Re:Do activision really care when it's released ?
on
No Doom 3 This Year?
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· Score: 1
You may as well at least link to the original Start-to-Crate article on oldmanmurray, which is here. The first page is kind of so-so, but when they actually get to the games on the second page, it's pretty good. Interestingly enough, a lot of games start you out staring at a crate.
This, of course, was back when OMM was actually funny and updated, er, more than once every two years, but it does have a reference to DX at the end.
all I'm really looking for are some data points to help serve as a guide
S'easy. Take the price that options are offered at ($x per share) and make up a number that you think they'll be worth when they vest (usually over 3-5 years) ($y per share). These options are worth ($y - $x) per share.
The problem, of course, is you have no idea what $y will actually be, but, hey, that's life.
But, on the useful side, here are some things to watch out for:
Most stock options vest over a certain number of years. Until that time, you can't exercise all of them. Furthermore, most stock options are only exercisable while you work for the company, so if they vest over 4 years, to get the full value from the options, you have to still be working there 4 years from now.
Sale of stock that you haven't held for at least 2 years (starting at the time you exercise the options, not receive them) is taxed at the higher capital gains rate.
Some companies may give out restricted stock options. Selling restricted stock is a real pain in the behind, and requires you get your company's permission before selling it.
Dungeons and Dragons was published by TSR in 1974. This is the three volume set (Men and Magic, Monsters and Treasure, and the Underworld and Wilderness Adventures).
Advanced Dungeons and Dragons wasn't published until 1977 (Monster Manual), 1978 (Player's Handbook), and 1979 (Dungeon Master's Guide).
So, Dungeons and Dragons existed for at least three years before Advanced Dungeons and Dragons came out.
Not only did you not read the article, you apparently didn't read the blurb at the top of the page, which mentions that the access points set up by various vendors were unencrypted; ie, they were for public use.
So, your argument can be summarized thusly: "Identity theft is easy, ergo, it's perfectly plausible for a company who states they won't sell your personal information to sell your personal information?"
This wasn't an article crying, "Boo hoo, the marketers are selling our information!" It was in article crying, "Boo hoo, the marketers are telling us they won't sell our information, and are lying about it!"
If a merchant says they won't sell any of my personal information, but neglects to say that they consider renting it out to be A-ok, I think there's a problem there.
If a merchant says that they won't disclose any of my personal information, but neglects to say that transactions are handled by another company (even though they all take place on the merchant's site, with a little "Powered By CartManager" logo at the bottom), and that that third party has no trouble selling my personal information, I think there's a problem there.
If a charity says on its web site that it won't disclose any of my personal information, but neglects to say that that just happens to not apply to people who donate through the mail instead of online, I think there's a problem there.
Finally, if a merchant says they won't sell or rent my personal information, and then sells or rents it, I think there's a problem there.
This has nothing to do with marketers collecting information. This has to do with marketers collecting information in methods that range from the dubious to the outright fraudulent.
You say you've tried googling, but a search for freeware "little fighters 2" returns the first choice as World of Free Games, which seperates games by genre, and has ratings. If you switch to the list view, you can sort by them, too.
Just another blah blah games.slashdot.org story about another stupid advertising trick for another stupid game...but including that gametabs.com link was classic. Finally an editorial comment I can agree with.
HeroClix (et al) are collectible in the same way that Magic the Gathering cards are: if you want to have, say, Green Arrow on your team, you need to buy the boosters until you find one with a Green Arrow figurine inside (alternatively, trade for one), rather than just being able to buy who you want.
I think (hope) you're just pretending to be sarcasm-challenged when taking the parent post seriously.
But, now that I'm on the subject...
Once you've gotten your first non-reproducible bug, you'll see what the parent poster was talking about with reproducible results. An awry pointer can cause all sorts of havoc that's incredibly difficult to track down, and, even worse, it often won't break the same way twice.
As for your example of algorithms: "better" is rather subjective, especially in regards to sorting algoriths. Although quicksort might be faster for general purpose use, there are plenty of algorithms that can beat it in certain conditions. And, programming being what it is, you can never be sure that your program will be running under those certain conditions or not.
Your friend made $8400 a year doing it? Wow. That's almost, but not quite, the poverty level!
