Wow. There sure are a lot of posts about which is better, but I don't see any comments that deal with the underlying problem. And that is this: don't get into a pissing match with your professor. Seriously, what are you hoping to accomplish here?
If you were thinking that you'd get tons of pro-compiling comments, and then put that in front of the professor, stop right there. Coming to Slashdot for validation of your side of the argument is about as helpful as those wives who write to Dear Abby about their husbands. Because no husband on Earth is going to appreciate getting chastised by Dear Abby, and if Abby sides with him, he's going to gloat. It's lose-lose for the wife, just like it's lose-lose for you if you try to use Slashdot as leverage. Screw with the computers that the professor relies on, and he'll find a way to "thank" you for it. Don't sabotage yourself.
If you go into a category that has 2 columns (in other words, you click a "more" link and a right-side column appears) and then you click options on the left column, the right column disappears. It's not a level 1 bug, totally recoverable by just clicking the "more" link again. But it's interesting to see a not-fully-debugged interface on Google.
Infinium Labs has retained the following legal council in Texas. This is public information from the court docket.
My advice: don't write to them. Don't tell them they suck. Looking at their documents so far, they don't really care about the case and are doing it half-assed. Don't stir them up, don't make them think there will be media attention, don't do anything. Let the Infinium lawyers continue to behave as if this doesn't matter. They are their own worst enemy, and will lose if we let them.
SydShamino has his finger on the pulse. He's pretty accurate. In fact, SydShamino, would it be OK to copy a sentence or two from your post for the Respect The Public Domain Web site? I'd probably put some of the text from your fourth paragraph onto the following page:
Apologies for the nit picking, but Black Isle didn't actually make BG1/2 or Arcanum
I never said that Black Isle made BG1/2 or Arcanum. In fact, I never even mentioned Black Isle. I mentioned Obsidian, which has employees like Jones, Avellone, Feargus, etc. They are not all from Black Isle, and they have worked on many different games, including Arcanum, PS:T, and others.
You know, I've been stuck in BG1/BG2/PS:T/Arcanum for years. I just can't seem to get into newer RPGs. I have NWN, I have KotOR. I've managed to get through the first act of each and then my interest wanes. I think it's the lack of NPC party banter (although Carth won't shut up sometimes).
Anyway, I think this could be great. Feargus could take a game that is just on the edge of holding my interest, and turn it into something an ounce more interesting. I don't know what it is for certain, but I know that Feargus (and actually, most of the team at Obsidian) built a lot of the games I like. They may be able to give it some of the old-skool goodness that wins me over. I really hope so, because I think I might have finally exhausted all the quests in BG2.
It's anti-Bush sentiment. Of course Bush supporters don't see any difference, but there is one.
My mom, like all of our moms, has been forwarding me stupid jokes and such via email. Well, the one from this morning was titled, "Bush is NOT the worst President in US history!" And it went into a long rant about how other Presidents started wars without being provoked, and how other Presidents lost far more soldiers. Knowing just how to push the buttons of my conservative, Christian, country-music-loving family members, I replied to all with one simple response: "Your email is right! George Bush is NOT the worst President! He is SECOND worst. His dad was first."
And since I did that an hour ago, I've enjoyed a steady stream of email about how disappointed my family is that I have no patriotism. My mom told me she "still loves me" and will send me a US flag. Sigh. Good times, good times.
Estimates for the thickness of the ice on Europa vary, but think kilometers, not meters, except for a few areas, like the so-called Conemara cliffs region, were it could be much thiner, possibly due to a local hot spot.
Congratulations on your run-on sentence. But on a serious note, where did you learn about Conemara? I no longer have access to cable TV, so I've been looking for DVDs and computer media CDs that might have an in-depth look at Europa, Io, etc. I'm just not finding anything that has more than a few photos.
I propose that in protest to such a blatant attempt at PC Multiculturalism, we as a community refer to the tenth planet as Nox, the Roman goddess of night. Since it lies the furthest from the sun, that actually fits it, in a descriptive sense.
Wow, It's too bad you weren't the one to name it originally. I think your choice is far superior.
Why not continure the 'tradition' of 3 letter TLDS and use.mob?
While yours is funny and correctly moderated as such, I find.pda to be a far more memorable and pleasing "real" option. Sure, not everything that uses.pda would have to be a PDA, but not everything that would use.mobile would have to be mobile either.
Even if you write scripts in ASP, PHP, or Perl, it isn't necessarily programming. Usually, those scripts consist of very basic logic and don't do much more than spit out HTML from a database, parse input data, and put it back into a database.
Usually? I think you might look at your audience. Whatever is "usual" about planet Earth isn't going to be "usual" for Slashdot readers. Walk down to your local bar and say "real pilots fly military jets" and you might be fine. But walk into the pilot's lounge at your local airport and say that, and you've just shot your credibility with a lot of people who think commercial flying is "real" piloting.
