Still illegal. Unless everyone involved is suffering from one of the terminal illnesses that can get you prescription pot...
They talked about making 30 grams or less punishable by a ticket, but the right wing bitches of the U.S. complained and had it reduced to 15 grams, then ten, then delayed it and we're still in the delay phase.
Common mistake though, I have to explain this to a lot of pot heads who are convinced that since they smoked pot next to a policemean once its legal (its not, that was just a lazy cop who didn't want to fill out all that paperwork).
Then I usually launch into a rant about how anyone who thinks that rape, murder, fraud and smoking a joint should get you the same punishment ought to be given the choice between getting raped, defrauded, murdered, or watching someone smoke a joint.
Has there been any documented cases on social networks of "cool people", small groups that slightly larger groups of people wished would make them their virtual friends?
I'm wondering if the communities are being designed to promote, fight or ignore these things.
The sentence "Damn! How hard is it to go meet your neighbors or even leave your room/apartment/house? Is it really that bad?" is an angry response that adds nothing to the discussion.
You could also have said "Haha! You people of slashdot are pathetic lonely loosers! I'm better than you!", its the same thing, deep down.
i think we should focus on cleaning this planet up before we decide to punt and basically make a new one.
I think we should make a backup before we start applying patches.
I'm not very concerned with messing the precious barren desert they have going there...not as much as I am about our lush diverse ecosystem anyways. And if there is life there, well its sure to be better suited to its native environment than what we bring along. At worst we get our first scientific data about how our bacteria interact with xenobacteria.
Creativity. Your best testers are the ones that can still come up with ludicrous, ridiculous things to try after doing ludicrous, ridiculous things to this piece of software for 10 hours a day the past 8 months.
Hehehe, reminds me of my first project. The lead tester wanted to kill me the night before the final deadline (deadlines come and go, but there's a point where its either done or the suits pull the plug). It was about 2:30 am and I declared "I've become invincible and I don't know how I did it". Turned out it was the result of another bug I'd found an hour earlier, so they only had to fix the first one to get rid of the 2. That was an 18 hour day, btw, and we still had to come in the next morning (though I did manage to convince them to let us come in only at around 10...woophee). And the bug wasn't there the day before. They went ahead and added something the day before the deadlines, the fools.
You do have to deduce all of the interrelating systems in a game and how they may misinteract with eachother.
There's also intuition. I was just discussing that at work earlier this week. One of my testers was doing some collision checks and I saw him go around a room and then out, I told him to go back in and try one wall some more. Turns out there was a way to get stuck there. I knew it just looking at him walk in it, and I'm not sure how I did. Its something in the way the character moved when he was pushing against the wall, I could tell something wasn't right.
There's another guy in the team who gets that collision intuition too. We had a chat about it as they were doing some more of that tedious collision testing. Our conclusion was that it comes from years of playing. You get a subconsious understanding of the conditions of a bug-free region and a bugged region.
Testing is part science, part artform. Unfortunatly the biggest part is buisness.
And then, there's the mantra of the programmers: Will Not Fix/Not A Defect
Anyone know who I should contact about having plenty of spare time to test games?
Its not a spare time thing, its a full time job. You find a game company within commute distance of where you live and you apply for the position.
The best place to apply to would be a game publisher, since they usually are the ones in charge of testing (as opposed to the developpers, who are in charge of making buggy games and then refusing to admit that its full of bugs). You need to know how to work in an office (meaning you need to know how to use Word and Excel or their open office equivalent, to show up on time, do what your superviser tells you, etc). There are also a handfull of testing subcontractors, don't know if there are any in florida though. Basically, being smart, professional, patient and passionate about games will qualify you.
The pay sucks, the hours are horrible, the stress is intense, but you get to impress any 10 year old you meet : )
a willingness to put up with annoying programmers like me that say that the bug can't be reproduced and that you're on crack for suggesting that it's still in the game.:)
I always figured you never actually even try to reproduce 'em and just loaf around on slashdot all day...
Are game testers held by the same criteria, ie. able to code and correct problems, or are they merely there to play the game?
