The hardware is extremely different - screwing the way most people write games
Pah. You people deserve Microsoft.
"Oooh! This system doesn't work the same way as my PC does! ITT never taught me how to do deal with this! Man, it sucks!"
I really feel sorry for the new breed of programmers who are so accustomed to PC hardware that when three curve balls are thrown they strike out.
I actually know a shortly-out-of-college programmer who, seriously, won't use any environment except for MS Visual C/C++. Any platform (e.g. Palm) that requires a different IDE is, honest-to-god, "impossible to develop for".
Christ, when did I become an old man? I'm barely than a month over 30... yet somehow the older people I work with aren't phased by new platforms, unlike all these whiny little bitches.
Note to self: Posting to slashdot and drinking hard liquor doesn't mix.
If you're married and have three kids, are you gonna by a Honda Civic?
Uh. Have you even taken a look at Honda Civics lately? Yes, three kids CAN fit into the back seat. Three adults can too, and the latest ones are even wider than the older ones I do that in on a regular basis.
I love the soccer mom mentality that if they buy a car with 3 rows of seats, give each kid a row, that means they won't bother each other. So why are these monstrous SUVs always wandering into my lane because someone's not paying attention to the road? Kids are going to be kids, unless you want to strap them in and hook up electro-shock collars (yes, I realize this in inhumane, nor am I saying that you SHOULD do this) they won't stop. Either find a way to deal with it or don't be a parent, dumbass.
If you work with someone and have to haul things around, are you gonna by a VW Bug?
So if I haul things around 10-15% of the time, and I'm driving around by my lonesome the other 85-90% of the time, does that justify using that 5mpg guzzler 100% of the time? At what point does common sense break down for you?
Or should I ease a vehicle for work use (writing it off on taxes, since it really IS a work expense), and then I buy a REASONABLE vehicle for my use? You know, you don't have to buy a NEW car for your own use, there are excellent USED vehicles which are in GREAT condition and get 35-45mpg.
Also, what happens to poeple like me, who go to work full time and support themselves? I can't be spending $100 a month on gas alone!
I don't know - maybe you'll join the sane members of society and get a car that costs less to drive?
Again, this whole attitude of your kind assumes that everyone has to replace their huge, monstrous, NEW SUV with a NEW Audi TT is just absurd. There are plenty of reasonable slightly-warmed-over used vehicles out there that can fit your requirements and pocketbook.
"Here's your cell phone, and since we have the number, we'll feel free to call anytime we need something done."
NEWSFLASH
Many companies already do that, except instead of calling their paid-for cellphone they call... your home phone. Often late into the night.
At least if they get used to calling the cell phone you can occasionally turn it off. Then if the Pointy-Haired type wants to call your home phone, they have to dig it up - in other words at least you have the satisfaction of knowing you made them do a little work.
Frankly, a colleague of mine uses his Nextel phone to go wander off to "fun" places (ie offsite) knowing that he's reachable within seconds.
My father came from a family of 10 people trying to eat off a single living wage. He pulled himself up by his bootstraps.
Based on this logic, everyone who wants to pull themselves up by their bootstraps CAN pull themselves up.
Unfortunately the reality of the situation is that for every person like your father that accomplished that feat, there are hundreds of individuals who worked just as hard but didn't succeed.
In other words, the world is not as simple as you're trying to make it out to be.
And since you come from a position of privilege, you have a severe advantage over the individuals who are trying to accomplish your father's feat. Does it bother you that if you and that person were competing for the same job, you would probably get it due to your better training, education, etc.? Not even a twinge?
This is part of the reason why children of the rich generally tend to stay rich, and the children of the poor generally stay poor.
Uh, not that I condone (or even have done/will do this) but...
Some people are putting down that $200 deposit (plus $20 rental), then just never returning the unit. I'd be interested to know what story they're giving (I suggested to an acquaintance who intends to do this that the old "my dog ate it" excuse probably wouldn't work).
Provided, of course, you like the PS2. If not, you return the unit and get your $200 back.
Cheaper than $1000 on eBay. Hell, I saw auctions this morning with over $600, but the RESERVE hadn't been met yet. Greedy SOBs...
Have you checked the cost of DC and N64 development systems lately?
Think those companies are making money off each box sold? No, they're doing the exact same thing as Sony.
This is how the console world works now. Make money on the games, not the hardware - selling the hardware cheap creates demand for software, both now and in the future.
If you think Microsoft is going to break this trend of selling hardware at cost and making it up on developer fees (MSDN subscriptions anyone?) you're nuts.
Frankly, I don't think buying a PS2 (retail, not at auction) is any more nuts than the billions of idiots who lined up outside computer stores the night before Windows '95 was being released, so they could buy it at 12:01. C'mon, I know you're out there... heck, you probably saw someone just like me, driving by and laughing...
With violence against women (rape, etc) being so widely depicted in Japanese literature/pop culture (well, according to you at least)... then according to Political Correctness there should be a HUGE problem with it in real life. Monkey See, Monkey Do, right?
Of course the real problem is that last time I checked the US had a much worse problem with that than Japan.
