> If you're into old-school games, yes. The nostalgia is shocking when you
> browse through the selection of titles. Reminiscent of Blockbuster's game
> section circa 1993.
Add in the fully stocked video arcade three doors down. Robotron 2084, Midway: 1943, Darkstalkers, just to name a few of my favorites. The video arcade ports seem to run mostly pretty well. It may not be to everyone's taste, but if you dropped a lot of quarters in arcades ten, fifteen years back, you'll love it.
It doesn't say they'll pay you gold. It says they'll pay you five pounds. Would like that deposited to your account, or do you want five pounds in coins?
Googled up some pictures of UK bank notes. Nowhere on them does it say that it will be redeemed for gold. It says, simply, "promise to pay to the bearer on demand." Present the note, and they'll pay you twenty pounds. Would you like that deposited to your account, returned in coins, or would you like another twenty pound bank note back?
> Fair point, that's what the gold ultimately represents I guess, but
> over here and in most countries I'd expect paper money is just like
> a cheque to pay the bearer on demand a set amount of gold.
Your understanding of economics is about 60 years out of date. No major currency (including the UK) will be redeemed for gold on demand. It's been that way for a long, long time now.
No, it isn't. The UK left the gold standard for the last time in 1946. No major currency follows the gold standard today, and they haven't for decades. It's all fiat money.
> if your character is killed in-game, you lose all of its posessions, don't you?
No, no MMORPG is that way these days. In Eve, which is the game mentioned in the article, you lose the ship your were flying and whatever you had on that ship. Anything back in a station, and your bank account, remain untouched. And Eve is one of the toughest MMORPGs in this respect. In WoW, you never lose anything. You take some damage to your gear, and that's only if you didn't run back to your corpse.
`` is the shell's execute inline function. The string that is backquoted is executed as a shell command and the standard output is pasted back into the command line. *Extremely* useful.
#! is the interpreter specification. This is actually a function of the UNIX kernel, rather than the shell. #!command on the first line of a file means that when the file is loaded for execution, the interpreter "command" is loaded instead and the file is given to it as input. Windows makes you do registry edits and abide by a file naming convention to autorun interpreted files. UNIX files simply have the name of the proper interpreter embedded into them.
Your for example was very nice. Can I capitalize letters? Uncaptalize them? Replace every space with a _? Replace any instance of "joe" in a name with "throatwarblermangrove"? I can do all that with the UNIX template given where sed creates the new name, and even more involved text manipulation.
The last example finds every regular file in the current directory and descends to the subdirectories recursively to find all the files there, greps the file list to contain only those that contain the string ".o" (this was actually misdone. He'll catch files with names like "important-report.out". His grep argument should've been '[.]o$' so that he only got the files that *end* in ".o") and then deletes them catagorically while giving a message that they've been deleted. TBH, you can probably do this in Windows; find has a -name parameter (at least it does in UNIX, I presume it does in Windows as well) that you can use to to specify '*.o', and an -exec parameter to run the rm command. In fact, he's cheated himself of the main advantage xargs has in a situation like this: efficiency. By removing the -n1, he doesn't run rm once for each file. Instead, rm is run only once for *all* the files, resulting in a big gain in efficiency (and that gain increases if you're doing something more heavyweight than rm).
Just stick an adapter (1/8" plug--1/4" jack would be good) into it. Pick one up at your local Radio Shack. Cheaper, less clumsy, and no noise whatsoever.
>> Not true! Suppose I mis-manage my billion trust fund that my Daddy left me,
>> and bungle things so badly that I make only 0.01% annual profit
You have a very mild definition of "bungle". In practice, it never works that way. Investments are made that *lose* money, hand over fist. It would seem that preservation of capital would be a simple concept to grasp, but in practice it's harder than it seems, especially with an inheritance baby who doesn't really understand the value of money. One of the sites I Googled up claimed that about 90% of large family inheritances are indeed gone by the third generation.