Of course, if you are developing something like Mapquest, Hotmail, or Google, it would involve actual programmers, but someone who develops websites with PHPNuke is not a programmer, just like someone who installs switches and outlets is not an electrical engineer.
And of course, the people building Mapquest, Hotmail, and Google are the people who have accounts here on Slashdot. PHPNuke is such a tiny subset of the market, it's bizarre to even bring it up as an example. It's like characterizing a massive forest fire as "a puff of smoke." It doesn't accurately describe what's really going on.
I think we should be shouting this from rooftops. Microsoft secretly funnelled a whole lot of extra money to SCO, through intermediaries. It's a big deal, especially for a convicted monopolist.
That was the coolest fucking post I have seen on Slashdot in a year. I really hope you didn't copy & paste that from somewhere. Damn, that was interesting, informative, intelligent. It reminds me why I liked Slashdot in the first place.
Why doesn't each machine print out who each person voted for?
Because then vote-buying will happen. The USA went through that problem in its history already, and I bet many other countries have too. The second a voter has anything more than the vote stub, the vote is up for grabs by force or money. Husbands can abuse their wives into voting certain ways. Unethical political groups can slip a little cash under the table to people willing to vote a certain way for a bribe.
Granted, this can happen now to a degree -- but any bully would never be certain his tactics worked, as no "who-voted-for-who" is ever displayed. The system is built to avoid tampering. Our solutions to voting problems must work within that.
I have attempted to work as good as I can, see what you think of my game, it is a bit difficult to wear the hats of Programmer, Designer, Developer, Musician, and Artist!
Well, I just downloaded your game. One of the things I like about this is that I take your comments at a higher value seeing that you're actually "down in it" building games on your own. I think your kind of game could really appeal to a lot of people.
First of all, as the article describes, the industry is really stretched by new 3D worlds that require huge investments of time, staff, and money. Getting back to the lone developer model of gaming, or even a 2 or 3 person development team, could be one solution. Also, if you visit Usenet groups like comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.rpg, you'll find a lot of people who miss isometric games with smaller, tighter storylines. I personally would love to buy a few games like Baldur's Gate 1 & 2, but which had only maybe 20 hours of gameplay, instead of 60. Those games would be more "complete-able" by 30-something and 40-something parents (like me), and more "build-able" by developers like you. And we seem to be a bigger part of the market nowadays anyway.
Garage Games is also catering to this market, at least in part. Smaller games, simple in scope, faster development & deployment, but great gameplay. I would encourage you to do more of this. I think the only difficulty is getting the word out, especially if you hope to charge money for the game. I don't know how you'd draw in traffic, except to say that Google's AdWords might be useful.
...was the last release of FreeBSD that I've purchased. I got the 6-disk toolkit to go with it -- tons of apps, it made for a great installation. I have no idea if 4.5 is considered a "good" release relative to the other releases, but it made me (mostly) happy. However, I did have one system -- an old laptop with a panel that needed WD drivers -- that just seemed to miss the FreeBSD sweet spot. It used a PCMCIA card to connect to my LAN, but FreeBSD 4.5 had only "early" PCMCIA tools then (which seemed weird, considering it was only a couple years ago). So I couldn't ever get the network up and running. Later releases had better PCMCIA, but they also used Xfree86 4, which couldn't handle my old LCD with its Western Digital chipset.
Soooo... now I'm wondering. The new 5.2.1 is surely excellent at PCMCIA. But does it have Xfree86 version 3 as an install option? If not, does Xfree86 4 have support for the WD chipset now? I'd really like to get FreeBSD running on my old laptop(s), but it seems that just as the PCMCIA started getting good, Xfree86 went modern and left a bunch of systems in the dust.
Nintendo has billions (YES, B) in the bank, and I don't mean Yen.
All that means is that Nintendo can survive some financially stupid decisions. But it doesn't mean the stupid decisions are undone. It sounds like Nintendo mismanaged enough of their relationships to have done actual harm to themselves. If I were an investor, I'm not sure I'd be overjoyed to see the cash in the bank sqandered on mistakes that could have been avoided.
The radar as such is not as powerful as a conventional radar but because of its cost-effectiveness, a number of them can be coupled together to perform really well.
Based upon your mention of PHP-based calendars, you're obviously trying to have a fully home-grown solution. But just for fun, I thought I'd mention Yahoo's calendar. It uses Intellisync to sync up their Web calendar with Outlook, Outlook Express, Palm OS handhelds, Lotus Organizer, and ACT. You might look at what they're doing, if only to see a system that works relatively well.
