Regardles, those MS files are part of the preferred method for modifying the program and I have even seen projects where the developers obviously used MSVC but wouldn't tar up those files. That's just cruel, because then I have to go through the hassle of re-creating them.
I have attempted to develop open source software on Windows and I have a few comments:
- MSVC 6.0 is obsolete. There are perfectly valid C++ constructs that do not compile correctly on that platform (in one case, I saw a crash.) Working around these problems required writing compiler specific code, which is most certianly *NOT* the preferred method of writing code. - MSVC 6.0 and 7.0 project files are not compatable. Importing from 6.0 tends to mess up settings, requiring a project file rebuild anyway. There are backport utilities - but I haven't used them. - MSVC 7.0 (a.k.a. VS.NET 2003 ) is functional, but it is a different package than the previous version (as opposed to just a downloadable upgrade.)
Because of these points, I have one question: is 6.0 preferred or 7.0 preferred?
(Of course, regenerating project files is moot compared to constructing a dependancy via configure, on a system that does not have SH.)
The other alternative is to use images mounted with something like Daemon Tools - you can have as many virtual discs mounted as you have drive letters. Or you could just use a No-CD crack - sure it's probably not legal, but I doubt anyone would be able to tell.
That used to work, but the latest copy-protection systems have blacklisted virtual CDs for some reason and will refuse to run on systems even containing those products. (Although the better ones actually identify the virtual CDs, and only block individual drives.)
As for the legality of NO-CD cracks and virtual disks, they tend to vary from place to place. It's probably the least of your worries since there's a completely different set of laws for "public performances", which may or may not apply.
I wonder what the legalities are though in regards to a store providing a game for public play like that? I know they do it with consoles all the time, but I wonder if they need some special agreement/licence - like an "Internet Cafe" does to have multiplayer gaming.
Internet Cafes always suffer from this kind of problem - as you know, Valve was known to clamp down on cafes that allowed playing Steam powered games through their computers. Of course, it's easy to avoid these kinds of problems with the proper planning.
The best way to deal with it is to just rent usage of the computers with internet access - the fact that they can be used for games is merely a side-effect. (A problem occurrs when users need to re-install things over and over again - perhaps you could provide temporary storage to your customers that lasts around ~14 days since last login, after that, it becomes compressed. One or two months after, the customer has gone on a sabbatical and probably doesn't need the information.
While it is true that the adress bar is hidden in the game window, there are ways to get around that. For example, IE allows pressing CTRL-N to open a new window, which normally contains the contents of the previous window (or it can be confiured to do so.)
Mozilla does not have any visible feature to open the page.
I'm not sure about Opera, Konqueror or other browsers as they are not installed at this time. However, I know that Lynx still has an address bar, but it isn't useful as it does not support Javascript.
It is not "impossible" in the context of the article. My local Radio Shack (which was since rebranded to Circut City) installed games on a computer to show that it worked.
Anyone can rig their own trial system for use in store: a PC with DeepFreeze installed immediatly takes care of the software portion - it may have a performance hit in extreme situations, but is fixed by a quick reset.
The hardware will be a bit tricky, as you can't use some random $10 keyboard and mouse - they have to be a rugged keyboard and a rugged mouse (there's a rugged joystick available, but that's optional.)
The remaining portion is the copy-protection in most games... Most computers have two IDE chains with two devices a-piece - that means you have three random games available per day, plus other things you can stuff on the computer.
I read a Wired News article http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,69115,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_5 a while back about this. It seems that the copyright office has rejected requests to circumvent copy protection technology on CD's, DVD's, and video games. I do not hold out much hope this time around.
Bypassing copyprotection is already permitted for obsolete systems. If CDs suddenly go out of production (alongside CD-readers), feel free to apply or create whatever no-CD crack you need. Likewise, if Windows XP goes out of production, feel free to use whatever anti-StarForce protection system you want (since there are no StarForce drivers for the x64 platform.)
A blanket request to circumvent copy-protection is the equivalent of repealing the law, and is not covered by the perodic review. If you want that, either challenge the law in the court system, or write to your congress representative.
I always get a kick out of new C++ programmers starting with Visual C++; using MFC classes like CFile or CTime without realizing that the stdlib provides the same functionality without cripling portability.
I'll play devil's advocate here.
Does stdlib support file locking capability? As you probably know, CFile is a wrapper around Window's internal support of file handles, which does.
Does stdlib (or the appropriate ANSI C/C++) support millisecond (or possibly nano-second) timing capability? It's something that a large number of readers wanted to do at one time, only to discover that they had to resort to something system-specific. (POSIX, even though it is a standard, is still system-specific: there were plenty of compilers on smaller machines that did not implement POSIX, such as BorlandC 3.1.)
BTW, MFC isn't really portable anyway, as it doesn't really have an implementation other than Microsoft Windows. If your program is dependant on some random library (whether it is MFC, KDE, or Gnome), you either go the full length on it's implementation direct in it's source code, or you create an internal wrapper in the application that centralizes the change for different interfaces to one single file, directory, or source code organizational unit.
I do not, however, feel that using Visual Studio "rots the brain"; it merely stunts a coder's growth, in the same way MFC does.
It only stunts the coder's growth if that's the only thing that gets used. Any decent programmer would take a look at the most basic functionalities of the language (e.g. read a tutorial, know the operators, read the specs and basic functions, stuff like that.) Anyone who doesn't (or has developed an unacceptable coding pattern) can't possibly be capable of doing any serious computer program.
