Basically, in any of these lists, if it's not made by Nintendo and developed before 1992, it's got a snowball's chance in hell of making the list.
I don't know why this is, but I have yet to see any of the really great C-64 | Atari 800 | Apple II games (like Lode Runner, Jumpman, Space Taxi, M.U.L.E., Racing Destruction Set, Original Wolfenstein) make the list.
Yeah, and dad probably doesn't want an email address as dad@my1337address.com. Will you buy him a domain name? And pay the money to keep it up every year? Where will you host the server? Will you pay for that? If you're going to host it, how will you be sure that it's really *private*? If not, what will you do the day the server dies or you suffer a hard drive failure? What if you're not even in the country when that happens? What will you do to ensure that neither you or him lose emails when your IP inevitably changes?
There's something to be said for having your own mail server, and there's something to be said against it too. Keeping an email server up and running for decades is not a trivial task that will take zero time. No, gmail isn't a perfect answer, but it's a pretty good one -- I can access it anywhere, and I can be reasonably sure that in the next 20 years my email will never change unless I want it to change. And, most important, it doesn't cost me any time (or money) to do so.
Cool. I orginally had two step 4s, because I believed that someone probably did pour over the code on the suspicion that something was missing in the interlude sequence.
However, I took it out because I felt it was too confusing, and this is just a hypothesis about how it could have happened, not nessessarily how it did. The focus was really more on the side of "how could Rockstar have been so irresponsible and were they deliberately sneaking forbidden content by the ESRB?" and less so on how the content was found.
I also noticed that I could have written step 4 better. I didn't mean to imply conspiracy, or even malice on the part of the programmer, just that he probably knew he could easily disable it post-production and have something cool to show off to friends. I know that I probably would have done such a thing. And, for all we know, he did, it just didn't leak, your friend just managed to find it.
This is exactly what I thought happened from day one. Here's the scenario as it appeared in my mind.
1. Programmer creates sex minigame, probably with the consent of his manager.
2. CEO|COO|CLO|Suit sees minigame, releases the potential legal (and financial) ramifications, and says, "yeah, you can't do that. Take it out."
3. Programmer realizes that taking out all the relevant code not only will take a long time, but might cause unforseen bugs in the program. Instead, he just writes a patch to cover it up so it can't be accessed. As far as he's concerned, it's been removed. When the boss sees the demo, he's happy and confident the 'problem' has been deleted.
4. Programmer originally patched the game with the intent to unpatch it later when it goes on sale. When it goes on sale, he shows his friends how to access the previously deleted content, they have a big laugh, one of them leaks the mod out to the internet.
5. Parent of some kid somewhere sees the Hot Coffee content, freaks out. News story is born.
6. Rockstar denies the code was in the game, blames the modders. For all they know, they told the programmer to take the content out, he did, and they don't know how it got there.
7. After checking the code, they see that it was indeed on there, but was never intended to be accessed. Oops.
It probably was budgeted. Then they decided that it would be taken out some time after the coding work was already done. It was probably taken out for this very reason -- it was too controversial and would have likely gotten them an AO rating. So, they edited it out.
Note that they did not even make this unlockable with a cheat code -- you have to deliberately reprogram parts of the game to see this content. Why would they bother to show it to the ESRB? The player was never supposed to be able to accesss the content. In fact, if they had shown it and it had gotten an AO rating, you'd have people complaining because the rating was too high and judged on content that's not accessable.
I don't think the point is to make a game. There's two ways I see this program. One, it's just a cool screensaver to use while you're streaming MP3's during a party -- and hey, you can play with it. Two, it's meant to be used under the influence of really heavy hallucinogins. If you've never used psychedelic drugs, then that might be hard to understand, but let me assure you that combined with the right drugs, that "meaningless crap" could be the most profound thing ever.
Joo Janta 200 Super-Chromatic Peril Sensitive Windshields have been specially designed to help people develop a relaxed attitude to danger. At the first hint of trouble, they turn totally blue and thus prevent you from seeing anything that might alarm you.
From other friends I've had in the same position and from my experience, two weeks notice is plenty unless there's some kind of extenuating circumstance -- but typically your new job won't want to wait two weeks, much less four. They have needs to fill as well (that's why they're hiring), and can't wait forever.
