I'm not sure you're considering all the ramifications of this company's lack of internal security. While no data is coming into the system or going out of it, I still don't post my ss# or cc# in my company email. Why? Because there could be some people with a chip on their shoulder for me or just an unscrupulous coworker. Because data is internal doesn't mean it is safe from prying eyes, it just reduces the number of prying eyes.
--trb
Re:Beware the viscious circle.
on
Half Mast
·
· Score: 1
Amen brother. I was the fat kid in elementary school and got picked on accordingly, both insults and fights. My mother never tolerated violence, so even if I had had the crap kicked out of me, if I threw even one punch she would get mad. I think she was afraid of lawsuits, I dunno. Anyways, I didn't really care but got back at those guys by lifting weights and turning out way more attractive by the end of high school.
My point here is that I whole heartedly agree with you. Talking does nothing for elementary school kids, unless you find that one random kid who was just 'going along with the group' and didn't really want to make fun/pick a fight with you anyways. For the most part, kids are just jerks and violence is the only thing they're going to understand.
Okay, you're right in that it's discrimination. I suppose I'm just okay with the fact that they are being discriminated against. When police bust up a white fraternity party, they're probably going to find some people drinking underage, maybe a few really drunk people causing a disturbance and some loud music. An inner-city party is likely going to have heavy narcotics and probably illegal arms, so the cops have a bit more to deal with. The patrons are more than likely also not going to be as cooperative.
Is it equal treatment? No, but the probable offenses aren't equal either. And while it's not a viable argument at all, everyone knows the cops are harder on inner-city type 'Get Togethers', whether they be on a street corner, in a house, wherever...if you put yourself in that situation, expect to get hassled. I don't walk down the streets of Southeast Washington, D.C. at night because I'm white, that'd be plain stupid. I'd most likely get, at least, mugged if not worse. If you're black and in the ghetto, don't hang out on a street corner where you're likely to be picked up. If you're a woman, don't go out to a club dressed like a whore and drink too much. If you're white, get your ass OUT of the ghetto after dark. Unfortunate guidelines we should follow, but intelligent nonetheless.
It would be such a different and more difficult fight than Vietnam. At least in Vietnam, we only had to deal with guerillas in one country. The 'War on Drugs' is a scam. I'm a friggin right wing Republican and I'll gladly admit that. It looked good on paper for the presidential campaigns of the 80's, but after having played around with a few controlled substances myself, I concluded there are two possible endings...
1) You learn to control your addiction 2) You die
Really, pretty simple. Why are we spending money trying to erradicate something we can never get rid of? As Chris Rock said, we'll never get rid of drugs...people would just go down in their basement and become scientists. If the US instead legalized the substances and purified them and gave out free needles, people would either die from overdoses or the drug lords, who cause a majority of the crime already either directly or indirectly, would go out of business.
Pretty simple conclusion, IMHO. You would still need to make it illegal to drive or be out in public on a controlled substance, just like alcohol is, in order to protect innocents. But in your house, hell! Shoot up, snort and smoke anything you want. Talk about getting rid of the national debt! I think my college roommates alone could have financed an inner city education with the amount of weed they bought.
And isn't it possible that you, like so many white people, don't have a freaking clue about what it's like living in that world?
Great cop-out. No matter whether we're white, black, asian, etc, we all live in the same world, with the same laws. Black people get picked up more, you're right, but black people commit more crimes. Him pointing to the fact that the people were waiting in jail with him were there for bullshit reasons doesn't dispute the fact that 1 in 4 black males are in jail (for more than a night) on a serious charge.
I've been called a racist before, it doesn't bother me and I'll admit it. I also wouldn't think to turn my back if a fellow human needed help (money, a lift, overwhelmed in a fight, etc). I'm just not going to close my eyes and pretend that minotirites are SO unfairly treated because of their race. If anything, minorities in general ARE treated fairly because of their race.
1) Yahoo! Mail - our motto: "Better than Hotmail!" 2) Slashdot - News for Nerds 3) Washington Post - GF takes the morning paper with her 4) ArsTechnica - always looking for new hardware 5) eBay - not news? it's kinda like my price checking engine...
Nonsense. They just barely know how to use windows
You miss the point.
