Create a shortcut to "C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\left 4 dead demo\left4dead.exe" or whereever your l4d exe is stored, and you're back in business.
I'm still not sure whether Valve simply goofed and locked out everyone by accident, or they purposely deactivated the demo on purpose.
>>but nobody was complaining when that thing (HL2) was released.
Wha? I guess you've forgotten the Great Steam Activation Debacle where millions of geeks were all trying to activate HL2 on the brand-new Steam network, overwhelming the servers with a giant self-induced DDOS. It took me two days to activate. Others, on dialup, much longer.
People were complaining bitterly -- not about the game quality (I agree with you -- GREAT game) but instead due the inability to play the game they just plunked down fifty dollars for. What a mess that was.
In his novel, Rainbow Six, eco-terrorists design a virus which will wipe out all of humanity and plan to release it by spreading it at the Olympics. The athletes will take it back home to the host country, where it will multiply and kill everyone (except for the ecoterrorists, of course, who will live in a biosphere).
It's a nasty concept, made all the worse because it's not unachievable.
What he fails to realize is, everything is an incremental, transitional technology. Nobody planned out this current hideous jumble of technologies we call teh intertubez, it started with a simple message protocol on top of a network protocol and evolved, and evolved, and evolved further from its inferior predecessors; at each state incremental improvements happened as necessary.
Web 1.0 was "good enough" for some tasks. But when it wasn't, the technology adapted. It remains is as good as the need requires and the market demands at this moment. Mistakes are culled, successes survive. A giant, electronic petri dish, if you will.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk had a few words for his critics last month: "Optimism, pessimism, f-ck that; we're going to make it happen. As God is my bloody witness, I'm hell-bent on making it work."
>>Exactly how much did this cost? You? nothing. Which is precisely why it's so significant. This is private enterprise, vs. a mandatory government space program. You get to choose whether to be a part of this, or not.
Oh, and as far as "cost", I think it's more accurate to consider it an "investment" for soon these space shots will generate income.
Serious question: can you name any company that was better after a merger? I can't think of a single example! (And when I say "better" I mean better from the customer's or employee's point of view not just a short-term-stockholder's view.)
The idea that the entire population can subsidize a minority with an extremely high download quantity actually isn't necessarily the only way to live.'
However, they seem perfectly okay using that economic model for their medical care, retirement, welfare, etc.
On the basis that if the town were to install a network and the telco had some actual competition in the marketplace, they might not be able get away with screwing the customer. (Just a guess, based on historical experience with monopoly cable companies, Ma Bell (back when it was a nationwide monopoly), utility companies, etc.)
Lots of people invent interesting devices. But inventing and bringing to market *at a point when the customer/market is ready to accept it* are two different things. Few items succeed merely on technical merits and most succeed purely on marketing (how else to explain the music top-40 list or clothing fashion?).
I'd say the iPod is the product of a Wurlitzer jukebox crossed with the Sony Walkman and fueled by the Napster music-sharing craze. Napster was the greater technological breakthrough, since it involved new economic as well as social dynamics and rocked an entire industry. The Sony Walkman enabled personal, portable music, and the jukebox gave access to a wide catalog. All were well understood ideas, but the iPod brought them together and Apple marketed it well. Breakthrough? Not really, I'd say it is an application and refinement of existing technologies enabling new behaviors but technology has allowed the device to scale to a point that it is practical.
>>Whether you are pro-life or pro-choice really shouldn't HAVE anything to do with what president you vote for, that's a matter for the courts.
The Supreme Court is populated by judges nominated by the President and approved by congress. We currently have a left-wing of the Court that is eager to use foreign laws as a lens by which to view our constitution and views it as a "living, breathing document" which changes in its meaning according to the times we live in. By contrast, the Court has a right-wing population that interprets the document in terms of the Original Intent of its authors and sees the meanings within as rigid. The result is either document which can mean anything the reader wishes (a legal Rorschach inkblot test?) or it has specific meanings that cannot vary. I find the former alarming since our rights and the very nature of our government would then depend highly on who is currently in power and could change like the weather.
Rights are inalienable and God given, not granted by man, and the Constitution is a document designed to limit Government, not grant it unyielding power. But so long as there is a risk of judges willing to "read between the lines" and ignore fundamental measures (such as the 2nd and 10th Amendments), I would argue the election of the President is tremendously important to the state of law in America.
