I'm a big fan of board and card games, and will spend four days this week playing all day with friends. But we're unusual. The real money is in video games. Are you transitioning to electronic games, and if so, what have been the stumbling blocks, or what have been the ideas you've taken from board games with you?
Yes, which is why I'm not actually a fan of Pandemic. But both Space Alert and Escape are speed games, so there's not enough time to micromanage everyone. You have to count on your teammates to do the right thing, to talk to each other, to carry out a plan, and to be flexible when the shit hits the fan.
Some cooperative games (Space Alert, Escape, Pandemic) allow everyone to win as a group, which makes everyone feel good. But as Reiner Knizia put it "the best games are where the losers feel like they also won." Where even the losers have met goals in the game, have felt like they played well, or have enjoyed themselves. Who cares who wins at Cards Against Humanity? We don't even keep score in Concept. If a game has rewards along the way, where I can look back at a game and be happy with some of my good plays, it makes losing the game not so bad, maybe even irrelevant. I like to win poker tournaments, but if I've made a particularly good bluff or clever trap call, I feel good about my play even if I end up losing.
I play board games two or three times a week. I love games with elegant rules which still lead to a game that can be played over and over. I've been playing bridge for 30 years, and I still find something new every time I play. Dominion and Werewolf are really neat elegant systems, but nearly every game is a new experience.
I also need to be able to improve. I think Royal Turf is an elegant game, but I know the ideal strategy and don't enjoy playing anymore. Whereas I have a lot to learn to be a better Zendo player and a better poker player, and will never master either game.
Set, Spot It, Rummy, Carcassonne, LotR Confrontation, and many other board games and card games.
Electronic games? She has found those on her own without any encouragement from me.
Baloney. We've been changing the length of lights, and drivers know it, which is why they run them all the time. We should make them standard based on length of the intersection, lanes, and speed limits throughout the US. Add in the RLC when the light length is well known, and it will help keep intersections safer.
Even if it works, in short order we'll have vitamin C resistant tuberculosis. Next up, miracle cure X, and cure X resistant tuberculosis. I'm all for miracle cures, but let's keep in mind that all viruses and parasites mutate to deal with our cures.
Further, Full Tilt is acting more like a bank than a normal casino, because they hold on to your money longer. And no bank is required to keep money on hand to cover all of their depositors. Their reserve requirement is much lower (10%) than Full Tilt apparently had (15%).
I'm a GS-14. I can't get yearly raises because I'm at the top step, but I do get cost-of-living raises as congress sees fit. The benefits are very good, although not as awesome as they were in years past.
I really like working for a non-commercial organization. We still need to produce good code, or the federal courts will reject our software and our group will be out of a job. But the focus of the organization is not making money, it's making the federal courts run smoothly.
I work for the government. Specifically, I work as a lead programmer writing Perl code for the federal courts case management software. I work in Washington, DC, and I have 13 years of professional experience. I make $117K, which is high compared to some of my coworkers, but not as high as a few. I think I'm worth it.
Some of the lowest paid people in my office are the consultants. Oh, the government pays a ton for them, but the consulting company keeps more than half of it. The consulting company has an exclusive contract with us. It's a complete scam, as former executives get lucrative salaries from this consulting company after they leave the government, and thus current executives want to keep the cash cow milking. Or maybe it's true with all consulting companies, but it's still frustrating to see one of our best programmers make $50K when we pay over $100K for him.
If you type for a living, as most of us here do, you should plunk down money for a great keyboard. The number of programmers who can't even touch-type is astounding. Otherwise you're driving the Indy 500 in a pickup truck.
Don't allow users to install software, active-x or other junk. Use centrally maintained anti-virus and anti-spam. In a corporate environment there should be a limited list of authorized programs, nothing else should be permitted.
We tried that, and programmers like me found that we needed lots of non-standard programs and tools. Rather than wait for the admins to personally certify every program, they finally just gave us all admin privileges. It was the right thing to do to get our work done reasonably.
Then I went a step further and installed Fedora, and I've never looked back.
I worked from home for the first two years of my daughter's life. My wife and I both consulted for the same financial company, were paid quite well, and had enormous flexibility about when we worked. I programmed many times at 3am with a baby in my lap.
It also helped that our boss was a woman with kids. As mentioned by other posters, where you work is more important than what you do when it comes to work/life balance.
I disagree, I think that a white list with challenge auto-replies, as I use, are clearly effective and add just a little to mail traffic. I encourage others to use such a system, which would eliminate problems from having the spam reply-to being a real address.
Since applying this schema, I've gotten exactly one spam message in my inbox. That's an excellent percentage.
