From what I have read, they are planning on stamping the disks when you bring them in so they can only be brought in once. With what or how hard it will be to remove I don't know.
I think the answer is they should both fix the problem. Drive manufacturers should issue a sane value and operating systems should check that the value is sane before using it. Same rule as accepting any data from an outside source, you tell them what they are supposed to do, but then you double check it to make sure they did. Pointing fingers at each other while customers hardware fries doesn't help anyone.
I am a shareholder of Time Warner. I have submitted a proposal for voting at the next shareholder meeting for Time Warner to only allow access to whitelisted sites by default and eventually become mandatory.
Thankfully this is a free market. If you get your proposal through, you do know that people will leave Time Warner for their internet connection by the masses don't you? There are plenty of good alternatives for cable and internet, there is no pressing need for anyone's service to be Time Warner. When you block out someone's favorite blog site or social networking site because some material on that site may be objectionable you will drive customers to another ISP that does not restrict access.
It is futile. You can do a google image search on porn and view all kinds of pornographic images through googles own site. Are you going to block google? Are you going to block myspace because a few people have objectionable (to you) photos? You take away a few of the major player and people will abandon the service.
You are making a proposal that will drive the value of the shares you and others own down.
I am not in favor of minors viewing pornography in any way, but to restrict everyone's access based on trying to restrict the access of a few is not the way to solve this problem.
I think he means that in some circumstances handles aren't reclaimed. I have the same issue on a laptop that I rarely reboot. After about a month or so of using visual studio and only going to hibernate and not rebooting I start getting the above problems. Context menus not opening, windows not being created, programs not running. No error messages, just things don't open. Closing some windows usually works but after about a month or so it gets really bad. I think in most circumstances the handles are reclaimed, but there is a bug somewhere that does not. A problem still, but not as severe as all window handles not being released.
Yeah, I think I do need to downplay COBOL even more and play up the financial applications side of it. I already did that, but maybe not enough. Maybe I'll take the word COBOL completely out heh.
It has been a few years since I have interviewed, but I'm not so bad at it. I had 4 or 5 interviews I targeted for after college and had 3 or 4 offers. Acedemically I did well and socially I can hold a conversation. I did (do) cover letters and follow up so I'm all good there. I picked where I am because I really liked the company and it has been fun to work there, at the expense of my marketable technical skills I guess. That will be a definite "learning experience" I take with me.
Well, our compiler won't interface with.net assemblies although there are COBOL compilers that will. In that case I have had to write wrappers in c++ in order to interface with 3rd party.net assemblies. There have been occasions where parameter passing didn't work when invoking dll's, again a wrapper was needed. It is difficult to create an email from a web app with our compiler without implementing it at the TCP level. No need to put yourself through that when a simple aspx page will do it in a few lines of code.
Of course some things can be done better in certain languages. Languages are tools and there is always a best tool for the job. I don't disagree with your statement that COBOL is dying. I do disagree with your insinuation of COBOL being a "toy" language and not a "real programming language". It was every bit as real as C and C++ in it's time, it just had different strengths and weaknesses. You can use it to write complex business applications. You really don't want to use it to create a new compiler. Eventually it will be gone as will most languages of it's time and most languages that are being used today. That is the nature of software.
Our current compiler vendor wants in the tens of thousands of dollars for the newest version of thier compiler plus they have seat licenses for anyone using any program written with it. There are other COBOL compilers that are less expensive than that and more capable than ours, but it is time for the little guys to migrate to something else. It is really priced for the big guys now.
I love my job, where I work and the hours I work. I am fairly content with how much I make, but I don't get the perks (read benefits) of working for a large company. I have a 5 year old and 1 year old twins that need better health insurance than what is available to me. Private health insurance is exhorbitantly expensive. I realize my skills will not translate very well to a new company. I want to update my skills and be more marketable, which was the reason for my original post.
Well, your wrong there. Anyone can't do it and you can do anything with a modern COBOL compiler that you can do with any number of other languages. There are also lots of COBOL jobs in my town, mostly on mainframe, but my experience is PC related. I also want to get out of it because you are correct in saying that it is becoming less and less marketable as a skill as demand for it drops.
There is a reason that most of the backend code for banks and insurance companies are written in COBOL.