It's not about preventing FUD. If that were the case, they'd outlaw the vitamin & cosmetic industries in a blink of an eye, due to the excessive, outrageous, complete-bullshit claims they make. (supports prostate health, look years younger, etc. etc. etc.)
This is about protecting an industry, and the cynical side of me is now more suspicious than ever that they have something to hide.
So what if the incubation period is 6 years? If I eat that beef, will not I become the new 'host' in which the prion incubates? I'd like to know if the animal is infected, whether it's currently displaying active symptoms of the disease is a secondary concern.
Just like with blood products; whether the donor is merely infected with HIV or in full-blown AIDS doesn't really matter. They're both reasons for exclusion from the blood supply. It should be the same w/r/t mad cow disease.
I, as the consumer, shouldn't be prohibited from obtaining information about the products I buy. If I wish to pay extra for beef tested for the presence of martian rainbows, that should be between me and the producer/distributor. If I'm misinformed or a fool, then PT Barnum was merely proven correct (a fool and his money...). If I am correct, however, then I have saved my life and health.
You know, yours started out as a seemingly somewhat insightful comment. Then you come in with lines like, "The Associated (with terrorists) Press" and you unmask yourself as totally off your rocker. It also doesn't help that almost all of your links point to what is clearly essentially a political propaganda site.
OK. I realize I probably won't change your mind, but I do want you to know I didn't throw that term out without reason. Here's why I said what I said:
I love the way it's written. It's so non-judgemental.
Gazans are finding an antidote to their growing isolation: digging tunnels under their border with Egypt to smuggle everything from weapons to cigarettes to people. Gee, when I feel isolated, I go hang with friends. I don't dig tunnels and smuggle weapons like guns, bombs and rockets to be fired indiscriminately into civilian areas. But remember, there's no bias at AP.
>>Journalists don't create stories, they document existing events. I'm sorry, but that's just naive.
Just a few examples to hopefully open your eyes:
Dan Rather's famous forged Air National Guard documents (for which he was fired, but stands behind with his infamous "fake but accurate" quote): http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=12526&only This wasn't just some staff reported in Podunk Arkansas, it was a lead anchor who was willing to end his career in order to further propaganda piece that was obviously fake. Makes me wonder what other pieces he pushed in his many years as news anchor and senior editor.
And then you have the FREQUENT odd Reuters captions: It seems that every time Israel takes out a terrorist with a missile, the area is flooded with "youth" that "inspect" the wreckage. (in reality, they are looking for bits of body parts, for they believe that by touching bits of the dead "martyr", they help secure a spot in heaven. Grisly and repulsive.) http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=25627_Palestinian_Car_Swarm_Watch
And I'll finish with the most vile, disgusting example I've ever seen. The Associated (with terrorists) Press publishes staged photographs of dead children arranged by a (so called) palestinian "press agent". Pure propaganda.
That's what I was able to put together with 5 minutes of work. I could continue for hours (days?) but hopefully this will open your eyes to the fact that there are people in the "news" that have clear agendas and aren't above creating stories where none exist in order to influence you. Not to mention those who write with bias.
It's not CPU that's at a premium, it's disk IO. And on virtualized machines (such as is extremely popular in corporations and hosting farms) where there might be four different OSs running on the same physical hardware, disk becomes a scarce resource very, very quickly. And not only does your virtualized server go to shit, it takes the others down with it since they can't get timely disk access, either.
Don't coddle weak programmers... it's survival of the fittest out here. Either they learn to nourish themselves from the ample teat of a stack dump, or they must perish. It is for the good of our civilization. I know this seems harsh, young Jedi, but it is the way of the Elders of Assembler, from the ancient Time Before OO. Now go Forth and code.
Okay, joking aside. Parent has a great point -- logging can generate incredible volumes of text and can form a remarkable bottleneck, especially on VM systems where your OS may not be the only one hitting the disk. So take advantage of Log4J/Net's ability to log at different severity levels and make logging globally configurable so you can enable/disable entirely at runtime. I'd recommend you log the following : object creation, scarce resource allocation, recoverable failure/error conditions and unrecoverable failures. Preface each severity level with a unique label so you can grep for it later. Even at the most verbose level, you can then grep your output to see only what's of interest to you (e.g. "unrecoverable:...").
>>IT is basically landscaping but with computers instead of shrubbery.
Wait a second, there's an enormous difference. Landscaping can't make other employees tens or hundreds of times more efficient, give one company a competitive advantage over others in the industry, fulfill oversight requirements, or create business opportunities (including new products and new markets). However, a bit of innovation in IT can certainly do all of the above. IT can have a multiplying effect, amplifying the work of the entire organization.
