I dunno if I should bother to respond to this, but you and a bunch of other people all responded to me in a similar fashion, so I suppose it deserves addressing, if only for the people reading along.
I read that SimCity story years ago. You can take whatever lesson you want from it, but I personally took away from it "no/wonder/ the software in the Microsoft world is so fragile."
Seriously, folks, I understand the engineering concerns they are trying to address (I am a developer) but it goes without saying I think they're doing it wrong, or I would use their platform instead of the alternatives I rely on.
I couldn't care less about whether Wine can manage to keep up with their output of cruft. It's like saying "it'll be forever until you can shit out a turd as big as mine." Personally, I don't want your turd OR the imitation turd. Thanks.
There's a lot of support in this thread for the general application of shims. But traditional software development doesn't call them "shims" -- it calls them "edge cases" and they are to be avoided like the plague!
As a third-party, Sourceforge is pretty much legally required to "knee-jerk." If the authors want to file a counter-complaint then that is their job, not SourceForge's.
At the TechEd conference in LA, Microsoft associate software architect Chris Jackson joked, 'If you walk too loudly down the hall near the [Windows] kernel developers, you'll break 20 to 30 apps.'
Yeah, real funny. Our software is fragile as fuck, HA-ha
Who's laughing at that goddamn joke? Oh, right, Microsoft is -- all the way to the bank.
Of course, the 'somethings' we get don't stick around for long, but (I am not a physicist!) I think that phenomena similar to this is how most physicists account for the big bang.
I know this is late response to the thread and may not be read, but I recently started using the Headplay HMD, which is technically 800x600 but can downscale remarkably well from higher resolutions in hardware, which finally makes it a good choice for gaming, as the games usually support a minimum resolution of 1024x768.
That's the good news; it's an affordable HMD that fits all the qualifications the OP wanted. More good news is, the FOV is LARGE, much larger than you'd get from a $150 HMD (i.e. Vuzix) and the screen looks good.
The bad news is as follows, and isn't completely the fault of Headplay, but is important to know before you buy and very difficult to find out from their product literature:
* It only works in ACTUAL 3D if you have a much older Nvidia card (7000 series or older). * The Nvidia Stereoscopic Display drivers will NOT detect it as a stereoscopic display. * If you want to code your own 3D applications, you have two choices:
1) Buy an Nvidia Quadro card, the only series of cards that support OpenGL's quad-buffering stereoscopic output,
2) Fake 3d by switching frames on EVERY SINGLE vblank (easy to miss one and end up with reversed view) * ALTERNATIVELY: The iz3d drivers DO support it quite well and will allow you to play all your games in true stereoscopic 3d on XP or Vista very admirably. The downside to this is you have an additional $50 licening fee to pay to a third party for said driver, so add that to the upfront cost if that's your plan.
All in all, it's absolutely the best bang for the buck in the stereoscopic display department. It's fun to use and very lightweight, and the screen really does appear to be huge. However, I'm somewhat disappointed in the lack of/official/ support for stereoscopic game playing, but if you can do with a third-party support it works quite well.
For the record, other displays I considered purchasing and declined in favor of the Headplay were the "I-O Display Systems i-Glasses i3pc" which have roughly the same specifications, no support for hardware downscaling, only a VGA input, and a significantly higher price tag. And the Emagin z800 which by all counts is an excellent product that USED to be priced identically to the Headplay, and if it still were I'd buy it in a heartbeat. But at its present price of $1500 (3x the Headplay price), it seems like a no-brainer to get the Headplay instead.
Hope that helps. If you're near to Naperville, IL and want to see a Headplay in person, drop me a note... easiest way to get me is as scribblej on a freenode IRC server.
I know where you're coming from; I'm a fan of eating submarine sandwiches, and every time I'm in the shop ordering a "foot long italian" I'm afraid the guy behind the counter is going to yell into the back room, "Hey, Luigi, there's a guy out here a-lookin for you!"
Wow, so basically, if I purchase -- er, sorry -- license a copy of a game, I can't actually/play/ the game unless the license also allows me to load -- sorry, copy -- it into RAM... and furthermore that a limitation of the license that allows me to copy it into RAM/only/ for the purposes of playing is perfectly legal?
I wonder how many EULAs I've agreed to that do/not/ grant me the right to have a copy in RAM, and I am therefore guilty of copyright infringement?