You don't need to hire an expert in language X, you can and should look for expert programmers that are willing to learn language X. An expert can easily cross over from being a novice in any language in a matter of a few weeks.
How I wish this were true. I consider myself to be a good programmer, I work in a small company that provides software to credit unions. We do the complete package, teller systems, ATM interfaces, online banking, etc. Three of us work here. Our entire system works well with two programmers and one tech support guy. We support 18 credit unions. Our problem is that with only 3 people it is based on a legacy code base that has grown over the years. It is all in COBOL with a little other stuff thrown in when COBOL won't work.
I am ready for a change and work in a city with lots of bank and insurance headquarters. Everyone wants J2EE or.Net developers and I am interested in.Net but don't have any real experience in it. I understand it and have written several small programs, but nothing really complex. I have plenty of experience writing software for the financial industry that work, writing software that is delivered on time and on budget and recieving praise for the quality of software I write. I can't even get an interview.
I am studying to get.net certified and hopefully that will help. I'm trying to better my situation, but at this point I can't even get anyone to talk to me. I would hope my resume doesn't suck that bad, when I graduated college 8 years ago I had plenty of offers and seemed to not interview like a slobbering moron, but everyone's mindset is "I need x years of this language experience before I'll talk to you".
I have rare uses for a cell phone, I can either be reached at home or at work, or I'm with my wife with her cell phone. I can't be reached for the 10 minute commute from home to work and if you can't handle that it's not my problem. The biggest thing preventing me from getting a cell phone is cost, I can't justify paying for something I'll rarely use. This would work perfect for me, the few times a month I need to call someone I can wait through an add.
The only drawback I can see is if your trying to make a 911 call and have to wait through a minute and a half of dice.com adds only to panic and hit 991 and have to do it all over again.
If they do this I'd probably pick one up as probably one of the 2% of Americans that don't currently have a cell phone.
You bet. Then I'd try to turn it into something useful. Wouldn't a nose spray company like to have the "famous booger picker" cured and as a spokesman? Kind of like the Jared of Snot.
Everquest had it right in the beginning too. It was possible to be a 200 skill in all tradeskills at player level 1, provided you could buy the components from people that were levelling and not skilling. It was expensive and hard, but if all you wanted to do was become a master craftsman and not adventure all day it was possible.
It all changed when they first started creating no-drop crafted items which made the levellers want to skill up to be able to make the item for themselves. They followed that up by increasing tradeskill max levels with alternate advancement (experience) points, which directly tied tradeskills to player level. Those two moves killed the tradeskill community in Everquest.
I understand why they did this. The game developers wanted every player to grind through both levels and tradeskills since more time in game equals more money in subscriptions, but it really took the fun out of the game for alot of tradeskillers and to be honest, most of the people into the level grind didn't really enjoy tradeskills either.
Well said. I might add that the hazy line is different for every child. Some kids can handle alot of freedom and behave appropriately. Some can't. It's up to the parents to determine where the line actually is.
Now don't get me wrong, I hate DRM in all forms, but isn't this just like saying if I lock my door with a lock that is easily pickable, then it's ok for someone to break in?
If it's only for customers then password it and give out the passwords when they place an order. If it's free to any potential customer, then maybe he was sitting in his car getting ready to go in, just as someone may be sitting in a booth getting ready to place an order.
That's like placing a free sample of bagels and cream cheese outside your store with no sign saying customers only and getting upset if someone walks by and helps themself to a piece. If you want it to be for customers only then secure it (put it inside at the checkout line rather than outside with no one around or put a sign on it saying free sample with purchase)
If I had mod points and could give you all of them, I would. Everyone reads computer and instantly the book is thrown at them.
What gets me is the severity of the penalties. 5 years possible for piggybacking a service to check his email and browse the web? The bandwidth this guy was using was negligible. I think the penalty he got was too harsh. Give him an $80 fine and move on. That's about the cost of a low speeding ticket. Chances are he wouldn't do it again. That's even if you consider it's a crime to connect to an open wifi network, which I personally think it shouldn't be.
If he were spamming 5 million emails in 15 minutes or otherwise knowingly abusing the system, I could see some penalties, but this is nonsense. The penalties for most computer crimes are severely too harsh to begin with. I can only hope like you do that as time moves on we will re-evaluate the laws and punishments.
