Again: go read a scientific case study instead of the crap and lies put forth by the government. And while you're at it, look at the studies on alcohol.
The comparison for tobacco and for alcohol vs marijuana has been done numerous times and has always come to the same conclusion: tobacco and alcohol do more damage to the body long and short term.
As for a final thought: how many years did the government and the industry outright LIE to people about their products effects on the body in order to preserve their interests? Is it not possible they're doing the same thing with other substances?
If you don't want to take the time to find out the truth, look for a movie called Grass. It was made in 2000 and shows the US war on pot from its very begining.
Unfortunate sign of the times...
on
Ageism in IT?
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
I'm 32. I started in computers when I was 8 (few years before PCs became available). I first started in programming and back then coding had to be structured, be commented and most importantly not crash, freeze or generally blow up without putting a concerted effort into it.
Then M$ came along in 1995 and released a huge pile of crap masquerading as an OS called Windows95. I feel justified calling it this because I was one of the outside beta testers and got see personally what it was worth. The structure was there (barely). Commented? HA. And as for the 3rd criteria, well, for you younger folks, computers aren't supposed to crash & lockup when you happen to sneeze near them!
This is just an opinion but since M$ seems to be doing so well producing error-riddled software, a lot of other companies are doing the same thing. It's almost like this is becoming the norm. This might explain why experienced coders are being let go.
I use myself as an example. I was in charge of Beta testing. I was fired because I refused to sign my name to a document stating that a particular piece software was as error-free as possible. I knew it wasn't because the errors that I had found and submitted were never fixed. Why? Because the owners of the company wanted to programmers to work on the new changes they had proposed. There were new changes every 2-3 days so no wonder errors weren't being fixed. The final reason I was given was that my vision of the company wasn't the same as managements.
I guess this was, in essence, true because setting me up to take the fall for crappy software when the customers started screaming certainly wasn't my view!
Both parties should just STFU and finish the f*cking game. Most don't really care about their petty, infantile jabs at each other. I know I certainly don't.
I've played Duke since the 1st one was brought out by Apogee (there's a name out of the past, Commander Keen all the way!). The way things are going I might play the first 3 & 3D again just to prove to myself that they existed.
When I as in Grade 8, the school board in our area decided rather than cutting all teacher's salaries they would dismiss 2 teachers instead.
This makes sense except that it's union so those with seniority kept their jobs. We the students were really pissed off because 2 good young teachers were going to be axed and there were at least 5 teachers that were no younger than 62. 2 of them had to take insulin shots every 2-3 hours (and they did miss and go into shock on more than one occasion). 2 didn't care about their jobs anymore and it was evident in the quality of the classes. 1 seemed to think that nothing had changed since the 1890s and that a teacher should run their class via fear and intimidation. She was also becoming senile although she would blame this on her students 'playing tricks on her'.
One day at 9:30am EVERY student in the school (a junior high, grades 8-10) walked out and started protesting in front of the school. The principal came out and tried to dissuade us and was having a good go at it until the press and the TV cameras showed up. A group of the best speaking, most presentable students addressed the press and told them exactly what was going on. As soon as the parents saw the 6:00 news, they weren't so mad about their kids walking out as they were pissed that quality teachers were being fired so 'useless' ones could earn an extra year of undeserved wages.
The next day students from 10 other schools in the area did the same.
After 2 days of the school board receiving calls and letters demanding certain body parts of theirs on a platter, they reluctantly found other areas to make up the money instead of firing teachers.
This also shows one of the drawbacks of unions: sacrificing youth and skill for old age a treachery...
PS: Read your NDA. Most only cover the property of the company, not the 'dirty laundry' btw employees and management.
With the amount of circuitry and cockpit to ground communication, cellphone interference is only logical.
The one I want to see proven is the belief that using a cellphone at gas station pump can start a fire. To me it seems more likely the odds of the battery in the car starting a fire are better than a cell battery.
