ATITD - That was an innovative game. It started out as a lot of fun. The thing that disappointed me, after time, was there really seemed to be no goal to keep focused on. I was making stuff that other people would use for their stuff. But it really seemed to lack a community objective outside of unlocking techs - which I liked, but seemed more like work because the hardcores would finish things *too* quickly and the subsequent requirements were raised exponentially to compensate. The game's goalposts seemed to move arbitrarily - if the players were too smart or worked too hard the devs would just increase the tediousness to match the devs' time line and they basically reduced the requirements on "tests" if they were too hard and it looked like someone might not make the all 7 goal by the time the devs preordained. Basically there was no way to "lose" and trying harder to win faster just earned more tedious tasks for you to do later to compensate. Maybe it's changed now, I don't know. That being said, I recommend to anyone looking for a different type of MMO to try ATITD because it is unique, just don't expect it to hold your interest for too long.
Player made content is the future of MMOs. I envision a place where gamers are given powerful design and scripting tools to make their own self contained adventures. Characters wouldn't have "stats" or "levels" or "skills." They would just "visit" worlds created by other players. Some of these worlds would allow the characters to transform themselves (via magic, or space armor, depending on the creator's vision) into mighty warriors and engage in interesting battles. Other worlds would cast the character as a detective trying to solve a mystery. Whatever happens in a world (or grouped series of worlds) would stay in those worlds and not be applicable to other worlds (so as not to break each others' designs).
Eve has a functional economy but it also has lots of gankers, so you can't really expect to go in as a solo casual. You can go in with friends that all play at the same time casual, or you can go in solo but hardcore enough to devote a lot of time to a Corp. But playing solo casual will just get you killed (or bored to death running repeatable missions). Whereas with wow, you can go in solo and make friends along the way just playing casually.
The vast majority of home PC buyers buy from retailers with legitimate Windows copies pre-loaded.
The problem with free is you get what you pay for. Consumers view computers as magic boxes that let them perform tasks they want to do. Consumers pay extra money to make it easy to do those tasks (whether they realize this at a conscious level or not). They may not specifically say they want Windows, but they do want whatever they buy to be easy to use and work with their existing resources (hardware and software). Therefore vendors include end-user focused OSes (either Windows or OSX) to sell more computers. Linux is not an end user oriented OS, doesn't help sales and therefore isn't worth even its "free" price to retail consumers and their vendors.
There is a place for Linux in areas that aren't considered end user oriented (like databases, web servers, etc...) But at a consumer level it doesn't compete, and probably never will, with the commercial OSes.
I've used all 3 languages and I speak from experience. Ada is better than C and C++ for system and safety critical applications. Even if one never plans to use it for development, Ada is still worth learning for a deeper understanding of what is possible in language and compiler design.
If you haven't tried Ada yet, I highly suggest looking into it. It keeps track of data sizes, types, etc... for the programmer but it will also let you get close to the hardware like C does. It's often used for safety critical software such as that used in aviation.
Unfortunately I can't recommend using Ada to develop windows apps. It's technically possible but you end up importing C library functions to do it. And if you're going to do that, you might as well just use a native development environment that is better suited to the task.
You don't say if you think people would buy your book even if piracy didn't exist. How much time/effort/resources do you put into advertising or promotional activities? It appears to be a text book; how many professors are using it? You have to convince people that this book is valuable to them before you can expect them to pay you for it. If you look at successful businesses, the one thing they have in common is the ability to "sell" their products.
For all I know the book could hold the deepest secrets to the universe. However we have to know it exists before we will buy it. BTW, I can't help but feel the slashdot question was a thinly veiled attempt to get free advertising. Congrats. Hopefully the editors will be more selective next time.
Word. I support NAFTA, but it doesn't go far enough. In theory, we should have had the free movement of people between the member nations by now. Unfortunately there's a lot of people in this country who, when given a choice between true freedom and keeping the brown people out, will take the later option.
I'm Anglo and I'm for unimpeded immigration because I want freedom. I believe in free markets and free people. I want the ability to legally live and work anywhere and believe others should have that freedom as well. I also believe freedom is a good thing economically speaking. It allows people to go to where the jobs are. I see the lack of border enforcement between the states and I see that it works out pretty well. Even though we have poor states and rich states, there aren't many people who believe erecting fences between them would be a good idea. The only problem I could potentially see between us and Mexico is the language, but the EU has proven that even that isn't a big issue.
"I support legal immigration, but not illegal" is it's just a cover for saying "I don't support *more* legal immigration."
Frankly this is all really about freedom. It should be as hard to live and work in the US if you're from Mexico or Canada as it is to live and work in New York if your from Alabama (valid ID, no court orders against you). The EU lets their people have freedom of movement and labor among the Union countries and it works well for them. The NAFTA countries should have that same freedom. It would solve a lot of problems, including strengthening worker rights and limiting the "fear of deportation" factor in employee employer relations.
I know at least one person who gave up on cigarettes because of cost. And I know many more who didn't.