Testers test. They don't code, they don't "play", they test, that's their job.
And yes, they are treated as disposable people, its a cool job, it beats washing toilets or flipping burgers, but testers are to the gaming industry what goblins are to fantasy settings or infantry to the military. Call it disposable, expendable, whatever. I call it the bottom of the ladder, and when shit happens, it flows down. Also, its a contract job. There's work mostly in the summer/fall and not much in the winter/spring (the summer rush ends in october for console games and november for PC games, who don't have to awnser to Sony, Nintendo or Microsoft and who can always get a patch later on).
What I've seen is that they hire testers when a project needs testing, and when its done most of 'em get the axe and the good ones are kept or told they'll be called back when there's a new project.
I might be a tad bitter...
Having never been in a game environment
It shows...
I think the idea behind 'disposable testers' is that they are given the job of playing a game, so naturally the assumption is that it's a BS job or that it's a fun job.
Yeah, because doing 40 to 70 hours a week in the same damn levels over and over again, documenting every little problem...that's fun...
Since I'll always have a PC, I'll just keep that hardware current, piece at a time, to support the latest games, rather than saving up for PS3.
You are dellusionnal my boy.
Of course you have to save up to buy a PS3, you spent 10 times its price upgrading your computer!
A piece at a time? A graphics card that will be able to play the newest games for a year at best costs more than a console that will get you at least 3 years worth of the newsest games.
Sure, PC gaming has its place, but price economy is NOT one of its advantages, jeez.
Those looking for a premium gaming experience will always choose a PC.
Premium gaming experience != Better graphics.
Old skool boyz like me had premium gaming experiences controlling a white dot defending our piles of blue lines from the falling orange lines coming to destroy them (on a black empty background, thank you very much).
I will always place gameplay, design and controlls above graphics. Always. BTW, that's why I think Splinter Cell is lame. Because it makes real nice screenshots, but its NOT FUN TO PLAY.
Perhaps Nokia will learn from the long list of mistakes it made with N-Gage and actually produce a quality machine. Lets not judge until we actually see the thing
I'm having none of that! I curse this as of yet non-existant machine and hope it'll be an even worse seller than the first ngage abobination.
I just hope this debacle will serve as a warning to other companies: Don't piss off your market by insulting them for having bought the allready existing competitor's product, and for god's sake, don't sell pieces of crap like that!
How about all the windows users check out Mozilla Thunderbird. You can keep your nice, friendly OS
He said to switch to mac from windows.
And thunderbird? Isn't called Firefox now? Or Toad-lama or whatever they've renamed it to this week...
P.S. I actually downloaded and installed Firefox on a friend's machine this weekend, and I made sure to make it the default web browser. Seeing this new explorer-dependant nasty made me glad I did.
you could actually stand at one planet and use high powered binoculars to see the next closet planet
These large scale models are built especially to educate people like you who think they can spot a tennis-ball sized object with binoculars from several miles away.
Videogame worlds are staffed by really efficient janitors, who store all the dust and grime in boxes. Which is why you see those everywhere.
Reminds of when I was playing Resident Evil...it wasn't the zombies, the green leapers or the Tyrant that were creeping me out the most, it was the Janitor, who would silently go in rooms as soon as I exited them and remove all the corpses.
Fast like a freak, with am insatiable apetite for zombie flesh...can't get much more creepy than that!;-)
it wasn't the nipple that bothered him aqs a father, so much as the act of Timberlake ripping off Jackson's top. It was an agressive, arguably denigrating act.
Amen!
Furthermore, I am never offended by pretty women's nipples, but I am offended by people who obviously make deliberate acts meant to generate a reaction who then claim "accident" or "wardrobe malfunction" when they get more than they bargained for.
Man, I had forgotten how wrong and agressive that whole thing looked...
Why can I drink on Friday without a hangover, but when it comes Monday morning my head is being pounded by sledgehammers?
Maybe because you've been drinking for over 2 days, non stop? Then again, its friday night. So as drunk as you probably are right now, I can see how this can be a bit of a mystery at the moment;-)
So, to the poster of "I think it should be illegal to be that contradictory" has obviously ignored the whole point of my post and of Slashdot (and is contradicting himself.)