There are some starange and unnatural computer languages that exist that are still capable of doing something semi-useful - if you can learn how to use them, then there is absolutly no way can suffer brain damage from using an improved code editor (or any assistant tools.)
Although it does provide the ability to program the way you describe, it doesn't have to be done that way. There's no reason you can't start up a windows console application and do the programming straight from the text file.
You don't even need to do that - you can just select "View Code" by right-clicking on the form. At most, you simply have the window auto-generated for you. (You need to do view code anyway if you want something similar to Databindings - there is a known bug with the VB implementation, with the Googleable error message "DataBinding could not find a row in the list that is suitable for all bindings". This bug is reproducable using a wizard and a simple database table.)
Either that, or create a C++ project - in that case, you must code manually.
There's plenty of flaws with the article, but a TopCoder SRM is about to start.
the fact that you cannot distinguish between parody and official message
I said "How is its use considered satire?", not "Is this satire?". These are two completely different questions.
As I also mentioned, I can quite simply slip in one of those "satirical" radio addresses in what should be a legitimate discussion. To verify that I'm linking to an offical site, I'll just ask you to follow the first link in the title bar, that will bring you here, as opposed to what is linked to on the official site - saying that level of imitation is still a satire is saying those PayPal phishing sites are also satire (meant to collect the names of people stupid enough to fall for that trap).
Consider the most recent Jack Thompson incident to be another thing claimed to be satire by the writer (including the donation claim ). In that case, it isn't since it is exactly the kind of game that will be written - and when people took it seriously, you-know-who claimed that gamers were too stupid to tell that it was satire.
There are some things that do not qualify as satire, and are called "attemped satire" instead. Even I can make a better attpampt by taking a "declassified" document and stamping the seal all over the text, with a caption of "Recently Declassified by order of the president." It's simple satire that shows that the US still keeps secrets, even if the usage of the mark is marginally inappropriate.
is all the more reason to worry about this country today... and is all the more reason to use the seal.
Showing the Presidential seal does not fall outside of the bounds of Satire, because clearly they are not implying Presidential support or endorcement. Therefore the use is acceptable.
How is its use considered satire?
While something may be protected by the First Amendment because it is satire, parody or some other thing, it has to qualify as such. As of this posting, I see the symbol used in The Onion's weekly radio address - I don't even see a remote connection about the seal being parodied or satirized, and neither does anyone else.
The souce website, known as Weekly Radio Addresses, creates these parodies - and also uses the seal. Compare this to the Official radio addresses. While there is indications that site itself is a parody, you actually have to dig beyond the links at the top of the site (which pretend to be the official Whitehouse site - at the very least, they could have given themselves away by linking to Whitehouse.com.)
As to your million dollar example the EULA would almost certainly state that modification is not allowed, and by modifying the EULA you are actually making a new offer. Since the copyright holder has never agreed to that offer (by conduct or otherwise) you would be in violation of copyright as you never accepted the holder's only offer of license.
Traditionally, the EULA is on a webpage in a "Textedit" control (which is normally sent back to the server), or is on a software installation frame and prohibits access until "accept" is pressed. In either case, the absence of resistance for a modifies EULA can be used to indicate acceptance of the modifications.
It's supposed to be trivial to detect modifications to such EULAs (while ignoring formatting changes.) If they simply rubberstamp the changes without reviewing them, then that's their problem - regardless of whether or not the stamp is automated.
In this game, most of the scenes in Episodes 2-3 are fatal unless you manage to kill the bandit on the one and only exact frame - usually, from the device that was used to try to kill the bandit.
I suggest the letter 'S' - although it will be confused with "Super" in the same way 'M' gets confused with "Masterful".
Seriously, has this guy ever heard of the first amendment?
He has - and he used it in response to the inquery from the Florida Bar Association.
But in any case, I took a look at how his reply was written - it contained no soild arguments. While there is circumstancial, indirect, and/or vague claims, they are things that can be countered by a layman.
He also seems to claim that anti-SLAPP lawsuits are unconstitutional from the same letter, but that could be the highly ambigious interpretation speaking. Overall, it's nothing to worry about but something that can't be ignored right now.
It would be awesome if someone actually could sell a game with nudity in it these days. I remember back when Duke Nukem 3D was out and there wasn't any coverage but recently with the video game industry becoming increasingly mainstream we have a ban on all nudity.
That game allegedly had parental lock - there were also locked versions sold at WalMart and Australia.
There was also a parental lock option available, meant to satisify complaints (but interfered with gameplay: the affected items were invisible but still blocked the player). This was acceptable, although as computers at the time couldn't normally be locked down for it to be ultimatly useful.
That, and it was considered leading edge - it was considered good to have the game at the time, as it meant your system was powerful.
I know that I shouldn't be feeding the troll (especially after one of my recent postings , but the situation has changed entirely. Jack Thompson is now exploiting the legal system in the same way that the RIAA does - the only difference is that Jack Thompson doesn't even have any circumstancial evidence. It is now time to revoke his bar certificate, which will naturally destroy his professional credability along with organizations that rely on him.
The letter hardly meets the requiremens since it does not address complaints about professionallism. IANAL, but nobody has to be in order to discredit the alleged rebuttal.