If I were tax dictator the extra taxes would go into a smokers insurance fund that will treat heart attacks and cancer for smokers. Either that or ban all publicly funded health care and mandate people buy their own health care coverage from their own pocketbooks, like auto liability insurance. If you want to kill yourself, do it on your own dime.
But by that logic, wouldn't it make more business sense to hire a couple of older programmers to maintain a system that works than a bunch of newbies to rewrite it?
The BS totalitarianism position would be to support the HOA absolutely. The individual freedom position would be to let the guy do what he wants with his own property. The pragmatic position would be to let the guy do what he wants as long as it doesn't harm others. The least harm to others is running a clothesline instead of a dryer because it benefits everyone while the no-eyesore thing only benefits a couple of neighbors.
Perhaps it's time to recognize that contracts and the laws that support them are contrary to a free and democratic society. If we dominate each other through trickery and exploitative contracts, how is that better than dominating each other through violence and force of arms?
Well, for one, you can choose not to sign an exploitative contract. But you can't choose not to be dominated by a group of thugs with superior firepower.
Contracts are merely non-violently enforceable agreements between two or more people. People can be bad, but the construct of a contract is a good and valuable mechanism.
Clothesline are very ecologically friendly. Nature is more important than your selling price. Besides, if you care so much about selling the place, you shouldn't have bought it to begin with. Homes are built for living in, not for speculation.
Don't be a hater. There's plenty of room for different styles of PvP. There are real team based PvP games where nobody loses anything permanent and they're fun as hell. Like Unreal or Team Fortress. WAR is the MMO version of those. If you like FFA PK or the "I love having the chance to lose 3 months worth of effort" style, don't play WAR.
Explain what part of Sandbox indicates to you complete and utter safety from "gankers"?
As a kid, I had a real sandbox. Actually it was just a large pile of sand. But I could make whatever I wanted without someone else coming along and destroying it. You obviously had a horrid childhood if you think sandbox equals gankerland.
The compiler can keep track of the string length if memory is a concern. You could have "safe" string (array) specific keywords for indexing or referencing the elements of the string if that is your desire. You could still use 0 as a terminator if the actual length is smaller than the maximum length.
And the 2nd point is, why would memory be such a concern anyway? When you're dealing with strings, the string itself takes far more space than the integer it takes to store the length.
Will gamers looking for a nostalgic game of Team Fortress 2 in the year 2025, find that they cant play Team Fortress 2 online because Steam doesnt exist?
Steam is more likely to exist than my backup copy of the game. Also, good luck finding a full server for any current multiplayer game in 25 years.
Slashdot Mirror
ATITD - That was an innovative game. It started out as a lot of fun. The thing that disappointed me, after time, was there really seemed to be no goal to keep focused on. I was making stuff that other people would use for their stuff. But it really seemed to lack a community objective outside of unlocking techs - which I liked, but seemed more like work because the hardcores would finish things *too* quickly and the subsequent requirements were raised exponentially to compensate. The game's goalposts seemed to move arbitrarily - if the players were too smart or worked too hard the devs would just increase the tediousness to match the devs' time line and they basically reduced the requirements on "tests" if they were too hard and it looked like someone might not make the all 7 goal by the time the devs preordained. Basically there was no way to "lose" and trying harder to win faster just earned more tedious tasks for you to do later to compensate. Maybe it's changed now, I don't know. That being said, I recommend to anyone looking for a different type of MMO to try ATITD because it is unique, just don't expect it to hold your interest for too long.
Player made content is the future of MMOs. I envision a place where gamers are given powerful design and scripting tools to make their own self contained adventures. Characters wouldn't have "stats" or "levels" or "skills." They would just "visit" worlds created by other players. Some of these worlds would allow the characters to transform themselves (via magic, or space armor, depending on the creator's vision) into mighty warriors and engage in interesting battles. Other worlds would cast the character as a detective trying to solve a mystery. Whatever happens in a world (or grouped series of worlds) would stay in those worlds and not be applicable to other worlds (so as not to break each others' designs).
Eve has a functional economy but it also has lots of gankers, so you can't really expect to go in as a solo casual. You can go in with friends that all play at the same time casual, or you can go in solo but hardcore enough to devote a lot of time to a Corp. But playing solo casual will just get you killed (or bored to death running repeatable missions). Whereas with wow, you can go in solo and make friends along the way just playing casually.
The vast majority of home PC buyers buy from retailers with legitimate Windows copies pre-loaded.
The problem with free is you get what you pay for. Consumers view computers as magic boxes that let them perform tasks they want to do. Consumers pay extra money to make it easy to do those tasks (whether they realize this at a conscious level or not). They may not specifically say they want Windows, but they do want whatever they buy to be easy to use and work with their existing resources (hardware and software). Therefore vendors include end-user focused OSes (either Windows or OSX) to sell more computers. Linux is not an end user oriented OS, doesn't help sales and therefore isn't worth even its "free" price to retail consumers and their vendors.
There is a place for Linux in areas that aren't considered end user oriented (like databases, web servers, etc...) But at a consumer level it doesn't compete, and probably never will, with the commercial OSes.