Reminds me of that quote about the Other White Scammer, Duncan Shiels: that he makes $1,000 a week doing it. Which sounds nice and impressive until you realize that it's only $52,000 a year. Which anyone network admin or sysadmin should be able to make, and not piss off millions of people while doing so.
Are you planning on walking out with your coworkers and forming a company of your own? Because, if you're not, there's no point in doing it in unison. Sure, you might wake someone at the company up, but more than likely they won't care, and even if they did, it's too late for you. Meanwhile, you're left holding the bag, as it were, with no job.
If the situation is that bad, you should do the normal route: look for a job while keeping yours. If/when you find another job, you quit. Your coworkers can all do the same. Things'll work out much better if you only bail when you have a parachute, and, no matter how bad your job is, it's better than no job at all.
It's really hard to come up with anything else to add to this story. I mean, did anyone _not_ see this coming? Global companies will do what's cheapest...and there will always be someone who'll be cheaper than you.
Now, when they start outsourcing management...that's when I'll be happy.
JEdit does (most of) what you want. Even better, it's free. Even better, it's open source, so the stuff it might not be able to do as well, you can make it do. As the name suggests, it's Java. It's largest strength is its plugin system, which is where many of the advantages come in.
CVS integration (VSS integration would be nice but not required)
JEdit plugin called 'Gruntspud' provides CVS access.
stellar UTF-8 support (internationalization is a big big deal now)
Honestly, I have no idea. Coming from Java roots, I would assume that it has this; if not, it could definitely be added on.
correctly recognizes and highlights HTML, JSP, JS, and CSS within a single file
JEdit has a real beaut of a syntax highlighter; using XML configuration files, it parses the highlights the text accordingly, and (here's the best part) the XML files can be self referential -- which is where a number of other syntax highlighters fall down. For instance, in a typical PHP page, you may have PHP code, Javascript code, and HTML code. JEdit handles this. The XML files can be modified to do just about anything, and are relatively easy to pick up. As long as you can give it some rules about what to look for in terms of start/stop text, you're good.
does some rudimentary auto-completion
Eh. It finishes tags for you. There's an autocomplete plugin out there for Java; one could be put together pretty easily, for, say, Javascript objects.
is easily configurable
Check. And open source.
runs on Win2k (oy vey)
Check.
supports bookmarks of various kinds
Check (they're called markers)
supports code collapsing
Check (they're called folds)
and affordable
Free.
Now, there are some annoying bits: it's Java, so it's slower than others might be, the file finder in JEdit could not be worse if it tried, and the XML files for Javascript parsing needed some tweaking before they'd work right right out of the box, and there's no way to jump to a specific window via the keyboard (eg, on Windows, Alt-W, ) (instead, it has Ctrl-PgUp and Ctrl-PgDn to cycle through the windows, and some hacks that require 4+ keystrokes are possible), but, overall, JEdit has been good to me. Of particular note is that it's search/replace is the best I've ever seen, having normal searches, regex searches, searches through all open files, searches through a directory and subdirectory, etc.
It's actually in the works. Has been, since, uh 1997 (almost six years so far, and counting!) The webpage is here.
The DNF team started work with the Quake I engine, dumped it for the Quake II engine, dumped it for the Unreal engine...not sure what they're working on now, but it better not be the Unreal engine (the original one; not UT or UT23k), as that'd be hideously ancient by now too.
Still no release date set. But we're assured that they're still working on it.
If this were a good game, I could see the point. Hell, if it was just an ok game, I could see the point. Didn't mind the mention of the Galactic Civilizations demo, earlier. But this is neither a good game, nor even an ok game. It is, in fact, a bad game. Not one good review yet. So why the article?
I mean, this is Slashdot. I don't come here for the stories (since I can get 99% of them by reading the Register, Wired, and Salon), but for the community discussion. You don't get much discussion about demos of bad games. At the very least, just do a weekly story listing the demos for that week. Save us the trouble.
Working out all the permutations from 0 to 99 cents, I find that a 1,5,10,25 system returns an average of 4.7 coins, like he says, but I find that his proposed 1,5,18,29 returns 4.45, not the 3.89 that he claims.