Have you ever tried calling Microsoft Tech Support?
Don't lie. I used to work for them. I know the idea of getting any kind of/useful/ support out of them is a/joke/. You can yak about support all day long, but it's lies. In windows, the problems fall into two categories:
1) Problems you can diagnose and repair yourself. 2) Problems that will go unsolved until Microsoft decides to patch it.
That it, that's all there is. That leaves absolutely no reason or room for support. Either you don't need it because you can solve the problem yourself, or you do need it but it can't/do/ anything to help.
I liked GoW on the PS2, I did not like it at all on the PSP. To be fair, though, any game with a 'Press X now to not die" mechanic loses points for me.
I/loved/ all the prior Metal Gears from the very first one I played on the NES. You could say I'm a fan of the series. I couldn't play it on the PSP at all, the camera controls killed it for me pretty much out of the box. You can't see WTF you're doing.
Not to mention even with the 3rd party 'grips' they sell for the PSP, it's a total bitch to try to use it if you do not have the hands of a child.
So unrelated to what you said, but very related to the topic, I hacked a PSP for a friend, and he would go to the local video game store and ask to demo a game on his PSP, and walk around the store while it was copying to his stick.
I don't condone this behavior. But I do find it very, very funny.
I really don't/want/ to like the MS-PL or anything Microsoft, but I read it, and re-read it, and I can't see anything wrong with it. In fact, at the risk of being modded to oblivion, I gotta' say it's a far cry easier to understand than the GPL license, seems straightforward, and truly "open." It seems roughly as open as the BSD license. It doesn't even require you to open your own code under the same license. What am I missing? Is this a late April Fools' joke?
So I take it you aren't using any of the technologies intended to help reduce this possibility, like, AVS and CVV2 validation, GeoIP lookups compared to address, postal lookups, velocity checks, or... anything, really? If your merchant account provider can't provide you with technology to do all this dump them and get one that is proper. (Note, yes, I'm biased, I'm responsible for having written payment gateways for merchant account providers and ISOs)
While I agree that people could do better, your overall attitude of EVERY BUG MUST GO BEFORE WE RELEASE is probably why you have to say "if I had a big project" rather than "the big project I'm on now..."
"Software should work out of the box. You shouldn't have to wait for an update or two for it to become stable enough to use."
Agreed, we're not talking about bugs that prevent use of the software here. Your inability to distinguish possibly hinders you professionally.
You worked at JC Penny for 7 years so you knew how the real world worked. The kids being complained about have never worked, or when they did, considered it below them.
I bought Far Cry 2, hoping it would be an improvement from my memory of Far Cry 1. In Far Cry 1, the enemies would see me through dense jungle at hundreds of meters before I even had a chance. I got real sick of it, hardly played into the game at all.
Far Cry 2 was a whole different experience for me. I read complaints like yours over and over and they all have some basis in reality; all the mechanics you suggest do exist to some extent. However, I found that they all make for some Hollywood-style game mechanics if you play it right.
An example - the guard posts that constantly respawn. I hated them too, they made getting from point a to point b a huge hassle. Well, there's a number of ways to overcome this. First off, realize the game is a journey and not a destination; every single encounter can be played through methodically and be fun. However, this does get tedious. So here's how I handle them now -
First, look at your map. There's almost always an alternate offroad route that will avoid the guard posts. And driving offroad is fun!
Can be bothered, or it's too far out of your way? No problem. Grab one of the ubiquitous jeeps with the rear-mounted gun, approach the checkpoint at/full/ speed, barrel down on it with the pedal to the metal. About the time you are right in the middle of the checkpoint, one guy/might/ be shooting at you, the others are still going to be going/WTF?/ -- just keep driving, straight through. Slow down for nothing. The guys at the checkpoint will scramble into their jeep and come after you. If the road is sufficiently twisty, just keep driving, you'll lose them in no time. If you can't lose them, then before they come up on you, hit the 'change seats' button to slip into the gunner position without stopping, turn the gun around, and blast the hell out of hem as they drive up on you. Then switch seats again, get out, repair your jeep, and keep going.
It's fun, and there's something very Hollywood-cowboy about doing it this way.
As for the map, I like the way it adds immersion; you really feel like you're using a map, not playing a character in a videogame. But I can totally see how annoying it would be to some. That said, you know you/can/ look over the top of the map, and while driving he keeps it down by the steering wheel so you can easily see where you're going.