You have a very weak and possibly nonexistant grasp of the concept of irony. And grammar. And punctuation.
The public airwaves must maintain the highest standards of decency so that any and everyone can listen without being offended.
Swear words do not offend me but stupidity really does offend me very much.
Should people with an I.Q. lower 110 be banned from the airwaves so I won't be offended? I think so.
It means that the public should not be forced to watch or listen to it.
Who the fuck is holding a god damn gun to your head and FORCING you to listen to Howard Stern? I listened to Howard Stern a couple times, he's sort of funny from time to time, but he's mainly stupid and vulgar for the sake of vulgarity, so I don't listen to him. Its not like ALL the channels are filled with vulgarity, if you don't like the channels who swear, tune to the ones that don't. That's freedom.
The public airwaves are for everyone. Not just you, EVERYONE.
Exactly. They should broadcast content for everyone, not just for the lowest common denominator.
I [...] am glad that the FCC is FINALLY cracking down. If you want profanity, you've got satellite, cable, or the video/DVD market. If if goes out over public airwaves, there should be restrictions; it is the law, after all....
C'mon. Mod me down and the parent up. Take 7 points away from me, but don't censor people's viewpoints just because they differ from yours.
How did your head not explode as you were writing that down?
Seriously, you post whines about moderation used to "censor" something you agree with AND clamours on about the holy righjeousness of using federal regulations to censor what YOU disagree with.
I think it should be illegal to be that contradictory.
Slashdot Mirror
You've got it all wrong.
Its ashamed because its naked!
I can see its parts!
we're serving pot at the reception!
Still illegal.
Unless everyone involved is suffering from one of the terminal illnesses that can get you prescription pot...
They talked about making 30 grams or less punishable by a ticket, but the right wing bitches of the U.S. complained and had it reduced to 15 grams, then ten, then delayed it and we're still in the delay phase.
Common mistake though, I have to explain this to a lot of pot heads who are convinced that since they smoked pot next to a policemean once its legal (its not, that was just a lazy cop who didn't want to fill out all that paperwork).
Then I usually launch into a rant about how anyone who thinks that rape, murder, fraud and smoking a joint should get you the same punishment ought to be given the choice between getting raped, defrauded, murdered, or watching someone smoke a joint.
Has there been any documented cases on social networks of "cool people", small groups that slightly larger groups of people wished would make them their virtual friends?
I'm wondering if the communities are being designed to promote, fight or ignore these things.
Why am I modded down to Troll?
a troll is a person who posts messages that create controversy or an angry response without adding content to the discussion
The sentence "Damn! How hard is it to go meet your neighbors or even leave your room/apartment/house? Is it really that bad?" is an angry response that adds nothing to the discussion.
You could also have said "Haha! You people of slashdot are pathetic lonely loosers! I'm better than you!", its the same thing, deep down.
i think we should focus on cleaning this planet up before we decide to punt and basically make a new one.
I think we should make a backup before we start applying patches.
I'm not very concerned with messing the precious barren desert they have going there...not as much as I am about our lush diverse ecosystem anyways.
And if there is life there, well its sure to be better suited to its native environment than what we bring along. At worst we get our first scientific data about how our bacteria interact with xenobacteria.
Creativity. Your best testers are the ones that can still come up with ludicrous, ridiculous things to try after doing ludicrous, ridiculous things to this piece of software for 10 hours a day the past 8 months.
Hehehe, reminds me of my first project. The lead tester wanted to kill me the night before the final deadline (deadlines come and go, but there's a point where its either done or the suits pull the plug).
It was about 2:30 am and I declared "I've become invincible and I don't know how I did it". Turned out it was the result of another bug I'd found an hour earlier, so they only had to fix the first one to get rid of the 2.
That was an 18 hour day, btw, and we still had to come in the next morning (though I did manage to convince them to let us come in only at around 10...woophee).
And the bug wasn't there the day before. They went ahead and added something the day before the deadlines, the fools.
You do have to deduce all of the interrelating systems in a game and how they may misinteract with eachother.