Just brute forcing it for me shows the optimum combination to be 1,3,11,37, with 4.1 coins per transaction. I wonder why the numbers are disparate. Anyone else running through it?
More to transactions than number of coins.
on
Making Change
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· Score: 3, Insightful
You think it's bad enough when the cashier has to use the machine to figure out how much change to give, and in what denominations? You think it's bad when the little old lady in front of you in line starts counting, and then double-counting to make sure, the change she's going to hand over?
You give them a 29 cent piece and see how fast things get.
I'm willing to bet that most of the "coin cost" or whatever you want to call it comes from pennies, anyway -- if the dollar amounts are random, every 5 transactions are going to involve (0 + 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = ) 10 pennies, or 2 pennies per transaction. Rounding prices to the nickel would be simpler, easier, and more efficient.
Or is everything mentioned 'good-looking'? Come on. Most video games are mediocre, at best, yet everything mentioned so far has been 'good-looking'. If I wanted pointless previews, I would go to gamespot or the like. These hands on impressions seem like fluff pieces in the extreme. Did simoniker get to play any of the games? Anything besides it's 'good-looking'?
It's not the price, really. Corporations and governments are willing to pay the price of Windows to ensure that they have support and stability. But the licensing of Windows -- product activation and the like -- are what's really kicking Microsoft's teeth in. Consumers are willing to overlook a lot, but not things that actively make their life harder, for no personal gain for them.
You say you're not a software company, so obviously the code that he's written isn't your product. Is it utilities, or something that manages your workflow and process? If so, it doesn't seem like you've got that much of a problem. I guess a lot of it depends on what terms he left as -- going to the competition doesn't necessarily imply a bad breakup, but the tone of your posts seems to. Well, anyways...
The easiest source of information is going to be him, himself. It doesn't sound like he's left on the worst terms, and, really, the truth of the matter is he's got all the cards now. If he wanted to screw you over with a malicious time bomb, he could, and there's very little you could do about it. So I would just take what he gives you in terms of documentation and all, and, unless evidence proves otherwise, assume that he's on the up and up. You have little choice, and the other options (like lawyers) are going to make him very uncooperative. Most programmers I know don't get malicious unless they feel that they've been royally screwed over. YMMY.
But, to the future! The best way to avoid exactly this kind of thing is to not have a new guy, but two (or more) new guys. Even if its a senior-level and a junior-level, having someone who can be your backup is invaluable. At worst (depending upon the software), you could get an intern or other low-paid peon to serve as the backup on the cheap. Some of them are clods, but some can be quite smart. Code review reduces not only bugs, but logic bombs and backdoors, and it leaves someone who at least has a clue about the system if one of the two leaves.
As for security: Make sure you have a firewall, and the rules are set to the bare minimum allowed in (but you should have this already, right?) Change the root/administrator passwords. If you have a competent sysadmin, have him monitor for unusual activity...but these are all things that should be going on all the time. In other words, nothing out of the norm.
That's wonderful. But the sum of an infinite series is quite different from what's being discussed here, that is, the chance that something will happen given an infinite probability.
But, to address some points: the surface of the curve (1/x) is infinite in length. The area under the curve is also infinite (integrate it: you'll get a division by 0). What you're probably thinking of is the area under the curve of 1/(x^2) (or x^-2) (the function represented by the rabbit and turtle), which is, indeed, 1.
However, the only reason that this works is that series decreases: 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + 1/16..etc, until it gets infinitely small. However, that wasn't the issue: the issue was a non-zero probability (constant) that happened an infinite number of times. If you take any non-zero number, and multiply it by infinity, you've still got with infinity.
Is it just me, or was no one else impressed by Gearbox's efforts for Half-life? Opposing Forces, especially, made me feel like I was playing Half-Life all over again -- not that it was continuing the story or anything like that, but that it was the _same_ game, just not done as well.
Look. This wasn't fraud. This wasn't Microsoft boosting their stock price, harming their competitors, or trying to gain market share.
This was a _joke_. You know, ha ha, funny? You want to sue for April Fool's stunts, too? What a dry, humorless world you live in. Frankly, I wish more companies would lighten up, and I wish that more people's immediate response wasn't, "Huh. I wonder if I could sue them."