The sickness is annoying, but really it's the same mechanic we find in many other games: a) you can't run too far, because ths would make escaping all situations too easy. Most games don't explain this mechanic at all (GTA, I'm looking at you!) but at least FC2 gives a/reason/ for it. b) Occassionally you will run out of pills and have to go get some to carry on - again, randomly popping in necessary quests is a mechanic a lot of games use to keep the player occupied.
As for the vehicles; buy the repair guides, they really do make a difference.
Now, I'd like to voice/my/ complaint with the game: it's too linear. They give you a wide-open world, and they give you two major factions and a couple minor factions. I just played Mercenaries 2 before FC2 so I can't help but compare them. In Mercs2, the things you do for a faction affect your standing with the others. They also affect the entire game world, changing where factions are, and even destroying or changing vast areas of the game. In Far Cry 2, the 'factions' are a joke; nothing you do has any impact and there are no decisions to be made aside from 'do I take the red mission or the blue mission first?' Screw that, this game does not hold a candle to Mercs1 in this regard, much less Mercs2.
And in Mercenaries 2, I really get the impression that at every turn, the designers asked themselves, "How can we make this FUN" instead of "How can we keep it real?" They give you an arsenal of/airstrikes/ and/artillery/ for crying out loud, you can
First off, you must mean, say, given 5v, that you would use 0v, 2.5v, and 5v as the targets for distinction, but there's a better, easier, and smarter way. Use -5v, 0v, and +5v.
Secondly, I've already replaced all the 1s and 0s in my computer with.5s and 0s, and it does run much faster.
Such as, I dunno, the continual change int he Earth's vector thanks to the Sun's gravity?
If that doesn't make sense, think about it this way - it's rather exactly like spinning a cat in a basket, the cat sticks to the basket even when it's upside-down because the cat's momentum is pushing it straight out, but the basket is catching it and pulling it around in a circle. Just like astronauts orbiting the earth, except in reverse and no gravity involved, so maybe not really like that at all. But I digress; my point is you can't explain it that simply, because if the momentum is the trick, then the delorean is gunna shoot off into space.
Unless, of course, you can come up with some way for gravity to affect things that are 'in-transit' timetravelling, but I think you will quickly find any such explanation leads to much bigger problems, like too much time travel eventually contributing to the decay of the Earth's orbit, or perhaps how to explain one force continuing to act on the delorean when no other force can.
I had something similar happen at the last company I worked for, who I'd love to name by name but... eh, whatever. Anyhow, I got hired as a coder at this startup and was employee #5, stock options, seemed like a good gig. Years later the business itself was doing just fine, but the CEO that had been hired was a dick and made a point of firing anyone before their stock options came due. In addition, he apparently yanked everyone's options and redistributed the stock by closing the company on paper and reincorporating in Nevada where I guess such shenanigans are OK. I don't know much about how all that works. I mostly kept my head down and figured I was OK.
So I was getting close to having served my term, and of course, I got let go. Of course, I picked up unemployment and started looking for something new. The company called me up a month later and asked if I'd be willing to help out a couple hours a day, doing 2nd level support from my house. I said all right, things went on in this vein for a short while.
Well, there was a certain bit of code that over the years a number of clients had asked for. Since I was no longer employed as a coder, just support, and that only a tiny bit of part time, I figured I could make a buck by coding up this application, and offering it for sale to folks. This was a common thing for our business; third parties providing connectors and applications to plug into our APIs, and this was nothing different.
Well, I was a nice guy, so I decided to offer it to the company first, thinking they could buy it on the cheap and then mark it up for their clients, and everybody wins. The CEO responded by saying they already owned it, THEN asking me to sign an "NDA" - it wasn't just an NDA. It said, much like yours, that every software I wrote, company time or not, for up to X time period AFTER employment, was their property. I refused to sign, and got the scariest phone call I've had from the CEO, who is a pretty scary man to begin with. He said he'd "make my life a living legal hell" and lots of other nasty things if I did not sign. He made it clear that my employment hinged on agreeing to sign the document right there on that call. He told me repeatedly I didn't know shit about the law and my ass was his. So I told him I'd call my lawyer to find out what the facts were, and he said it didn't matter, I was fired and I would never work in this industry again.