I hope quite sincerely that someone puts this class actions lawsuit in the recycle bin along with the greedy B*****ds who came up with this steaming pile of bovine excrement.
I think it is a valid case. They advertised one thing and delivered something else. Seems pretty clear cut to me.
Trying not to sound like a Brad fanboy, I think EQ original, kunark and velious eras were the most fun. That's about the point in turned into a grindathon and stopped being as much fun. That's also about the time that Brad left. I put the two together, when he left the developers went in a different direction.
Several things were put in the game that the "hardcore" players kept asking for, faster transport, easier binding, more uber loot in much harder places to get, tying tradeskills to levelling, and changing the game from an open free range game to a keyed, flagged mess you had to work your way through. It went from being the open world Brad "visioned" to a bastardized console first person shooter that was linear as the people from SOE took over.
I complained then and I still complain today that way too much effort was put into appeasing the 10% top tier players and too little time appeasing the 90% casual gamers that played. The top players always said that if it wasn't for them nobody would play, like they were the "pros" that everyone else tried to emulate. In reality it really didn't matter to me what they were doing because I would never be able to put in the time they did. Their game was completely different than mine and the people I adventured with. If the developers spent half the time creating fun enjoyable quests and having true gm's run real events instead of creating uber dungeon 43 with big loot item rare drop that 1% of the population would benifit from it would have been a much better (longer lasting) game.
But I agree with you, the difficulty was the key. Just like the previous poster said, its all about the grind today. Back then it was an adventure and an accomplishment just to travel and see the world.
I agree. I started playing just after beta, quit for a while just before Kunark and came back just after Velious was released and then played for 3 years or so. The game was much more enjoyable early on when it was really hard. When it took 2 or 3 hours to cross the continent and then you could only bind in cities. It made the world feel "real" in some way. Another world you could escape into. That's what everyone talks about when they talk about EQ, the hard stuff they did early on. Even the people that complain about it.
I was always behind the "vision" and understood what Brad meant. He had an ideal for the game to make it better that even if the players didn't like, made the game better. The players always wanted the game to be easier, even if they asked in a round about way. I also liked how he wanted it to be a real world type experience and that not all aspects of the game would revolve around level. You could be an artisan and not kill anything and still offer something to the game. That was destroyed when he left and tradeskills and other skills were tied to levelling and specific items.
Nothing will ever rival the original EQ in my mind because as far as I can see every game has revolved around the level grind and not around the experience of playing that eq offered at first.
If she is a developer, she will be capable of placing code in a program that at some point will touch live data. Pulling off some scheme would be massively difficult, but I've learned over the years that nothing is impossible.
I am balding and I really don't care. When I was younger I had all the skate/shaved/dread/bangs/normal/mullet(it was the 80's) haircuts I could get at different times. My mom was always telling me that I was going to make my hair fall out faster by doing what I was doing. My reply was always that by looking at both sides of my family, I had better have my fun while I could. Now it gets cut with the #2 trimmer every time and I had my fun. It's no big deal to me. I actually prefer the short haircut now since I haven't combed or even dried my hair in years. Towel off and I'm ready to roll. The only problem I have is the sunburns, but I'm getting better about wearing a hat or using sunscrean on if I'm outside.
I have a friend on the other hand who has spent thousands only to have a head of hair that looks like he's doing something strange to his head. He is massively sensitive about it and it is not a subject to be discussed. I'm sure he would be jumping with joy and shelling out the cash if this works.
I am pretty sure the terms of service for Second Life are you must be an adult to create a character. There is a Teen Second Life for teens to use. Unless someone falsified their age somewhere this shouldn't be an issue.
Ultimately your goal as a parent isn't to run around trying to censor everything for your children, it's to teach your children why they shouldn't want to do those things in the first place.
Well, we differ there because I think it's both. I don't need or want to censor everything, but my kid isn't going to be watching whatever he wants just yet either. It's up to me to decide what he is ready to see and what he isn't. As he gets older it will be his decision. Believe it or not, in my group of friends I am one of the most lenient about what my kid can see and if it's questionable it's always either started with or ended with a conversation about what he just saw and why he was allowed to see it. My oldest is 5, it's up to me what to decide. When he's 14, if I'm still running around blocking access to this and that, then I've failed at my job.