True. I've found WinRAR to be a better choice over.zip
As far as I can remember zip (especially PKware) has been around for about as long a PCs have. When new compresson utilities first came around, I found that alot of them couldn't beat zip. Except ARJ. Anyone remember ARJ? It was able to beat zip for compression most of the time. Not a huge amount but enough to make it my compression of choice when all we had was floppies.
Let's face it, the tobacco industry is being slowly hunted down and exterminated. What better way to survive than to alter the product but keep the raw material.
The industry keeps it's plantations and probably won't have to change the harvesting methods. Processing might need some modification. Major changes for the factories/machines that produce the actual finished product. If it's possible to grow a tobacco plant with multiple genetic changes that don't interfere with each other's development, it could be the 2nd golden era for the tobacco industry.
This is not a problem with the game lacking enough stimulis. It's an inherent problem with the human mind. Some feel that because of the wires, they have complete detachment and can do whatever the hell they want.
I've seen a few MUDs that keep their users in check by having authorized people with 'superhuman' characters specifically designed to combat and destroy single or groups of pathetic little ankies who need to cheat at an online game in order to satisfy their egos. This really doesn't come as a surprise to me because I've been dealing with this since the time of the BBS. From my experience, the people engaging in these activities have absolutly no chance of intimidating anyone in the real world. With BBSs it wasn't really that much of a problem. The only access was a phone line and the number was easily traced.
It would be nice if this could be done again (showing up with 5-10 people on the doorstep of the offening ankie results in alot of pained expressions on the face of the guilty if not a loss of bowel control). But an up-to-date version of this would be to surround the twit as soon as he logs on with about 20-25 bots that continually push him around inside the circle while yelling at him such remarks as 'Who do you think you are? You think you're big and tough, huh? Well, how come you can't leave the circle then, huh? Not as tough as you thought you were, huh?' and others.
I guess another way would be to block the IP address. This would catch the ankies using Mommy and Daddys account but this can be defeated by those who know how to mask or broadcast a false IP.
I like my other suggestion better. It gives the gimp a little taste of his own medicine and don't think it would be that hard to program a bot to do this.
2. Best guess, they're using a single lens camera. I believe dragonflies eat flies. If this is so and the fact that flies have compound eyes, does this test really hold true for their natural prey or just for 'human-style' eyes?
3. I'm not 100% sure myself that dragonflies have compound eyes, but if they do then I would expect that their eyes are accurate enough to see the retina of it's prey (or whatever) and keep itself in the same position relative to those movments.
BTW these are just the quick thoughts of an amateur scientist with 20 years of software trouble-shooting expereience. The points I've made seem logical to me but I've come to the conclusion that logic really doesn't work that well in the waking world.
Why don't you fix the crap you've already shoved down everybodys throat before you try to create new and innovative garbage.
Their initial ideas are sound but with the business model that they've been following since 1995 (release faulty software at an inflated price, make more money on the 'upgrades')the innovations are lost among programming errors and security faults.
It's understandable why M$ is so scared of Open Source. For one thing it's free. Secondly, if you produce faulty software someone else is gonna fix it and improve upon it. No chance for those 'upgrades'. You won't even have time to charge $15 to cover the cost of putting it on a CD.
Mine's not on the list either but I'm pretty sure I'll be on the 'next' list. The last 10 packets I've done are all from 1999-2000. Looks like I'm doing a bunch of 2nd & 3rd decodes...
... of the uneducated in a position of power. Things like this piss me off as well. Just because you're a judge doesn't mean you're an expert on everything.
I'll admit that violent video games may indeed effect children/people in some way, there still has to be some psychological intent on behalf of the guilty. Whether subconscious or not, the underlying 'drive' to commit violence is present in the mind long before.
I'm over 30 years old. My friends and I grew up watching The Road Runner (most violent cartoon for it's time) and playing video games. We've followed the evolution of the games and played most of them (violent ones included).
We have not turned into emotionless, amoral killing machines. Mainly because we are smart enough to realize the difference btw fantasy and the real world. If it is true that children 10 yrs old and higher aren't able to make this distinction, then not have the parents failed in raising this child but society has failed as well.