(If you can't find the sync link, after you login to your calendar, look for "sync" on the upper right side.)
a recent half-year financial loss ("old news now... the first loss they've ever reported since going public in 1962")
I don't keep up on the financials of gaming companies, but... I think this "defense" has convinced me that the biased Nintendo articles are maybe not so biased. Nintendo has it's first financial loss since going public 42 years ago? That's pretty serious. The fanboys can compain that it's old news, but it's news that would fund speculation and future plans by investors. If the Nintendo apologists want to end the unflattering chatter, perhaps they should start with Nintendo's business decisions.
Slashdot Mirror
<cynicism>
I have no sympathy for terrorists. I'm glad this company is protecting us.
<cynicism>
Wow. There sure are a lot of posts about which is better, but I don't see any comments that deal with the underlying problem. And that is this: don't get into a pissing match with your professor. Seriously, what are you hoping to accomplish here?
If you were thinking that you'd get tons of pro-compiling comments, and then put that in front of the professor, stop right there. Coming to Slashdot for validation of your side of the argument is about as helpful as those wives who write to Dear Abby about their husbands. Because no husband on Earth is going to appreciate getting chastised by Dear Abby, and if Abby sides with him, he's going to gloat. It's lose-lose for the wife, just like it's lose-lose for you if you try to use Slashdot as leverage. Screw with the computers that the professor relies on, and he'll find a way to "thank" you for it. Don't sabotage yourself.
If you go into a category that has 2 columns (in other words, you click a "more" link and a right-side column appears) and then you click options on the left column, the right column disappears. It's not a level 1 bug, totally recoverable by just clicking the "more" link again. But it's interesting to see a not-fully-debugged interface on Google.
My advice: don't write to them. Don't tell them they suck. Looking at their documents so far, they don't really care about the case and are doing it half-assed. Don't stir them up, don't make them think there will be media attention, don't do anything. Let the Infinium lawyers continue to behave as if this doesn't matter. They are their own worst enemy, and will lose if we let them.
RMS vs. cash. Hmm.
ESR vs. cash. No, hmm.
Perens vs. cash. Umm.
Yes, I guess you're right. In a debate over OSS principals and cash, cash wins out!
Maybe if they were cuter.
Translation: "Shit, you guys are making us look bad. Stop it!"
SydShamino has his finger on the pulse. He's pretty accurate. In fact, SydShamino, would it be OK to copy a sentence or two from your post for the Respect The Public Domain Web site? I'd probably put some of the text from your fourth paragraph onto the following page:
http://www.respectthepublicdomain.org/what.html
I think your wording is more succinct and accurate than mine.
I never said that Black Isle made BG1/2 or Arcanum. In fact, I never even mentioned Black Isle. I mentioned Obsidian, which has employees like Jones, Avellone, Feargus, etc. They are not all from Black Isle, and they have worked on many different games, including Arcanum, PS:T, and others.
You know, I've been stuck in BG1/BG2/PS:T/Arcanum for years. I just can't seem to get into newer RPGs. I have NWN, I have KotOR. I've managed to get through the first act of each and then my interest wanes. I think it's the lack of NPC party banter (although Carth won't shut up sometimes).
Anyway, I think this could be great. Feargus could take a game that is just on the edge of holding my interest, and turn it into something an ounce more interesting. I don't know what it is for certain, but I know that Feargus (and actually, most of the team at Obsidian) built a lot of the games I like. They may be able to give it some of the old-skool goodness that wins me over. I really hope so, because I think I might have finally exhausted all the quests in BG2.
My mom, like all of our moms, has been forwarding me stupid jokes and such via email. Well, the one from this morning was titled, "Bush is NOT the worst President in US history!" And it went into a long rant about how other Presidents started wars without being provoked, and how other Presidents lost far more soldiers. Knowing just how to push the buttons of my conservative, Christian, country-music-loving family members, I replied to all with one simple response: "Your email is right! George Bush is NOT the worst President! He is SECOND worst. His dad was first."
And since I did that an hour ago, I've enjoyed a steady stream of email about how disappointed my family is that I have no patriotism. My mom told me she "still loves me" and will send me a US flag. Sigh. Good times, good times.
Congratulations on your run-on sentence. But on a serious note, where did you learn about Conemara? I no longer have access to cable TV, so I've been looking for DVDs and computer media CDs that might have an in-depth look at Europa, Io, etc. I'm just not finding anything that has more than a few photos.
Wow, It's too bad you weren't the one to name it originally. I think your choice is far superior.
While yours is funny and correctly moderated as such, I find .pda to be a far more memorable and pleasing "real" option. Sure, not everything that uses .pda would have to be a PDA, but not everything that would use .mobile would have to be mobile either.
Usually? I think you might look at your audience. Whatever is "usual" about planet Earth isn't going to be "usual" for Slashdot readers. Walk down to your local bar and say "real pilots fly military jets" and you might be fine. But walk into the pilot's lounge at your local airport and say that, and you've just shot your credibility with a lot of people who think commercial flying is "real" piloting.
