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User: Warwick+Allison

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  1. Nethack already did it. on Can Minecraft Change the Gaming Industry? · · Score: 2

    Minecraft is just a copy of the Gnomish Mines.

  2. Re:'learn new languages in about a day".... Bullsh on 2nd Edition of Learn Python the Hard Way Released · · Score: 1

    Python is a language that takes a day to relearn every time you have to switch to it. I foolishly chose it over Java for my Google app engine code. Only a few hundred lines, but so stupidly different in syntax to every other language that I regularly use it's just a pain. I hate it. Python is fine if that's the only language you use, or if you have a keyboard where it's really hard to type { and }.

  3. If programming languages are religion, Python is.. on 2nd Edition of Learn Python the Hard Way Released · · Score: 1

    nihilism where the most meaningful syntactic element is the empty nothingness of space.

  4. Re:Sick of this on TSA Has 95-Year-Old Remove Her Diaper For Screening · · Score: 2

    I'm certainly glad I got an education... I wouldn't like to handle adult diapers for a living.

  5. Err... touchscreens? on Fingertip Mouse Fits On a Ring · · Score: 1

    Who would want a super advanced trackbally thing rather than a touchscreen? What's next, new compact-size punchcards? A dialing rotor with a maglev bearing?

    Humans like feedback, preferably tactile, but otherwise visual, so either real clicky things or touchscreens. And we dislike indirection, so press the button with your finger, not rub a blue dot to move a cursor and the press something else to select.

  6. Men aren't catered for either on Women Remain the Ignored Audience In Gaming · · Score: 1

    What hope is there for studios understanding women when their understanding of men is that all we need is ever bigger guns and gore? I'm so sick of seeing the current unending stream of military games. Yawn!

    So attempts to "target" women as an audience will be just as woefully patronising and base. Maybe a pregnancy game, eh? That's what all the girls want while all the boys want to go kill people.

  7. Re:Agile... please stop. on Book Review: The Clean Coder · · Score: 1

    Imagine coal miners who live on a continuum of the opinion that cleanliness is effective in increasing productivity. Which are right? Are any? Or should we be tolerant of OCD coal miners who cannot operate with dirty hands?

    Just because you can type in an analogy does not mean it has any relevance.

  8. Re:More pop culture humor. on English City Council "Not Ready" for Zombie Attack · · Score: 1

    Do you know Kevin Bacon?

  9. Francis, Buddy! on English City Council "Not Ready" for Zombie Attack · · Score: 1

    You are prepared! When I first-post they're all over me, tearing at my brain lining and giving such perfect proof of my infantophagia that I mod them up before I've even realised it's me they're talking about!

  10. Re:has anyone seen or played homefront ? on A Plea For Game Devs To Aim Higher · · Score: 2

    GG in au gave it a pretty mediocre 7, IIRC, for exactly the reasons in TFA: formulaic, relying of bells and whistles over good character development... the usual AAA f-ups. just another soliders with guns game, just based on the ludicrous premise of a starving third world nation becoming a superpower. Nazis with dinosaurs make more sense.

  11. Re:Two Words on A Plea For Game Devs To Aim Higher · · Score: 1

    Ugh. Give me Unity (3D not the gnome p.o.s) any day.

  12. Re:Two Words on A Plea For Game Devs To Aim Higher · · Score: 1

    It exports matches to YouTube and cost $10 (in lots of 2), so don't bother with the demo! Buy it if you like any game on the axis between Chess and Day of Defeat.

  13. Re:What? on A Plea For Game Devs To Aim Higher · · Score: 2

    The whole point is that the current AAA titles are all aiming for the *median* gamer. The indie market covers MORE than the AAA titles, for the simple reason that 20 hits at 5% groups usually hits wider than 1 hit at 50%... and the real figures are way over 20:1.

    But it's a trap for AAA: everywhere the go from there current local maxima means higher costs and lower income.

    Indies don't have that problem, plus many of them will fail thereby leaving those that remain to further seek out great new directions and signal starting points for newcomers and reboots.

    Best of all for PC gamers, there is little monopolisation and lock-in distorting the market: you're free to play MW, CoD, DoD CS, and NetHack all on the same hardware (you probably don't even need the latest drivers for NetHack). Angry Birds is on every mobile device (even Nokia). Console gamers aren't too oppressed even.

  14. Re:Because real science is quantitative... on Why We Have So Much "Duh" Science · · Score: 2

    And to reconnect with the article, Galileo dropped those cannon balls off the tower in Pisa not because he thought he would learn something, but because OTHER people needed the "obvious" (dis)proved to them.

  15. Wide FoV = low magnification on DARPA's New Hi-Tech Telescope · · Score: 2

    The purpose of this telescope is fast scanning of large areas, not fine detail on single distant objects. By invoking red (!) LGMs, the FA author is just doing a poor job at sensationalizing something he doesn't understand (just the sort of vacuous hype we get too much of here).

  16. Re:Cue lawsuit in ... on Apple AirPlay Private Key Exposed · · Score: 1

    Interoperating, such as supplying power to a Macbook? Private keys seem a little more protected than 5 wires and a magnet, and yet Apple won't let you interoperate there.

  17. Errr... Chemistry? on Forget Space Travel, It's Just a Dream · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Plenty of interstellar ship concepts propose nuclear power and are therefore outside the "titanic" power of mere chemistry.

  18. The Nuts on Magical Chinese Hard Drive · · Score: 2

    Never mind the lost files... what about the Chinese heavy machinery being made with two less nuts than spec..

  19. Whoosh on SlashTweaks Let YOU Micro-Edit Slashdot · · Score: 1

    Wowser.

  20. Vivid mode on Why Russian Space Images Look Different From NASA's · · Score: 1

    The "Vivid" and "Photo" modes littering printers and monitors have as much relevance to Realism as McDonald sugar buns have to Bread. Fujifilm vs Kodak wasn't about quality, it was about hyperrealism. Digital just makes it all the worse.

  21. Re:So it's a solar cell.... on Artificial Leaf Could Provide Cheap Energy · · Score: 1

    And then there's there's the 2/3 of the earth covered by water nobody is making much use of.

    Other than using it as the sink for the majority of the CO2 being produced. Don't assume it can be inconsequentially exploited.

  22. Re:this is the thing that bothers me on China To Overtake US In Science In Two Years · · Score: 1

    Indeed, from the original Royal Society report, 35% of papers are now international.

  23. Re:this is the thing that bothers me on China To Overtake US In Science In Two Years · · Score: 1

    I suspect the US will start saying "let's all work together, instead of competing" at about the time when the rest of the world has stopped listening to it. A bit like how Norway will ask to join the EU when their oil runs out and they need an export market for goat cheese.

  24. Re:Of course it's a competition! on China To Overtake US In Science In Two Years · · Score: 1

    What, there was a plan to slaughter civilians in a different way? Some other war crime was planned? WW2 of course was war crimes on all sides (except they didn't get defined so until after the war, and only the losers got prosecuted), I'm just sickened that something worse could have been planned.

    Oh, and something that didn't actually eventuate can't be "historical fact".

  25. Re:What, people measure scientific output? on China To Overtake US In Science In Two Years · · Score: 1

    Your "two problems" are completely contradictory: they surely have LESS linking due to there being LESS Chinese language papers (as indeed TFA said).