That $200.00 a month is likely for the total tech consumption (i.e. Internet access plus all you spend on tech toys, gadgets and related services) for the month - not for internet access. Internet access is between $20.00 and $50.00 a month - just like up north.
They have a couple more of those... and the admins never responded - I just got a response with something like "Thanks for telling us, we will look into it, but dont expect any answers / changes"
Well...at the very least, you may want to let them know that you just went *public* with their exploitable
web-site on one of the most popular Internet sites in the world.
Oh...and now that you've done that...you should probably get *your* money out of *their* bank.
hey took it WAY too slow, all had characters in levels 3-4 after playing this certain campaign for easily 3 years)
Too bad you didn't stick it out with them; that kind of gaming is *very* fun. Threats and challenges remain threats and challenges without delving deeply into the absurd ("Yep. Just got back from killing Odin and Zeus. Which god is on my list next?" "What Farmer Joe? Your kingdom is besieged by 15 Red Dragons? Never fear; I should have them cleared out by lunch time.")
Not sure if you know who Ed Greenwood is but he was the Father of the Forgotten Realms. I sat in on a seminar he gave at Gen Con many years ago where he discussed his real-life Forgotten Realms campaign and he talked about the levels of the characters. After 9 or 10 years of gaming, the players in his group had reached between 9th and 11th level. That's about a level a year - just like the group you left.
I ran a group for a few years and at the end of the campaign, the highest level character was around 9th. We played about 12-hours a week (6 hours Saturday and Sunday - this was many years ago when I could do that kind of thing) - based on an average session of 4-5 hours, we figure we gamed about a 5 year campaign in about a 1 1/2 years. That group of players still talks about that game - and they only averaged about 1-2 levels per "gaming" year.
Groups that level slowly are often emphasizing story and depth over mechanics. If you ever get a chance to game, long-term, with a group like that again, you should take it. Stick it out, focus on the story and you'll probably have a very good time.
I always wonder why people fixate on D&D as the only PnP RPG?
I no longer play D&D - did a lot of D&D gaming back in the 80's and early 90's before I completely switched over to Steve Jackson's GURPS - but the reason I think people fixate on D&D is twofold:
It is the granddaddy of all modern RPGs - descending from Chainmail (which was more of a mini's game)
At one point, it was the game just about everyone started with because it was comparatively simple with its well-defined archetypes and level-based advancement in comparison to skills-based games like GURPS or hybrid games like Palladium
A tertiary argument *might* be that the developers of DDO hope to bring in new blood to the MMO market - they hope to bring home the classic "gamer" who may not be interested in the level grind.
I'll use myself as a case-in-point: I don't play MMOs. I don't understand the fascination with them and I have only been tempted once, when Star Wars Galaxies first came out, to even consider trying them. I do not want to pay a monthly fee, after having already bought the game, in order to go online and interact with a bunch of people who are breaking character with anachronistic sayings and a ridiculous focus on levels, experience and items/gold/credits. I've been a tabletop gamer for over 20 years; to attract me to an MMO you must feature a game that is rich in content, absent of PVP (or enables me to ignore it completely), and features a rich system of mechanics that allow characters to be nuanced and individualized. The fact that I am a Rogue should tell you very little about me other than the fact that I focus on agility and style versus strength and force. You should not be able to tell that I am a rogue just by looking at my avatar; I should be able to pick up any item I choose to - but may not be able to use it, etc. yadda, yadda, yadda. In other words, recreate, as closely as possible, the tabletop gaming experience without the smelly compatriots.:). This is what SWG seemed to promise - but ultimately failed to deliver on - once again, from various things I've read.
There are players who want to be part of an epic story - not just one of many X-level Rogues/Fighters/Insert your archetype here. I am one of them.
The developers behind DDO probably recognize that D&D has a large player-base and an even larger, untapped, player-base in the classic, tabletop, holdout gamers like myself. WoW has a stranglehold on the gaming market - the only way to break that stranglehold, or to avoid it, is to attract gamers who want something different than what WoW currently has to offer; everything I've heard about WoW indicates that the content is rich - people love the WoW environment - but everything I've heard also says the mechanics are, perhaps, too simple. DDO's strategy might be to blend familiar, yet rich, tabletop mechanics with rich content and a healthy dose of nostalgia. They don't need to be the biggest boy on the block, they just need to be profitable.
Wow. I would fire *you* for making uninformed hiring/firing decisions. Better to get
you out of the way than to face a lawsuit for wrongful termination.
How about reading the FA before you sound off:
This essay is a joke! I apologise if anyone took this literally. Canadians think it gauche to label jokes with a:-). People paid no attention when I harped about how to write __maintainable code. I found people were more receptive hearing all the goofy things people often do to muck it up. Checking for unmaintainable design patterns is a rapid way to defend against malicious or inadvertent sloppiness.
My Lord, you just completely missed the point of that article, didn't you?
Did you miss the "Humor" tag?
Did you even read the article or are you responding to the blurb on the front page?
Its a jab at the IT industry (and an old one at that - been around for quite some time - this is the second time this thing has appeared on Slashdot that I can remember); think of it as an article on Worst Practices. No one is supposed to be doing these things; they are illustrations of things that *still* happen that should never be done - a humourous jab in the eye to get our attention and encourage *good* programming styles and techniques by highlighting the ridiculous stuff that does happen.
The problem in all that is I learned nothing in life takes effort. I'm extremely lazy, and procrastinate everything, getting by at the last minute because I'm that good.
I guess you could say that I majored in "Pump and Dump". Sad but true. I can remember cramming my head full of facts, to the point where I was probably high on adrenaline and couldn't sit still, only to dump them to paper really quickly. I got great grades but to this day have problems with long term memory i.e. I exercised my short term memory extensively and convinced myself that only the things I was truly interested in were worth retaining. Not a good approach but one that served me well in my younger years.