So I called the lawyer. And being in the State of Illinois, I have a right to request full copies of any and all documentation a company I've worked for holds on me, up to once a year. So I put in the official paperwork and got back my employee file from the company, and had proof that I'd never signed anything there - not so much as an employment contract.
After that I took a job at a competitor, built a new product for them from the ground up, and have been steadily working to put the old company out of business. I haven't heard a peep from the old company since I got the documentation. And the new company treats me (and all their employees) just/great/. I'm already living my revenge in some sense, I think about the things that CEO did and said over the years, and in that last phone call, and I just laugh at what I now recognize as impotent rage.
Anyhow, I guess you're either out of that job, or having been there for 20 years, pretty solid. I'd strongly suggest to anyone who sees a contract like that to run. I guess I should note this wasn't in the mid eighties for me, it happened about 2004. I started with that company in 2000.
Aw shucks, I'm blushing! Seriously, though, I'd imagine I could design a system a lot better than this. I'd also have really wished that Diebold's systems would be better than anything I could do.
But for the record, "people like me" and "Diebold" do share a certain intersection, in my opinion (which isn't me; I'm not a Diebold employee). They do design some banking systems, for instance, I know they do ATMs. I've only done one project myself that interacts with the ATM networks, so I'd say someone/did/ turn the design and implementation over to 'people like me.' Well, 'people like me, only retarded.'
Which describes most of the banking industry, honestly I'm surprised we don't hear about more problems like this with ATMs, from Diebold and others.
I would have said the same thing to the person you are replying to, but since you did, let me play devil's advocate and say you're only right if the intent was to either facilitate voting, or subvert the system directly. If the goal was to destroy faith in the system, this is a pretty good job.
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I dunno if I should bother to respond to this, but you and a bunch of other people all responded to me in a similar fashion, so I suppose it deserves addressing, if only for the people reading along.
I read that SimCity story years ago. You can take whatever lesson you want from it, but I personally took away from it "no /wonder/ the software in the Microsoft world is so fragile."
Seriously, folks, I understand the engineering concerns they are trying to address (I am a developer) but it goes without saying I think they're doing it wrong, or I would use their platform instead of the alternatives I rely on.
I couldn't care less about whether Wine can manage to keep up with their output of cruft. It's like saying "it'll be forever until you can shit out a turd as big as mine." Personally, I don't want your turd OR the imitation turd. Thanks.
There's a lot of support in this thread for the general application of shims. But traditional software development doesn't call them "shims" -- it calls them "edge cases" and they are to be avoided like the plague!
As a third-party, Sourceforge is pretty much legally required to "knee-jerk." If the authors want to file a counter-complaint then that is their job, not SourceForge's.
At the TechEd conference in LA, Microsoft associate software architect Chris Jackson joked, 'If you walk too loudly down the hall near the [Windows] kernel developers, you'll break 20 to 30 apps.'
Yeah, real funny. Our software is fragile as fuck, HA-ha
Who's laughing at that goddamn joke? Oh, right, Microsoft is -- all the way to the bank.
We get "something from nothing" all day long, sir.
Here's some things to read about for fun:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirac_sea
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_particles
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_integral_formulation
Of course, the 'somethings' we get don't stick around for long, but (I am not a physicist!) I think that phenomena similar to this is how most physicists account for the big bang.
Bananas are the most useless food ever. Once you peel off the skin and throw away the bone, there's nothing to eat.
I know this is late response to the thread and may not be read, but I recently started using the Headplay HMD, which is technically 800x600 but can downscale remarkably well from higher resolutions in hardware, which finally makes it a good choice for gaming, as the games usually support a minimum resolution of 1024x768.
That's the good news; it's an affordable HMD that fits all the qualifications the OP wanted. More good news is, the FOV is LARGE, much larger than you'd get from a $150 HMD (i.e. Vuzix) and the screen looks good.
The bad news is as follows, and isn't completely the fault of Headplay, but is important to know before you buy and very difficult to find out from their product literature:
* It only works in ACTUAL 3D if you have a much older Nvidia card (7000 series or older).
* The Nvidia Stereoscopic Display drivers will NOT detect it as a stereoscopic display.