>> That is only true for small amount of money, for larger amounts of money,
>> it is not labour that makes money, but money itself.
Untrue. It is the intelligent management of money that makes money. Without the intelligent management, the money does not make money but instead disappears. Try Googling on the phrase, "Shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations."
>> Why do they need to - they've got calculators and computers.
Which, of course, never make mistakes and never need cross-checking.
>> Seriously. Who gives a ****?
Oh, I dunno. How about everyone who cares about the massive amounts of lost money or the *lost lives* that can happen because of a stupid engineering mistake? Mistakes that are caught by a guy looking at the figures and and saying, "Wait a minute. That can't be right..."
> Yeah, I know that. The problem is: how am I going to convince him to give me his password?
You're the freaking adult. He doesn't have any money except what you give him. Hell, he *doesn't have any internet access except what you give him.* You're in charge, so take charge and do what needs to be done.
Slashdot Mirror
Physically, you're in your first home. Mentally, you're in Azeroth, Vana'diel, Norrath, whatever.
Chris Mattern
> and some borrowed biblical plots (which is quite unlikely for a fantastic world
> based on gothic, nordic and celtic myths)
But not so unlikely for a fantastic world written by a man who lived and died a devout
Catholic.
> So, The General Relativity Theory is relativly correct?
> (sorry)
Generally, yeah.
Chris Mattern
Wow, we melted the original site *and* the mirror!
CHris Mattern
> If you're into old-school games, yes. The nostalgia is shocking when you
> browse through the selection of titles. Reminiscent of Blockbuster's game
> section circa 1993.
Add in the fully stocked video arcade three doors down. Robotron 2084, Midway: 1943, Darkstalkers, just to name a few of my favorites. The video arcade ports seem to run mostly pretty well. It may not be to everyone's taste, but if you dropped a lot of quarters in arcades ten, fifteen years back, you'll love it.
Chris Mattern
> Fair enough, though I'd still point out that the coins are gold, even if
> they're not pure.
Um, no, they aren't. They're only gold colored. According to the Royal Mint
Website, the one-pound coin is 70% copper, 5.5% nickel, 24.5% zinc.
Chris Mattern
It doesn't say they'll pay you gold. It says they'll pay you five pounds. Would like that deposited to your account, or do you want five pounds in coins?
Chris Mattern
> It still says it on bank notes??
Googled up some pictures of UK bank notes. Nowhere on them does it say that it will be redeemed for gold. It says, simply, "promise to pay to the bearer on demand." Present the note, and they'll pay you twenty pounds. Would you like that deposited to your account, returned in coins, or would you like another twenty pound bank note back?
Chris Mattern
> Fair point, that's what the gold ultimately represents I guess, but
> over here and in most countries I'd expect paper money is just like
> a cheque to pay the bearer on demand a set amount of gold.
Your understanding of economics is about 60 years out of date. No major currency (including the UK) will be redeemed for gold on demand. It's been that way for a long, long time now.
Chris Mattern
> Well, it is over here (UK).
No, it isn't. The UK left the gold standard for the last time in 1946. No major currency follows the gold standard today, and they haven't for decades. It's all fiat money.
Chris Mattern
> if your character is killed in-game, you lose all of its posessions, don't you?
No, no MMORPG is that way these days. In Eve, which is the game mentioned in the article, you lose the ship your were flying and whatever you had on that ship. Anything back in a station, and your bank account, remain untouched. And Eve is one of the toughest MMORPGs in this respect. In WoW, you never lose anything. You take some damage to your gear, and that's only if you didn't run back to your corpse.
Chris Mattern
Trust Google! Google is your friend! Google wants you to be happy! Failure to be happy is treason! What is your security clearance, citizen?
Chris Mattern
`` is the shell's execute inline function. The string that is backquoted is executed as a shell command and the standard output is pasted back into the command line. *Extremely* useful.