There's also intuition. I was just discussing that at work earlier this week. One of my testers was doing some collision checks and I saw him go around a room and then out, I told him to go back in and try one wall some more. Turns out there was a way to get stuck there. I knew it just looking at him walk in it, and I'm not sure how I did.
Its something in the way the character moved when he was pushing against the wall, I could tell something wasn't right.
There's another guy in the team who gets that collision intuition too. We had a chat about it as they were doing some more of that tedious collision testing. Our conclusion was that it comes from years of playing. You get a subconsious understanding of the conditions of a bug-free region and a bugged region.
Testing is part science, part artform.
Unfortunatly the biggest part is buisness.
And then, there's the mantra of the programmers: Will Not Fix/Not A Defect
Anyone know who I should contact about having plenty of spare time to test games?
Its not a spare time thing, its a full time job.
You find a game company within commute distance of where you live and you apply for the position.
The best place to apply to would be a game publisher, since they usually are the ones in charge of testing (as opposed to the developpers, who are in charge of making buggy games and then refusing to admit that its full of bugs). You need to know how to work in an office (meaning you need to know how to use Word and Excel or their open office equivalent, to show up on time, do what your superviser tells you, etc).
There are also a handfull of testing subcontractors, don't know if there are any in florida though.
Basically, being smart, professional, patient and passionate about games will qualify you.
The pay sucks, the hours are horrible, the stress is intense, but you get to impress any 10 year old you meet : )
everybody in the history of the world would take a job where they get paid to play video games
;-)
Those Amish testers are the worst! Its allways carriages this, barn raising that...
a willingness to put up with annoying programmers like me that say that the bug can't be reproduced and that you're on crack for suggesting that it's still in the game. :)
;-)
I always figured you never actually even try to reproduce 'em and just loaf around on slashdot all day...
Guess I was right
Working as a game tester is just like mopping floors at McDonalds. No brains, very tedious
It is very tedious, but the guys with no brains are laid off pretty damn fast.
There is a big intelectual step from noticing a flaw to describing the exact reproduction process of that flaw.
Are game testers held by the same criteria, ie. able to code and correct problems, or are they merely there to play the game?
Testers test.
They don't code, they don't "play", they test, that's their job.
And yes, they are treated as disposable people, its a cool job, it beats washing toilets or flipping burgers, but testers are to the gaming industry what goblins are to fantasy settings or infantry to the military. Call it disposable, expendable, whatever. I call it the bottom of the ladder, and when shit happens, it flows down.
Also, its a contract job. There's work mostly in the summer/fall and not much in the winter/spring (the summer rush ends in october for console games and november for PC games, who don't have to awnser to Sony, Nintendo or Microsoft and who can always get a patch later on).
What I've seen is that they hire testers when a project needs testing, and when its done most of 'em get the axe and the good ones are kept or told they'll be called back when there's a new project.
I might be a tad bitter...
Having never been in a game environment
It shows...
I think the idea behind 'disposable testers' is that they are given the job of playing a game, so naturally the assumption is that it's a BS job or that it's a fun job.
Yeah, because doing 40 to 70 hours a week in the same damn levels over and over again, documenting every little problem...that's fun...
Sheesh.
Since I'll always have a PC, I'll just keep that hardware current, piece at a time, to support the latest games, rather than saving up for PS3.
You are dellusionnal my boy.
Of course you have to save up to buy a PS3, you spent 10 times its price upgrading your computer!
A piece at a time? A graphics card that will be able to play the newest games for a year at best costs more than a console that will get you at least 3 years worth of the newsest games.
Sure, PC gaming has its place, but price economy is NOT one of its advantages, jeez.
Those looking for a premium gaming experience will always choose a PC.
Premium gaming experience != Better graphics.
Old skool boyz like me had premium gaming experiences controlling a white dot defending our piles of blue lines from the falling orange lines coming to destroy them (on a black empty background, thank you very much).
I will always place gameplay, design and controlls above graphics. Always.
BTW, that's why I think Splinter Cell is lame. Because it makes real nice screenshots, but its NOT FUN TO PLAY.