Any time spent after that is typically billed at double pay and is subject to your availibility. If they need you to talk the new programmer through some stuff, they can certainly get you, but it will cost them. If they have an emergency that only you can fix, they'd better hope it's when you can attend to it. I've even had friends negotiate quadruple time (from the original rate) for anything after 1am and holidays.
This will make them think twice about calling you for something frivolous, and it gives you a good incentive to go back and help them. It will also keep them from doing this stupid shit again. If you're going to run with an indispensible employee, then you'd better have some contingency plans for when they leave -- and you'd better treat them like they are indespensible, happy employees don't go looking for work.
Bottom line, and others have said it, this guy fucked up. Now he wants you to cover his fuckup and do it on the cheap. You're under no obligation to do so. If he was a decent employer I'd certainly give him enough notice to find a new employee and get some knowledge transfer and I'd leave him with plenty of documentation on how to run things in your absence. What I wouldn't do is give him so much time that it puts my new job in jeopardy or give him extra time at anything below ordinary contractor rates. You're under no obligation to do anything other than say, "here's my two weeks notice."
Solar cells take almost as much energy to make as they put out over their lifetime. We've dammed nearly every river that's dammable, and there's considerable ecological cost that comes with that as well. Wind isn't consistent, and the windmills tend to be large, ugly, and kill birds. Hydrogen isn't a fuel source, it's just a fancy battery.
Nuclear fusion isn't viable yet, and as we know, you can't legislate technological advancement. And no environmentalist (who are the ones crying for alternative energy sources) wants to even consider nuclear fission.
So, pray tell, do you plan on generating this "alternate energy"?
Car and Driver had an excellentarticle about these cars a few years back.
Basically, people were paying $525 a month to lease a car that cost nearly 1.5 million each to build. Small wonder they liked them, and small wonder that GM scrapped them.
If I had mod points, I would mod you up. I'd never even heard of the limit or the argument that it needs to be increased, but it makes very good sense.
It's a lot easier to buy 435 (or 218 for a majority) politicians than it is to buy 4350.
I'd just like to say that your attitude, and ones like it, are exactly the attitudes that have ruined Austin.
Thanks for making it fucking impossible to get around, thanks for making traffic congestion so much worse than it could be in a misguided attempt to 'help the environment', and thank you for a light rail system that does fuck all and has tied up road funds for over a decade.
You might as well say, "why do we have zoning laws."
I hate my HOA, but do I understand why it's there. When I was 12, someone was given the land next to my parents' house and they immediately plopped a trailer home down on it. Never mind the fact there were no hookups or anything, they just cleared some of the brush, put up an outhouse, and plopped their shitty trailer home on their new land.
Needless to say, property values plummeted overnight. It took a determined group of neighbors to buy out the guy and return our neighborhood to normalicy.
HOA's just take that and zoning laws a little further. Basically, no one can do anything that might devalue your property. Many people see their home as an investment, not just a place to live, and they welcome this. Of course, it means that you have to give up a bit of your freedom as well. Good HOA's aren't that restrictive, and just make sure that you don't put a car up on blocks in your front lawn and never cut the yard. More restrictive ones might tell you how often you're going to paint your house.
The main problem with HOA's is that they tend to get populated with exactly the wrong kind of people. Who runs for the HOA offices? People with too much free time that like to stick their noses in other people's business. This thought pattern is really hard to overcome and root out once it gets in there, and most people don't realize who's running until it's too late. The busybodies will form a voting block, and the rest of the neighborhood will be just disorganized enough to not be able to get them out. That's when things go to shit. Not really, because the neighborhood looks nice, but neighbors start hating neighbors, and those (like me) who get disgusted with it simply move it. The busybodies like it too much to move, and the new blood takes too long to figure out the HOA isn't their friends.
Christ. I'm ranting. Look, I hate my HOA. However, I understand that it's a great idea corrupted by misguided people. As much as I hate it, I would have serious reservations about moving into a neighborhood without one.
I think a lot of the commercial advertisements benefit the movie theatre and not the movie producers. I hadn't really thought about commercials in the movies in some time, then after reading this article, I thought, "hmmm... I do seem to recall a period of time when it seemed like half the 'previews' were commercials. Come to think of it, there are less previews than there used to be...."