Ask anyone under 30 right now how to write a paper, email someone or use a search engine. If they live in the U.S. and aren't in an incredibly rural area, I give you a 90% chance or more they can answer you. That's becuase we've grown up around computers. Now, everyone will admit there are some (many) differences between Linux and Windows when it comes to operating standards, GUI, etc. Don't you think that if someone were subjected to Linux at an early age and learned how to do the basics on Linux they would grow up keeping that knowledge and expanding on it? All it takes is for kids to learn it in high school and move on to college, where they sit down at the Linux machines because that's what they know. Then they get into the workplace ("tomorrow's" business execs, remember?) and if they have any say in what system they get, they'll request a linux workstation.
Okay, I *think* you're telling yourself all this stuff because you would have done the opposite...what's confusing me is this is what I would tell myself if I wanted myself to actually *follow* my guidance.
2a)...specifically, play hockey. I'm only realizing at 24 that hockey is one of the greatest sports to play, not only for the fast pace but the mental and physical challenge and the fact it's one of the few remaining sports where kids have to shake hands afterwards.
So basically what every level comes down to is just rushing the living hell out of everything
See, if this is the underyling strategy, then to me this isn't a good RTS game. That was what made SC/WC different from C&C for me, the creatures actually had abilities that changed the strategy, not just the amount of damage that was done.
Case in point...the Zerg. Perfect for zergling rushes, right? True, but they were also perfect for defending bases from archons/siege tanks because you could take a group about half a screen length outside your base (where archons/tanks typically would set up while the melee units attacked your defenses) and drop them underground. The enemy walks up, BOOM!, their long range heavy hitting units are history and you have them in a crossfire. Wonderful strategy to use.
C&C never offered anything like this. I remember playing Red Alert when my primary strategy was to build as many freakin rocket dudes as I could because a) helicopters terrorized me and b) they were somewhat effective at killing tanks. It worked, but certainly not what I call a killer strategy. That, and whoever made the most tanks usually won, hands down.
I agree with your sentiment, but have to disagree in practice. I had never played WC before 3, although I admit to playing SC ravenously. I got used to the keys in WC3 and though I still don't have them all memorized, I'm efficient enough so that it doesn't matter. I still click on icons to build 50% of the creatures in the game, just because I don't know their hotkeys. It's not essential to memorize stuff, it just helps.
That being said, I don't like the fact that I have to memorize keys at all. Unfortunately, that's one of the problems when you compare RTS vs RPG. RPGs give you lots of time. Games like TIE Fighter and flight sims are different RTS games because you get so much time to react to stuff. You also, in both cases, are controlling only one specialized unit. In modern RTS games, time is of the essence (don't believe me? attack someone in WC with 2 groups of 3 types of units each...if you look at the keyboard, you're toast...not enough time to react at all).
I don't want to pay another $50 to play the same game I already have in my library. Sequels should keep the style of gameplay the same, with similar (if not identical) hotkeys but a completely different storyline/graphics/units. Blizzard has done a pretty good job of this with their WC/SC series...you can almost consider SC a sequel to WC...same style, similar hotkeys but completely different storyline with different characters and a different means to an end.
I want something that changes my strategies from the original game. Now, I haven't played the newest C&C game, but I'm guessing you're going to be tank rushing a lot.
Without a well rounded programmer looking at the overall system (or his/her boss)
This is what the lead programmer/designer or the PM is for. Depending on the project, you should have 1 of these for each section of the project. If the project is sufficiently large, have 1 LP for each sub-section and have them report to a primary LP. The primary should know how all the subs interface and the subs should know how every component under them interfaces together. There are few projects that I've ever seen that required more than a few LPs (and I've worked on projects with 250+ developers) because they worked in a multi-tiered environment...each LP knew their own section.
Individual programmers need to look at things as a black box, it will make them much more efficient. Granted, you need to have sufficient requirements for them to do this effectively (very, very few projects have these). Ideally, programmers shouldn't even be hired until at least the first draft of requirements are out. The LP should be God before that, dictating what's doable, feasible and what makes sense from a technical perspective. He then needs to hire on programmers that can produce what he's envisioned. It amazes me the number of programs that staff up before requirements are out...how can you effectively staff up if you don't know what your staff is going to be doing? That's why sub-contractors are important, they can be staffed up anytime and (should!) have domain knowledge on what you're doing.