If ignorance of the law or being drunk cannot be used as a defence, why is being under the influence of a video game accepted so readily?
Good for comercializm - I'm interested in the price and quality of the handheld units vs. GPS.
Good for quality - talk about the US screwing with the GPS satlites during the Iraqi war and the potential conflict to follow (North Korea's nuclear conflict or government-topling war with Iran, take your pick) I would welcome a system that doesn't get continually tampered with.
Bad for the space program - yet another 30 pieces of orbiting debris to cause potentially catastrophic damage to space vessels.
I have a few 'chunks' of it in my crystal/rock collection. I happen to think it's a cool looking element - continuous geometricly layered squares with oil-like coloring... I've had the pieces for ages but I haven't looked at the collection in at least a couple years. Guess I better check if it's still there!
Have they gotten rid of the spyware yet? Kazaa is crap. IRC works the best but I prefer WinMX. I've found everything I need - from new just released movies to old cult classics and the obscure.
I paid my $13.50 to see it in the moviehouses but The Matrix Reloaded is rather cerebral. I d/l it (via WinMX) and watched it a few times more to get all the dialogue. I paid once and that's good enough.
I also use WinMX to preview some of the not-so-hyped movies to see if it's worth spending that much money to see it on the big screen. When movies were $5.00 and even $7.50 it was alright. I could justify it.
But now incl. taxes you have to spend $15.00! Some of these movies don't even rate $5.00 as a worthwhile use of my money.
I remember when actors and musicians were bards that had to perform for their dinner. Now the same people get millions of $$$. Some high-quality ones are worth the millions they have (maybe not 10s of millions but IMHO they do deserve 5-10 million OVER their careers, not for just one movie/album). Most don't deserve more than a few $100,000.
The argument could be posed that athletes earn millions a season and professional sports is considered entertainment. This is true but I can justify athletes getting piles of cash - they have to stay in the peak of health for their entire careers, keep a strict diet and put their bodies through (at times) extreme physical 'torture'.
Actors/Musicians just have to be able to survive their heavy-partying lifestyles. The only physical 'torture' is the posibility of overdose of drugs or booze. Sure you might say the psychological 'torture' of having to repeat a scene 15-40 times until a director says 'That 40th shot was good but I think we'll just use the 1st one...' but after the movie is complete or the album is finalized, it's done. 10-30 million dollars for a handful or two if months of mostly standing around waiting for the technical stuff to be set up, then do a small snippet of work, then added to make up 90 mins worth of film?
Allowing for re-shoots, 90 mins of finished flim takes maybe 15-20 hours of the actor/actress actually doing their job - acting. For this they get millions?? This is why I have to pay so much to see a freakin' movie?!?!?
Forget it! I'll d/l the movie and judge for myself if it's worth paying that much to see it on the big screen.
Case in point: Star Trek Nemesis. It's an even numbered ST so according to the rule it should have been a good one. The advertising was really eye-catching. This was supposed to be a dark, scarey Start Trek. The only reason why it was dark was because everything was filmed with shadows and dark colors! It reminded me so much of another hyped movie that kinda flopped I thought the director of Alien3 was doing this! Not to mention that Data wasn't able to create another Soong-type android let alone Starfleet but a clone from a mining planet can with no problems at all?!?!?
The amount of money these 'entertainers' are getting needs to be drastically reduced. That will never happen so the 'pirating' of movies and music will continue. Just like the 'war on video game crackers' for every one 'they' stop 5 more start up.
Considering I started with ML and Assembler (for PC & Mainframe) maybe now a programmer can actually be called a programmer.
I learned Pascal, COBOL, PL/1, & C. After that I lost interest because any fool could call himself a programmer. I just couldn't accept that someone creating a screen for data entry in dBase was calling him/herself a computer programmer. I also felt a little cheated with some of these languages that generate huge chunks of code for the 'programmer' and the compilers that not only point to the error but tell you what to do to fix it. I know this is innovation but I feel this is what led to sloppy programming and the after-effect of bug-ridden software. A 'programmer' no longer had to think about what he/she was trying to produce.