And of course, the people building Mapquest, Hotmail, and Google are the people who have accounts here on Slashdot. PHPNuke is such a tiny subset of the market, it's bizarre to even bring it up as an example. It's like characterizing a massive forest fire as "a puff of smoke." It doesn't accurately describe what's really going on.
I note that ZDnet now has an article on this. And Design Technica and ENN have picked up (copied) the Register article.
I think we should be shouting this from rooftops. Microsoft secretly funnelled a whole lot of extra money to SCO, through intermediaries. It's a big deal, especially for a convicted monopolist.
That was the coolest fucking post I have seen on Slashdot in a year. I really hope you didn't copy & paste that from somewhere. Damn, that was interesting, informative, intelligent. It reminds me why I liked Slashdot in the first place.
Because then vote-buying will happen. The USA went through that problem in its history already, and I bet many other countries have too. The second a voter has anything more than the vote stub, the vote is up for grabs by force or money. Husbands can abuse their wives into voting certain ways. Unethical political groups can slip a little cash under the table to people willing to vote a certain way for a bribe.
Granted, this can happen now to a degree -- but any bully would never be certain his tactics worked, as no "who-voted-for-who" is ever displayed. The system is built to avoid tampering. Our solutions to voting problems must work within that.
Well, I just downloaded your game. One of the things I like about this is that I take your comments at a higher value seeing that you're actually "down in it" building games on your own. I think your kind of game could really appeal to a lot of people.
First of all, as the article describes, the industry is really stretched by new 3D worlds that require huge investments of time, staff, and money. Getting back to the lone developer model of gaming, or even a 2 or 3 person development team, could be one solution. Also, if you visit Usenet groups like comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.rpg, you'll find a lot of people who miss isometric games with smaller, tighter storylines. I personally would love to buy a few games like Baldur's Gate 1 & 2, but which had only maybe 20 hours of gameplay, instead of 60. Those games would be more "complete-able" by 30-something and 40-something parents (like me), and more "build-able" by developers like you. And we seem to be a bigger part of the market nowadays anyway.
Garage Games is also catering to this market, at least in part. Smaller games, simple in scope, faster development & deployment, but great gameplay. I would encourage you to do more of this. I think the only difficulty is getting the word out, especially if you hope to charge money for the game. I don't know how you'd draw in traffic, except to say that Google's AdWords might be useful.
...was the last release of FreeBSD that I've purchased. I got the 6-disk toolkit to go with it -- tons of apps, it made for a great installation. I have no idea if 4.5 is considered a "good" release relative to the other releases, but it made me (mostly) happy. However, I did have one system -- an old laptop with a panel that needed WD drivers -- that just seemed to miss the FreeBSD sweet spot. It used a PCMCIA card to connect to my LAN, but FreeBSD 4.5 had only "early" PCMCIA tools then (which seemed weird, considering it was only a couple years ago). So I couldn't ever get the network up and running. Later releases had better PCMCIA, but they also used Xfree86 4, which couldn't handle my old LCD with its Western Digital chipset.
Soooo... now I'm wondering. The new 5.2.1 is surely excellent at PCMCIA. But does it have Xfree86 version 3 as an install option? If not, does Xfree86 4 have support for the WD chipset now? I'd really like to get FreeBSD running on my old laptop(s), but it seems that just as the PCMCIA started getting good, Xfree86 went modern and left a bunch of systems in the dust.
All that means is that Nintendo can survive some financially stupid decisions. But it doesn't mean the stupid decisions are undone. It sounds like Nintendo mismanaged enough of their relationships to have done actual harm to themselves. If I were an investor, I'm not sure I'd be overjoyed to see the cash in the bank sqandered on mistakes that could have been avoided.
Imagine a beowulf... oh nevermind. :)
Based upon your mention of PHP-based calendars, you're obviously trying to have a fully home-grown solution. But just for fun, I thought I'd mention Yahoo's calendar. It uses Intellisync to sync up their Web calendar with Outlook, Outlook Express, Palm OS handhelds, Lotus Organizer, and ACT. You might look at what they're doing, if only to see a system that works relatively well.
(If you can't find the sync link, after you login to your calendar, look for "sync" on the upper right side.)
I don't keep up on the financials of gaming companies, but... I think this "defense" has convinced me that the biased Nintendo articles are maybe not so biased. Nintendo has it's first financial loss since going public 42 years ago? That's pretty serious. The fanboys can compain that it's old news, but it's news that would fund speculation and future plans by investors. If the Nintendo apologists want to end the unflattering chatter, perhaps they should start with Nintendo's business decisions.
Wow, you mean, like voicemail?
In the New Testament, Jesus condensed them all down to one: act only out of love.