Clearly there is no legal recourse, only
technological.
I don't personally know anyone else who uses this solution, but I'd love to hear from people who do.
Yes, I want more keys, too. Well, I want two more, I want a pair of Keypad shifts, and I may add them as my next modification.
I think the arrows make sense to me, because the right hand does all the up/down motions (page up, page down, enter, up arrow, down arrow) and the left does all the left/right motions (home, end, backspace, delete, left arrow, right arrow). But the great thing about this keyboard is that you can easily make the changes you have described.
What they really need is an integrated pillow on the middle of the keyboard, so you can sleep while you type.
When I interview a programmer, I always ask "Why are you a programmer?"
There is only one acceptable answer: "because I enjoy programming." Answers such as "because that's where the money is" or "I wanted stable employment" or "because nobody will pay me to surf the web" are indications that they will be bad or mediocre programmers. People who like what they do will usually do it well.
I really like this keyboard as well, and have even modified mine. I hate going back and using flat Qwerty keyboards that you can't program. It feels so limited, and the keyboard locations terrible compared to Dvorak.
I'm on several mailing lists, and I either add their addresses to my address list, or I add a filter that will catch and accept them. When I take a discussion off-list, I add that person to my address book before I write to them.
Sometimes I do dig in the spam folder for things, but only when I'm in a hurry.
Of course, when I was job hunting, I could not afford to auto-reply to potential employeers. My filters were off then.
99% of the spam does not have a valid return- or from-address.
This has already been countered by using a valid return address of any poor sap. I can easily imagine having a list of thousands of addresses, and sending spam to one address with a from field of the previous address. Thus, address 3235 gets spam from address 3234. That would prevent one victim's address from getting black listed, and would keep the spammers effective.
My white list protects against this, because it auto-replies to all mail with a from field that is not known by my address book. I'm expecting that some spammer will send me spam with a victim's address, they will get my auto-reply, and they will be annoyed at me for sending them such spam.
BTW, if someone auto-replies to my auto-reply, my filters are smart enough to trash it, not reply to it.
My Eudora filters allow me to auto-reply to mail coming from someone not already in my address book. The auto-reply tells the writer to try again and put a code word in the subject line, which the filters will then bypass. This is very effective, and since I implemented it, I don't see spam. It is a bit of a pain for people writing to me the first time.
Now, a white list like this can be bypassed by a spammer claiming to be a friend of mine. It can't claim to be me, because my filters automatically delete anything sent to my address claiming to come from me. I'm wondering if anyone else who has implemented a white list for themselves has seen any problems with it.
I've programmed both professionally, and while I'd rather use Java when working in a large group, I think Perl is prettier. TCL is elegant, but I hate passing all variables by value, and I think "uplevel" is a terrible idea. I find Perl more fun.
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I'm a big fan of board and card games, and will spend four days this week playing all day with friends. But we're unusual. The real money is in video games. Are you transitioning to electronic games, and if so, what have been the stumbling blocks, or what have been the ideas you've taken from board games with you?
No more http://slashdot.org?
Yes, which is why I'm not actually a fan of Pandemic. But both Space Alert and Escape are speed games, so there's not enough time to micromanage everyone. You have to count on your teammates to do the right thing, to talk to each other, to carry out a plan, and to be flexible when the shit hits the fan.
Some cooperative games (Space Alert, Escape, Pandemic) allow everyone to win as a group, which makes everyone feel good. But as Reiner Knizia put it "the best games are where the losers feel like they also won." Where even the losers have met goals in the game, have felt like they played well, or have enjoyed themselves. Who cares who wins at Cards Against Humanity? We don't even keep score in Concept. If a game has rewards along the way, where I can look back at a game and be happy with some of my good plays, it makes losing the game not so bad, maybe even irrelevant. I like to win poker tournaments, but if I've made a particularly good bluff or clever trap call, I feel good about my play even if I end up losing.
I play board games two or three times a week. I love games with elegant rules which still lead to a game that can be played over and over. I've been playing bridge for 30 years, and I still find something new every time I play. Dominion and Werewolf are really neat elegant systems, but nearly every game is a new experience.
I also need to be able to improve. I think Royal Turf is an elegant game, but I know the ideal strategy and don't enjoy playing anymore. Whereas I have a lot to learn to be a better Zendo player and a better poker player, and will never master either game.
Set, Spot It, Rummy, Carcassonne, LotR Confrontation, and many other board games and card games. Electronic games? She has found those on her own without any encouragement from me.