As you know, eighteen years ago I commenced efforts against the entertainment industry's illegal distribution of adult entertainment to minors. That fledgling effort resulted in the first decency fines ever levied by the FCC.
The broadcasters struck back with Bar complaints. One happy result of that is that The Bar's insurance carrier had to pay me money damages for The Bar's having taken the bait offered by the SLAPP bar complainants. SLAPP is the acronym for "strategic litigation against public participation." Filing such a complaint violates certain federal civil rights statutes and state laws as well.
I hardly see any relevance here, but it looks like he is trying to declaire the anti-SLAPP law as illegal. Given that filing bogus lawsuits and/or complaints (or threatening to do so) in the first place is illegal anyway...
Most likely, he is smug from his previous victory where the SLAPP lawsuits were themselves bogus. In this case, it is different.
I hear today, then, from the Internet-based "enthusiast video game press" that "gamers" are going to file or have filed new SLAPP Bar complaints against me. Here's why:
An outfit in Seattle called "Think Geek" is marketing a t-shirt emblazoned across the front of which are the words "I Hate Jack Thompson." [...]
The parent company is an outfit called Penny Arcade. In the last several days, the folks at Think Geek provided, improperly, Penny Arcade with my email address, which had not been widely circulated (I had to get rid of the last one because of death threats and the like).
This is half-way through the response - either his argument is going to be very thin, or he was just doing padding to make his letter seem important. In any case, ThinkGeek is based in Fairfax, specifically in the state of "VA", whatever that is. Think Geek does have a business relationship with Penny Arcade, but if it is anything like ownership, he has his facts backwards, as the Penny Arcade merchandise is hosted on ThinkGeek (and aside from a few advertisements, Penny Arcade contains no Think Geek content.)
BTW, JT posted his e-mail address - the first on the StopKill website, and the other in the WHOIS database for the StopKill DNS. It is common knowledge - if he doesn't want people distributing his e-mail, he can get someone else to take up the job as a technical and administrative contact (and not send e-mails to comic strips that make fun of him.)
I have written the Police Chief in Seattle and asked that their department investigate this matter, as I believe this constitutes a criminal act by Penny Arcade. Penny Arcade has thus ramped up the harassment, and now there is a campaign among gamers to go to The Florida Bar to "discipline" me for trying to protect myself and my family, as well as my right, under the First Amendment to try to get the video game industry to start acting like something other than a bunch of sociopaths.
He's declaring First Admendment for harassment and filing a false police report. (Actually, he did libel since he sent it to everyone other than Penny Arcade.)
(Of course, most light-guns don't implement recoil, and have sights to make aiming easier - but there are more difficult games that add a kicker in the light gun, and that exclude iron sights.)
Other than that, you are correct:
You'll find that hitting a 3 inch circle outside 30 yards takes a lot of practice with [the Desert Eagle], in real life.
Yes, I do. I needed to debug a program I was developing for a contest - because GDB was not installed (because I chose Vector Linux, which is a minimalistic distribution that could more easily be downloaded through dial-up), I needed to find a way to identify the source of a bug that I was encountering.
Since I was writing a roguelike, I could not display standard error on the same screen - it had to be redirected. I have three ways of doing this: - Write my own terminal program that pre-seperates sthout and stderr into two different windows. Not feasable in seven days. - Redirect stderr to a file, and have another terminal window cat/tail that file. (Inefficient space wise.) - Redirect stderr to another terminal, such as/dev/tty5 - which is normally owned by root for good reason.
In theory, as I am logged into/dev/tty5, I should be able to redirect whatever I want there. In practice, permission denied. In addition to the fact that I needed to run as root to even get the roguelike working (I discovered the cause much later - the executable permission bit was not set on the mount point for the FAT32 partition), you can guess what I had to do.
There is also the case where you cannot run certain applications as root. Ignoring those that provide an override switch of some sort, these can interfere with normal usage.
While I think it was not fair of him to offer a donation for what he later called satire Jack Thompson made it semi clear that it was in fact a satire
This is my third post in this thread, but since this is near the top:
- The violence was over the top - not that this is special since games normally have a single person or unit take on massive armies anyway. - He claimed that games unfairly target police officers, but these are generally the exception rather than the rule (and these games are pretty explicit by the fact that you are playing a criminal - the police are considered vaild targets since they are trying to stop yoou.) - Reports say that one version of the satire had a comment added, where a security guard shot the protagonist before he could do any damage. Alternativly, you could accept my modification where the character beats himself up for creating such a violent game. - The so called "satire" against video games hardly has its intended effect. In fact, it backfires since it describing most of the violent "anti-violent video game" critics. - Even if it is satire, it is not written as such: " How about it, video game industry? I've got the check and you've got the tech. It's all a fantasy, right? No harm can come from such a game, right? Go ahead, video game moguls. Target yourselves as you target others. I dare you." It doesn't take a genius to recognise that this is a challenge rather than satire. Hell, it doesn't even take an Anonymous Coward. - Even if it is satire, you don't make a satirical claim that you will donate "$10 000" to charity. On the other hand, you can make a satirical claim that you will donate "$10 000 000 000 000 000" to charity.
However if you paid attention in high school or college you may have heard of a work know as "A Modest Proposal" by Jonathan Swift. One of the early and most well known satires about Swift suggesting that Ireland suffering from Famine and poverty should eat and sell their children for food. Note the title of Jack Thompsons proposal "A Modest Video Game Proposal."