True, ML and Assembler are 2nd genteration programming languages and long since considered 'dead' but some of us still use them today. Why? Because with them you have very powerful control over a comuter. Why else would M$ get rid of DOS. If you can boot a computer into DOS you can use a simple text editor and DOS compiler to create a program to manipulate the Windows OS.
Ever since the Atari 2600 & C64 came into existance I always wondered why they were advertising for the teen & pre-teen market but tagged prices that the target market could not afford.
I can remember getting my 2600 and then my C64 when they first came out and then having to spend about 3-4 days convincing my parents to spend $40+ for a game.
Now in the past few years it's been trying to justify spending $80+ for the same thing - 1 game.
This is what originally started game cracking in the first place. 'If you can't convince Mom and/or Dad to shell out for that cool game just get a copy from Buddy.' This eventually led to 'Why bother trying to convince Mom and/or Dad in the first place? Save your time and breath and just get a copy from Buddy and avoid the whole conflict.'
This might be a stretch but I feel originally game crackers were the Robin Hoods of the early home computing days...
In arcades it's you and the machine with people watching you. Online gaming it's you and every brainless ankie who thinks it's 'so cool' to hack the game so he's the best and 'kill off' anybody who is new to the game.
I've enjoyed arcades since the first ones came into existance. Online gaming doesn't appeal to me in the least because of all the idiots out there who either cheat or target new players for the sole purpose of building their egos - 'Look at me! I killed XXX players! Aren't I cool?' Ya maybe but considering 95% of that frag total were players that had been in the game for 5 mins, all you've proven is that your a complete waste of skin.
These are usually people who would never go to an arcade because their actual game skill is so pathetic they'd be laughed out every aracde...
Slashdot Mirror
Again: go read a scientific case study instead of the crap and lies put forth by the government. And while you're at it, look at the studies on alcohol.
The comparison for tobacco and for alcohol vs marijuana has been done numerous times and has always come to the same conclusion: tobacco and alcohol do more damage to the body long and short term.
As for a final thought: how many years did the government and the industry outright LIE to people about their products effects on the body in order to preserve their interests? Is it not possible they're doing the same thing with other substances?
If you don't want to take the time to find out the truth, look for a movie called Grass. It was made in 2000 and shows the US war on pot from its very begining.
I'm 32. I started in computers when I was 8 (few years before PCs became available). I first started in programming and back then coding had to be structured, be commented and most importantly not crash, freeze or generally blow up without putting a concerted effort into it.
Then M$ came along in 1995 and released a huge pile of crap masquerading as an OS called Windows95. I feel justified calling it this because I was one of the outside beta testers and got see personally what it was worth. The structure was there (barely). Commented? HA. And as for the 3rd criteria, well, for you younger folks, computers aren't supposed to crash & lockup when you happen to sneeze near them!
This is just an opinion but since M$ seems to be doing so well producing error-riddled software, a lot of other companies are doing the same thing. It's almost like this is becoming the norm. This might explain why experienced coders are being let go.
I use myself as an example. I was in charge of Beta testing. I was fired because I refused to sign my name to a document stating that a particular piece software was as error-free as possible. I knew it wasn't because the errors that I had found and submitted were never fixed. Why? Because the owners of the company wanted to programmers to work on the new changes they had proposed. There were new changes every 2-3 days so no wonder errors weren't being fixed. The final reason I was given was that my vision of the company wasn't the same as managements.
I guess this was, in essence, true because setting me up to take the fall for crappy software when the customers started screaming certainly wasn't my view!
Both parties should just STFU and finish the f*cking game. Most don't really care about their petty, infantile jabs at each other. I know I certainly don't.
I've played Duke since the 1st one was brought out by Apogee (there's a name out of the past, Commander Keen all the way!). The way things are going I might play the first 3 & 3D again just to prove to myself that they existed.
When I as in Grade 8, the school board in our area decided rather than cutting all teacher's salaries they would dismiss 2 teachers instead.