Enforcing rules and punishing actions is teaching them to choose more wisely. How is a child going to learn what is acceptable and what is not if they aren't punished for doing unacceptable things? You can talk till your blue in the face, but until a punishment comes down it will not be taken seriously. Children push their bounderies to see what they are, punishing them for overstepping those bounderies teach them what they are.
And again, I think your perspective will change when you have kids. Everyone I've known has.
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From what I have read, they are planning on stamping the disks when you bring them in so they can only be brought in once. With what or how hard it will be to remove I don't know.
I think the answer is they should both fix the problem. Drive manufacturers should issue a sane value and operating systems should check that the value is sane before using it. Same rule as accepting any data from an outside source, you tell them what they are supposed to do, but then you double check it to make sure they did. Pointing fingers at each other while customers hardware fries doesn't help anyone.
Thankfully this is a free market. If you get your proposal through, you do know that people will leave Time Warner for their internet connection by the masses don't you? There are plenty of good alternatives for cable and internet, there is no pressing need for anyone's service to be Time Warner. When you block out someone's favorite blog site or social networking site because some material on that site may be objectionable you will drive customers to another ISP that does not restrict access.
It is futile. You can do a google image search on porn and view all kinds of pornographic images through googles own site. Are you going to block google? Are you going to block myspace because a few people have objectionable (to you) photos? You take away a few of the major player and people will abandon the service.
You are making a proposal that will drive the value of the shares you and others own down.
I am not in favor of minors viewing pornography in any way, but to restrict everyone's access based on trying to restrict the access of a few is not the way to solve this problem.
I think he means that in some circumstances handles aren't reclaimed. I have the same issue on a laptop that I rarely reboot. After about a month or so of using visual studio and only going to hibernate and not rebooting I start getting the above problems. Context menus not opening, windows not being created, programs not running. No error messages, just things don't open. Closing some windows usually works but after about a month or so it gets really bad. I think in most circumstances the handles are reclaimed, but there is a bug somewhere that does not. A problem still, but not as severe as all window handles not being released.
Yeah, I think I do need to downplay COBOL even more and play up the financial applications side of it. I already did that, but maybe not enough. Maybe I'll take the word COBOL completely out heh.
It has been a few years since I have interviewed, but I'm not so bad at it. I had 4 or 5 interviews I targeted for after college and had 3 or 4 offers. Acedemically I did well and socially I can hold a conversation. I did (do) cover letters and follow up so I'm all good there. I picked where I am because I really liked the company and it has been fun to work there, at the expense of my marketable technical skills I guess. That will be a definite "learning experience" I take with me.
Well, our compiler won't interface with .net assemblies although there are COBOL compilers that will. In that case I have had to write wrappers in c++ in order to interface with 3rd party .net assemblies. There have been occasions where parameter passing didn't work when invoking dll's, again a wrapper was needed. It is difficult to create an email from a web app with our compiler without implementing it at the TCP level. No need to put yourself through that when a simple aspx page will do it in a few lines of code.
Of course some things can be done better in certain languages. Languages are tools and there is always a best tool for the job. I don't disagree with your statement that COBOL is dying. I do disagree with your insinuation of COBOL being a "toy" language and not a "real programming language". It was every bit as real as C and C++ in it's time, it just had different strengths and weaknesses. You can use it to write complex business applications. You really don't want to use it to create a new compiler. Eventually it will be gone as will most languages of it's time and most languages that are being used today. That is the nature of software.
Our current compiler vendor wants in the tens of thousands of dollars for the newest version of thier compiler plus they have seat licenses for anyone using any program written with it. There are other COBOL compilers that are less expensive than that and more capable than ours, but it is time for the little guys to migrate to something else. It is really priced for the big guys now.
I love my job, where I work and the hours I work. I am fairly content with how much I make, but I don't get the perks (read benefits) of working for a large company. I have a 5 year old and 1 year old twins that need better health insurance than what is available to me. Private health insurance is exhorbitantly expensive. I realize my skills will not translate very well to a new company. I want to update my skills and be more marketable, which was the reason for my original post.