If I had mod points, I'd give you +1 Insightful.
I've used all 3 languages and I speak from experience. Ada is better than C and C++ for system and safety critical applications. Even if one never plans to use it for development, Ada is still worth learning for a deeper understanding of what is possible in language and compiler design.
We use Ada for embedded code. It combines the power of C with the safety of ... Ada.
If you haven't tried Ada yet, I highly suggest looking into it. It keeps track of data sizes, types, etc... for the programmer but it will also let you get close to the hardware like C does. It's often used for safety critical software such as that used in aviation.
Unfortunately I can't recommend using Ada to develop windows apps. It's technically possible but you end up importing C library functions to do it. And if you're going to do that, you might as well just use a native development environment that is better suited to the task.
You don't say if you think people would buy your book even if piracy didn't exist. How much time/effort/resources do you put into advertising or promotional activities? It appears to be a text book; how many professors are using it? You have to convince people that this book is valuable to them before you can expect them to pay you for it. If you look at successful businesses, the one thing they have in common is the ability to "sell" their products.
For all I know the book could hold the deepest secrets to the universe. However we have to know it exists before we will buy it. BTW, I can't help but feel the slashdot question was a thinly veiled attempt to get free advertising. Congrats. Hopefully the editors will be more selective next time.
Word. I support NAFTA, but it doesn't go far enough. In theory, we should have had the free movement of people between the member nations by now. Unfortunately there's a lot of people in this country who, when given a choice between true freedom and keeping the brown people out, will take the later option.
We should be more like Iran and Russia? What political philosophy is this? Certainly not what our founding fathers envisioned.
I'm Anglo and I'm for unimpeded immigration because I want freedom. I believe in free markets and free people. I want the ability to legally live and work anywhere and believe others should have that freedom as well. I also believe freedom is a good thing economically speaking. It allows people to go to where the jobs are. I see the lack of border enforcement between the states and I see that it works out pretty well. Even though we have poor states and rich states, there aren't many people who believe erecting fences between them would be a good idea. The only problem I could potentially see between us and Mexico is the language, but the EU has proven that even that isn't a big issue.
"I support legal immigration, but not illegal" is it's just a cover for saying "I don't support *more* legal immigration."
Frankly this is all really about freedom. It should be as hard to live and work in the US if you're from Mexico or Canada as it is to live and work in New York if your from Alabama (valid ID, no court orders against you). The EU lets their people have freedom of movement and labor among the Union countries and it works well for them. The NAFTA countries should have that same freedom. It would solve a lot of problems, including strengthening worker rights and limiting the "fear of deportation" factor in employee employer relations.
I know at least one person who gave up on cigarettes because of cost. And I know many more who didn't.
If I were tax dictator the extra taxes would go into a smokers insurance fund that will treat heart attacks and cancer for smokers. Either that or ban all publicly funded health care and mandate people buy their own health care coverage from their own pocketbooks, like auto liability insurance. If you want to kill yourself, do it on your own dime.
But by that logic, wouldn't it make more business sense to hire a couple of older programmers to maintain a system that works than a bunch of newbies to rewrite it?
It's very cool.
The BS totalitarianism position would be to support the HOA absolutely. The individual freedom position would be to let the guy do what he wants with his own property. The pragmatic position would be to let the guy do what he wants as long as it doesn't harm others. The least harm to others is running a clothesline instead of a dryer because it benefits everyone while the no-eyesore thing only benefits a couple of neighbors.
Two guilty parties do NOT make one of the parties innocent. We should point out faults wherever they may be.
Well, for one, you can choose not to sign an exploitative contract. But you can't choose not to be dominated by a group of thugs with superior firepower.
Contracts are merely non-violently enforceable agreements between two or more people. People can be bad, but the construct of a contract is a good and valuable mechanism.
Clothesline are very ecologically friendly. Nature is more important than your selling price. Besides, if you care so much about selling the place, you shouldn't have bought it to begin with. Homes are built for living in, not for speculation.
You realize Counter-Strike was one of the most popular games ever created right?
Don't be a hater. There's plenty of room for different styles of PvP. There are real team based PvP games where nobody loses anything permanent and they're fun as hell. Like Unreal or Team Fortress. WAR is the MMO version of those. If you like FFA PK or the "I love having the chance to lose 3 months worth of effort" style, don't play WAR.
As a kid, I had a real sandbox. Actually it was just a large pile of sand. But I could make whatever I wanted without someone else coming along and destroying it. You obviously had a horrid childhood if you think sandbox equals gankerland.
The compiler can keep track of the string length if memory is a concern. You could have "safe" string (array) specific keywords for indexing or referencing the elements of the string if that is your desire. You could still use 0 as a terminator if the actual length is smaller than the maximum length. And the 2nd point is, why would memory be such a concern anyway? When you're dealing with strings, the string itself takes far more space than the integer it takes to store the length.
Steam is more likely to exist than my backup copy of the game. Also, good luck finding a full server for any current multiplayer game in 25 years.