This makes sense except that it's union so those with seniority kept their jobs. We the students were really pissed off because 2 good young teachers were going to be axed and there were at least 5 teachers that were no younger than 62. 2 of them had to take insulin shots every 2-3 hours (and they did miss and go into shock on more than one occasion). 2 didn't care about their jobs anymore and it was evident in the quality of the classes. 1 seemed to think that nothing had changed since the 1890s and that a teacher should run their class via fear and intimidation. She was also becoming senile although she would blame this on her students 'playing tricks on her'.
One day at 9:30am EVERY student in the school (a junior high, grades 8-10) walked out and started protesting in front of the school. The principal came out and tried to dissuade us and was having a good go at it until the press and the TV cameras showed up. A group of the best speaking, most presentable students addressed the press and told them exactly what was going on. As soon as the parents saw the 6:00 news, they weren't so mad about their kids walking out as they were pissed that quality teachers were being fired so 'useless' ones could earn an extra year of undeserved wages.
The next day students from 10 other schools in the area did the same.
After 2 days of the school board receiving calls and letters demanding certain body parts of theirs on a platter, they reluctantly found other areas to make up the money instead of firing teachers.
This also shows one of the drawbacks of unions: sacrificing youth and skill for old age a treachery...
PS: Read your NDA. Most only cover the property of the company, not the 'dirty laundry' btw employees and management.
is still crap.
With the amount of circuitry and cockpit to ground communication, cellphone interference is only logical.
The one I want to see proven is the belief that using a cellphone at gas station pump can start a fire. To me it seems more likely the odds of the battery in the car starting a fire are better than a cell battery.
True. I've found WinRAR to be a better choice over .zip
As far as I can remember zip (especially PKware) has been around for about as long a PCs have. When new compresson utilities first came around, I found that alot of them couldn't beat zip. Except ARJ. Anyone remember ARJ? It was able to beat zip for compression most of the time. Not a huge amount but enough to make it my compression of choice when all we had was floppies.
I can see myself looking like Krusty in that Simpsons episode...
'Uhhh, check my ass. I think there's space for one more...'
Let's face it, the tobacco industry is being slowly hunted down and exterminated. What better way to survive than to alter the product but keep the raw material.
The industry keeps it's plantations and probably won't have to change the harvesting methods. Processing might need some modification. Major changes for the factories/machines that produce the actual finished product. If it's possible to grow a tobacco plant with multiple genetic changes that don't interfere with each other's development, it could be the 2nd golden era for the tobacco industry.
They'd have to make them ALOT smoother. I could never keep tobacco smoke in my lungs as long as I do with pot. Not even close!
This is not a problem with the game lacking enough stimulis. It's an inherent problem with the human mind. Some feel that because of the wires, they have complete detachment and can do whatever the hell they want.
I've seen a few MUDs that keep their users in check by having authorized people with 'superhuman' characters specifically designed to combat and destroy single or groups of pathetic little ankies who need to cheat at an online game in order to satisfy their egos. This really doesn't come as a surprise to me because I've been dealing with this since the time of the BBS. From my experience, the people engaging in these activities have absolutly no chance of intimidating anyone in the real world. With BBSs it wasn't really that much of a problem. The only access was a phone line and the number was easily traced.
It would be nice if this could be done again (showing up with 5-10 people on the doorstep of the offening ankie results in alot of pained expressions on the face of the guilty if not a loss of bowel control). But an up-to-date version of this would be to surround the twit as soon as he logs on with about 20-25 bots that continually push him around inside the circle while yelling at him such remarks as 'Who do you think you are? You think you're big and tough, huh? Well, how come you can't leave the circle then, huh? Not as tough as you thought you were, huh?' and others.
I guess another way would be to block the IP address. This would catch the ankies using Mommy and Daddys account but this can be defeated by those who know how to mask or broadcast a false IP.
I like my other suggestion better. It gives the gimp a little taste of his own medicine and don't think it would be that hard to program a bot to do this.
Since there aren't any deatils.