Is it my fault? Most certainly. I take full responsibility for my actions.
What about the school? Well...I think the school established a system of rewards that, once you learned to game the system, ensured that those of us with good memories were going to succeed. I received so many awards, certificates of recognition, accolades, etc. during my K-12 education that recognition means very little to me today: give me time off with pay or give me money. Do not give me a pat on the back in front of my co-workers. During high school, I was in the top 3 students (of 550+) without even trying; I fell further back my senior year because I ran out of AP classes to take (that I wanted to take) and because I received a very poor grade in an Photography class (the teacher and I had differences of opinion over what constituted "art").
My experience in the public school system of America (private schools may be the same or different, I don't know, I didn't go to one) was that it does not teach students to think; it demands conformance and teaches facts. At the High School level, you would think we would challenge our students more and worry about their egos less; other nations do and, as a result, America is slipping further and further behind comparatively.
That way, instead of my browser connecting to Gmail's servers every 60 seconds to check for new mail, Gmail's servers can connect to my browser and tell me only when I have new email.
What you want to learn, then, is RPC or CORBA or any of its variants. You may already realize this, but you've simply described a typical client-server application.
I think it would really improve things.
Maybe. Maybe not. Do you like the idea of subscription-based software? That's where AJAX inevitably leads.
What AJAX provides us with is rich web applications - applications *approaching* the responsiveness of thick-client apps - without the need to install them, which is good. Don't fool yourself, though: the geeks love AJAX because it is shiny and new; the suits love AJAX because it enables them to move closer to a goal they've slobbered over for years: subscription-based software. AJAX is demonstrating that you can build feature-rich, responsive web applications on the web that someone can *easily* prevent you from using if you do not pony up your monthly fees on demand.
Did you bother to read either the FA or any of the articles to which it linked? At least
read GKH's take on all this
binary driver nonsense. If his insightful comments on the issue do not change your mind, fine.
GKH raises good points about how a stable binary driver interface will open the floodgates to both security problems and to update/maintenance problems.
As it stands right now, Linux kernel developers can quickly respond to threats because they are able
to fix all instances of a given problem, in all drivers, at the same time. If they do not maintain this
flexibility, either some drivers stop working unexpectedly when security fixes are made and the interfaces
are forced to change (making Linux appear "unstable") or backwards compatibility must be maintained making the Linux kernel grow over time (whenever a new interface has to be written to address flaws in the old interface).
Yes, abstraction is good...but, in this case, stability, the perception of the user and maintainability (where the *real* costs lie) must win over abstraction. Most of the kernel developers are not being compensated; how often do you think that backwards compatibility is going to be maintained? Its not. Right now, fixes are accomplished because it is easy to accomplish - global search and replace, etc. Make it difficult and it just won't be done.
Manufacturers want binary drivers because they want to play for free - they want all of the benefits of open source without any of the costs. Not cool.
We are keeping a list of all people with >500 computers, and manually confirming all large submissions. It's going to be more reliable than your average.
I would say you are acting more like a lobby, which is probably going to prove
more valuable than the average online petition - I still have my doubts about whether anyone will take a
list, unsigned either digitally (via PGP or its ilk) or manually, seriously but I commend you for your effort and wish you good luck.
PLEASE read about internet petitions
and their relevance at Snopes.com - it relates to online petitions in a political context, it is
certainly opinion, but it is well-reasoned and equally valid in this context.
A few things to consider:
Online "petitions" like this are meaningless - anyone could sit down and
throw together a long list of names and no one would know whether they
were accurate or not. Sending a list of names to someone you are trying
to influence is irrelevant - any individual who makes policy based upon an
online and un-verifiable list of names should not be in a decision-making
role.
If you want to effect change, do the following:
Write the decision-maker, in ink, on paper. Inundate them with snail
mail; it has a visual impact - email is easy to ignore.
Call the decision-maker on the phone; tie up his business line and he
is likely to take notice.
Sign a petition, in ink. Online petitions are worthless for the
reasons given above. If you want to initiate an online petition, form a
lobby, accumulate a membership and write or speak on behalf of your
members in lieu of an online petition.
I'd like to apologize for the use of various inflamator terms - including retard.
I'm not the one you should be apologizing to, but your sentiment is understood and accepted.
Not just an underfunded program, but nothing. I had no idea that AP classes even existed when I got to college. Such was the case at most of the schools I was familiar with, and most schools that I've encountered since then.
Once again, I understand and empathize. My elementary education was severely curtailed by the lack of good programs and my High School education was only marginally better (we did have some AP courses). It always strikes me as funny that I got from kindergarten through my senior year in high school and never once studied the Civil War. We didn't get it in grade school or junior high and my high school American History teacher, who was really an awesome teacher, figured that we should have had that subject by now and started with the Spanish-American War.:) My point is: students can do perfectly well in life without AP courses. Do I wish everyone who was able could participate in them: most certainly. My generally low opinion of public education in general derives from the lack of challenge I felt up through High School.
My complaint was and is totally geared at those who truly get nothing from the resources spent upon them, and end up institutionalized anyway unable to care for themselves.
Again, I understand and empathize. The problem comes in trying to determine who is getting something from the resources and who is not; I count it a victory if I can get my son to maintain eye contact for more than a few seconds, if I can get him to "pretend" at all or even give me hug. Involvement in school programs will help; he's already in early intervention therapy in our local school district. These are HUGE victories right now - with enough therapy it is possible we may recover our son and that some day he may be indistinguishable from a neurotypical child. Your yardstick of "benefit" is different than mine but, in this case, both are equally valid and competing for resources for which we both have paid - this was my basic point about each child living up to their own potential.
Maybe everyone's being neglected, and I just don't see it because of my special interest, but it sure seems that even a partially-funded program that no one would dare cut is better than no program whatsoever.