Slashdot Mirror
You may as well at least link to the original Start-to-Crate article on oldmanmurray, which is here. The first page is kind of so-so, but when they actually get to the games on the second page, it's pretty good. Interestingly enough, a lot of games start you out staring at a crate.
This, of course, was back when OMM was actually funny and updated, er, more than once every two years, but it does have a reference to DX at the end.
all I'm really looking for are some data points to help serve as a guide
S'easy. Take the price that options are offered at ($x per share) and make up a number that you think they'll be worth when they vest (usually over 3-5 years) ($y per share). These options are worth ($y - $x) per share.
The problem, of course, is you have no idea what $y will actually be, but, hey, that's life.
But, on the useful side, here are some things to watch out for:
Most stock options vest over a certain number of years. Until that time, you can't exercise all of them. Furthermore, most stock options are only exercisable while you work for the company, so if they vest over 4 years, to get the full value from the options, you have to still be working there 4 years from now.
Sale of stock that you haven't held for at least 2 years (starting at the time you exercise the options, not receive them) is taxed at the higher capital gains rate.
Some companies may give out restricted stock options. Selling restricted stock is a real pain in the behind, and requires you get your company's permission before selling it.
'Collapse Sections' is the setting you're looking for. If you choose this, all stories will show up on the front page for you.
Interesting, but incorrect.
Dungeons and Dragons was published by TSR in 1974. This is the three volume set (Men and Magic, Monsters and Treasure, and the Underworld and Wilderness Adventures).
Advanced Dungeons and Dragons wasn't published until 1977 (Monster Manual), 1978 (Player's Handbook), and 1979 (Dungeon Master's Guide).
So, Dungeons and Dragons existed for at least three years before Advanced Dungeons and Dragons came out.
Sources: here, here, and TSR's list of every product ever.
Not only did you not read the article, you apparently didn't read the blurb at the top of the page, which mentions that the access points set up by various vendors were unencrypted; ie, they were for public use.
So, your argument can be summarized thusly: "Identity theft is easy, ergo, it's perfectly plausible for a company who states they won't sell your personal information to sell your personal information?"
Hrmm. Compelling.
Didn't read the article, did you?
This wasn't an article crying, "Boo hoo, the marketers are selling our information!" It was in article crying, "Boo hoo, the marketers are telling us they won't sell our information, and are lying about it!"
If a merchant says they won't sell any of my personal information, but neglects to say that they consider renting it out to be A-ok, I think there's a problem there.
If a merchant says that they won't disclose any of my personal information, but neglects to say that transactions are handled by another company (even though they all take place on the merchant's site, with a little "Powered By CartManager" logo at the bottom), and that that third party has no trouble selling my personal information, I think there's a problem there.
If a charity says on its web site that it won't disclose any of my personal information, but neglects to say that that just happens to not apply to people who donate through the mail instead of online, I think there's a problem there.
Finally, if a merchant says they won't sell or rent my personal information, and then sells or rents it, I think there's a problem there.
This has nothing to do with marketers collecting information. This has to do with marketers collecting information in methods that range from the dubious to the outright fraudulent.
You say you've tried googling, but a search for freeware "little fighters 2" returns the first choice as World of Free Games, which seperates games by genre, and has ratings. If you switch to the list view, you can sort by them, too.
Just another blah blah games.slashdot.org story about another stupid advertising trick for another stupid game...but including that gametabs.com link was classic. Finally an editorial comment I can agree with.
HeroClix (et al) are collectible in the same way that Magic the Gathering cards are: if you want to have, say, Green Arrow on your team, you need to buy the boosters until you find one with a Green Arrow figurine inside (alternatively, trade for one), rather than just being able to buy who you want.
I think (hope) you're just pretending to be sarcasm-challenged when taking the parent post seriously.
But, now that I'm on the subject...
Once you've gotten your first non-reproducible bug, you'll see what the parent poster was talking about with reproducible results. An awry pointer can cause all sorts of havoc that's incredibly difficult to track down, and, even worse, it often won't break the same way twice.
As for your example of algorithms: "better" is rather subjective, especially in regards to sorting algoriths. Although quicksort might be faster for general purpose use, there are plenty of algorithms that can beat it in certain conditions. And, programming being what it is, you can never be sure that your program will be running under those certain conditions or not.
