system for the games that don't have Linux versions and don't play well with Wine, and just found myself booting to Windows ALL the time, because rebooting to play a game was too much hassle. I eventually removed Linux because I was always in Windows anyway.
Then you run into other problems, like perhiperal support. Neither my sound card, nor the 3d portion of my video card work out of the box with any distro I've tried. I've got common hardware on that front - SB Live and GeForce 4. Sure, neither took much work to get working properly, but if they don't work out of the box, they won't work for a bootable games. Then there's network cards - it was easier for me to switch network cards than to get the one that was already in my system working. Hardware support just is not bulletproof enough, and the large number of drivers needed to make sure all the necessary hardware works would be space restrictive. Bootable DVDs, maybe.
Then there's the issue of saving games, patching the software, downloadable content, etc. I'm sure there's ways around some of those issues, but they're big enough barriers for this to not make corporate sense.
Rare, for example. And more recently, Retro Studios is a good example. The big difference between Nintendo and Sony/MS is that with Nintendo, it's generally using their existing franchises.
If you want a company that didn't do that, my guess would be Sega, but even then I just might not have heard about it.
$300 doesn't include the cost of Windows, which, let's face it, is what most people use.
For the record, WinXP seems to go for.... about $300 US.
That brings it down to 1.333 times for "user experience" AND stability. And frankly, the $300 PC is probably well under the performance of the $799 Mac.
You're right in that there seems to be an unnecessary rush to get new consoles out to market. They aren't giving existing consoles time to mature properly like they used to.
NES debuted in North America in what, 1984? Followed by the SNES in 1993 I think? 9 years or so between the two.
Some of the later NES games outdid some (early) SNES or Genesis games for how good they looked.
On the flip side though, there is someplace to go. Yes, Metroid Prime looks beautiful (though I disagree about that being the GCN's full capabilities), but try something that looks that good in 4 window split view.
I agree that single player games aren't going to get much better looking. It's getting that kind of performance in multiplayer that's the goal, I'd say.
Slashdot Mirror
Unions are the source of all evil? No, they're not. They're just a hefty chunk of it, being in industries they have absolutely no business being in, and having far more power than they ever should have. The amount of times I've seen incompetent people who don't deserve what they're getting payed get raises because of unions makes me sick. Unions should only be involved when the workers are ACTUALLY being abused, and not when they're just whining.
But back on topic.
Frankly, whoever is responsible for this, should be held accountable at least to the level of losing their job. In any PROFESSION (programming is NOT a profession, it's a job), the person responsible would be held completely liable. Yes, insurance would probably be there to cover the monetary costs (and if not, well, expect personal bankruptcy), but that person would never be able to work in that profession again, at least not in the same province/state/country/however far up the ladder the profession is administered. THAT is realistic, as it DOES exist already.
Doctor found liable for a patient's death? Can't practice medicine there anymore. Lawyer disbarred for something? Can't pratice law there anymore. Get it?
That kind of system should be in place for any "critical" system, including anything that deals with life and death (not applicable directly to this discussion, but worth mentioning for completeness), or is (as in this case) somewhat central to the smooth (or at least as smooth as usual) functioning of society. SOMEONE should have had to sign off on that upgrade and take responsibility for it. That someone SHOULD have been someone who was actually involved in the process, and not a PHB.
For TWO MONTHS? And that's a minimum. RBC handles it's OWN collection at one month overdue. A collection agency wouldn't be hired until at least 2 months.
If it's illness (bad enough to cause them to not be able to afford $30 for a minimum payment) for that long, then they should be on disability leave. For unemployment, they shouldn't be racking up credit card bills.
Yeah, I DO blame the person in this case. This computer glitch has absolutely NOTHING to do with this person being called by a collection agency. Odds are the contract was already given to the collection agency BEFORE the glitch occurred.
And even if - and this is a major stretch - that wouldn't have happened without the glitch, then arrangements would have been made on the FIRST call from the agency, as they were surely notified by the bank about the difficulties.
95% of the evidence points to this person being a deadbeat who will blame ANYBODY but themselves for their current troubles.
Sure they should. Just in that case, it should be heads in the vendor's company.
You know, if she's been contacted THREE TIMES this week about payment, then she's at LEAST 2 months overdue. Going to blame the other 2+ months on the computer glitch that started on Monday? Besides, their Visa bills aren't actually DUE until about 7 working days into the month, so if she was up to date, then her payment wouldn't even be due yet.
No, that's just somebody who thinks the world owes them everything taking the opportunity to complain because it might get them something they don't really deserve.
I just hope their programmers aren't unionized. Heads should roll for this one. In cases like this, you should be lucky if you aren't held 100% liable.
Well, Turing is NOT Pascal. Its syntax is based on Pascal, it uses a modified Pascal compiler, but it's NOT Pascal.
What it comes down to is that the Turing syntax isn't really meant for complex usage. To make the language easier to learn, and more like english, they focused on the more basic useage. Technically, it's still there, it's just a lot easier to do complex tasks in Pascal than in Turing.
I'd rather live near a nuclear power plant than a fossil fuel one.
Sure, solar and wind power would be preferable to either, but aren't viable on their own, and not just for economic reasons. They just take up too much SPACE. Off-shore wind farms? Better check the environmental impact on those. Affects the fish & such. Not so environmentally friendly anymore!
And, as I understand it, enough use of solar power could, theoretically, lead to global cooling, as heat provided by the sun would be converted into energy rather than absorbed by the atmosphere... though I admit that's a bit of a stretch, and the heat generated by the use of that electricity may be more than enough to offset that heat loss.