I have heard of "A Modest Proposal" but haven't read it. In any case, the original modest proposal is valid satire as it draws a conclusion that wouldn't work in the real workld.
However, Jack Thompson's proposal "A Modest Video Game Proposal." is valid for a game, as it is a work of fiction. In fact, on a "realistic" difficulty setting, it would be just like any other game as the character gets shot dead before any damage can be done - hardly a satire at all.
This modest proposal is trying to make fun of fiction because it is fiction. This is no different than making a satire of a satire - it just doesn't work.
BTW, there's more than enough comments allegedly from Jack Thompson (known as Thompsonisms, in the same way that dumb quotes are Quaylisms.) Take one look at these comments, and take one look at this so called satire. If you consider this to be satire to bring down video games, then I hope that the devil can skate should this tactic prove successful.
For the record I am not siding with Jack Thompson but I'm not the smartest man in the world but when he claimed his work was ment to be satire I put 2 and 2 together so I would hope someone else has.
Putting 2 and 2 together results in one of the following conclusions: - Jack Thompson can't write satire properly. - Jack Thompson is making a sature about the violent anti-"violent video game" lobbiests. - Jack Thompson will reneg on the promise to donate to charity in the event that such a game gets created to the letter. - That Jack Thompson forgot about the fact that sec
All your enemy needs to win, is the continued vote of your silence.
I know that I just posted about not posting unless necessary, but I need to correct this (that, and we've already cracked the 100 comment marker.)
There is already enough information available to discredit Jack Thompson. When you need to, just mention that this is the same guy that requested the creation of a violent video game coupled with what appeared to be a straight donation to charity - and then renegged claiming satire. In fact, there wasn't even a thing indicating that there was satire involved: the game itself, even though the story line was poor, was plausable (and counter-productive to its cause, since it casts the anti-game advocate as a insane maniac), as was the alleged donation of ($10 000).
Even I could make a better satire myself - it involves making the donation sum ridiculous ($10 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 plus 33+1/3 cents) so that it couldn't possible be legit under normal contract law, and eventually ends in having the protagonist beating himself up for creating the game that he created. While it still doesn't meet the requirements, it is a much better attempt.
The original "satire" can be twisted easily, as there is no good light that can be cast upon this - this is the equivalent of political suicide, as there is no damage control that can be performed to save face (aside from making that donation).
Jack is already discredited - all that's needed is to point to this incident in either a "commitioning violent games = supporting violent games", or as a "reneg on donation promise for no good reason". The legal departments from the ESA and other lobby groups have already countered similar laws in other states - they can easily take care of one nutcase that has not famous for his career success-rate (political, or legal).
I say again: Thompson is not a threat. There is no need to keep posting comments, or to keep posting articles about him on Slashdot. If you see a story about him in the mainstream media, feel free to post once (making sure that content is not excessivly repeated.) Other than that, the "Don't feed the troll" rule applies.
He is nothing but a common troll. He lives on attention. YOUR attention. Stop giving him page hits; stop giving him political capital; stop giving him the time of day.
Really, why is it necessary to point this out?
Given: - He is a lawyer. - He is in a position of power.
This makes him a threat and/or newsworthy according to Slashdot and many other people.
It is necessary to point it out that he's simply a troll because people don't understand the fact that whatever he does is simply vapour (based on his "status"/loudness). If you want his detailed history of vapour, just check out his Wikipedia entry, including the sections where he lost an election since his platform was based on personal attacks.
Anybody who reads this message: Just don't make further postings in this thread unless you really have to. Given that you have to wait ~2 minutes between postings, you might as well have the time spent on a posting on something worthwhile.
Two puzzles - with answers I'm afraid. 1) Two doors, one leads to instant death, the other to safety. Two guards, one always tells the truth, the other always lies. How do you escape? [...] 1) Ask either guard, which door _the other guard_ would say leads to safety. Then take the door which he did not indicate.
The lying guard would claim lack of knowledge. Since there is no yes/no restriction, you will get this answer from a guard (that just happens to be a professional liar.)
A better answer is to say that there is free beer in the safe area. No guard is willing to pass up a few chugs - the only problem is with the professional liars that enter the wrong door or simply stay put.
2) "It's a lemon entry my dear Watson!"
That pun doesn't work - the pronunciation is too different, unless it's a take off from "elemementary".
Damn, looks like/. filters out the Cyrillic character.
If you want to see it, it is Unicode character 0x042F and looks like a backwards 'R' - as used in the arcade version. It is called "Cyrillic Capital Letter Ya" under Windows' Character Map.
The only major multitasking problem with Windows is a CPU chewing up 100% CPU (common to all platforms), and that can be worked around by having a high-priority task manager that can be used to kill rogue applications.
Even Windows 3.0 could multitask. I was playing solitaire while I had a DOS application wipe the sectors of a floppy disk (which kept pausing because of sector errors on that floppy.) As far as I know, there was only one competeting product that was capable of multitasking in the same way for that platform, and it certainly wasn't one of the Unicies.
and thinks the world revolves around it.
Of course it thinks that - 95% of the population blindingly purchased Windows 95, even though some of them didn't even have a computer.
Take a graduate mechatronic Engineer, a mechanical Engineer, a civil Engineer and an aerospace Engineer. Give them each problems from the other's field and appropriate references. They will struggle with unfamiliarity but they WILL be able to competently solve the problem, why?? they are all trained in the same basic principles. Hand a computer "engineer" a fluid dynamics problem and they will almost certainly NOT be able to solve it.