I agree wholeheartedly. Schools should be about receiving an education not playing sports; the athletics department represents a whole pot of money that should be used to benefit the entire school population - not just the few who are brawny enough to make the football team. I understand the benefits of a physical education program and I'm willing to "safe-harbor" it if for no other reason than to provide a break in study time. I also realize that an AP program could still be seen as exclusionary in that it applies to a select few; but it is in line with the primary purpose (or what should be the primary purpose) of the school. Also, if those funds were available, I find it unlikely that some of them would not go to benefit the entire school - be it in better teachers or better resources for everyone's use.
That's some of the reasoning behind my volunteering at the local school to teach programming concepts to the students with a desire to learn...
That is awesome. Keep it up.
Chicagoland
Left Chicagoland thirteen years ago and only go back to visit family who still live there. I grew up in the south suburbs and hated the place - a dirty, rundown, industrial wasteland; the public education system then was terrible (I assume it has probably not gotten any better) and the general locale was unsafe. I would never want to raise a family there.
Maybe I'm not as intellectually gifted as I once was (:))...or maybe it is the splitting headache I've got right now...but I'm not sure exactly where you stand in this debate.
If your point is that you are frustrated with the lack of funding your programs receive, I'm right there with you (or, at least I was oh-so-many-years-ago). Hopefully, your frustration at lack of funding does not translate to a desire to refer to challenged children as "retards" or to believing that an intellectual elite deserve all the education resources, to which their parents also contributed, to the exclusion of those who are challenged.
I took offense to cloudmaster's attitude; hopefully, you can see that. It may look like a waste of money, but if we can teach challenged children the basics they need to care for themselves, everyone wins: the child has a chance at some semblance of normalcy through even limited independence, the parents get to see their child happy, and the burden on society gets reduced because, hopefully, that challenged child can one day contribute to his own care - both in taxes paid and wages earned and spent. Without an education, the chances of that happening are much slimmer.
If you cannot keep yourself intellectually stimulated, cannot seek out new intellectual challenges and must instead rely upon a publically funded institution to provide that stimulation, then you are not thinking for yourself. You are being directed by school teachers. Of course, not knowing your age or education level, "you" could be *you* or it could be any high school student who finds himself in an un[der]funded gifted program. I grew up on the south side of Chicago in one of the worst public school systems in America - I hated the fact that my classes were not challenging and that there were not programs aimed at myself and my peers in the gifted program. We found ways to keep ourselves going intellectually.
I'm also glad to hear that your compassion is only directed towards your disabled son...
Bullshit. My response directly addressed *your* inability to deal compassionately with the "retards". It had nothing to do with gifted children and underfunded programs beyond saying that an underfunded gifted program is not a recipe for suicide and that if it is, you are not trying hard enough. I've been in those underfunded programs and I understand the frustration - I also understand that you can seek out other avenues if you are sufficiently motivated.
...explain why we've neglected those with the most potential in favor of those with the least?
There are two primary reasons:
First, let's start with the obvious: every working citizen pays into the public education system through taxes. If they pay into the system, they have a right to expect to reap some kind of benefit from that system. Trust me, I would love to not have to subject my children to a public "education" - let's approve a voucher system, privatize education and eliminate those taxes so I can do just that. Since that is not likely to happen anytime soon, we can think of it in privatized terms: I've been paying the tuition for my children to go to school for many years now - since I've already paid for their education, the fact that one of my children requires special attention does not preclude his right to attend school. If it does, give me back the money I've already paid for *his* education and I will happily go elsewhere.
Second: it is very difficult to objectively judge "potential". By definition, it is a hope and dream beyond whatever state a person is at presently. Do we judge by GPA? So should we consider someone who is studying, say, Preliminary Education as achieving the same level as someone who is studying Aerospace Engineering? Engineering is a much more difficult course of study than Education so is the Education student not living up to this arbitrary standard of "potential" or are they living up, and excelling, within their chosen discipline? Are they living up to their *own* potential? In short: there is no such thing as "most potential" except on an individual by individual basis - and there are plenty of examples of people who did poorly in school only to go on to excel in society. I think you and I agree that public education is aimed at achieving parity at best (mediocrity at worst) - which, my son's disability aside, is why I am not in favor of a public education system.
Finally, if we do not provide to some extent for those less fortunate than ourselves - through no fault of of their own - how can we call ourselves either enlightened or intelligent? How can we say we've reached *our* potential if we only see "retards" instead of recognizing that an investment in the education of the "retard", may save money and resources down the road? We might be able to teach a large number of the "retards" to live independently or contribute to their own care - in which case, *all* of society benefits. Including those who feel they are missing out now - like I felt when I was in high school and like you may have felt when you were in high school.
I'm not sure if you are a troll or just a complete and total ass.
I know you are frustrated and I do understand; while I never would have thought to dismiss an entire class of citizens when I was going through High School, I was certainly upset and disgusted that *my* programs (AP classes, academic activities, etc.) were not receiving adequate funding because the athletic programs and the "special needs" programs were sucking up the money. I, too, believe that public education breeds mediocrity and drags down the "gifted" to the lowest common denominator.
...everyone's expense...
The point you are completely missing (and that I missed then) is that if you want *my* money (tax dollars) to support *your* ascension to whatever throne it is that you think you deserve, you're gonna have to deal with the situation the way it is. Give me back my tax dollars so I can provide the hours of behavioral therapy my autistic son requires; give me back my tax dollars so I can make a dent in the cost of hiring private therapists; give me back my tax dollars so I can afford a home schooling curriculum. Institute a voucher system so you can go wherever you want. My "retard" of a son is an impediment to your glorious intellectual ascension? Bullshit; your publically funded education is a drain on the therapy I need to pay for out of my own pocket so my son can have as fulfilling a life as possible.
Meanwhile, a big chunk of the smart kids get depressed and kill themselves because school offers them nothing.