Then I remembered, I started going to a movie theatre that caters to movie enthusiasts. I can't remember the last time I saw an advertisement before the feature movie. I also can't remember the last time someone talked during a movie or was disruptive or anyone under the age of 18 was in attendance. No screaming babies either. Maybe because they don't allow children under 6 at all, and no one under 18 without parents and they are very intolerant of bullshit and very responsive about complaints.
Somehow, they still manage to charge about the same price as every other theatre in town. No wonder I go there for every movie -- and if it doesn't show there, I wait for DVD.
There are good movie theatres out there, you just have to find them.
You forgot this month, which is "identify your Halo 2 enemies and their weaknesses" and "how to be a better killer in Halo 2".
I also liked XBN (free subscription), but I wouldn't have paid for it, and the past few months haven't been very good.
Re:7 miles up! Aircraft will need repeaters
on
Cell Phones In The Air?
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· Score: 2, Informative
I have attempted to use a cell phone on a plane before, as a scientific experiment. I have not tried it with my new 3g phone, but with my old TDMA phone, service was good for about five minutes after takeoff and before landing. Otherwise, you're high enough that you can't get signal. I'm sure that some of that is from the metal airframe, but even sitting next to a window didn't help.
Those who say its easy to use a cell phone on a plane have obviously never tried it.
I don't want to take away their right to spam the FCC. However, I do want the FCC to understand that they don't represent a very large minority of the population, even if the volume says they do.
Just because you can shout the loudest doesn't mean that you are speaking for everyone, or anyone really, other than yourself.
My aging Thinkpad 600E is quite literally a Frankenstien machine. At some point, I've replaced everything on the machine other than the motherboard and bottom casing.
It's been very piecemeal, like limping along a 1966 Mustang, so the cost has been mostly transparent. Plus, I can't say it's a hard machine to work on, and the parts are cheap on eBay.
Yes. I quite enjoyed mine, but they have a penchant for breaking because idiots who don't understand the puzzle tend to force the pieces and pop|twist|misalign the strings.
The puzzle isn't very difficult though. It's much more fun and challenging to use the puzzle to create sculpture, such as a cube on a stand.
It's exactly what you think it's there for -- to prevent weight transfer to the rear wheels. Think of it less as two extra wheels and more as two wheels with a suspension that won't compress.
I wouldn't call it cheating, but I would say that it shows the inherent disadvantage of FWD in a drag racing application. Fact of the matter is, FWD is not as good a platform for racing as AWD or RWD. With FWD, you must split all the driving forces (braking, acceleration, turning) with the front tires. It's very hard to fully utilize the rear wheel's traction, and often, they do little more than hold up the rear of the car. This is why front tires on FWD platforms wear so much quicker than rear ones.
Also note that you almost never see FWD race cars, unless it's specifically mandated by the class. The inherent disadvantages of FWD in a racing application are extremely large obstacles to overcome.
The way I understand it is that it depends on how long you spend in the foreign country. If you spend over a certain percentage of days actually living and earning a wage in that country, you are not subject to American income taxation.
You can have dual citizenship until you are 18. The only way this could happen is if you are born on foriegn soil to American parents. You have the citizenship of the country you were born in, and America recognizes your citizenship because your parents are American.
Turn 18 though, and you must choose. I know because my cousin had dual Italian/American citizenship.
Yeah, it's about like listening to a debate about the differences between Windows XP home and Windows XP pro. Sure they're different, but wouldn't you like to hear about Linux as well?
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I don't know why this is, but I have yet to see any of the really great C-64 | Atari 800 | Apple II games (like Lode Runner, Jumpman, Space Taxi, M.U.L.E., Racing Destruction Set, Original Wolfenstein) make the list.
There's something to be said for having your own mail server, and there's something to be said against it too. Keeping an email server up and running for decades is not a trivial task that will take zero time. No, gmail isn't a perfect answer, but it's a pretty good one -- I can access it anywhere, and I can be reasonably sure that in the next 20 years my email will never change unless I want it to change. And, most important, it doesn't cost me any time (or money) to do so.