* If you want to code your own 3D applications, you have two choices:
1) Buy an Nvidia Quadro card, the only series of cards that support OpenGL's quad-buffering stereoscopic output,
2) Fake 3d by switching frames on EVERY SINGLE vblank (easy to miss one and end up with reversed view)
* ALTERNATIVELY: The iz3d drivers DO support it quite well and will allow you to play all your games in true stereoscopic 3d on XP or Vista very admirably. The downside to this is you have an additional $50 licening fee to pay to a third party for said driver, so add that to the upfront cost if that's your plan.
All in all, it's absolutely the best bang for the buck in the stereoscopic display department. It's fun to use and very lightweight, and the screen really does appear to be huge. However, I'm somewhat disappointed in the lack of /official/ support for stereoscopic game playing, but if you can do with a third-party support it works quite well.
For the record, other displays I considered purchasing and declined in favor of the Headplay were the "I-O Display Systems i-Glasses i3pc" which have roughly the same specifications, no support for hardware downscaling, only a VGA input, and a significantly higher price tag. And the Emagin z800 which by all counts is an excellent product that USED to be priced identically to the Headplay, and if it still were I'd buy it in a heartbeat. But at its present price of $1500 (3x the Headplay price), it seems like a no-brainer to get the Headplay instead.
Hope that helps. If you're near to Naperville, IL and want to see a Headplay in person, drop me a note... easiest way to get me is as scribblej on a freenode IRC server.
I know where you're coming from; I'm a fan of eating submarine sandwiches, and every time I'm in the shop ordering a "foot long italian" I'm afraid the guy behind the counter is going to yell into the back room, "Hey, Luigi, there's a guy out here a-lookin for you!"
Wow, so basically, if I purchase -- er, sorry -- license a copy of a game, I can't actually /play/ the game unless the license also allows me to load -- sorry, copy -- it into RAM... and furthermore that a limitation of the license that allows me to copy it into RAM /only/ for the purposes of playing is perfectly legal?
I wonder how many EULAs I've agreed to that do /not/ grant me the right to have a copy in RAM, and I am therefore guilty of copyright infringement?
Have you ever tried calling Microsoft Tech Support?
Don't lie. I used to work for them. I know the idea of getting any kind of /useful/ support out of them is a /joke/. You can yak about support all day long, but it's lies. In windows, the problems fall into two categories:
1) Problems you can diagnose and repair yourself.
2) Problems that will go unsolved until Microsoft decides to patch it.
That it, that's all there is. That leaves absolutely no reason or room for support. Either you don't need it because you can solve the problem yourself, or you do need it but it can't /do/ anything to help.
Correct. It pretty much has to go one way or the other; your left-handed critters like all of us cannot eat right-handed things and process them.
They belong in the 'crap' pile.
I liked GoW on the PS2, I did not like it at all on the PSP. To be fair, though, any game with a 'Press X now to not die" mechanic loses points for me.
I /loved/ all the prior Metal Gears from the very first one I played on the NES. You could say I'm a fan of the series. I couldn't play it on the PSP at all, the camera controls killed it for me pretty much out of the box. You can't see WTF you're doing.
Not to mention even with the 3rd party 'grips' they sell for the PSP, it's a total bitch to try to use it if you do not have the hands of a child.
So unrelated to what you said, but very related to the topic, I hacked a PSP for a friend, and he would go to the local video game store and ask to demo a game on his PSP, and walk around the store while it was copying to his stick.
I don't condone this behavior. But I do find it very, very funny.
"Other than being open."
"Other than that, Ms. Lincoln, how was the play?"
I really don't /want/ to like the MS-PL or anything Microsoft, but I read it, and re-read it, and I can't see anything wrong with it. In fact, at the risk of being modded to oblivion, I gotta' say it's a far cry easier to understand than the GPL license, seems straightforward, and truly "open." It seems roughly as open as the BSD license. It doesn't even require you to open your own code under the same license. What am I missing? Is this a late April Fools' joke?
So I take it you aren't using any of the technologies intended to help reduce this possibility, like, AVS and CVV2 validation, GeoIP lookups compared to address, postal lookups, velocity checks, or ... anything, really? If your merchant account provider can't provide you with technology to do all this dump them and get one that is proper. (Note, yes, I'm biased, I'm responsible for having written payment gateways for merchant account providers and ISOs)
While I agree that people could do better, your overall attitude of EVERY BUG MUST GO BEFORE WE RELEASE is probably why you have to say "if I had a big project" rather than "the big project I'm on now..."