Actually, let me rephrase that a bit. IT, **DONE PROPERLY** can achieve those things. The problem is there is a lot of mediocre leadership in large corporations where the Chief MucketyMuck has the point-of-view that IT is simply a chore of business, like having a janitorial service, or landscaping. And guess what? This remarkable lack of vision is self-fulfilling: they treat IT as if it's a chore, defund it, crush innovation and morale and offshore at every opportunity, then act REALLY SURPRISED when there's no innovation and the competition runs right past them in the marketplace.
The problem is not IT, it's lack of vision and leadership from the highest levels.
General Patton would have disagreed. He understood the problems faced by his "team" and inspired them to overcome incredible odds. Sometimes a little profanity can be inspiring, if not used gratuitously.
>>Would you like to work for such a man? Yes, actually I would. Because that sort of man, and the people who work for him, are going to do great things! That's real passion, which is sadly lacking from most corporations. He's not just your average CEO coasting toward a golden parachute and a retirement filled with golf and tea parties -- he's trying to overcome incredible odds to get a vehicle into space.
Slashdot Mirror
Create a shortcut to "C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\left 4 dead demo\left4dead.exe" or whereever your l4d exe is stored, and you're back in business.
I'm still not sure whether Valve simply goofed and locked out everyone by accident, or they purposely deactivated the demo on purpose.
>>but nobody was complaining when that thing (HL2) was released.
Wha? I guess you've forgotten the Great Steam Activation Debacle where millions of geeks were all trying to activate HL2 on the brand-new Steam network, overwhelming the servers with a giant self-induced DDOS. It took me two days to activate. Others, on dialup, much longer.
People were complaining bitterly -- not about the game quality (I agree with you -- GREAT game) but instead due the inability to play the game they just plunked down fifty dollars for. What a mess that was.
Because if there's one thing we all need in our lives, it's more inane advertising plastered over every square inch of vertical surfaces.
You may joke, but in the parking deck at work, there's a wheelchair access ramp leading to the stairwell. I'm not kidding.
No. Never heard of it.
In his novel, Rainbow Six, eco-terrorists design a virus which will wipe out all of humanity and plan to release it by spreading it at the Olympics. The athletes will take it back home to the host country, where it will multiply and kill everyone (except for the ecoterrorists, of course, who will live in a biosphere).
It's a nasty concept, made all the worse because it's not unachievable.
Actually, according to Twitter, it's "404 not found" and "408 request time out"'s fault. Oh, wait, it's back up now. Nevermind.
Thank you for that. It's exactly right.
What he fails to realize is, everything is an incremental, transitional technology. Nobody planned out this current hideous jumble of technologies we call teh intertubez, it started with a simple message protocol on top of a network protocol and evolved, and evolved, and evolved further from its inferior predecessors; at each state incremental improvements happened as necessary.
Web 1.0 was "good enough" for some tasks. But when it wasn't, the technology adapted. It remains is as good as the need requires and the market demands at this moment. Mistakes are culled, successes survive. A giant, electronic petri dish, if you will.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk had a few words for his critics last month: "Optimism, pessimism, f-ck that; we're going to make it happen. As God is my bloody witness, I'm hell-bent on making it work."
I guess he showed them!
>>Exactly how much did this cost?
You? nothing. Which is precisely why it's so significant. This is private enterprise, vs. a mandatory government space program. You get to choose whether to be a part of this, or not.
Oh, and as far as "cost", I think it's more accurate to consider it an "investment" for soon these space shots will generate income.
Serious question: can you name any company that was better after a merger? I can't think of a single example! (And when I say "better" I mean better from the customer's or employee's point of view not just a short-term-stockholder's view.)
However, they seem perfectly okay using that economic model for their medical care, retirement, welfare, etc.
On the basis that if the town were to install a network and the telco had some actual competition in the marketplace, they might not be able get away with screwing the customer. (Just a guess, based on historical experience with monopoly cable companies, Ma Bell (back when it was a nationwide monopoly), utility companies, etc.)
The mysterious future, or the past. I vote for the latter, 'cause that "control room" graphic looks like it was created on an Apple ][.
Lots of people invent interesting devices. But inventing and bringing to market *at a point when the customer/market is ready to accept it* are two different things. Few items succeed merely on technical merits and most succeed purely on marketing (how else to explain the music top-40 list or clothing fashion?).