Don't laugh, but this is one of the reasons why it's important to have solid requirements BEFORE you being coding anything. Most projects don't, I know, but something as complicated as the space shuttle would need to be completely spec'd out beforehand. After proper requirements and specs are laid down, the programmer should then approach the system as if it were a black box...with a lot of restrictions.
The idea behind black box development is that you don't need to know what the rest of the system does...your component takes input and delivers output. That's a Good Thing (tm). Requirements are what tell you how to design and implement your black box, ie, you can't have more than 1ms latency between input/output, you can't assume some system variable is going to be out there, you can't assume your process won't be interrupted. Given these sorts of requirements, your part of the system SHOULD be a black box...someone else should send you the inputs and know what kind of outputs they're getting out. Assuming you correctly followed the requirements (that's what QA testing is for), they know what they're getting.
And why not? If it does the job, why should I care when the processor was made?
Good point.
I've never heard of a "USB Pen", and I'm sure as hell not going to waste money on some cutting edge technology that nobody's using yet.
Bad point. USB is hardly new. The pen hard drive is relatively new (~2 years), but the underlying technology has been around long enough that it's standard, everyone either knows what it is or can figure out where to plug it in (I use my technologically impaired grandmother as par, btw).
Your other point about speed makes no sense...I started using mini CDRWs (about $5 for 5 at Office Depot) and they're great...they hold 220M+ and I can easily transport them from home to office. I don't when you last copied stuff to floppy, but they aren't exactly lightening fast. They have transfer speeds well below that of a CDRW, and there's software out there that let's you treat your CDRW as a local hard drive. If you don't have a burner at the office, use a pen drive, it's that simple.
Er, possibly, but I'd argue it's the fact that Sims opened up a previously untapped group of people to play...females. Check out Sims Online, over half the people on there are girls between 13-17. They never had a game that was a) fun, b) their type of game, c) didn't make them feel like a geek playing it (very important to girls, sadly enough).
My girlfriend (she's 20) and I nearly broke up over this game because I wasn't letting her play enough.
First, my high school had two physics teachers. Each of them designed tests separately for their individual classes. When their tests were given out to the students, they also gave a test to the other teacher. The tests were curved so that the teacher who took the test got a 100% (ie, if he got an 87%, a 13 point curve was given). Kinda fair standard, we all though, until we realized that both teachers had doctorates and should probably be acing entry level physics tests...
My favorite tests, though, had to be while I was taking Digital Design during my sophmore computer engineering curriculum (Virginia Tech, btw). We had a professor who failed, overall, 52% of his students the semester I was in his class. I got a 15% on one test and it was "only" a D (I passed the class with a B, btw).
I don't get this grade inflation thing that humanities students have going for them. Engineers fail out constantly, and not because they aren't smart or don't work, it just happens. People in humanities should be reminded what grading curves were used for...you had to be average to above average to pass. If teacher's graded on a 'true' bell curve, I think it's something like 25% of the class gets a D or below. Now, I never had teachers that were that cruel, but did, if they curved at all, curve up to a bell (ie, the median grade received was a 75%/C). It was fair, and grade distribution seemed pretty good each semester (until we got to 4th year classes, people routinely failed).
Let me also add Gamedev.net. A little outdated (DX6 stuff, mostly), but covers a TON of issues of Isometric/3D/OpenGL programming. Very good reference.
I think someone already pointed it out, but hey, I've got karma to burn. DVDs have an additional income that CDs don't...cinema. A movie can make back everything it cost to produce it within the first weekend. That's not terribly rare, either. A CD has no such outlet, it gets out there and requires people to buy it. DVD sales are on top of movie ticket sales, making them almost purely profit. I don't have hard numbers to back me up here, but if you looked at the profit margin on a movie, then on an album, you'd probably win out going with the movie. Some might say that a DVD is actually OVER priced, since it's revenue is profit on top of the heap of ticket sales.
eh...if I whenever I wanted gum I could walk over to the computer, hit a few buttons, wait a few minutes (while doing something else) and out popped gum, I would probably do it...retailers be damned, I'm lazy and that's an easy process.