#! is the interpreter specification. This is actually a function of the UNIX kernel, rather than the shell. #!command on the first line of a file means that when the file is loaded for execution, the interpreter "command" is loaded instead and the file is given to it as input. Windows makes you do registry edits and abide by a file naming convention to autorun interpreted files. UNIX files simply have the name of the proper interpreter embedded into them.
Your for example was very nice. Can I capitalize letters? Uncaptalize them? Replace every space with a _? Replace any instance of "joe" in a name with "throatwarblermangrove"? I can do all that with the UNIX template given where sed creates the new name, and even more involved text manipulation.
The last example finds every regular file in the current directory and descends to the subdirectories recursively to find all the files there, greps the file list to contain only those that contain the string ".o" (this was actually misdone. He'll catch files with names like "important-report.out". His grep argument should've been '[.]o$' so that he only got the files that *end* in ".o") and then deletes them catagorically while giving a message that they've been deleted. TBH, you can probably do this in Windows; find has a -name parameter (at least it does in UNIX, I presume it does in Windows as well) that you can use to to specify '*.o', and an -exec parameter to run the rm command. In fact, he's cheated himself of the main advantage xargs has in a situation like this: efficiency. By removing the -n1, he doesn't run rm once for each file. Instead, rm is run only once for *all* the files, resulting in a big gain in efficiency (and that gain increases if you're doing something more heavyweight than rm).
Just stick an adapter (1/8" plug--1/4" jack would be good) into it. Pick one up at your local Radio Shack. Cheaper, less clumsy, and no noise whatsoever.
Chris Mattern
> But were they morally wrong?
Hell, yes. That was an easy question to answer.
> That's a question only UCLA and the researchers can really answer,
> by providing us with the information about what the research was.
Nope, sorry, wrong. Vigilantes planting molotov cocktails at random is
morally wrong, regardless of *what* the researchers are doing.
Chris Mattern
>> Not true! Suppose I mis-manage my billion trust fund that my Daddy left me,
>> and bungle things so badly that I make only 0.01% annual profit
You have a very mild definition of "bungle". In practice, it never works that way. Investments are made that *lose* money, hand over fist. It would seem that preservation of capital would be a simple concept to grasp, but in practice it's harder than it seems, especially with an inheritance baby who doesn't really understand the value of money. One of the sites I Googled up claimed that about 90% of large family inheritances are indeed gone by the third generation.
Chris Mattern
>> That is only true for small amount of money, for larger amounts of money,
>> it is not labour that makes money, but money itself.
Untrue. It is the intelligent management of money that makes money. Without the intelligent management, the money does not make money but instead disappears. Try Googling on the phrase, "Shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations."
Chris Mattern
>> Why do they need to - they've got calculators and computers.
Which, of course, never make mistakes and never need cross-checking.
>> Seriously. Who gives a ****?
Oh, I dunno. How about everyone who cares about the massive amounts of lost
money or the *lost lives* that can happen because of a stupid engineering
mistake? Mistakes that are caught by a guy looking at the figures and
and saying, "Wait a minute. That can't be right..."
Chris Mattern
Well, as long as they don't catch fire.
Chris Mattern
> Yeah, I know that. The problem is: how am I going to convince him to give me his password?
You're the freaking adult. He doesn't have any money except what you give him. Hell, he *doesn't have any internet access except what you give him.* You're in charge, so take charge and do what needs to be done.
Chris Mattern
Make sure you get the right RAMAC, since IBM named a recent line of big disk boxes that in honor of the first RAMAC...
Chris Mattern
> Some things are matters of principle.
Yep. And here the principle is "If it ain't broke, don't fix it"!
Chris Mattern
Me, I was wondering how they were going to make a MMORPG about the District of Columbia work...I mean, sure, it's my home town and all, but still...
Chris Mattern
Personally, I'm going with Larry Gonick on this one. All praise Yahoo-Wahoo!
Chris Mattern
What it *really* needed to survive natural selection was a set of Sidewinder missiles...
Chris Mattern