However, I took it out because I felt it was too confusing, and this is just a hypothesis about how it could have happened, not nessessarily how it did. The focus was really more on the side of "how could Rockstar have been so irresponsible and were they deliberately sneaking forbidden content by the ESRB?" and less so on how the content was found.
I also noticed that I could have written step 4 better. I didn't mean to imply conspiracy, or even malice on the part of the programmer, just that he probably knew he could easily disable it post-production and have something cool to show off to friends. I know that I probably would have done such a thing. And, for all we know, he did, it just didn't leak, your friend just managed to find it.
1. Programmer creates sex minigame, probably with the consent of his manager.
2. CEO|COO|CLO|Suit sees minigame, releases the potential legal (and financial) ramifications, and says, "yeah, you can't do that. Take it out."
3. Programmer realizes that taking out all the relevant code not only will take a long time, but might cause unforseen bugs in the program. Instead, he just writes a patch to cover it up so it can't be accessed. As far as he's concerned, it's been removed. When the boss sees the demo, he's happy and confident the 'problem' has been deleted.
4. Programmer originally patched the game with the intent to unpatch it later when it goes on sale. When it goes on sale, he shows his friends how to access the previously deleted content, they have a big laugh, one of them leaks the mod out to the internet.
5. Parent of some kid somewhere sees the Hot Coffee content, freaks out. News story is born.
6. Rockstar denies the code was in the game, blames the modders. For all they know, they told the programmer to take the content out, he did, and they don't know how it got there.
7. After checking the code, they see that it was indeed on there, but was never intended to be accessed. Oops.
8. Media has field day.
Note that they did not even make this unlockable with a cheat code -- you have to deliberately reprogram parts of the game to see this content. Why would they bother to show it to the ESRB? The player was never supposed to be able to accesss the content. In fact, if they had shown it and it had gotten an AO rating, you'd have people complaining because the rating was too high and judged on content that's not accessable.
I don't think the point is to make a game. There's two ways I see this program. One, it's just a cool screensaver to use while you're streaming MP3's during a party -- and hey, you can play with it. Two, it's meant to be used under the influence of really heavy hallucinogins. If you've never used psychedelic drugs, then that might be hard to understand, but let me assure you that combined with the right drugs, that "meaningless crap" could be the most profound thing ever.
Joo Janta 200 Super-Chromatic Peril Sensitive Windshields have been specially designed to help people develop a relaxed attitude to danger. At the first hint of trouble, they turn totally blue and thus prevent you from seeing anything that might alarm you.
Any time spent after that is typically billed at double pay and is subject to your availibility. If they need you to talk the new programmer through some stuff, they can certainly get you, but it will cost them. If they have an emergency that only you can fix, they'd better hope it's when you can attend to it. I've even had friends negotiate quadruple time (from the original rate) for anything after 1am and holidays.
This will make them think twice about calling you for something frivolous, and it gives you a good incentive to go back and help them. It will also keep them from doing this stupid shit again. If you're going to run with an indispensible employee, then you'd better have some contingency plans for when they leave -- and you'd better treat them like they are indespensible, happy employees don't go looking for work.
Bottom line, and others have said it, this guy fucked up. Now he wants you to cover his fuckup and do it on the cheap. You're under no obligation to do so. If he was a decent employer I'd certainly give him enough notice to find a new employee and get some knowledge transfer and I'd leave him with plenty of documentation on how to run things in your absence. What I wouldn't do is give him so much time that it puts my new job in jeopardy or give him extra time at anything below ordinary contractor rates. You're under no obligation to do anything other than say, "here's my two weeks notice."
Solar cells take almost as much energy to make as they put out over their lifetime. We've dammed nearly every river that's dammable, and there's considerable ecological cost that comes with that as well. Wind isn't consistent, and the windmills tend to be large, ugly, and kill birds. Hydrogen isn't a fuel source, it's just a fancy battery.
Nuclear fusion isn't viable yet, and as we know, you can't legislate technological advancement. And no environmentalist (who are the ones crying for alternative energy sources) wants to even consider nuclear fission.
So, pray tell, do you plan on generating this "alternate energy"?
Basically, people were paying $525 a month to lease a car that cost nearly 1.5 million each to build. Small wonder they liked them, and small wonder that GM scrapped them.
It's a lot easier to buy 435 (or 218 for a majority) politicians than it is to buy 4350.