Perhaps Nokia will learn from the long list of mistakes it made with N-Gage and actually produce a quality machine. Lets not judge until we actually see the thing
I'm having none of that! I curse this as of yet non-existant machine and hope it'll be an even worse seller than the first ngage abobination.
I just hope this debacle will serve as a warning to other companies: Don't piss off your market by insulting them for having bought the allready existing competitor's product, and for god's sake, don't sell pieces of crap like that!
Nobody wants to be intruded with ads
I don't want to be intruded with anything!
Plus I think that's illegal in some states...
How about all the windows users check out Mozilla Thunderbird. You can keep your nice, friendly OS
He said to switch to mac from windows.
And thunderbird? Isn't called Firefox now? Or Toad-lama or whatever they've renamed it to this week...
P.S. I actually downloaded and installed Firefox on a friend's machine this weekend, and I made sure to make it the default web browser. Seeing this new explorer-dependant nasty made me glad I did.
I don't feel safe unless i'm reading my email through a CLI...
;-)
They must hate you at airports
you could actually stand at one planet and use high powered binoculars to see the next closet planet
These large scale models are built especially to educate people like you who think they can spot a tennis-ball sized object with binoculars from several miles away.
Videogame worlds are staffed by really efficient janitors, who store all the dust and grime in boxes. Which is why you see those everywhere.
;-)
Reminds of when I was playing Resident Evil...it wasn't the zombies, the green leapers or the Tyrant that were creeping me out the most, it was the Janitor, who would silently go in rooms as soon as I exited them and remove all the corpses.
Fast like a freak, with am insatiable apetite for zombie flesh...can't get much more creepy than that!
it wasn't the nipple that bothered him aqs a father, so much as the act of Timberlake ripping off Jackson's top. It was an agressive, arguably denigrating act.
Amen!
Furthermore, I am never offended by pretty women's nipples, but I am offended by people who obviously make deliberate acts meant to generate a reaction who then claim "accident" or "wardrobe malfunction" when they get more than they bargained for.
Man, I had forgotten how wrong and agressive that whole thing looked...
I know Washington DC is full of idiots. What will it take to make you a true believer?
When they stop letting new idiots in because the place is full.
Why can I drink on Friday without a hangover, but when it comes Monday morning my head is being pounded by sledgehammers?
;-)
Maybe because you've been drinking for over 2 days, non stop?
Then again, its friday night. So as drunk as you probably are right now, I can see how this can be a bit of a mystery at the moment
So, to the poster of "I think it should be illegal to be that contradictory" has obviously ignored the whole point of my post and of Slashdot (and is contradicting himself.)
You have a very weak and possibly nonexistant grasp of the concept of irony.
And grammar. And punctuation.
The public airwaves must maintain the highest standards of decency so that any and everyone can listen without being offended.
Swear words do not offend me but stupidity really does offend me very much.
Should people with an I.Q. lower 110 be banned from the airwaves so I won't be offended?
I think so.
It means that the public should not be forced to watch or listen to it.
Who the fuck is holding a god damn gun to your head and FORCING you to listen to Howard Stern?
I listened to Howard Stern a couple times, he's sort of funny from time to time, but he's mainly stupid and vulgar for the sake of vulgarity, so I don't listen to him. Its not like ALL the channels are filled with vulgarity, if you don't like the channels who swear, tune to the ones that don't. That's freedom.
The public airwaves are for everyone. Not just you, EVERYONE.
Exactly. They should broadcast content for everyone, not just for the lowest common denominator.
I [...] am glad that the FCC is FINALLY cracking down. If you want profanity, you've got satellite, cable, or the video/DVD market. If if goes out over public airwaves, there should be restrictions; it is the law, after all....
C'mon. Mod me down and the parent up. Take 7 points away from me, but don't censor people's viewpoints just because they differ from yours.
How did your head not explode as you were writing that down?
Seriously, you post whines about moderation used to "censor" something you agree with AND clamours on about the holy righjeousness of using federal regulations to censor what YOU disagree with.
I think it should be illegal to be that contradictory.