I agree with you fully, however (and I am just as subjective, but with much less experience):
- The "Computer Engineering" field is highly chaotic. As an example, take a look at some online programming contests, such as UVA, SPOJ, TopCoder, etc.: you will find that each problem is wildly different. In particular, SPOJ's problem SBSTR1 requires doing a simple task, but only in one of three programming languages (a converter from one language to C is currently found here.) While any engineer could do this, giving reference materials beyond the basics would effectivly be solving the problem for that engineer (and thus defeat the purpose of that problem.) Only computer engineering does (or should) train students to solve these kinds of problems, where new algorithms get invented. - The same could apply to practical aspects as well. Thankfully, most practical aspects are considered simple, such as creating a database - however, there are some cases where things may become difficult. - The traditional engineering fields are normally based around known algorithms and solutions (unless you are doing research, but that's more like science rather than engineering). Computer Engineering is also based around known problems and solutions. This seems similar, but Computer Engineering has much more focus on communication and art than traditional engineering - it is generally used to solve business problems as opposed to physical problems. - Compter engineering allows for rapid development, where a product is rushed in hopes that it can be fixed later (or when requirements keep changing: using traditional engineering as an equivalent, it's no different than changing the size of the bridge mid-way through). This is very rarely an option with traditional engineering. Whether software engineering should permit this is another story. - On a day to day basis, computer engineering has to deal with users, while traditional engineering has an interceding organization as a middle-man. Some of these users think that their Operating system is Netscape, that their web browser is Microsoft Word for Windows, and that their word processor is MacOX 9. That's right, they mince words in addition to what platform they think they are running.
Given the diversity of hardware just on one architecture, computer engineering is more concerned about trying to fit square pegs into holes of various shapes and sizes. Sometimes, the peg is too small, othertimes, the peg is too large.
Anyway, not trying to belittle computer "engineers", but I think their training has to step up several levels in rigor and broaden its scope to truly be considered an Engineering discipline before you start laying the burden of personal liability on their shoulders.
I agree here as well. I only discovered (too late) that a software engineering diploma/degree is useless by itself - the only reason I took that field in particular (as opposed to a straight computer programming diploma or one that focuses on electronics) was because it simply looked like a better course on a fast glance.
Computer "engineering" is really a much different field than traditional engineering - but it really could have a lot more content in the academic aspect to get things up to speed. Computers have been around for at least 50 years - which is long enough to state that it should be converted into an engineering dicipline as oppo
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I have attempted to develop open source software on Windows and I have a few comments:
- MSVC 6.0 is obsolete. There are perfectly valid C++ constructs that do not compile correctly on that platform (in one case, I saw a crash.) Working around these problems required writing compiler specific code, which is most certianly *NOT* the preferred method of writing code.
- MSVC 6.0 and 7.0 project files are not compatable. Importing from 6.0 tends to mess up settings, requiring a project file rebuild anyway. There are backport utilities - but I haven't used them.
- MSVC 7.0 (a.k.a. VS
Because of these points, I have one question: is 6.0 preferred or 7.0 preferred?
(Of course, regenerating project files is moot compared to constructing a dependancy via configure, on a system that does not have SH.)
That used to work, but the latest copy-protection systems have blacklisted virtual CDs for some reason and will refuse to run on systems even containing those products. (Although the better ones actually identify the virtual CDs, and only block individual drives.)
As for the legality of NO-CD cracks and virtual disks, they tend to vary from place to place. It's probably the least of your worries since there's a completely different set of laws for "public performances", which may or may not apply.
Internet Cafes always suffer from this kind of problem - as you know, Valve was known to clamp down on cafes that allowed playing Steam powered games through their computers. Of course, it's easy to avoid these kinds of problems with the proper planning.
The best way to deal with it is to just rent usage of the computers with internet access - the fact that they can be used for games is merely a side-effect. (A problem occurrs when users need to re-install things over and over again - perhaps you could provide temporary storage to your customers that lasts around ~14 days since last login, after that, it becomes compressed. One or two months after, the customer has gone on a sabbatical and probably doesn't need the information.
While it is true that the adress bar is hidden in the game window, there are ways to get around that. For example, IE allows pressing CTRL-N to open a new window, which normally contains the contents of the previous window (or it can be confiured to do so.)
Mozilla does not have any visible feature to open the page.
I'm not sure about Opera, Konqueror or other browsers as they are not installed at this time. However, I know that Lynx still has an address bar, but it isn't useful as it does not support Javascript.
It is not "impossible" in the context of the article. My local Radio Shack (which was since rebranded to Circut City) installed games on a computer to show that it worked.
Anyone can rig their own trial system for use in store: a PC with DeepFreeze installed immediatly takes care of the software portion - it may have a performance hit in extreme situations, but is fixed by a quick reset.
The hardware will be a bit tricky, as you can't use some random $10 keyboard and mouse - they have to be a rugged keyboard and a rugged mouse (there's a rugged joystick available, but that's optional.)
The remaining portion is the copy-protection in most games... Most computers have two IDE chains with two devices a-piece - that means you have three random games available per day, plus other things you can stuff on the computer.