A bunch of supposedly gifted students can't figure out how to study on their own? A bunch of "gifted" students can't find their own intellectual challenges? A bunch of "gifted" students have to wait to be told what to do before they can progress? Give me a flippin' break! If you are not being challenged in your high school classes, seek challenges elsewhere - it should be easy: you're the intellectual elite! If you choose to off yourself over *that*, you obviously haven't tried hard enough.
...making worthwhile investments...
In what? You?
You are neither an ascendant nor an elite; you are a compassionless ass upon whom countless educational resources have been wasted because you cannot think for yourself about anything or anyone but yourself. If you can restore to me the money I wasted on your education, we can move on - if not, sit the hell down and STFU.
Hopefully, you won't have to learn compassion the hard way. If *you* are any indication of what the intelligentsia are supposed to be, the United States is doomed.
Having non-programmers tell programmers that they expect all software to be as reliable as a bridge is ridiculous...
Bill Thompson, the author of the original article, "worked as a commercial programmer for several years, and [has] seen how hard it is to write bullet-proof code." Now, 'several years' could be anywhere from three to five or more...but his opinion should not be dismissed as coming from a technology pundit with no real technology experience.
I don't believe the people I am referring to were 'trained' at all.
Well...they were not formally trained. They were trained by the user interface and came to expect that all user interfaces would be similar or they just flat out don't care. In either case, a de facto standard was born. The question now becomes who set that de facto standard: Microsoft with 90%+ of the desktop market (my vote) or web mail (which probably tried to emulate the desktop because it was already familiar to the user and/or designer who did not want to break with a familiar paradigm, regardless of whether or not it was the *right* paradigm).
I can't think of any other communication method that historically used a similar style.
This is a very good point but I think the relevant point is that at no time in prior history was such a model of communication even possible: near instantaneous (within minutes) written communication?
I believe the difference is that Usenet posting and much emailing by technical users is conversational versus informational: two (or more) people engaged in correspondence via Usenet are really engaged in a conversation that can most easily be "overheard" by a newcomer if written in a conversational style. Two people corresponding via manuscript are (usually) just providing information to one another. When trying to actually converse with one another, they have to resort to memory jogging conventions that complicate the message ("With regard to your point that...yadda, yadda, yadda."). Given that email dispatch is virtually instantaneous (compared to snail mail) it would seem that a more efficient means of conversing is required.
When usenet styles are appropriately used, usenet reads like a conversation that you are overhearing - if you want greater context you go further back in the archives; top-posted email reads like an ongoing, snail-mail conversation and is somewhat out-of-place given the means of dispatch. The reason it is particularly annoying is, as you know, the complete absence of context in the response - there is an expectation that you have read the entire conversation because it is included *in every email*; you are expected to wade through much information of little interest to you in order to figure out the context of a single statement that appears to start up out of nowhere.
Only because the average user has been *trained* by bad messaging habits to read email that way.
Top-posting is fine (it annoys me, but its tolerable) if you are engaged in a single-threaded, IM-style conversation where you only have to answer one question at a time. When someone asks multiple, unrelated questions in a single email or touches on multiple topics that cannot all be dealt with in a single response, top-posting falls flat on its face.
The division on this issue seems to be squarely along business users and technical users. Most technical users have been trained in Usenet-style posting: trimmed messages, clear annotation, appropriate response. Business users have been trained by Microsoft - fire and forget.
"Subsequently, any user should be able to reliably disable the TCG functionality in a way that does not violate the owner's policy."
Owner = copyright owner
User = computer owner
The way I believe the article should be read is: The owner of the computer is able to disable any DRM the copyright owner has allowed them to disable.
Basically, copyright owners will exert more control over their copyrighted works at the expense of your fair use rights; a technological enforcement that, when circumvented, will result in prosecution under the DMCA. Nice.
If this was not the case, copyrighted works would be released into the public domain or released under an appropriate public license (CC, GPL, LGPL, etc.) after a reasonable time and this technology would be irrelevant.
How is this different from opting out directly to the spammer, according to the instructions received in the spam message,
Because the merchant's ability to sell to customers who arrived at the site via normal means is impacted. The point is to complain to the merchant who is paying the spammer - you are impacting both the spammer and the merchant who hired him. Changing domains does not help the spammer because the Blue Community keeps auto-responding to his messages making it difficult for him to keep up. The ISP gets fed up with the traffic and the beating the server takes handling all of those legitimate replies. The merchant gets fed up because his server gets bombarded with legitimate complaints and he is unable to handle other customers. Everybody in the chain is impacted and, hopefully, hemorrhaging money as a result.
Otherwise, this community will become a service to the spammers just as much as to its own members, leaving non-members out in the cold
In general, I agree with this; however, Blue Community has a right to charge for their service. If you choose not to participate (or cannot participate - they only have a Windows client and I run Linux) then you are no worse off then you were before. It would be nice if entire lists were being discarded by spammers but I do not believe it is reasonable to expect this.
immediate blacklisting (with a working mechanism for appeal; even we can make mistakes) of the spammer's IP address, netblock, service provider, or country (as deemed appropriate)
This is problematic because of the number of truly innocent victims who get caught up in the fight. Historically, appeals processes have been slow and unreliable.
passing the ID number back and forth in the request/response headers
Yep.
I agree with you that passing back and forth on the query string is open to man-in-the-middle attacks; however, the threat of such a thing happening can be significantly reduced by using SSL.
My less-than-eloquently-stated point is that you can design a site to not use cookies; using cookies is unreliable because you cannot guarantee that the user will have cookies enabled - and forcing them to enable cookies just to use your site is not right, in my opinion.
Ultimately, I concede the point for the following reasons:
I did not adequately consider the man-in-the-middle attack before posting my response.
Personal bias: I cannot stand the way cookies have been abused by 3rd Parties and do not use them in my own coding.
In my development environment, we routinely use SSL which may not always be available to others
As a web developer, I'll call bull-puckey on this.