Your analogy goes hand and hand with a sig I see here all the time..."The can is open, the worms are everywhere". Record labels are going to have a very, VERY difficult time attempting to turn the free download service customers into paying customers because they didn't start early enough.
Back in 1996, when I first downloaded MP3s, had they advertised that I could get ANY track from a CD for.25, I would have been a paying customer instantly, simply because there wasn't that much content online. Now it's a different story. Any track I want is out there and, other than quality (arguably, 90% of the population doesn't care about the lesser quality of MP3s) and a sense of doing the (again, arguable) "right thing", there's no reason for me to pay for it.
Because unlike regular institutions that don't (typically) require too many programs that are hardware specific, programming for games sometimes does. Look at the video card requirements...if you're playing the cutting edge games, your video card is made by ATI or has the word "GeForce" in the title.
Couple this with the fact that cutting edge games require top of the line components...the school probably gets a great deal on large quantities of components (not to mention companies want people developing games for their hardware) and a trade in program would work better (at all, in fact) if everyone has the same hardware to swap in each year/2 years.
I should have qualified this statement...it's your responsibility to read the links so you know what impact the program will have on your computer. It's not illegal for a program to ask for you information and then spam you constantly, especially if you gave your consent by clicking agree. Nothing illegal there. Now, you may not have known that you were consenting to that because it was written in their on-site agreement, which changes regularly (or something), so they don't include it in the software.
You're right, an external link couldn't be held up in a court of law, but neither could a lawsuit that you file because you got 400 spam emails a day from a company that sold your email address becaues you didn't read the appropriate documents that would have convinced you to click 'Disagree'.
No, I don't think so. If you are so necessary to civilization's upkeep that you have to be reachable 24/7, don't go somewhere that prohibits phones. A movie theater, a play, really anything where the audience is expected to be quiet, should be off limits to you. It's the price you pay for having the job/wife/child that HAS to reach you.
Or you could just turn the damn thing to vibrate and keep in on your hip, like the rest of us do. That works too.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not sure you're considering all the ramifications of this company's lack of internal security. While no data is coming into the system or going out of it, I still don't post my ss# or cc# in my company email. Why? Because there could be some people with a chip on their shoulder for me or just an unscrupulous coworker. Because data is internal doesn't mean it is safe from prying eyes, it just reduces the number of prying eyes.
--trb
Amen brother. I was the fat kid in elementary school and got picked on accordingly, both insults and fights. My mother never tolerated violence, so even if I had had the crap kicked out of me, if I threw even one punch she would get mad. I think she was afraid of lawsuits, I dunno. Anyways, I didn't really care but got back at those guys by lifting weights and turning out way more attractive by the end of high school.
My point here is that I whole heartedly agree with you. Talking does nothing for elementary school kids, unless you find that one random kid who was just 'going along with the group' and didn't really want to make fun/pick a fight with you anyways. For the most part, kids are just jerks and violence is the only thing they're going to understand.
--trb
Okay, you're right in that it's discrimination. I suppose I'm just okay with the fact that they are being discriminated against. When police bust up a white fraternity party, they're probably going to find some people drinking underage, maybe a few really drunk people causing a disturbance and some loud music. An inner-city party is likely going to have heavy narcotics and probably illegal arms, so the cops have a bit more to deal with. The patrons are more than likely also not going to be as cooperative.
Is it equal treatment? No, but the probable offenses aren't equal either. And while it's not a viable argument at all, everyone knows the cops are harder on inner-city type 'Get Togethers', whether they be on a street corner, in a house, wherever...if you put yourself in that situation, expect to get hassled. I don't walk down the streets of Southeast Washington, D.C. at night because I'm white, that'd be plain stupid. I'd most likely get, at least, mugged if not worse. If you're black and in the ghetto, don't hang out on a street corner where you're likely to be picked up. If you're a woman, don't go out to a club dressed like a whore and drink too much. If you're white, get your ass OUT of the ghetto after dark. Unfortunate guidelines we should follow, but intelligent nonetheless.
--trb
...another Vietnam type conflict
It would be such a different and more difficult fight than Vietnam. At least in Vietnam, we only had to deal with guerillas in one country. The 'War on Drugs' is a scam. I'm a friggin right wing Republican and I'll gladly admit that. It looked good on paper for the presidential campaigns of the 80's, but after having played around with a few controlled substances myself, I concluded there are two possible endings...