I'd say the iPod is the product of a Wurlitzer jukebox crossed with the Sony Walkman and fueled by the Napster music-sharing craze. Napster was the greater technological breakthrough, since it involved new economic as well as social dynamics and rocked an entire industry. The Sony Walkman enabled personal, portable music, and the jukebox gave access to a wide catalog. All were well understood ideas, but the iPod brought them together and Apple marketed it well. Breakthrough? Not really, I'd say it is an application and refinement of existing technologies enabling new behaviors but technology has allowed the device to scale to a point that it is practical.
>>Whether you are pro-life or pro-choice really shouldn't HAVE anything to do with what president you vote for, that's a matter for the courts.
The Supreme Court is populated by judges nominated by the President and approved by congress. We currently have a left-wing of the Court that is eager to use foreign laws as a lens by which to view our constitution and views it as a "living, breathing document" which changes in its meaning according to the times we live in. By contrast, the Court has a right-wing population that interprets the document in terms of the Original Intent of its authors and sees the meanings within as rigid. The result is either document which can mean anything the reader wishes (a legal Rorschach inkblot test?) or it has specific meanings that cannot vary. I find the former alarming since our rights and the very nature of our government would then depend highly on who is currently in power and could change like the weather.
Rights are inalienable and God given, not granted by man, and the Constitution is a document designed to limit Government, not grant it unyielding power. But so long as there is a risk of judges willing to "read between the lines" and ignore fundamental measures (such as the 2nd and 10th Amendments), I would argue the election of the President is tremendously important to the state of law in America.
It's not about preventing FUD. If that were the case, they'd outlaw the vitamin & cosmetic industries in a blink of an eye, due to the excessive, outrageous, complete-bullshit claims they make. (supports prostate health, look years younger, etc. etc. etc.)
This is about protecting an industry, and the cynical side of me is now more suspicious than ever that they have something to hide.
So what if the incubation period is 6 years? If I eat that beef, will not I become the new 'host' in which the prion incubates? I'd like to know if the animal is infected, whether it's currently displaying active symptoms of the disease is a secondary concern.
Just like with blood products; whether the donor is merely infected with HIV or in full-blown AIDS doesn't really matter. They're both reasons for exclusion from the blood supply. It should be the same w/r/t mad cow disease.
I, as the consumer, shouldn't be prohibited from obtaining information about the products I buy. If I wish to pay extra for beef tested for the presence of martian rainbows, that should be between me and the producer/distributor. If I'm misinformed or a fool, then PT Barnum was merely proven correct (a fool and his money...). If I am correct, however, then I have saved my life and health.
OK. I realize I probably won't change your mind, but I do want you to know I didn't throw that term out without reason. Here's why I said what I said:
AP Admits relationship with terrorists
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/009026.php
another angle to that same story: AP photographer Rahmatullah Naikzad was a witness to a Taliban murder.
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2008/07/associated-with.html
AP and Reuters photographer Bilal Hussein colludes with insurgents
http://sirhumphreys.blogspot.com/2005/10/ap-and-reuters-photographer-bilal.html
Gunmen take up position behind a garbage bin **as they engage British troops** in central Basra, Iraq: http://www.snappedshot.com/archives/1005-Embedded-with-the-Enemy.html
http://caosblog.com/5367
"A group of smugglers recently gave an Associated Press photographer rare permission to accompany them as they dug one tunnel..."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/14/AR2007081400721.html
More on Kevin Frayer's hang time with the tunnel-digging, weapons-smuggling thugs of Gaza:
http://www.snappedshot.com/archives/1068-Embedded-with-the-Enemy.html
which resulted in some beautiful propaganda shots. Who needs a media relations department when you can get it for free courtesy of AP?
http://www.daylife.com/photo/0h2FcWH0gtbCn
http://www.daylife.com/photo/0eRMfTXdBvcpc/Palestinian_tunnel_diggers
I love the way it's written. It's so non-judgemental.
>>Journalists don't create stories, they document existing events.
I'm sorry, but that's just naive.
Just a few examples to hopefully open your eyes:
Dan Rather's famous forged Air National Guard documents (for which he was fired, but stands behind with his infamous "fake but accurate" quote):
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=12526&only
This wasn't just some staff reported in Podunk Arkansas, it was a lead anchor who was willing to end his career in order to further propaganda piece that was obviously fake. Makes me wonder what other pieces he pushed in his many years as news anchor and senior editor.