Every developer working in the online industry by now knows that cookies are, at best, an unreliable solution to solving the statelessness of the web. Why would you encourage anyone to keep cookies on their systems, knowing that a large segment of the online community is going to put those cookies to unethical use? Because "legit" sites will get caught in the crossfire? No. Legit sites should design a strategy for storing user state that does not involve cookies. Two well-worn ways of doing this are: storing user state in a server-side session that expires after 30 minutes or so and persisting data to a data store.
You cannot count on people having cookies enabled or on allowing cookies to be set; cookies have been usurped by advertisers and spyware writers to invade the privacy of web-surfers. I am sure that you can find either a browser feature or a browser plugin that will remember your username and password for sites you regularly visit...or fill in forms for you...or whatever. Beyond login information, everything required to enable every feature of a good site can be retrieved from a persistent data store. If a user does not want to register, they get a default presentation. Not a problem.
...allow session cookies...
If you are going to only allow session cookies why not skip the cookies altogether and store needed state information in an actual session object. No doubt this uses more resources on the server, however, it is far more reliable than using cookies and does not strongarm the user into enabling a feature that is sure to be abused by some third parties.
You and I understand what session cookies are and how they work. Most people do not; many people do not even know what cookies really are. These people have been conditioned to fear cookies and are likely to either enable or disable them altogether.
Slashdot Mirror
That $200.00 a month is likely for the total tech consumption (i.e. Internet access plus all you spend on tech toys, gadgets and related services) for the month - not for internet access. Internet access is between $20.00 and $50.00 a month - just like up north.
Well...at the very least, you may want to let them know that you just went *public* with their exploitable web-site on one of the most popular Internet sites in the world.
Oh...and now that you've done that...you should probably get *your* money out of *their* bank.
I'm just sayin'...
Too bad you didn't stick it out with them; that kind of gaming is *very* fun. Threats and challenges remain threats and challenges without delving deeply into the absurd ("Yep. Just got back from killing Odin and Zeus. Which god is on my list next?" "What Farmer Joe? Your kingdom is besieged by 15 Red Dragons? Never fear; I should have them cleared out by lunch time.")
Not sure if you know who Ed Greenwood is but he was the Father of the Forgotten Realms. I sat in on a seminar he gave at Gen Con many years ago where he discussed his real-life Forgotten Realms campaign and he talked about the levels of the characters. After 9 or 10 years of gaming, the players in his group had reached between 9th and 11th level. That's about a level a year - just like the group you left.
I ran a group for a few years and at the end of the campaign, the highest level character was around 9th. We played about 12-hours a week (6 hours Saturday and Sunday - this was many years ago when I could do that kind of thing) - based on an average session of 4-5 hours, we figure we gamed about a 5 year campaign in about a 1 1/2 years. That group of players still talks about that game - and they only averaged about 1-2 levels per "gaming" year.
Groups that level slowly are often emphasizing story and depth over mechanics. If you ever get a chance to game, long-term, with a group like that again, you should take it. Stick it out, focus on the story and you'll probably have a very good time.
I no longer play D&D - did a lot of D&D gaming back in the 80's and early 90's before I completely switched over to Steve Jackson's GURPS - but the reason I think people fixate on D&D is twofold:
A tertiary argument *might* be that the developers of DDO hope to bring in new blood to the MMO market - they hope to bring home the classic "gamer" who may not be interested in the level grind.
I'll use myself as a case-in-point: I don't play MMOs. I don't understand the fascination with them and I have only been tempted once, when Star Wars Galaxies first came out, to even consider trying them. I do not want to pay a monthly fee, after having already bought the game, in order to go online and interact with a bunch of people who are breaking character with anachronistic sayings and a ridiculous focus on levels, experience and items/gold/credits. I've been a tabletop gamer for over 20 years; to attract me to an MMO you must feature a game that is rich in content, absent of PVP (or enables me to ignore it completely), and features a rich system of mechanics that allow characters to be nuanced and individualized. The fact that I am a Rogue should tell you very little about me other than the fact that I focus on agility and style versus strength and force. You should not be able to tell that I am a rogue just by looking at my avatar; I should be able to pick up any item I choose to - but may not be able to use it, etc. yadda, yadda, yadda. In other words, recreate, as closely as possible, the tabletop gaming experience without the smelly compatriots. :). This is what SWG seemed to promise - but ultimately failed to deliver on - once again, from various things I've read.
There are players who want to be part of an epic story - not just one of many X-level Rogues/Fighters/Insert your archetype here. I am one of them.
The developers behind DDO probably recognize that D&D has a large player-base and an even larger, untapped, player-base in the classic, tabletop, holdout gamers like myself. WoW has a stranglehold on the gaming market - the only way to break that stranglehold, or to avoid it, is to attract gamers who want something different than what WoW currently has to offer; everything I've heard about WoW indicates that the content is rich - people love the WoW environment - but everything I've heard also says the mechanics are, perhaps, too simple. DDO's strategy might be to blend familiar, yet rich, tabletop mechanics with rich content and a healthy dose of nostalgia. They don't need to be the biggest boy on the block, they just need to be profitable.
um...yeah, that's why the parent raised the editing question.
From TFA (the fine article): "what follows are seven key principles we use to make knowledge workers most effective."
The article authors said "seven" and then listed 10.
No. Peer review is. :)
How about reading the FA before you sound off:
Did you miss the "Humor" tag?
Did you even read the article or are you responding to the blurb on the front page?
Its a jab at the IT industry (and an old one at that - been around for quite some time - this is the second time this thing has appeared on Slashdot that I can remember); think of it as an article on Worst Practices. No one is supposed to be doing these things; they are illustrations of things that *still* happen that should never be done - a humourous jab in the eye to get our attention and encourage *good* programming styles and techniques by highlighting the ridiculous stuff that does happen.