1) You learn to control your addiction
2) You die
Really, pretty simple. Why are we spending money trying to erradicate something we can never get rid of? As Chris Rock said, we'll never get rid of drugs...people would just go down in their basement and become scientists. If the US instead legalized the substances and purified them and gave out free needles, people would either die from overdoses or the drug lords, who cause a majority of the crime already either directly or indirectly, would go out of business.
Pretty simple conclusion, IMHO. You would still need to make it illegal to drive or be out in public on a controlled substance, just like alcohol is, in order to protect innocents. But in your house, hell! Shoot up, snort and smoke anything you want. Talk about getting rid of the national debt! I think my college roommates alone could have financed an inner city education with the amount of weed they bought.
--trb
And isn't it possible that you, like so many white people, don't have a freaking clue about what it's like living in that world?
Great cop-out. No matter whether we're white, black, asian, etc, we all live in the same world, with the same laws. Black people get picked up more, you're right, but black people commit more crimes. Him pointing to the fact that the people were waiting in jail with him were there for bullshit reasons doesn't dispute the fact that 1 in 4 black males are in jail (for more than a night) on a serious charge.
I've been called a racist before, it doesn't bother me and I'll admit it. I also wouldn't think to turn my back if a fellow human needed help (money, a lift, overwhelmed in a fight, etc). I'm just not going to close my eyes and pretend that minotirites are SO unfairly treated because of their race. If anything, minorities in general ARE treated fairly because of their race.
--trb
1) Yahoo! Mail - our motto: "Better than Hotmail!"
2) Slashdot - News for Nerds
3) Washington Post - GF takes the morning paper with her
4) ArsTechnica - always looking for new hardware
5) eBay - not news? it's kinda like my price checking engine...
--trb
Nonsense. They just barely know how to use windows
You miss the point.
Ask anyone under 30 right now how to write a paper, email someone or use a search engine. If they live in the U.S. and aren't in an incredibly rural area, I give you a 90% chance or more they can answer you. That's becuase we've grown up around computers. Now, everyone will admit there are some (many) differences between Linux and Windows when it comes to operating standards, GUI, etc. Don't you think that if someone were subjected to Linux at an early age and learned how to do the basics on Linux they would grow up keeping that knowledge and expanding on it? All it takes is for kids to learn it in high school and move on to college, where they sit down at the Linux machines because that's what they know. Then they get into the workplace ("tomorrow's" business execs, remember?) and if they have any say in what system they get, they'll request a linux workstation.
1-2-3...simple.
--trb
Let's be objective here. Because you and I don't like Creed doesn't mean that 2 million other people out there don't.
--trb
Okay, I *think* you're telling yourself all this stuff because you would have done the opposite...what's confusing me is this is what I would tell myself if I wanted myself to actually *follow* my guidance.
--trb
Along the lines of #2...
...specifically, play hockey. I'm only realizing at 24 that hockey is one of the greatest sports to play, not only for the fast pace but the mental and physical challenge and the fact it's one of the few remaining sports where kids have to shake hands afterwards.
2a)
--trb
So basically what every level comes down to is just rushing the living hell out of everything
See, if this is the underyling strategy, then to me this isn't a good RTS game. That was what made SC/WC different from C&C for me, the creatures actually had abilities that changed the strategy, not just the amount of damage that was done.
Case in point...the Zerg. Perfect for zergling rushes, right? True, but they were also perfect for defending bases from archons/siege tanks because you could take a group about half a screen length outside your base (where archons/tanks typically would set up while the melee units attacked your defenses) and drop them underground. The enemy walks up, BOOM!, their long range heavy hitting units are history and you have them in a crossfire. Wonderful strategy to use.
C&C never offered anything like this. I remember playing Red Alert when my primary strategy was to build as many freakin rocket dudes as I could because a) helicopters terrorized me and b) they were somewhat effective at killing tanks. It worked, but certainly not what I call a killer strategy. That, and whoever made the most tanks usually won, hands down.