Thanks for making it fucking impossible to get around, thanks for making traffic congestion so much worse than it could be in a misguided attempt to 'help the environment', and thank you for a light rail system that does fuck all and has tied up road funds for over a decade.
I hate my HOA, but do I understand why it's there. When I was 12, someone was given the land next to my parents' house and they immediately plopped a trailer home down on it. Never mind the fact there were no hookups or anything, they just cleared some of the brush, put up an outhouse, and plopped their shitty trailer home on their new land.
Needless to say, property values plummeted overnight. It took a determined group of neighbors to buy out the guy and return our neighborhood to normalicy.
HOA's just take that and zoning laws a little further. Basically, no one can do anything that might devalue your property. Many people see their home as an investment, not just a place to live, and they welcome this. Of course, it means that you have to give up a bit of your freedom as well. Good HOA's aren't that restrictive, and just make sure that you don't put a car up on blocks in your front lawn and never cut the yard. More restrictive ones might tell you how often you're going to paint your house.
The main problem with HOA's is that they tend to get populated with exactly the wrong kind of people. Who runs for the HOA offices? People with too much free time that like to stick their noses in other people's business. This thought pattern is really hard to overcome and root out once it gets in there, and most people don't realize who's running until it's too late. The busybodies will form a voting block, and the rest of the neighborhood will be just disorganized enough to not be able to get them out. That's when things go to shit. Not really, because the neighborhood looks nice, but neighbors start hating neighbors, and those (like me) who get disgusted with it simply move it. The busybodies like it too much to move, and the new blood takes too long to figure out the HOA isn't their friends.
Christ. I'm ranting. Look, I hate my HOA. However, I understand that it's a great idea corrupted by misguided people. As much as I hate it, I would have serious reservations about moving into a neighborhood without one.
Alamo Drafthouse : coming soon to a city near you.
Did I mention they also serve beer and real food?
Then I remembered, I started going to a movie theatre that caters to movie enthusiasts. I can't remember the last time I saw an advertisement before the feature movie. I also can't remember the last time someone talked during a movie or was disruptive or anyone under the age of 18 was in attendance. No screaming babies either. Maybe because they don't allow children under 6 at all, and no one under 18 without parents and they are very intolerant of bullshit and very responsive about complaints.
Somehow, they still manage to charge about the same price as every other theatre in town. No wonder I go there for every movie -- and if it doesn't show there, I wait for DVD.
There are good movie theatres out there, you just have to find them.
I also liked XBN (free subscription), but I wouldn't have paid for it, and the past few months haven't been very good.
Those who say its easy to use a cell phone on a plane have obviously never tried it.
Just because you can shout the loudest doesn't mean that you are speaking for everyone, or anyone really, other than yourself.
It's been very piecemeal, like limping along a 1966 Mustang, so the cost has been mostly transparent. Plus, I can't say it's a hard machine to work on, and the parts are cheap on eBay.
But yes, Space Taxi and Racing Destruction Set are two of the most notable absences. I think I spent more time playing those two than anything else.
Of course, I'm also wondering how difficult it would be to hack this thing to play other ROMs.
The puzzle isn't very difficult though. It's much more fun and challenging to use the puzzle to create sculpture, such as a cube on a stand.
I wouldn't call it cheating, but I would say that it shows the inherent disadvantage of FWD in a drag racing application. Fact of the matter is, FWD is not as good a platform for racing as AWD or RWD. With FWD, you must split all the driving forces (braking, acceleration, turning) with the front tires. It's very hard to fully utilize the rear wheel's traction, and often, they do little more than hold up the rear of the car. This is why front tires on FWD platforms wear so much quicker than rear ones.
Also note that you almost never see FWD race cars, unless it's specifically mandated by the class. The inherent disadvantages of FWD in a racing application are extremely large obstacles to overcome.
The way I understand it is that it depends on how long you spend in the foreign country. If you spend over a certain percentage of days actually living and earning a wage in that country, you are not subject to American income taxation.
Turn 18 though, and you must choose. I know because my cousin had dual Italian/American citizenship.
Yeah, it's about like listening to a debate about the differences between Windows XP home and Windows XP pro. Sure they're different, but wouldn't you like to hear about Linux as well?