All he gave in response were sarcastic comments light on ANYTHING factual. Well, I suppose it did have substance, as he's someone I intend to completely ignore in the future.
Like others are said, he seems to be confusing nuclear power with nuclear weapons many times over. The two, while based on the same early research and sharing very basic principles, are very different. The main difference I'd say, other than purpose, is that one is a CONTROLLED reaction, the other is specifically an uncontrolled one. Never mind that the whole bag of effects for the detonation of a nuclear weapon, and fallout from a power plant are for the most part different.
Or the fact that Nuclear power plants have been operationg perfectly fine for a long time now without ANY screw-ups. Last one was Chernobyl (or Three Mile Island, can't remember which was more recent).
He displays very bad knowledge of nuclear power, and even less sense than most *enviro-nuts who argue against nuclear power do.
*NB: Not all people who argue against nuclear power are enviro-nuts. There ARE good arguements to be made against its use, and there are sensible, informed people who use them. Enviro-nuts don't use those however, because they're too busy protesting against nuclear power to actually become informed enough on the subject to make any good arguements against it.
But as for a language, try Turing. It's a little old, a little underpowered, but it's entire purpose as far as I've been able to tell was as a learning language. The syntax is closer to actual english than most languages, and it's fairly forgiving in that it's error messages are fairly understandable.
It's basically a higher level of Pascal, so it's not completely underpowered either.
You know what? The game was made more for the fans of the originals than the fans of the genre in general, otherwise it would have been called something else instead of dragging out a name that people who weren't fans of the original wouldn't care about. Not making it require high amounts of skill to get through would have annoyed many of that target audience, and I know THAT for a fact. The Ninja Gaiden series has NEVER been easy, and was never meant for the casual gamer.
I suspect many fans of the original NES Ninja Gaiden games, like myself, would have been annoyed if it HADN'T been more difficult than most games these days.
The original is one of my favourite NES games of all time, even though I was never able to finish it. Just too hard. It wasn't uncommon to have trouble getting past the first area of the first world if you were new to the game.
Gamers now are spoiled by excessive (and therefore forgiving of dying) save points, and difficulty through gimmics. Once you figure out the gimmic, it tends to get a LOT easier. It's nice to see a game that's just HARD.
Not completely true, as that's only PART of what he said.
He continues on to imply that both could be known, it's just they'd then cancel each other out and take the universe with them.
Personally, I think the 6 times 9 thing is proof that the mice's original plan for earth got messed up long before the Vogons.
Well, it's a lot more predictable since it's designed to explode, as opposed to a hydrogen blimp.
At least with rocket fuel, the machine is designed to handle the explosion in a certain way, and not just as a safety measure.
No, but that isn't what he was saying, was it?
The fact that someone once did it proves that it CAN be done, and lends evidence that someone else can probably do it.
There's a whole lot of space between only one person being able to do something, and everybody being able to do it.
Parents' BEDROOM? Shouldn't that be parents' basement? Parents' bedroom would open up whole new areas of psychological issues.
I can see this being a good idea for places like gaming cafes, but that's about it. For personal computers? There just isn't a big enough market for it.
I had a dual boot Linux/Windows system for the games that don't have Linux versions and don't play well with Wine, and just found myself booting to Windows ALL the time, because rebooting to play a game was too much hassle. I eventually removed Linux because I was always in Windows anyway.
Then you run into other problems, like perhiperal support. Neither my sound card, nor the 3d portion of my video card work out of the box with any distro I've tried. I've got common hardware on that front - SB Live and GeForce 4. Sure, neither took much work to get working properly, but if they don't work out of the box, they won't work for a bootable games. Then there's network cards - it was easier for me to switch network cards than to get the one that was already in my system working. Hardware support just is not bulletproof enough, and the large number of drivers needed to make sure all the necessary hardware works would be space restrictive. Bootable DVDs, maybe.
Then there's the issue of saving games, patching the software, downloadable content, etc. I'm sure there's ways around some of those issues, but they're big enough barriers for this to not make corporate sense.
And then with the case of SSH, they still need the login info...
Guess what, that adds an extra step they need to make! Slows them down at least, and weeds out a bit of the less intelligent ones.
Nintendo has, and still does.
Rare, for example. And more recently, Retro Studios is a good example. The big difference between Nintendo and Sony/MS is that with Nintendo, it's generally using their existing franchises.
If you want a company that didn't do that, my guess would be Sega, but even then I just might not have heard about it.
Can anyone else say "splinters"?
Is the post by the supposed cheater part way down the first page of that thread.
I say supposed, because that post could very well be someone making a joke.
Exactly!
And kids who really want it can ask their parents... forcing the parents to be involved.
And for those parents who don't have a problem with it can just go buy it for their kids.
$300 doesn't include the cost of Windows, which, let's face it, is what most people use.
For the record, WinXP seems to go for.... about $300 US.
That brings it down to 1.333 times for "user experience" AND stability. And frankly, the $300 PC is probably well under the performance of the $799 Mac.
The installer ASKED if you wanted to use non-free.
Frankly, if they remove that OPTION, I think I'll be switching to another distribution the next time I upgrade.
You're right in that there seems to be an unnecessary rush to get new consoles out to market. They aren't giving existing consoles time to mature properly like they used to.
NES debuted in North America in what, 1984? Followed by the SNES in 1993 I think? 9 years or so between the two.
Some of the later NES games outdid some (early) SNES or Genesis games for how good they looked.
On the flip side though, there is someplace to go. Yes, Metroid Prime looks beautiful (though I disagree about that being the GCN's full capabilities), but try something that looks that good in 4 window split view.
I agree that single player games aren't going to get much better looking. It's getting that kind of performance in multiplayer that's the goal, I'd say.