I guess you could say that I majored in "Pump and Dump". Sad but true. I can remember cramming my head full of facts, to the point where I was probably high on adrenaline and couldn't sit still, only to dump them to paper really quickly. I got great grades but to this day have problems with long term memory i.e. I exercised my short term memory extensively and convinced myself that only the things I was truly interested in were worth retaining. Not a good approach but one that served me well in my younger years.
Is it my fault? Most certainly. I take full responsibility for my actions.
What about the school? Well...I think the school established a system of rewards that, once you learned to game the system, ensured that those of us with good memories were going to succeed. I received so many awards, certificates of recognition, accolades, etc. during my K-12 education that recognition means very little to me today: give me time off with pay or give me money. Do not give me a pat on the back in front of my co-workers. During high school, I was in the top 3 students (of 550+) without even trying; I fell further back my senior year because I ran out of AP classes to take (that I wanted to take) and because I received a very poor grade in an Photography class (the teacher and I had differences of opinion over what constituted "art").
My experience in the public school system of America (private schools may be the same or different, I don't know, I didn't go to one) was that it does not teach students to think; it demands conformance and teaches facts. At the High School level, you would think we would challenge our students more and worry about their egos less; other nations do and, as a result, America is slipping further and further behind comparatively.
What you want to learn, then, is RPC or CORBA or any of its variants. You may already realize this, but you've simply described a typical client-server application.
I think it would really improve things.
Maybe. Maybe not. Do you like the idea of subscription-based software? That's where AJAX inevitably leads.
What AJAX provides us with is rich web applications - applications *approaching* the responsiveness of thick-client apps - without the need to install them, which is good. Don't fool yourself, though: the geeks love AJAX because it is shiny and new; the suits love AJAX because it enables them to move closer to a goal they've slobbered over for years: subscription-based software. AJAX is demonstrating that you can build feature-rich, responsive web applications on the web that someone can *easily* prevent you from using if you do not pony up your monthly fees on demand.
GKH raises good points about how a stable binary driver interface will open the floodgates to both security problems and to update/maintenance problems. As it stands right now, Linux kernel developers can quickly respond to threats because they are able to fix all instances of a given problem, in all drivers, at the same time. If they do not maintain this flexibility, either some drivers stop working unexpectedly when security fixes are made and the interfaces are forced to change (making Linux appear "unstable") or backwards compatibility must be maintained making the Linux kernel grow over time (whenever a new interface has to be written to address flaws in the old interface).
Yes, abstraction is good...but, in this case, stability, the perception of the user and maintainability (where the *real* costs lie) must win over abstraction. Most of the kernel developers are not being compensated; how often do you think that backwards compatibility is going to be maintained? Its not. Right now, fixes are accomplished because it is easy to accomplish - global search and replace, etc. Make it difficult and it just won't be done.
Manufacturers want binary drivers because they want to play for free - they want all of the benefits of open source without any of the costs. Not cool.
I would say you are acting more like a lobby, which is probably going to prove more valuable than the average online petition - I still have my doubts about whether anyone will take a list, unsigned either digitally (via PGP or its ilk) or manually, seriously but I commend you for your effort and wish you good luck.
A few things to consider:
Online "petitions" like this are meaningless - anyone could sit down and throw together a long list of names and no one would know whether they were accurate or not. Sending a list of names to someone you are trying to influence is irrelevant - any individual who makes policy based upon an online and un-verifiable list of names should not be in a decision-making role.
If you want to effect change, do the following:
I'm not the one you should be apologizing to, but your sentiment is understood and accepted.
Not just an underfunded program, but nothing. I had no idea that AP classes even existed when I got to college. Such was the case at most of the schools I was familiar with, and most schools that I've encountered since then.
Once again, I understand and empathize. My elementary education was severely curtailed by the lack of good programs and my High School education was only marginally better (we did have some AP courses). It always strikes me as funny that I got from kindergarten through my senior year in high school and never once studied the Civil War. We didn't get it in grade school or junior high and my high school American History teacher, who was really an awesome teacher, figured that we should have had that subject by now and started with the Spanish-American War. :) My point is: students can do perfectly well in life without AP courses. Do I wish everyone who was able could participate in them: most certainly. My generally low opinion of public education in general derives from the lack of challenge I felt up through High School.
My complaint was and is totally geared at those who truly get nothing from the resources spent upon them, and end up institutionalized anyway unable to care for themselves.
Again, I understand and empathize. The problem comes in trying to determine who is getting something from the resources and who is not; I count it a victory if I can get my son to maintain eye contact for more than a few seconds, if I can get him to "pretend" at all or even give me hug. Involvement in school programs will help; he's already in early intervention therapy in our local school district. These are HUGE victories right now - with enough therapy it is possible we may recover our son and that some day he may be indistinguishable from a neurotypical child. Your yardstick of "benefit" is different than mine but, in this case, both are equally valid and competing for resources for which we both have paid - this was my basic point about each child living up to their own potential.
Maybe everyone's being neglected, and I just don't see it because of my special interest, but it sure seems that even a partially-funded program that no one would dare cut is better than no program whatsoever.
I agree wholeheartedly. Schools should be about receiving an education not playing sports; the athletics department represents a whole pot of money that should be used to benefit the entire school population - not just the few who are brawny enough to make the football team. I understand the benefits of a physical education program and I'm willing to "safe-harbor" it if for no other reason than to provide a break in study time. I also realize that an AP program could still be seen as exclusionary in that it applies to a select few; but it is in line with the primary purpose (or what should be the primary purpose) of the school. Also, if those funds were available, I find it unlikely that some of them would not go to benefit the entire school - be it in better teachers or better resources for everyone's use.
That's some of the reasoning behind my volunteering at the local school to teach programming concepts to the students with a desire to learn...
That is awesome. Keep it up.