Baloney. We've been changing the length of lights, and drivers know it, which is why they run them all the time. We should make them standard based on length of the intersection, lanes, and speed limits throughout the US. Add in the RLC when the light length is well known, and it will help keep intersections safer.
Quick, update the Drake Equation results to 100%!
Even if it works, in short order we'll have vitamin C resistant tuberculosis. Next up, miracle cure X, and cure X resistant tuberculosis. I'm all for miracle cures, but let's keep in mind that all viruses and parasites mutate to deal with our cures.
Further, Full Tilt is acting more like a bank than a normal casino, because they hold on to your money longer. And no bank is required to keep money on hand to cover all of their depositors. Their reserve requirement is much lower (10%) than Full Tilt apparently had (15%).
I'm a GS-14. I can't get yearly raises because I'm at the top step, but I do get cost-of-living raises as congress sees fit. The benefits are very good, although not as awesome as they were in years past.
I really like working for a non-commercial organization. We still need to produce good code, or the federal courts will reject our software and our group will be out of a job. But the focus of the organization is not making money, it's making the federal courts run smoothly.
I work for the government. Specifically, I work as a lead programmer writing Perl code for the federal courts case management software. I work in Washington, DC, and I have 13 years of professional experience. I make $117K, which is high compared to some of my coworkers, but not as high as a few. I think I'm worth it.
Some of the lowest paid people in my office are the consultants. Oh, the government pays a ton for them, but the consulting company keeps more than half of it. The consulting company has an exclusive contract with us. It's a complete scam, as former executives get lucrative salaries from this consulting company after they leave the government, and thus current executives want to keep the cash cow milking. Or maybe it's true with all consulting companies, but it's still frustrating to see one of our best programmers make $50K when we pay over $100K for him.
I swear, when I saw this I thought it was a joke entry for someone publishing a pen. I imagined that April 1st came late this year.
More about my keyboards and how I've modified them here: http://wiki.playagaingames.com/tiki-index.php?page =Dvorak+Keyboarding
I worked from home for the first two years of my daughter's life. My wife and I both consulted for the same financial company, were paid quite well, and had enormous flexibility about when we worked. I programmed many times at 3am with a baby in my lap.
It also helped that our boss was a woman with kids. As mentioned by other posters, where you work is more important than what you do when it comes to work/life balance.
I disagree, I think that a white list with challenge auto-replies, as I use, are clearly effective and add just a little to mail traffic. I encourage others to use such a system, which would eliminate problems from having the spam reply-to being a real address. Since applying this schema, I've gotten exactly one spam message in my inbox. That's an excellent percentage.
Clearly there is no legal recourse, only technological. I don't personally know anyone else who uses this solution, but I'd love to hear from people who do.
I think the arrows make sense to me, because the right hand does all the up/down motions (page up, page down, enter, up arrow, down arrow) and the left does all the left/right motions (home, end, backspace, delete, left arrow, right arrow). But the great thing about this keyboard is that you can easily make the changes you have described.
What they really need is an integrated pillow on the middle of the keyboard, so you can sleep while you type.
There is only one acceptable answer: "because I enjoy programming." Answers such as "because that's where the money is" or "I wanted stable employment" or "because nobody will pay me to surf the web" are indications that they will be bad or mediocre programmers. People who like what they do will usually do it well.
I really like this keyboard as well, and have even modified mine. I hate going back and using flat Qwerty keyboards that you can't program. It feels so limited, and the keyboard locations terrible compared to Dvorak.
Sometimes I do dig in the spam folder for things, but only when I'm in a hurry.
Of course, when I was job hunting, I could not afford to auto-reply to potential employeers. My filters were off then.
This has already been countered by using a valid return address of any poor sap. I can easily imagine having a list of thousands of addresses, and sending spam to one address with a from field of the previous address. Thus, address 3235 gets spam from address 3234. That would prevent one victim's address from getting black listed, and would keep the spammers effective.
My white list protects against this, because it auto-replies to all mail with a from field that is not known by my address book. I'm expecting that some spammer will send me spam with a victim's address, they will get my auto-reply, and they will be annoyed at me for sending them such spam.
BTW, if someone auto-replies to my auto-reply, my filters are smart enough to trash it, not reply to it.
Now, a white list like this can be bypassed by a spammer claiming to be a friend of mine. It can't claim to be me, because my filters automatically delete anything sent to my address claiming to come from me. I'm wondering if anyone else who has implemented a white list for themselves has seen any problems with it.
I've programmed both professionally, and while I'd rather use Java when working in a large group, I think Perl is prettier. TCL is elegant, but I hate passing all variables by value, and I think "uplevel" is a terrible idea. I find Perl more fun.