The New York Times accepts (read: publishes without edit) Barack Obama's Op-Ed but "rejects" a piece by John McCain. No bias there. Nosir. Nope.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/07/21/mccain.nyt/
Reuters accepts the most amateurish photoshop jobs: ...and only after an internet firestorm has to admit it:
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/21956_Reuters_Doctoring_Photos_from_Beirut
http://sweetness-light.com/archive/reuters-caught-blowing-smoke-faking-photos
Tennessee newspaper published blatantly altered photograph to promote political agenda: http://terryfrank.net/?p=2964
Iran gets in on the photoshop act: http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/10/in-an-iranian-image-a-missile-too-many/index.html?hp
And then you have the FREQUENT odd Reuters captions: It seems that every time Israel takes out a terrorist with a missile, the area is flooded with "youth" that "inspect" the wreckage. (in reality, they are looking for bits of body parts, for they believe that by touching bits of the dead "martyr", they help secure a spot in heaven. Grisly and repulsive.)
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=25627_Palestinian_Car_Swarm_Watch
And I'll finish with the most vile, disgusting example I've ever seen. The Associated (with terrorists) Press publishes staged photographs of dead children arranged by a (so called) palestinian "press agent". Pure propaganda.
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=22123_Green_Helmet_Admits_Staging_Photos&only
which is promptly carried to the United Nations and presented there:
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/22669_Fauxtography_at_the_United_Nations
That's what I was able to put together with 5 minutes of work. I could continue for hours (days?) but hopefully this will open your eyes to the fact that there are people in the "news" that have clear agendas and aren't above creating stories where none exist in order to influence you. Not to mention those who write with bias.
A competition to see who can get "FRIST POST" in their favourite Forum?
Actually, I agree with you -- I think logging is essential. That's why I said "Joking aside..." and then went on to suggest making it configurable.
Sorry I wasn't clearer. I might have to go back to using the "/irony" tags.
It's not CPU that's at a premium, it's disk IO. And on virtualized machines (such as is extremely popular in corporations and hosting farms) where there might be four different OSs running on the same physical hardware, disk becomes a scarce resource very, very quickly. And not only does your virtualized server go to shit, it takes the others down with it since they can't get timely disk access, either.
Don't coddle weak programmers... it's survival of the fittest out here. Either they learn to nourish themselves from the ample teat of a stack dump, or they must perish. It is for the good of our civilization. I know this seems harsh, young Jedi, but it is the way of the Elders of Assembler, from the ancient Time Before OO. Now go Forth and code.
Okay, joking aside. Parent has a great point -- logging can generate incredible volumes of text and can form a remarkable bottleneck, especially on VM systems where your OS may not be the only one hitting the disk.
So take advantage of Log4J/Net's ability to log at different severity levels and make logging globally configurable so you can enable/disable entirely at runtime. I'd recommend you log the following : object creation, scarce resource allocation, recoverable failure/error conditions and unrecoverable failures. Preface each severity level with a unique label so you can grep for it later. Even at the most verbose level, you can then grep your output to see only what's of interest to you (e.g. "unrecoverable:...").
>>IT is basically landscaping but with computers instead of shrubbery.
Wait a second, there's an enormous difference. Landscaping can't make other employees tens or hundreds of times more efficient, give one company a competitive advantage over others in the industry, fulfill oversight requirements, or create business opportunities (including new products and new markets). However, a bit of innovation in IT can certainly do all of the above. IT can have a multiplying effect, amplifying the work of the entire organization.
Actually, let me rephrase that a bit. IT, **DONE PROPERLY** can achieve those things. The problem is there is a lot of mediocre leadership in large corporations where the Chief MucketyMuck has the point-of-view that IT is simply a chore of business, like having a janitorial service, or landscaping. And guess what? This remarkable lack of vision is self-fulfilling: they treat IT as if it's a chore, defund it, crush innovation and morale and offshore at every opportunity, then act REALLY SURPRISED when there's no innovation and the competition runs right past them in the marketplace.
The problem is not IT, it's lack of vision and leadership from the highest levels.
General Patton would have disagreed. He understood the problems faced by his "team" and inspired them to overcome incredible odds. Sometimes a little profanity can be inspiring, if not used gratuitously.
>>Would you like to work for such a man?
Yes, actually I would. Because that sort of man, and the people who work for him, are going to do great things! That's real passion, which is sadly lacking from most corporations. He's not just your average CEO coasting toward a golden parachute and a retirement filled with golf and tea parties -- he's trying to overcome incredible odds to get a vehicle into space.