1. What is are the distances involved?
2. Best guess, they're using a single lens camera. I believe dragonflies eat flies. If this is so and the fact that flies have compound eyes, does this test really hold true for their natural prey or just for 'human-style' eyes?
3. I'm not 100% sure myself that dragonflies have compound eyes, but if they do then I would expect that their eyes are accurate enough to see the retina of it's prey (or whatever) and keep itself in the same position relative to those movments.
BTW these are just the quick thoughts of an amateur scientist with 20 years of software trouble-shooting expereience. The points I've made seem logical to me but I've come to the conclusion that logic really doesn't work that well in the waking world.
Why don't you fix the crap you've already shoved down everybodys throat before you try to create new and innovative garbage.
Their initial ideas are sound but with the business model that they've been following since 1995 (release faulty software at an inflated price, make more money on the 'upgrades')the innovations are lost among programming errors and security faults.
It's understandable why M$ is so scared of Open Source. For one thing it's free. Secondly, if you produce faulty software someone else is gonna fix it and improve upon it. No chance for those 'upgrades'. You won't even have time to charge $15 to cover the cost of putting it on a CD.
Mine's not on the list either but I'm pretty sure I'll be on the 'next' list. The last 10 packets I've done are all from 1999-2000. Looks like I'm doing a bunch of 2nd & 3rd decodes...
... of the uneducated in a position of power. Things like this piss me off as well. Just because you're a judge doesn't mean you're an expert on everything.
I'll admit that violent video games may indeed effect children/people in some way, there still has to be some psychological intent on behalf of the guilty. Whether subconscious or not, the underlying 'drive' to commit violence is present in the mind long before.
I'm over 30 years old. My friends and I grew up watching The Road Runner (most violent cartoon for it's time) and playing video games. We've followed the evolution of the games and played most of them (violent ones included).
We have not turned into emotionless, amoral killing machines. Mainly because we are smart enough to realize the difference btw fantasy and the real world. If it is true that children 10 yrs old and higher aren't able to make this distinction, then not have the parents failed in raising this child but society has failed as well.
If ignorance of the law or being drunk cannot be used as a defence, why is being under the influence of a video game accepted so readily?
how long is it gonna take 'em to implement it? (So that the general public notices, that is...)
So is Bi a creation from two or more other elements or is it a by-product? (Sorry for the Mr. Wizard questions)
Good for comercializm - I'm interested in the price and quality of the handheld units vs. GPS.
Good for quality - talk about the US screwing with the GPS satlites during the Iraqi war and the potential conflict to follow (North Korea's nuclear conflict or government-topling war with Iran, take your pick) I would welcome a system that doesn't get continually tampered with.
Bad for the space program - yet another 30 pieces of orbiting debris to cause potentially catastrophic damage to space vessels.
Windows XP = Windows eXtortion Program.
I have a few 'chunks' of it in my crystal/rock collection. I happen to think it's a cool looking element - continuous geometricly layered squares with oil-like coloring... I've had the pieces for ages but I haven't looked at the collection in at least a couple years. Guess I better check if it's still there!
Have they gotten rid of the spyware yet? Kazaa is crap. IRC works the best but I prefer WinMX. I've found everything I need - from new just released movies to old cult classics and the obscure.
I paid my $13.50 to see it in the moviehouses but The Matrix Reloaded is rather cerebral. I d/l it (via WinMX) and watched it a few times more to get all the dialogue. I paid once and that's good enough.
I also use WinMX to preview some of the not-so-hyped movies to see if it's worth spending that much money to see it on the big screen. When movies were $5.00 and even $7.50 it was alright. I could justify it.
But now incl. taxes you have to spend $15.00! Some of these movies don't even rate $5.00 as a worthwhile use of my money.
I remember when actors and musicians were bards that had to perform for their dinner. Now the same people get millions of $$$. Some high-quality ones are worth the millions they have (maybe not 10s of millions but IMHO they do deserve 5-10 million OVER their careers, not for just one movie/album). Most don't deserve more than a few $100,000.