--trb
I agree with your sentiment, but have to disagree in practice. I had never played WC before 3, although I admit to playing SC ravenously. I got used to the keys in WC3 and though I still don't have them all memorized, I'm efficient enough so that it doesn't matter. I still click on icons to build 50% of the creatures in the game, just because I don't know their hotkeys. It's not essential to memorize stuff, it just helps.
That being said, I don't like the fact that I have to memorize keys at all. Unfortunately, that's one of the problems when you compare RTS vs RPG. RPGs give you lots of time. Games like TIE Fighter and flight sims are different RTS games because you get so much time to react to stuff. You also, in both cases, are controlling only one specialized unit. In modern RTS games, time is of the essence (don't believe me? attack someone in WC with 2 groups of 3 types of units each...if you look at the keyboard, you're toast...not enough time to react at all).
--trb
I don't want to pay another $50 to play the same game I already have in my library. Sequels should keep the style of gameplay the same, with similar (if not identical) hotkeys but a completely different storyline/graphics/units. Blizzard has done a pretty good job of this with their WC/SC series...you can almost consider SC a sequel to WC...same style, similar hotkeys but completely different storyline with different characters and a different means to an end.
I want something that changes my strategies from the original game. Now, I haven't played the newest C&C game, but I'm guessing you're going to be tank rushing a lot.
--trb
Without a well rounded programmer looking at the overall system (or his/her boss)
This is what the lead programmer/designer or the PM is for. Depending on the project, you should have 1 of these for each section of the project. If the project is sufficiently large, have 1 LP for each sub-section and have them report to a primary LP. The primary should know how all the subs interface and the subs should know how every component under them interfaces together. There are few projects that I've ever seen that required more than a few LPs (and I've worked on projects with 250+ developers) because they worked in a multi-tiered environment...each LP knew their own section.
Individual programmers need to look at things as a black box, it will make them much more efficient. Granted, you need to have sufficient requirements for them to do this effectively (very, very few projects have these). Ideally, programmers shouldn't even be hired until at least the first draft of requirements are out. The LP should be God before that, dictating what's doable, feasible and what makes sense from a technical perspective. He then needs to hire on programmers that can produce what he's envisioned. It amazes me the number of programs that staff up before requirements are out...how can you effectively staff up if you don't know what your staff is going to be doing? That's why sub-contractors are important, they can be staffed up anytime and (should!) have domain knowledge on what you're doing.
--trb
Don't laugh, but this is one of the reasons why it's important to have solid requirements BEFORE you being coding anything. Most projects don't, I know, but something as complicated as the space shuttle would need to be completely spec'd out beforehand. After proper requirements and specs are laid down, the programmer should then approach the system as if it were a black box...with a lot of restrictions.
The idea behind black box development is that you don't need to know what the rest of the system does...your component takes input and delivers output. That's a Good Thing (tm). Requirements are what tell you how to design and implement your black box, ie, you can't have more than 1ms latency between input/output, you can't assume some system variable is going to be out there, you can't assume your process won't be interrupted. Given these sorts of requirements, your part of the system SHOULD be a black box...someone else should send you the inputs and know what kind of outputs they're getting out. Assuming you correctly followed the requirements (that's what QA testing is for), they know what they're getting.
--trb
ewe...
And why not? If it does the job, why should I care when the processor was made?
Good point.
I've never heard of a "USB Pen", and I'm sure as hell not going to waste money on some cutting edge technology that nobody's using yet.
Bad point. USB is hardly new. The pen hard drive is relatively new (~2 years), but the underlying technology has been around long enough that it's standard, everyone either knows what it is or can figure out where to plug it in (I use my technologically impaired grandmother as par, btw).
Your other point about speed makes no sense...I started using mini CDRWs (about $5 for 5 at Office Depot) and they're great...they hold 220M+ and I can easily transport them from home to office. I don't when you last copied stuff to floppy, but they aren't exactly lightening fast. They have transfer speeds well below that of a CDRW, and there's software out there that let's you treat your CDRW as a local hard drive. If you don't have a burner at the office, use a pen drive, it's that simple.
--trb
Er, possibly, but I'd argue it's the fact that Sims opened up a previously untapped group of people to play...females. Check out Sims Online, over half the people on there are girls between 13-17. They never had a game that was a) fun, b) their type of game, c) didn't make them feel like a geek playing it (very important to girls, sadly enough).