Chicagoland
Left Chicagoland thirteen years ago and only go back to visit family who still live there. I grew up in the south suburbs and hated the place - a dirty, rundown, industrial wasteland; the public education system then was terrible (I assume it has probably not gotten any better) and the general locale was unsafe. I would never want to raise a family there.
Good luck with your volunteer efforts!
Maybe I'm not as intellectually gifted as I once was (:))...or maybe it is the splitting headache I've got right now...but I'm not sure exactly where you stand in this debate.
If your point is that you are frustrated with the lack of funding your programs receive, I'm right there with you (or, at least I was oh-so-many-years-ago). Hopefully, your frustration at lack of funding does not translate to a desire to refer to challenged children as "retards" or to believing that an intellectual elite deserve all the education resources, to which their parents also contributed, to the exclusion of those who are challenged.
I took offense to cloudmaster's attitude; hopefully, you can see that. It may look like a waste of money, but if we can teach challenged children the basics they need to care for themselves, everyone wins: the child has a chance at some semblance of normalcy through even limited independence, the parents get to see their child happy, and the burden on society gets reduced because, hopefully, that challenged child can one day contribute to his own care - both in taxes paid and wages earned and spent. Without an education, the chances of that happening are much slimmer.
If you cannot keep yourself intellectually stimulated, cannot seek out new intellectual challenges and must instead rely upon a publically funded institution to provide that stimulation, then you are not thinking for yourself. You are being directed by school teachers. Of course, not knowing your age or education level, "you" could be *you* or it could be any high school student who finds himself in an un[der]funded gifted program. I grew up on the south side of Chicago in one of the worst public school systems in America - I hated the fact that my classes were not challenging and that there were not programs aimed at myself and my peers in the gifted program. We found ways to keep ourselves going intellectually.
I'm also glad to hear that your compassion is only directed towards your disabled son...
Bullshit. My response directly addressed *your* inability to deal compassionately with the "retards". It had nothing to do with gifted children and underfunded programs beyond saying that an underfunded gifted program is not a recipe for suicide and that if it is, you are not trying hard enough. I've been in those underfunded programs and I understand the frustration - I also understand that you can seek out other avenues if you are sufficiently motivated.
There are two primary reasons:
First, let's start with the obvious: every working citizen pays into the public education system through taxes. If they pay into the system, they have a right to expect to reap some kind of benefit from that system. Trust me, I would love to not have to subject my children to a public "education" - let's approve a voucher system, privatize education and eliminate those taxes so I can do just that. Since that is not likely to happen anytime soon, we can think of it in privatized terms: I've been paying the tuition for my children to go to school for many years now - since I've already paid for their education, the fact that one of my children requires special attention does not preclude his right to attend school. If it does, give me back the money I've already paid for *his* education and I will happily go elsewhere.
Second: it is very difficult to objectively judge "potential". By definition, it is a hope and dream beyond whatever state a person is at presently. Do we judge by GPA? So should we consider someone who is studying, say, Preliminary Education as achieving the same level as someone who is studying Aerospace Engineering? Engineering is a much more difficult course of study than Education so is the Education student not living up to this arbitrary standard of "potential" or are they living up, and excelling, within their chosen discipline? Are they living up to their *own* potential? In short: there is no such thing as "most potential" except on an individual by individual basis - and there are plenty of examples of people who did poorly in school only to go on to excel in society. I think you and I agree that public education is aimed at achieving parity at best (mediocrity at worst) - which, my son's disability aside, is why I am not in favor of a public education system.
Finally, if we do not provide to some extent for those less fortunate than ourselves - through no fault of of their own - how can we call ourselves either enlightened or intelligent? How can we say we've reached *our* potential if we only see "retards" instead of recognizing that an investment in the education of the "retard", may save money and resources down the road? We might be able to teach a large number of the "retards" to live independently or contribute to their own care - in which case, *all* of society benefits. Including those who feel they are missing out now - like I felt when I was in high school and like you may have felt when you were in high school.
I'm not sure if you are a troll or just a complete and total ass.
I know you are frustrated and I do understand; while I never would have thought to dismiss an entire class of citizens when I was going through High School, I was certainly upset and disgusted that *my* programs (AP classes, academic activities, etc.) were not receiving adequate funding because the athletic programs and the "special needs" programs were sucking up the money. I, too, believe that public education breeds mediocrity and drags down the "gifted" to the lowest common denominator.
The point you are completely missing (and that I missed then) is that if you want *my* money (tax dollars) to support *your* ascension to whatever throne it is that you think you deserve, you're gonna have to deal with the situation the way it is. Give me back my tax dollars so I can provide the hours of behavioral therapy my autistic son requires; give me back my tax dollars so I can make a dent in the cost of hiring private therapists; give me back my tax dollars so I can afford a home schooling curriculum. Institute a voucher system so you can go wherever you want. My "retard" of a son is an impediment to your glorious intellectual ascension? Bullshit; your publically funded education is a drain on the therapy I need to pay for out of my own pocket so my son can have as fulfilling a life as possible.
Meanwhile, a big chunk of the smart kids get depressed and kill themselves because school offers them nothing.
A bunch of supposedly gifted students can't figure out how to study on their own? A bunch of "gifted" students can't find their own intellectual challenges? A bunch of "gifted" students have to wait to be told what to do before they can progress? Give me a flippin' break! If you are not being challenged in your high school classes, seek challenges elsewhere - it should be easy: you're the intellectual elite! If you choose to off yourself over *that*, you obviously haven't tried hard enough.
In what? You?
You are neither an ascendant nor an elite; you are a compassionless ass upon whom countless educational resources have been wasted because you cannot think for yourself about anything or anyone but yourself. If you can restore to me the money I wasted on your education, we can move on - if not, sit the hell down and STFU.
Hopefully, you won't have to learn compassion the hard way. If *you* are any indication of what the intelligentsia are supposed to be, the United States is doomed.
