After you've been in this business for more than 20 years without giving it up to become a manager or guru, you may find that coding practices are orthogonal to code quality.
Just do the best you can with the cards you've been given.
Nobody wants GSM Encryption broken if it's done using proprietary code. And if the general public is told this is illegal, just think of the free publicity for open source!
You're right, but the NES restriction was of a lot more value to Nintendo than it was to consumers. In the crash people just got tired spending $40-$60 for 4K or 8K game (not the actual code size, but the limitations that went with it).
"They would have seen the light on Atari 400 or 800 home computers or perhaps Apple or Commodore machines, not the Atari 2600 VCS, but they would have seen the light of day nonetheless."
The number of Atari 2600s sold was at least an order of magnitude more than the Atari 400 and 800 combined.
Besides, many of the best games were created specifically for the 2600 and wouldn't be any big deal on more capable machines.
In any case, the vast majority of early home computer users didn't have any mass storage device so games came on a cartridge. So we're back to the same issue.
As someone who actually was part of the video game crash, let me offer you a different perspective. If Atari had been able to legally keep out competitors, the best Atari 2600 games would never have seen the light of day.
The tactic that Nintendo eventually used had been considered by the industry earlier, but was not adopted because it was thought to be illegal. That's the way it should have stayed.
Slashdot Mirror
"The document paradigm comes from Xerox."
Yes, but it wasn't used exclusively.
Nice job working your "Moderately gifted" IQ into your post.
I find that the Myers-Briggs test can make a good party game (for people who are easily entertained), but I don't think it has much real value.
I understand what you're saying but perhaps creating and nurturing life might be considered more important than destroying it.
Strong and powerful men with good weapons were said to be more intelligent because they'd beat the crap out of people who said otherwise.
"Why would a woman pick a mate she believed was stupid?"
Wealth and power come to mind.
Exactly! I'd say that the concept of intelligence is really just a human cultural convention. It has no objective reality.
After you've been in this business for more than 20 years without giving it up to become a manager or guru, you may find that coding practices are orthogonal to code quality.
Just do the best you can with the cards you've been given.
"I'd go as far as saying readability is more important than correctness;"
This reminds me of the joke in the "My Fair Lady": "The French don't care what they do actually
As long as they pronounce it properly"
"Yahoo by making itself technologically dependent on Microsoft for 10 years has given up on search. This effectively puts Yahoo out of business."
No, this keeps Yahoo in business.
"The convicted monopolist is making moves again"
Assuming for your benefit that you're not misinformed, who are you referring to?
"Bing hasn't exactly been shown to be a challenger to Google's search results."
Bing hasn't made much of a dent in Google's market share, but I do note that I've seen Google ads on TV for the first time after Bing came out.
Nobody wants GSM Encryption broken if it's done using proprietary code. And if the general public is told this is illegal, just think of the free publicity for open source!
Your definitions don't really connect the two words, but I see I'm not going to convince you.
I've already explained why this doesn't matter.
Quite true although I don't get the point.
I think you'll find that obvious isn't a synonym for redundant nor does one word imply the other.
How can his post be redundant when nobody said anything like it?
If you don't consider the laws of physics evidence.
You're right, but the NES restriction was of a lot more value to Nintendo than it was to consumers. In the crash people just got tired spending $40-$60 for 4K or 8K game (not the actual code size, but the limitations that went with it).
"They would have seen the light on Atari 400 or 800 home computers or perhaps Apple or Commodore machines, not the Atari 2600 VCS, but they would have seen the light of day nonetheless."
The number of Atari 2600s sold was at least an order of magnitude more than the Atari 400 and 800 combined.
Besides, many of the best games were created specifically for the 2600 and wouldn't be any big deal on more capable machines.
In any case, the vast majority of early home computer users didn't have any mass storage device so games came on a cartridge. So we're back to the same issue.
"That seems unlikely considering that it actually took a court battle to have 3rd party games deemed legal"
I don't know what court battle you refer to, but there were many 3rd party games sold openly in stores long before the NES came along.
I don't think it's that clever. People who frequent WTF think it's the other guy who writes bad code.
As someone who actually was part of the video game crash, let me offer you a different perspective. If Atari had been able to legally keep out competitors, the best Atari 2600 games would never have seen the light of day.
The tactic that Nintendo eventually used had been considered by the industry earlier, but was not adopted because it was thought to be illegal. That's the way it should have stayed.
Believe it or not Wikipedia isn't the ultimate source of information.
I thought it was "dir" vs "ls", not DOS vs UNIX.