Bypassing copyprotection is already permitted for obsolete systems. If CDs suddenly go out of production (alongside CD-readers), feel free to apply or create whatever no-CD crack you need. Likewise, if Windows XP goes out of production, feel free to use whatever anti-StarForce protection system you want (since there are no StarForce drivers for the x64 platform.)
A blanket request to circumvent copy-protection is the equivalent of repealing the law, and is not covered by the perodic review. If you want that, either challenge the law in the court system, or write to your congress representative.
I'll play devil's advocate here.
Does stdlib support file locking capability? As you probably know, CFile is a wrapper around Window's internal support of file handles, which does.
Does stdlib (or the appropriate ANSI C/C++) support millisecond (or possibly nano-second) timing capability? It's something that a large number of readers wanted to do at one time, only to discover that they had to resort to something system-specific. (POSIX, even though it is a standard, is still system-specific: there were plenty of compilers on smaller machines that did not implement POSIX, such as BorlandC 3.1.)
BTW, MFC isn't really portable anyway, as it doesn't really have an implementation other than Microsoft Windows. If your program is dependant on some random library (whether it is MFC, KDE, or Gnome), you either go the full length on it's implementation direct in it's source code, or you create an internal wrapper in the application that centralizes the change for different interfaces to one single file, directory, or source code organizational unit.
It only stunts the coder's growth if that's the only thing that gets used. Any decent programmer would take a look at the most basic functionalities of the language (e.g. read a tutorial, know the operators, read the specs and basic functions, stuff like that.) Anyone who doesn't (or has developed an unacceptable coding pattern) can't possibly be capable of doing any serious computer program.
There are some starange and unnatural computer languages that exist that are still capable of doing something semi-useful - if you can learn how to use them, then there is absolutly no way can suffer brain damage from using an improved code editor (or any assistant tools.)
You don't even need to do that - you can just select "View Code" by right-clicking on the form. At most, you simply have the window auto-generated for you. (You need to do view code anyway if you want something similar to Databindings - there is a known bug with the VB implementation, with the Googleable error message "DataBinding could not find a row in the list that is suitable for all bindings". This bug is reproducable using a wizard and a simple database table.)
Either that, or create a C++ project - in that case, you must code manually.
There's plenty of flaws with the article, but a TopCoder SRM is about to start.
I said "How is its use considered satire?", not "Is this satire?". These are two completely different questions.
As I also mentioned, I can quite simply slip in one of those "satirical" radio addresses in what should be a legitimate discussion. To verify that I'm linking to an offical site, I'll just ask you to follow the first link in the title bar, that will bring you here, as opposed to what is linked to on the official site - saying that level of imitation is still a satire is saying those PayPal phishing sites are also satire (meant to collect the names of people stupid enough to fall for that trap).
Consider the most recent Jack Thompson incident to be another thing claimed to be satire by the writer (including the donation claim ). In that case, it isn't since it is exactly the kind of game that will be written - and when people took it seriously, you-know-who claimed that gamers were too stupid to tell that it was satire.
There are some things that do not qualify as satire, and are called "attemped satire" instead. Even I can make a better attpampt by taking a "declassified" document and stamping the seal all over the text, with a caption of "Recently Declassified by order of the president." It's simple satire that shows that the US still keeps secrets, even if the usage of the mark is marginally inappropriate.
That reminds me: George W. Bush reminds youngers to practice a safe Halloween - you can tell just by looks that this is is just as official as any other statement - you can tell because the Privacy Policy based on both links are completely identical.
How is its use considered satire?
While something may be protected by the First Amendment because it is satire, parody or some other thing, it has to qualify as such. As of this posting, I see the symbol used in The Onion's weekly radio address - I don't even see a remote connection about the seal being parodied or satirized, and neither does anyone else.
The souce website, known as Weekly Radio Addresses, creates these parodies - and also uses the seal. Compare this to the Official radio addresses. While there is indications that site itself is a parody, you actually have to dig beyond the links at the top of the site (which pretend to be the official Whitehouse site - at the very least, they could have given themselves away by linking to Whitehouse.com.)
Traditionally, the EULA is on a webpage in a "Textedit" control (which is normally sent back to the server), or is on a software installation frame and prohibits access until "accept" is pressed. In either case, the absence of resistance for a modifies EULA can be used to indicate acceptance of the modifications.
It's supposed to be trivial to detect modifications to such EULAs (while ignoring formatting changes.) If they simply rubberstamp the changes without reviewing them, then that's their problem - regardless of whether or not the stamp is automated.
IANAL, but this is basically common sense.
You-know-who was also suggesting "suicide simulators" as a category.
In this game, most of the scenes in Episodes 2-3 are fatal unless you manage to kill the bandit on the one and only exact frame - usually, from the device that was used to try to kill the bandit.
I suggest the letter 'S' - although it will be confused with "Super" in the same way 'M' gets confused with "Masterful".
He has - and he used it in response to the inquery from the Florida Bar Association.
But in any case, I took a look at how his reply was written - it contained no soild arguments. While there is circumstancial, indirect, and/or vague claims, they are things that can be countered by a layman.
He also seems to claim that anti-SLAPP lawsuits are unconstitutional from the same letter, but that could be the highly ambigious interpretation speaking. Overall, it's nothing to worry about but something that can't be ignored right now.
There was also a parental lock option available, meant to satisify complaints (but interfered with gameplay: the affected items were invisible but still blocked the player). This was acceptable, although as computers at the time couldn't normally be locked down for it to be ultimatly useful.