My girlfriend (she's 20) and I nearly broke up over this game because I wasn't letting her play enough.
--trb
Two stories...
First, my high school had two physics teachers. Each of them designed tests separately for their individual classes. When their tests were given out to the students, they also gave a test to the other teacher. The tests were curved so that the teacher who took the test got a 100% (ie, if he got an 87%, a 13 point curve was given). Kinda fair standard, we all though, until we realized that both teachers had doctorates and should probably be acing entry level physics tests...
My favorite tests, though, had to be while I was taking Digital Design during my sophmore computer engineering curriculum (Virginia Tech, btw). We had a professor who failed, overall, 52% of his students the semester I was in his class. I got a 15% on one test and it was "only" a D (I passed the class with a B, btw).
I don't get this grade inflation thing that humanities students have going for them. Engineers fail out constantly, and not because they aren't smart or don't work, it just happens. People in humanities should be reminded what grading curves were used for...you had to be average to above average to pass. If teacher's graded on a 'true' bell curve, I think it's something like 25% of the class gets a D or below. Now, I never had teachers that were that cruel, but did, if they curved at all, curve up to a bell (ie, the median grade received was a 75%/C). It was fair, and grade distribution seemed pretty good each semester (until we got to 4th year classes, people routinely failed).
--trb
Let me also add Gamedev.net. A little outdated (DX6 stuff, mostly), but covers a TON of issues of Isometric/3D/OpenGL programming. Very good reference.
--trb
I think someone already pointed it out, but hey, I've got karma to burn. DVDs have an additional income that CDs don't...cinema. A movie can make back everything it cost to produce it within the first weekend. That's not terribly rare, either. A CD has no such outlet, it gets out there and requires people to buy it. DVD sales are on top of movie ticket sales, making them almost purely profit. I don't have hard numbers to back me up here, but if you looked at the profit margin on a movie, then on an album, you'd probably win out going with the movie. Some might say that a DVD is actually OVER priced, since it's revenue is profit on top of the heap of ticket sales.
--trb
eh...if I whenever I wanted gum I could walk over to the computer, hit a few buttons, wait a few minutes (while doing something else) and out popped gum, I would probably do it...retailers be damned, I'm lazy and that's an easy process.
.25, I would have been a paying customer instantly, simply because there wasn't that much content online. Now it's a different story. Any track I want is out there and, other than quality (arguably, 90% of the population doesn't care about the lesser quality of MP3s) and a sense of doing the (again, arguable) "right thing", there's no reason for me to pay for it.
Your analogy goes hand and hand with a sig I see here all the time..."The can is open, the worms are everywhere". Record labels are going to have a very, VERY difficult time attempting to turn the free download service customers into paying customers because they didn't start early enough.
Back in 1996, when I first downloaded MP3s, had they advertised that I could get ANY track from a CD for
--trb
Because unlike regular institutions that don't (typically) require too many programs that are hardware specific, programming for games sometimes does. Look at the video card requirements...if you're playing the cutting edge games, your video card is made by ATI or has the word "GeForce" in the title.
Couple this with the fact that cutting edge games require top of the line components...the school probably gets a great deal on large quantities of components (not to mention companies want people developing games for their hardware) and a trade in program would work better (at all, in fact) if everyone has the same hardware to swap in each year/2 years.
--trb
I should have qualified this statement...it's your responsibility to read the links so you know what impact the program will have on your computer. It's not illegal for a program to ask for you information and then spam you constantly, especially if you gave your consent by clicking agree. Nothing illegal there. Now, you may not have known that you were consenting to that because it was written in their on-site agreement, which changes regularly (or something), so they don't include it in the software.
You're right, an external link couldn't be held up in a court of law, but neither could a lawsuit that you file because you got 400 spam emails a day from a company that sold your email address becaues you didn't read the appropriate documents that would have convinced you to click 'Disagree'.
--trb
No, I don't think so. If you are so necessary to civilization's upkeep that you have to be reachable 24/7, don't go somewhere that prohibits phones. A movie theater, a play, really anything where the audience is expected to be quiet, should be off limits to you. It's the price you pay for having the job/wife/child that HAS to reach you.
Or you could just turn the damn thing to vibrate and keep in on your hip, like the rest of us do. That works too.
--trb