Your friend made $8400 a year doing it? Wow. That's almost, but not quite, the poverty level!
Reminds me of that quote about the Other White Scammer, Duncan Shiels: that he makes $1,000 a week doing it. Which sounds nice and impressive until you realize that it's only $52,000 a year. Which anyone network admin or sysadmin should be able to make, and not piss off millions of people while doing so.
Are you planning on walking out with your coworkers and forming a company of your own? Because, if you're not, there's no point in doing it in unison. Sure, you might wake someone at the company up, but more than likely they won't care, and even if they did, it's too late for you. Meanwhile, you're left holding the bag, as it were, with no job.
If the situation is that bad, you should do the normal route: look for a job while keeping yours. If/when you find another job, you quit. Your coworkers can all do the same. Things'll work out much better if you only bail when you have a parachute, and, no matter how bad your job is, it's better than no job at all.
It's really hard to come up with anything else to add to this story. I mean, did anyone _not_ see this coming? Global companies will do what's cheapest...and there will always be someone who'll be cheaper than you.
Now, when they start outsourcing management...that's when I'll be happy.
JEdit does (most of) what you want. Even better, it's free. Even better, it's open source, so the stuff it might not be able to do as well, you can make it do. As the name suggests, it's Java. It's largest strength is its plugin system, which is where many of the advantages come in.
CVS integration (VSS integration would be nice but not required)
JEdit plugin called 'Gruntspud' provides CVS access.
stellar UTF-8 support (internationalization is a big big deal now)
Honestly, I have no idea. Coming from Java roots, I would assume that it has this; if not, it could definitely be added on.
correctly recognizes and highlights HTML, JSP, JS, and CSS within a single file
JEdit has a real beaut of a syntax highlighter; using XML configuration files, it parses the highlights the text accordingly, and (here's the best part) the XML files can be self referential -- which is where a number of other syntax highlighters fall down. For instance, in a typical PHP page, you may have PHP code, Javascript code, and HTML code. JEdit handles this. The XML files can be modified to do just about anything, and are relatively easy to pick up. As long as you can give it some rules about what to look for in terms of start/stop text, you're good.
does some rudimentary auto-completion
Eh. It finishes tags for you. There's an autocomplete plugin out there for Java; one could be put together pretty easily, for, say, Javascript objects.
is easily configurable
Check. And open source.
runs on Win2k (oy vey)
Check.
supports bookmarks of various kinds
Check (they're called markers)
supports code collapsing
Check (they're called folds)
and affordable
Free.
Now, there are some annoying bits: it's Java, so it's slower than others might be, the file finder in JEdit could not be worse if it tried, and the XML files for Javascript parsing needed some tweaking before they'd work right right out of the box, and there's no way to jump to a specific window via the keyboard (eg, on Windows, Alt-W, ) (instead, it has Ctrl-PgUp and Ctrl-PgDn to cycle through the windows, and some hacks that require 4+ keystrokes are possible), but, overall, JEdit has been good to me. Of particular note is that it's search/replace is the best I've ever seen, having normal searches, regex searches, searches through all open files, searches through a directory and subdirectory, etc.
It's actually in the works. Has been, since, uh 1997 (almost six years so far, and counting!) The webpage is here.
The DNF team started work with the Quake I engine, dumped it for the Quake II engine, dumped it for the Unreal engine...not sure what they're working on now, but it better not be the Unreal engine (the original one; not UT or UT23k), as that'd be hideously ancient by now too.
Still no release date set. But we're assured that they're still working on it.
If this were a good game, I could see the point. Hell, if it was just an ok game, I could see the point. Didn't mind the mention of the Galactic Civilizations demo, earlier. But this is neither a good game, nor even an ok game. It is, in fact, a bad game. Not one good review yet. So why the article?
I mean, this is Slashdot. I don't come here for the stories (since I can get 99% of them by reading the Register, Wired, and Salon), but for the community discussion. You don't get much discussion about demos of bad games. At the very least, just do a weekly story listing the demos for that week. Save us the trouble.
Working out all the permutations from 0 to 99 cents, I find that a 1,5,10,25 system returns an average of 4.7 coins, like he says, but I find that his proposed 1,5,18,29 returns 4.45, not the 3.89 that he claims.