That, and it was considered leading edge - it was considered good to have the game at the time, as it meant your system was powerful.
The joke was incomplete: You should have also offered to be the one to open the can.
But be careful with those jokes - they are very dangerous when directed at the wrong person.
The letter hardly meets the requiremens since it does not address complaints about professionallism. IANAL, but nobody has to be in order to discredit the alleged rebuttal.
I hardly see any relevance here, but it looks like he is trying to declaire the anti-SLAPP law as illegal. Given that filing bogus lawsuits and/or complaints (or threatening to do so) in the first place is illegal anyway...
Most likely, he is smug from his previous victory where the SLAPP lawsuits were themselves bogus. In this case, it is different.
This is half-way through the response - either his argument is going to be very thin, or he was just doing padding to make his letter seem important. In any case, ThinkGeek is based in Fairfax, specifically in the state of "VA", whatever that is. Think Geek does have a business relationship with Penny Arcade, but if it is anything like ownership, he has his facts backwards, as the Penny Arcade merchandise is hosted on ThinkGeek (and aside from a few advertisements, Penny Arcade contains no Think Geek content.)
BTW, JT posted his e-mail address - the first on the StopKill website, and the other in the WHOIS database for the StopKill DNS. It is common knowledge - if he doesn't want people distributing his e-mail, he can get someone else to take up the job as a technical and administrative contact (and not send e-mails to comic strips that make fun of him.)
He's declaring First Admendment for harassment and filing a false police report. (Actually, he did libel since he sent it to everyone other than Penny Arcade.)
Note that Penny Arcade can
I'll play devil's advocate, and say Time Crisis.
(Of course, most light-guns don't implement recoil, and have sights to make aiming easier - but there are more difficult games that add a kicker in the light gun, and that exclude iron sights.)
Other than that, you are correct:
Yes, I do. I needed to debug a program I was developing for a contest - because GDB was not installed (because I chose Vector Linux, which is a minimalistic distribution that could more easily be downloaded through dial-up), I needed to find a way to identify the source of a bug that I was encountering.
Since I was writing a roguelike, I could not display standard error on the same screen - it had to be redirected. I have three ways of doing this:
- Write my own terminal program that pre-seperates sthout and stderr into two different windows. Not feasable in seven days.
- Redirect stderr to a file, and have another terminal window cat/tail that file. (Inefficient space wise.)
- Redirect stderr to another terminal, such as
In theory, as I am logged into
There is also the case where you cannot run certain applications as root. Ignoring those that provide an override switch of some sort, these can interfere with normal usage.
This is my third post in this thread, but since this is near the top:
- The violence was over the top - not that this is special since games normally have a single person or unit take on massive armies anyway.
- He claimed that games unfairly target police officers, but these are generally the exception rather than the rule (and these games are pretty explicit by the fact that you are playing a criminal - the police are considered vaild targets since they are trying to stop yoou.)
- Reports say that one version of the satire had a comment added, where a security guard shot the protagonist before he could do any damage. Alternativly, you could accept my modification where the character beats himself up for creating such a violent game.
- The so called "satire" against video games hardly has its intended effect. In fact, it backfires since it describing most of the violent "anti-violent video game" critics.
- Even if it is satire, it is not written as such: "
How about it, video game industry? I've got the check and you've got the tech. It's all a fantasy, right? No harm can come from such a game, right? Go ahead, video game moguls. Target yourselves as you target others. I dare you." It doesn't take a genius to recognise that this is a challenge rather than satire. Hell, it doesn't even take an Anonymous Coward.
- Even if it is satire, you don't make a satirical claim that you will donate "$10 000" to charity. On the other hand, you can make a satirical claim that you will donate "$10 000 000 000 000 000" to charity.
The full-text of the letter is at http://news.spong.com/detail/news.asp?prid=9201&cb =0.1497723&cb=0.8835369
I have heard of "A Modest Proposal" but haven't read it. In any case, the original modest proposal is valid satire as it draws a conclusion that wouldn't work in the real workld.
However, Jack Thompson's proposal "A Modest Video Game Proposal." is valid for a game, as it is a work of fiction. In fact, on a "realistic" difficulty setting, it would be just like any other game as the character gets shot dead before any damage can be done - hardly a satire at all.
This modest proposal is trying to make fun of fiction because it is fiction. This is no different than making a satire of a satire - it just doesn't work.
BTW, there's more than enough comments allegedly from Jack Thompson (known as Thompsonisms, in the same way that dumb quotes are Quaylisms.) Take one look at these comments, and take one look at this so called satire. If you consider this to be satire to bring down video games, then I hope that the devil can skate should this tactic prove successful.
Putting 2 and 2 together results in one of the following conclusions:
- Jack Thompson can't write satire properly.
- Jack Thompson is making a sature about the violent anti-"violent video game" lobbiests.
- Jack Thompson will reneg on the promise to donate to charity in the event that such a game gets created to the letter.
- That Jack Thompson forgot about the fact that sec
I know that I just posted about not posting unless necessary, but I need to correct this (that, and we've already cracked the 100 comment marker.)
There is already enough information available to discredit Jack Thompson. When you need to, just mention that this is the same guy that requested the creation of a violent video game coupled with what appeared to be a straight donation to charity - and then renegged claiming satire. In fact, there wasn't even a thing indicating that there was satire involved: the game itself, even though the story line was poor, was plausable (and counter-productive to its cause, since it casts the anti-game advocate as a insane maniac), as was the alleged donation of ($10 000).