The argument could be posed that athletes earn millions a season and professional sports is considered entertainment. This is true but I can justify athletes getting piles of cash - they have to stay in the peak of health for their entire careers, keep a strict diet and put their bodies through (at times) extreme physical 'torture'.
Actors/Musicians just have to be able to survive their heavy-partying lifestyles. The only physical 'torture' is the posibility of overdose of drugs or booze. Sure you might say the psychological 'torture' of having to repeat a scene 15-40 times until a director says 'That 40th shot was good but I think we'll just use the 1st one...' but after the movie is complete or the album is finalized, it's done. 10-30 million dollars for a handful or two if months of mostly standing around waiting for the technical stuff to be set up, then do a small snippet of work, then added to make up 90 mins worth of film?
Allowing for re-shoots, 90 mins of finished flim takes maybe 15-20 hours of the actor/actress actually doing their job - acting. For this they get millions?? This is why I have to pay so much to see a freakin' movie?!?!?
Forget it! I'll d/l the movie and judge for myself if it's worth paying that much to see it on the big screen.
Case in point: Star Trek Nemesis. It's an even numbered ST so according to the rule it should have been a good one. The advertising was really eye-catching. This was supposed to be a dark, scarey Start Trek. The only reason why it was dark was because everything was filmed with shadows and dark colors! It reminded me so much of another hyped movie that kinda flopped I thought the director of Alien3 was doing this! Not to mention that Data wasn't able to create another Soong-type android let alone Starfleet but a clone from a mining planet can with no problems at all?!?!?
The amount of money these 'entertainers' are getting needs to be drastically reduced. That will never happen so the 'pirating' of movies and music will continue. Just like the 'war on video game crackers' for every one 'they' stop 5 more start up.
Considering I started with ML and Assembler (for PC & Mainframe) maybe now a programmer can actually be called a programmer.
I learned Pascal, COBOL, PL/1, & C. After that I lost interest because any fool could call himself a programmer. I just couldn't accept that someone creating a screen for data entry in dBase was calling him/herself a computer programmer. I also felt a little cheated with some of these languages that generate huge chunks of code for the 'programmer' and the compilers that not only point to the error but tell you what to do to fix it. I know this is innovation but I feel this is what led to sloppy programming and the after-effect of bug-ridden software. A 'programmer' no longer had to think about what he/she was trying to produce.
True, ML and Assembler are 2nd genteration programming languages and long since considered 'dead' but some of us still use them today. Why? Because with them you have very powerful control over a comuter. Why else would M$ get rid of DOS. If you can boot a computer into DOS you can use a simple text editor and DOS compiler to create a program to manipulate the Windows OS.
Ever since the Atari 2600 & C64 came into existance I always wondered why they were advertising for the teen & pre-teen market but tagged prices that the target market could not afford.
I can remember getting my 2600 and then my C64 when they first came out and then having to spend about 3-4 days convincing my parents to spend $40+ for a game.
Now in the past few years it's been trying to justify spending $80+ for the same thing - 1 game.
This is what originally started game cracking in the first place. 'If you can't convince Mom and/or Dad to shell out for that cool game just get a copy from Buddy.' This eventually led to 'Why bother trying to convince Mom and/or Dad in the first place? Save your time and breath and just get a copy from Buddy and avoid the whole conflict.'
This might be a stretch but I feel originally game crackers were the Robin Hoods of the early home computing days...
In arcades it's you and the machine with people watching you. Online gaming it's you and every brainless ankie who thinks it's 'so cool' to hack the game so he's the best and 'kill off' anybody who is new to the game.
I've enjoyed arcades since the first ones came into existance. Online gaming doesn't appeal to me in the least because of all the idiots out there who either cheat or target new players for the sole purpose of building their egos - 'Look at me! I killed XXX players! Aren't I cool?' Ya maybe but considering 95% of that frag total were players that had been in the game for 5 mins, all you've proven is that your a complete waste of skin.
These are usually people who would never go to an arcade because their actual game skill is so pathetic they'd be laughed out every aracde...