Just brute forcing it for me shows the optimum combination to be 1,3,11,37, with 4.1 coins per transaction. I wonder why the numbers are disparate. Anyone else running through it?
You think it's bad enough when the cashier has to use the machine to figure out how much change to give, and in what denominations? You think it's bad when the little old lady in front of you in line starts counting, and then double-counting to make sure, the change she's going to hand over?
You give them a 29 cent piece and see how fast things get.
I'm willing to bet that most of the "coin cost" or whatever you want to call it comes from pennies, anyway -- if the dollar amounts are random, every 5 transactions are going to involve (0 + 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = ) 10 pennies, or 2 pennies per transaction. Rounding prices to the nickel would be simpler, easier, and more efficient.
Or is everything mentioned 'good-looking'? Come on. Most video games are mediocre, at best, yet everything mentioned so far has been 'good-looking'. If I wanted pointless previews, I would go to gamespot or the like. These hands on impressions seem like fluff pieces in the extreme. Did simoniker get to play any of the games? Anything besides it's 'good-looking'?
Anything?
It's not the price, really. Corporations and governments are willing to pay the price of Windows to ensure that they have support and stability. But the licensing of Windows -- product activation and the like -- are what's really kicking Microsoft's teeth in. Consumers are willing to overlook a lot, but not things that actively make their life harder, for no personal gain for them.
You say you're not a software company, so obviously the code that he's written isn't your product. Is it utilities, or something that manages your workflow and process? If so, it doesn't seem like you've got that much of a problem. I guess a lot of it depends on what terms he left as -- going to the competition doesn't necessarily imply a bad breakup, but the tone of your posts seems to. Well, anyways...
The easiest source of information is going to be him, himself. It doesn't sound like he's left on the worst terms, and, really, the truth of the matter is he's got all the cards now. If he wanted to screw you over with a malicious time bomb, he could, and there's very little you could do about it. So I would just take what he gives you in terms of documentation and all, and, unless evidence proves otherwise, assume that he's on the up and up. You have little choice, and the other options (like lawyers) are going to make him very uncooperative. Most programmers I know don't get malicious unless they feel that they've been royally screwed over. YMMY.
But, to the future! The best way to avoid exactly this kind of thing is to not have a new guy, but two (or more) new guys. Even if its a senior-level and a junior-level, having someone who can be your backup is invaluable. At worst (depending upon the software), you could get an intern or other low-paid peon to serve as the backup on the cheap. Some of them are clods, but some can be quite smart. Code review reduces not only bugs, but logic bombs and backdoors, and it leaves someone who at least has a clue about the system if one of the two leaves.
As for security: Make sure you have a firewall, and the rules are set to the bare minimum allowed in (but you should have this already, right?) Change the root/administrator passwords. If you have a competent sysadmin, have him monitor for unusual activity...but these are all things that should be going on all the time. In other words, nothing out of the norm.
That's wonderful. But the sum of an infinite series is quite different from what's being discussed here, that is, the chance that something will happen given an infinite probability.
But, to address some points: the surface of the curve (1/x) is infinite in length. The area under the curve is also infinite (integrate it: you'll get a division by 0). What you're probably thinking of is the area under the curve of 1/(x^2) (or x^-2) (the function represented by the rabbit and turtle), which is, indeed, 1.
However, the only reason that this works is that series decreases: 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + 1/16..etc, until it gets infinitely small. However, that wasn't the issue: the issue was a non-zero probability (constant) that happened an infinite number of times. If you take any non-zero number, and multiply it by infinity, you've still got with infinity.
Is it just me, or was no one else impressed by Gearbox's efforts for Half-life? Opposing Forces, especially, made me feel like I was playing Half-Life all over again -- not that it was continuing the story or anything like that, but that it was the _same_ game, just not done as well.
Jesus, just that thought makes me sick.
Look. This wasn't fraud. This wasn't Microsoft boosting their stock price, harming their competitors, or trying to gain market share.
This was a _joke_. You know, ha ha, funny? You want to sue for April Fool's stunts, too? What a dry, humorless world you live in. Frankly, I wish more companies would lighten up, and I wish that more people's immediate response wasn't, "Huh. I wonder if I could sue them."