Even I could make a better satire myself - it involves making the donation sum ridiculous ($10 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 plus 33+1/3 cents) so that it couldn't possible be legit under normal contract law, and eventually ends in having the protagonist beating himself up for creating the game that he created. While it still doesn't meet the requirements, it is a much better attempt.
The original "satire" can be twisted easily, as there is no good light that can be cast upon this - this is the equivalent of political suicide, as there is no damage control that can be performed to save face (aside from making that donation).
Jack is already discredited - all that's needed is to point to this incident in either a "commitioning violent games = supporting violent games", or as a "reneg on donation promise for no good reason". The legal departments from the ESA and other lobby groups have already countered similar laws in other states - they can easily take care of one nutcase that has not famous for his career success-rate (political, or legal).
I say again: Thompson is not a threat. There is no need to keep posting comments, or to keep posting articles about him on Slashdot. If you see a story about him in the mainstream media, feel free to post once (making sure that content is not excessivly repeated.) Other than that, the "Don't feed the troll" rule applies.
Given:
- He is a lawyer.
- He is in a position of power.
This makes him a threat and/or newsworthy according to Slashdot and many other people.
It is necessary to point it out that he's simply a troll because people don't understand the fact that whatever he does is simply vapour (based on his "status"/loudness). If you want his detailed history of vapour, just check out his Wikipedia entry, including the sections where he lost an election since his platform was based on personal attacks.
Anybody who reads this message: Just don't make further postings in this thread unless you really have to. Given that you have to wait ~2 minutes between postings, you might as well have the time spent on a posting on something worthwhile.
The lying guard would claim lack of knowledge. Since there is no yes/no restriction, you will get this answer from a guard (that just happens to be a professional liar.)
A better answer is to say that there is free beer in the safe area. No guard is willing to pass up a few chugs - the only problem is with the professional liars that enter the wrong door or simply stay put.
That pun doesn't work - the pronunciation is too different, unless it's a take off from "elemementary".
Damn, looks like /. filters out the Cyrillic character.
If you want to see it, it is Unicode character 0x042F and looks like a backwards 'R' - as used in the arcade version. It is called "Cyrillic Capital Letter Ya" under Windows' Character Map.
There is an 'R' key on the keyboard, but most people can't find the ''. Until then, "TETIS" is mispelled as "TETRIS".
As you know, TETRIS is made in Soviet Russia. In Soviet Russia, they mispell you...
Where did you get that information?
The only major multitasking problem with Windows is a CPU chewing up 100% CPU (common to all platforms), and that can be worked around by having a high-priority task manager that can be used to kill rogue applications.
Even Windows 3.0 could multitask. I was playing solitaire while I had a DOS application wipe the sectors of a floppy disk (which kept pausing because of sector errors on that floppy.) As far as I know, there was only one competeting product that was capable of multitasking in the same way for that platform, and it certainly wasn't one of the Unicies.
Of course it thinks that - 95% of the population blindingly purchased Windows 95, even though some of them didn't even have a computer.
I agree with you fully, however (and I am just as subjective, but with much less experience):
- The "Computer Engineering" field is highly chaotic. As an example, take a look at some online programming contests, such as UVA, SPOJ, TopCoder, etc.: you will find that each problem is wildly different. In particular, SPOJ's problem SBSTR1 requires doing a simple task, but only in one of three programming languages (a converter from one language to C is currently found here.) While any engineer could do this, giving reference materials beyond the basics would effectivly be solving the problem for that engineer (and thus defeat the purpose of that problem.) Only computer engineering does (or should) train students to solve these kinds of problems, where new algorithms get invented.
- The same could apply to practical aspects as well. Thankfully, most practical aspects are considered simple, such as creating a database - however, there are some cases where things may become difficult.
- The traditional engineering fields are normally based around known algorithms and solutions (unless you are doing research, but that's more like science rather than engineering). Computer Engineering is also based around known problems and solutions. This seems similar, but Computer Engineering has much more focus on communication and art than traditional engineering - it is generally used to solve business problems as opposed to physical problems.
- Compter engineering allows for rapid development, where a product is rushed in hopes that it can be fixed later (or when requirements keep changing: using traditional engineering as an equivalent, it's no different than changing the size of the bridge mid-way through). This is very rarely an option with traditional engineering. Whether software engineering should permit this is another story.
- On a day to day basis, computer engineering has to deal with users, while traditional engineering has an interceding organization as a middle-man. Some of these users think that their Operating system is Netscape, that their web browser is Microsoft Word for Windows, and that their word processor is MacOX 9. That's right, they mince words in addition to what platform they think they are running.
Given the diversity of hardware just on one architecture, computer engineering is more concerned about trying to fit square pegs into holes of various shapes and sizes. Sometimes, the peg is too small, othertimes, the peg is too large.
I agree here as well. I only discovered (too late) that a software engineering diploma/degree is useless by itself - the only reason I took that field in particular (as opposed to a straight computer programming diploma or one that focuses on electronics) was because it simply looked like a better course on a fast glance.
Computer "engineering" is really a much different field than traditional engineering - but it really could have a lot more content in the academic aspect to get things up to speed. Computers have been around for at least 50 years - which is long enough to state that it should be converted into an engineering dicipline as oppo