Well, your wrong there. Anyone can't do it and you can do anything with a modern COBOL compiler that you can do with any number of other languages. There are also lots of COBOL jobs in my town, mostly on mainframe, but my experience is PC related. I also want to get out of it because you are correct in saying that it is becoming less and less marketable as a skill as demand for it drops.
There is a reason that most of the backend code for banks and insurance companies are written in COBOL.
How I wish this were true. I consider myself to be a good programmer, I work in a small company that provides software to credit unions. We do the complete package, teller systems, ATM interfaces, online banking, etc. Three of us work here. Our entire system works well with two programmers and one tech support guy. We support 18 credit unions. Our problem is that with only 3 people it is based on a legacy code base that has grown over the years. It is all in COBOL with a little other stuff thrown in when COBOL won't work.
I am ready for a change and work in a city with lots of bank and insurance headquarters. Everyone wants J2EE or
I am studying to get
I have rare uses for a cell phone, I can either be reached at home or at work, or I'm with my wife with her cell phone. I can't be reached for the 10 minute commute from home to work and if you can't handle that it's not my problem. The biggest thing preventing me from getting a cell phone is cost, I can't justify paying for something I'll rarely use. This would work perfect for me, the few times a month I need to call someone I can wait through an add.
The only drawback I can see is if your trying to make a 911 call and have to wait through a minute and a half of dice.com adds only to panic and hit 991 and have to do it all over again.
If they do this I'd probably pick one up as probably one of the 2% of Americans that don't currently have a cell phone.
Because they have no sense of humor?
You bet. Then I'd try to turn it into something useful. Wouldn't a nose spray company like to have the "famous booger picker" cured and as a spokesman? Kind of like the Jared of Snot.
Everquest had it right in the beginning too. It was possible to be a 200 skill in all tradeskills at player level 1, provided you could buy the components from people that were levelling and not skilling. It was expensive and hard, but if all you wanted to do was become a master craftsman and not adventure all day it was possible.
It all changed when they first started creating no-drop crafted items which made the levellers want to skill up to be able to make the item for themselves. They followed that up by increasing tradeskill max levels with alternate advancement (experience) points, which directly tied tradeskills to player level. Those two moves killed the tradeskill community in Everquest.
I understand why they did this. The game developers wanted every player to grind through both levels and tradeskills since more time in game equals more money in subscriptions, but it really took the fun out of the game for alot of tradeskillers and to be honest, most of the people into the level grind didn't really enjoy tradeskills either.
Well said. I might add that the hazy line is different for every child. Some kids can handle alot of freedom and behave appropriately. Some can't. It's up to the parents to determine where the line actually is.
Now don't get me wrong, I hate DRM in all forms, but isn't this just like saying if I lock my door with a lock that is easily pickable, then it's ok for someone to break in?
If it's only for customers then password it and give out the passwords when they place an order. If it's free to any potential customer, then maybe he was sitting in his car getting ready to go in, just as someone may be sitting in a booth getting ready to place an order.
That's like placing a free sample of bagels and cream cheese outside your store with no sign saying customers only and getting upset if someone walks by and helps themself to a piece. If you want it to be for customers only then secure it (put it inside at the checkout line rather than outside with no one around or put a sign on it saying free sample with purchase)
If I had mod points and could give you all of them, I would. Everyone reads computer and instantly the book is thrown at them.
What gets me is the severity of the penalties. 5 years possible for piggybacking a service to check his email and browse the web? The bandwidth this guy was using was negligible. I think the penalty he got was too harsh. Give him an $80 fine and move on. That's about the cost of a low speeding ticket. Chances are he wouldn't do it again. That's even if you consider it's a crime to connect to an open wifi network, which I personally think it shouldn't be.
If he were spamming 5 million emails in 15 minutes or otherwise knowingly abusing the system, I could see some penalties, but this is nonsense. The penalties for most computer crimes are severely too harsh to begin with. I can only hope like you do that as time moves on we will re-evaluate the laws and punishments.
I think it is a valid case. They advertised one thing and delivered something else. Seems pretty clear cut to me.
It's not thier fault. Really. All kids are ADD or ADHD these days, don't you watch 20/20/dateline/60 minutes?