"Software should work out of the box. You shouldn't have to wait for an update or two for it to become stable enough to use."
Agreed, we're not talking about bugs that prevent use of the software here. Your inability to distinguish possibly hinders you professionally.
It's a genuine disconnect between the language and the speakers!
You worked at JC Penny for 7 years so you knew how the real world worked. The kids being complained about have never worked, or when they did, considered it below them.
I bought Far Cry 2, hoping it would be an improvement from my memory of Far Cry 1. In Far Cry 1, the enemies would see me through dense jungle at hundreds of meters before I even had a chance. I got real sick of it, hardly played into the game at all.
Far Cry 2 was a whole different experience for me. I read complaints like yours over and over and they all have some basis in reality; all the mechanics you suggest do exist to some extent. However, I found that they all make for some Hollywood-style game mechanics if you play it right.
An example - the guard posts that constantly respawn. I hated them too, they made getting from point a to point b a huge hassle. Well, there's a number of ways to overcome this. First off, realize the game is a journey and not a destination; every single encounter can be played through methodically and be fun. However, this does get tedious. So here's how I handle them now -
First, look at your map. There's almost always an alternate offroad route that will avoid the guard posts. And driving offroad is fun!
Can be bothered, or it's too far out of your way? No problem. Grab one of the ubiquitous jeeps with the rear-mounted gun, approach the checkpoint at /full/ speed, barrel down on it with the pedal to the metal. About the time you are right in the middle of the checkpoint, one guy /might/ be shooting at you, the others are still going to be going /WTF?/ -- just keep driving, straight through. Slow down for nothing. The guys at the checkpoint will scramble into their jeep and come after you. If the road is sufficiently twisty, just keep driving, you'll lose them in no time. If you can't lose them, then before they come up on you, hit the 'change seats' button to slip into the gunner position without stopping, turn the gun around, and blast the hell out of hem as they drive up on you. Then switch seats again, get out, repair your jeep, and keep going.
It's fun, and there's something very Hollywood-cowboy about doing it this way.
As for the map, I like the way it adds immersion; you really feel like you're using a map, not playing a character in a videogame. But I can totally see how annoying it would be to some. That said, you know you /can/ look over the top of the map, and while driving he keeps it down by the steering wheel so you can easily see where you're going.
The sickness is annoying, but really it's the same mechanic we find in many other games: a) you can't run too far, because ths would make escaping all situations too easy. Most games don't explain this mechanic at all (GTA, I'm looking at you!) but at least FC2 gives a /reason/ for it. b) Occassionally you will run out of pills and have to go get some to carry on - again, randomly popping in necessary quests is a mechanic a lot of games use to keep the player occupied.
As for the vehicles; buy the repair guides, they really do make a difference.
Now, I'd like to voice /my/ complaint with the game: it's too linear. They give you a wide-open world, and they give you two major factions and a couple minor factions. I just played Mercenaries 2 before FC2 so I can't help but compare them. In Mercs2, the things you do for a faction affect your standing with the others. They also affect the entire game world, changing where factions are, and even destroying or changing vast areas of the game. In Far Cry 2, the 'factions' are a joke; nothing you do has any impact and there are no decisions to be made aside from 'do I take the red mission or the blue mission first?' Screw that, this game does not hold a candle to Mercs1 in this regard, much less Mercs2.
And in Mercenaries 2, I really get the impression that at every turn, the designers asked themselves, "How can we make this FUN" instead of "How can we keep it real?" They give you an arsenal of /airstrikes/ and /artillery/ for crying out loud, you can
First off, you must mean, say, given 5v, that you would use 0v, 2.5v, and 5v as the targets for distinction, but there's a better, easier, and smarter way. Use -5v, 0v, and +5v.
Secondly, I've already replaced all the 1s and 0s in my computer with .5s and 0s, and it does run much faster.
Such as, I dunno, the continual change int he Earth's vector thanks to the Sun's gravity?
If that doesn't make sense, think about it this way - it's rather exactly like spinning a cat in a basket, the cat sticks to the basket even when it's upside-down because the cat's momentum is pushing it straight out, but the basket is catching it and pulling it around in a circle. Just like astronauts orbiting the earth, except in reverse and no gravity involved, so maybe not really like that at all. But I digress; my point is you can't explain it that simply, because if the momentum is the trick, then the delorean is gunna shoot off into space.