Bill Thompson, the author of the original article, "worked as a commercial programmer for several years, and [has] seen how hard it is to write bullet-proof code." Now, 'several years' could be anywhere from three to five or more...but his opinion should not be dismissed as coming from a technology pundit with no real technology experience.
Other than that, I basically agree with you.
It's not intuitive at all...but it is well-known to those who use vi/vim: "/" is how you start an in-page search.
Well...they were not formally trained. They were trained by the user interface and came to expect that all user interfaces would be similar or they just flat out don't care. In either case, a de facto standard was born. The question now becomes who set that de facto standard: Microsoft with 90%+ of the desktop market (my vote) or web mail (which probably tried to emulate the desktop because it was already familiar to the user and/or designer who did not want to break with a familiar paradigm, regardless of whether or not it was the *right* paradigm).
I can't think of any other communication method that historically used a similar style.
This is a very good point but I think the relevant point is that at no time in prior history was such a model of communication even possible: near instantaneous (within minutes) written communication?
I believe the difference is that Usenet posting and much emailing by technical users is conversational versus informational: two (or more) people engaged in correspondence via Usenet are really engaged in a conversation that can most easily be "overheard" by a newcomer if written in a conversational style. Two people corresponding via manuscript are (usually) just providing information to one another. When trying to actually converse with one another, they have to resort to memory jogging conventions that complicate the message ("With regard to your point that...yadda, yadda, yadda."). Given that email dispatch is virtually instantaneous (compared to snail mail) it would seem that a more efficient means of conversing is required.
When usenet styles are appropriately used, usenet reads like a conversation that you are overhearing - if you want greater context you go further back in the archives; top-posted email reads like an ongoing, snail-mail conversation and is somewhat out-of-place given the means of dispatch. The reason it is particularly annoying is, as you know, the complete absence of context in the response - there is an expectation that you have read the entire conversation because it is included *in every email*; you are expected to wade through much information of little interest to you in order to figure out the context of a single statement that appears to start up out of nowhere.
Only because the average user has been *trained* by bad messaging habits to read email that way.
Top-posting is fine (it annoys me, but its tolerable) if you are engaged in a single-threaded, IM-style conversation where you only have to answer one question at a time. When someone asks multiple, unrelated questions in a single email or touches on multiple topics that cannot all be dealt with in a single response, top-posting falls flat on its face.
The division on this issue seems to be squarely along business users and technical users. Most technical users have been trained in Usenet-style posting: trimmed messages, clear annotation, appropriate response. Business users have been trained by Microsoft - fire and forget.
Owner = copyright owner
User = computer owner
The way I believe the article should be read is: The owner of the computer is able to disable any DRM the copyright owner has allowed them to disable.
Basically, copyright owners will exert more control over their copyrighted works at the expense of your fair use rights; a technological enforcement that, when circumvented, will result in prosecution under the DMCA. Nice.
If this was not the case, copyrighted works would be released into the public domain or released under an appropriate public license (CC, GPL, LGPL, etc.) after a reasonable time and this technology would be irrelevant.
Because the merchant's ability to sell to customers who arrived at the site via normal means is impacted. The point is to complain to the merchant who is paying the spammer - you are impacting both the spammer and the merchant who hired him. Changing domains does not help the spammer because the Blue Community keeps auto-responding to his messages making it difficult for him to keep up. The ISP gets fed up with the traffic and the beating the server takes handling all of those legitimate replies. The merchant gets fed up because his server gets bombarded with legitimate complaints and he is unable to handle other customers. Everybody in the chain is impacted and, hopefully, hemorrhaging money as a result.
Otherwise, this community will become a service to the spammers just as much as to its own members, leaving non-members out in the cold
In general, I agree with this; however, Blue Community has a right to charge for their service. If you choose not to participate (or cannot participate - they only have a Windows client and I run Linux) then you are no worse off then you were before. It would be nice if entire lists were being discarded by spammers but I do not believe it is reasonable to expect this.
immediate blacklisting (with a working mechanism for appeal; even we can make mistakes) of the spammer's IP address, netblock, service provider, or country (as deemed appropriate)
This is problematic because of the number of truly innocent victims who get caught up in the fight. Historically, appeals processes have been slow and unreliable.
Yep.
I agree with you that passing back and forth on the query string is open to man-in-the-middle attacks; however, the threat of such a thing happening can be significantly reduced by using SSL.
My less-than-eloquently-stated point is that you can design a site to not use cookies; using cookies is unreliable because you cannot guarantee that the user will have cookies enabled - and forcing them to enable cookies just to use your site is not right, in my opinion.
Ultimately, I concede the point for the following reasons:
As a web developer, I'll call bull-puckey on this.
Every developer working in the online industry by now knows that cookies are, at best, an unreliable solution to solving the statelessness of the web. Why would you encourage anyone to keep cookies on their systems, knowing that a large segment of the online community is going to put those cookies to unethical use? Because "legit" sites will get caught in the crossfire? No. Legit sites should design a strategy for storing user state that does not involve cookies. Two well-worn ways of doing this are: storing user state in a server-side session that expires after 30 minutes or so and persisting data to a data store.
You cannot count on people having cookies enabled or on allowing cookies to be set; cookies have been usurped by advertisers and spyware writers to invade the privacy of web-surfers. I am sure that you can find either a browser feature or a browser plugin that will remember your username and password for sites you regularly visit...or fill in forms for you...or whatever. Beyond login information, everything required to enable every feature of a good site can be retrieved from a persistent data store. If a user does not want to register, they get a default presentation. Not a problem.
If you are going to only allow session cookies why not skip the cookies altogether and store needed state information in an actual session object. No doubt this uses more resources on the server, however, it is far more reliable than using cookies and does not strongarm the user into enabling a feature that is sure to be abused by some third parties.
You and I understand what session cookies are and how they work. Most people do not; many people do not even know what cookies really are. These people have been conditioned to fear cookies and are likely to either enable or disable them altogether.