Trying not to sound like a Brad fanboy, I think EQ original, kunark and velious eras were the most fun. That's about the point in turned into a grindathon and stopped being as much fun. That's also about the time that Brad left. I put the two together, when he left the developers went in a different direction.
Several things were put in the game that the "hardcore" players kept asking for, faster transport, easier binding, more uber loot in much harder places to get, tying tradeskills to levelling, and changing the game from an open free range game to a keyed, flagged mess you had to work your way through. It went from being the open world Brad "visioned" to a bastardized console first person shooter that was linear as the people from SOE took over.
I complained then and I still complain today that way too much effort was put into appeasing the 10% top tier players and too little time appeasing the 90% casual gamers that played. The top players always said that if it wasn't for them nobody would play, like they were the "pros" that everyone else tried to emulate. In reality it really didn't matter to me what they were doing because I would never be able to put in the time they did. Their game was completely different than mine and the people I adventured with. If the developers spent half the time creating fun enjoyable quests and having true gm's run real events instead of creating uber dungeon 43 with big loot item rare drop that 1% of the population would benifit from it would have been a much better (longer lasting) game.
But I agree with you, the difficulty was the key. Just like the previous poster said, its all about the grind today. Back then it was an adventure and an accomplishment just to travel and see the world.
I agree. I started playing just after beta, quit for a while just before Kunark and came back just after Velious was released and then played for 3 years or so. The game was much more enjoyable early on when it was really hard. When it took 2 or 3 hours to cross the continent and then you could only bind in cities. It made the world feel "real" in some way. Another world you could escape into. That's what everyone talks about when they talk about EQ, the hard stuff they did early on. Even the people that complain about it.
I was always behind the "vision" and understood what Brad meant. He had an ideal for the game to make it better that even if the players didn't like, made the game better. The players always wanted the game to be easier, even if they asked in a round about way. I also liked how he wanted it to be a real world type experience and that not all aspects of the game would revolve around level. You could be an artisan and not kill anything and still offer something to the game. That was destroyed when he left and tradeskills and other skills were tied to levelling and specific items.
Nothing will ever rival the original EQ in my mind because as far as I can see every game has revolved around the level grind and not around the experience of playing that eq offered at first.
If she is a developer, she will be capable of placing code in a program that at some point will touch live data. Pulling off some scheme would be massively difficult, but I've learned over the years that nothing is impossible.
I am balding and I really don't care. When I was younger I had all the skate/shaved/dread/bangs/normal/mullet(it was the 80's) haircuts I could get at different times. My mom was always telling me that I was going to make my hair fall out faster by doing what I was doing. My reply was always that by looking at both sides of my family, I had better have my fun while I could. Now it gets cut with the #2 trimmer every time and I had my fun. It's no big deal to me. I actually prefer the short haircut now since I haven't combed or even dried my hair in years. Towel off and I'm ready to roll. The only problem I have is the sunburns, but I'm getting better about wearing a hat or using sunscrean on if I'm outside.
I have a friend on the other hand who has spent thousands only to have a head of hair that looks like he's doing something strange to his head. He is massively sensitive about it and it is not a subject to be discussed. I'm sure he would be jumping with joy and shelling out the cash if this works.
What's wrong with Phil?
I am pretty sure the terms of service for Second Life are you must be an adult to create a character. There is a Teen Second Life for teens to use. Unless someone falsified their age somewhere this shouldn't be an issue.
Well, we differ there because I think it's both. I don't need or want to censor everything, but my kid isn't going to be watching whatever he wants just yet either. It's up to me to decide what he is ready to see and what he isn't. As he gets older it will be his decision. Believe it or not, in my group of friends I am one of the most lenient about what my kid can see and if it's questionable it's always either started with or ended with a conversation about what he just saw and why he was allowed to see it. My oldest is 5, it's up to me what to decide. When he's 14, if I'm still running around blocking access to this and that, then I've failed at my job.
Enforcing rules and punishing actions is teaching them to choose more wisely. How is a child going to learn what is acceptable and what is not if they aren't punished for doing unacceptable things? You can talk till your blue in the face, but until a punishment comes down it will not be taken seriously. Children push their bounderies to see what they are, punishing them for overstepping those bounderies teach them what they are.
And again, I think your perspective will change when you have kids. Everyone I've known has.