Unless, of course, you can come up with some way for gravity to affect things that are 'in-transit' timetravelling, but I think you will quickly find any such explanation leads to much bigger problems, like too much time travel eventually contributing to the decay of the Earth's orbit, or perhaps how to explain one force continuing to act on the delorean when no other force can.
I had something similar happen at the last company I worked for, who I'd love to name by name but ... eh, whatever. Anyhow, I got hired as a coder at this startup and was employee #5, stock options, seemed like a good gig. Years later the business itself was doing just fine, but the CEO that had been hired was a dick and made a point of firing anyone before their stock options came due. In addition, he apparently yanked everyone's options and redistributed the stock by closing the company on paper and reincorporating in Nevada where I guess such shenanigans are OK. I don't know much about how all that works. I mostly kept my head down and figured I was OK.
So I was getting close to having served my term, and of course, I got let go. Of course, I picked up unemployment and started looking for something new. The company called me up a month later and asked if I'd be willing to help out a couple hours a day, doing 2nd level support from my house. I said all right, things went on in this vein for a short while.
Well, there was a certain bit of code that over the years a number of clients had asked for. Since I was no longer employed as a coder, just support, and that only a tiny bit of part time, I figured I could make a buck by coding up this application, and offering it for sale to folks. This was a common thing for our business; third parties providing connectors and applications to plug into our APIs, and this was nothing different.
Well, I was a nice guy, so I decided to offer it to the company first, thinking they could buy it on the cheap and then mark it up for their clients, and everybody wins. The CEO responded by saying they already owned it, THEN asking me to sign an "NDA" - it wasn't just an NDA. It said, much like yours, that every software I wrote, company time or not, for up to X time period AFTER employment, was their property. I refused to sign, and got the scariest phone call I've had from the CEO, who is a pretty scary man to begin with. He said he'd "make my life a living legal hell" and lots of other nasty things if I did not sign. He made it clear that my employment hinged on agreeing to sign the document right there on that call. He told me repeatedly I didn't know shit about the law and my ass was his. So I told him I'd call my lawyer to find out what the facts were, and he said it didn't matter, I was fired and I would never work in this industry again.
So I called the lawyer. And being in the State of Illinois, I have a right to request full copies of any and all documentation a company I've worked for holds on me, up to once a year. So I put in the official paperwork and got back my employee file from the company, and had proof that I'd never signed anything there - not so much as an employment contract.
After that I took a job at a competitor, built a new product for them from the ground up, and have been steadily working to put the old company out of business. I haven't heard a peep from the old company since I got the documentation. And the new company treats me (and all their employees) just /great/. I'm already living my revenge in some sense, I think about the things that CEO did and said over the years, and in that last phone call, and I just laugh at what I now recognize as impotent rage.
Anyhow, I guess you're either out of that job, or having been there for 20 years, pretty solid. I'd strongly suggest to anyone who sees a contract like that to run. I guess I should note this wasn't in the mid eighties for me, it happened about 2004. I started with that company in 2000.
Aw shucks, I'm blushing! Seriously, though, I'd imagine I could design a system a lot better than this. I'd also have really wished that Diebold's systems would be better than anything I could do.
But for the record, "people like me" and "Diebold" do share a certain intersection, in my opinion (which isn't me; I'm not a Diebold employee). They do design some banking systems, for instance, I know they do ATMs. I've only done one project myself that interacts with the ATM networks, so I'd say someone /did/ turn the design and implementation over to 'people like me.' Well, 'people like me, only retarded.'
Which describes most of the banking industry, honestly I'm surprised we don't hear about more problems like this with ATMs, from Diebold and others.
Ok, 'people like me, only /more/ retarded' then.
I would have said the same thing to the person you are replying to, but since you did, let me play devil's advocate and say you're only right if the intent was to either facilitate voting, or subvert the system directly. If the goal was to destroy faith in the system, this is a pretty good job.
I program banking systems for a living.
It's cute that you think "electronics simply don't do [...] accountability." Believe me, I'd be out a job real fast if they didn't.
The bottom line is, this was handled really, really poorly.
Only if the lights go out. If you walk into the dark, you're boned.
> GO NORTH
It is dark. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
> SHAKE FLASHLIGHT
The shaking only attracts the grue! You are boned!
Game over. You have achieved 1 of a possible bazillion points.