As usual, the Blameless Society is actually to blame for it's own actions.
Uh. Yeah. Sure. Here, quit your whining, spend $35, and get slave support via the Rev. B ROM module. They've had Rev. C and Rev. B ROMs for sale for over a year now, though they've finally sold out of Cs.
http://eshop.macsales.com/specials/XLR8YourMac.t af
Listen, I've met your kind before. Even if they changed model names every time they came out with new revisions you'd still bitch. You'd bitch because you didn't know your model was going to be discontinued. BFD. Welcome to the real world. Models get replaced with faster ones all the time.
If you bought a Dell, and two months later they discontinued your line and came out with new systems with with new features for the same price, would you do the same thing? No? Because this doesn't happen on the other side of the fence, right?
Wrong.
Dell speed-bumps systems just as often, if not more often, than Apple does. Many times those speed bumps, just like Apple, include new features. Even if you don't find out about those features until you bump into the limitations of your older model.
Life sucks and then you die. Either deal with it or commit suicide, but don't sit around and harp endlessly about how life sucks, okay?
Notice how 90% of his post was about how OS/X previews work on older Macs? Older Macs which were upgraded with G3 and G4 procs, and were therefore compatible with the OS/X preview.
Now read your response. Notice how you merely repeated the same concept you posted previously? Even though that concept was refuted in his post?
Now go run off and be a good little "Ancient Hacker"...
Current OS/X betas DO run on older PCI Macs. This support is expected to continue on to the final product, as the code that this functionality is based off of is as finished as it's going to get. Is it officially supported? No. Does it work? Yes.
By the way, ignoring for a second that OS/X is technically NeXTStep, which never ran on that NuBus/PCI Mac in the first place, and therefore getting it to run on older Mac hardware is a herculean task that not even Microsoft (or Linus) would attempt, explain to me how older MacOS releases fit into your particular viewpoint? Since, after all, that broad sweeping statement certainly included them.
Last time I checked the only systems unsupported are 6+ year old 680x0 systems. Running OS9 on that old of a hardware platform is ridiculous, both from a memory (nothing like needing 64M on a platform that maxes out at 32MB) and performance (since most of the recent performance increases come from a switch from 680x0 to PPC code) perspectives.
Then again, I bet you're one of those crackpots who complained about Microsoft not supporting 286 and (some) 386 procs in Windows 95...
Windows was already being worked on in 1985, and had at least a year or two of work in it.
Windows real "shot in the arm" came not out of Apple's refusal to clone Macs, but out of the constant dull, throbbing headache that was Microsoft's relationship with IBM.
IBM wanted a different direction for OS/2 than Microsoft wanted, from square one until the end of their relationship. This led Windows NT (or should I say OS/2 2.0?), but the more traditional Windows development certainly received a lot more attention because of all this animosity.
Remember, Microsoft has a "Not Invented Here" streak a mile wide...
I think you're making this a little more complicated than it actually is.
Last time I poked my nose into something similar on EQ (their beta test servers, which still run to this very day on the latest-and-greatest patch that hasn't hit the "public" servers), there was a simple file IN the EQ directory that told it what DNS names the appropriate servers were to be called on.
Change this file (might have encrypted it by now) to point to your "favorite" server(s) instead and... no more Verant.
To hard-code a particular IP address into the client is just plain suicide. Get ticked off at your ISP not providing sufficient bandwidth for your title? Too bad, you can't switch, unless you want to tick off all your customers. Someone-or-other did this (Westwood?) in one of their games, made things even more annoying whenever you had to reinstall everything (due to the inevitable build up of useless crud in a MS OS), because it couldn't see anything beyond your LAN until you updated.
Better than just doing DNS lookups for a particular address is to do what (I think) EQ has done, which is to have the ability to CHANGE what DNS lookups the client uses. Obviously when the client first connects it has old information, but as it gets patched the new information gets handed to it and off it goes to bigger and better equipment.
Verant has had this problem as they've upgraded systems from time to time, where the old systems are overloaded, but people have a hard time getting the patches in order to get on the new equipment.
By the way, I don't work for Verant, nor do I know a single person who does. I never even talked to one of their dungeon master weenies. Hell I haven't even booted up the game in 2 or 3 months. I just work in the industry... and talk to other people in the industry...
Hmm. Depends on what business nCUBE is in. (I followed the link bug didn't dig)
At first blush I don't think nCUBE is in a field that's remotely related to Nintendo's consumer consoles.
If there's a low likelihood of someone mistaking N-Cube for nCUBE (or vice versa), then there's a low likelihood of damages occuring by the use of the name.
Countless products in completely dissimilar industries use the same product names, it's only when the products are similar to one another (in form, function, or even if the two companies are in competition somehow) that "damages" (lost sales due to any one of a billion reasons) occur.
So *if* nCUBE isn't in a related industry, Nintendo COULD use N-Cube. If they really wanted to.
Of course IANAL. And the only thing keeping me awake right now is a continuous stream of quart-sized coffee mugs...
Hmm. I don't know if my information is still accurate, but a couple years ago all the studies I read basically stated this:
The casual gamer accounts for 40% of all sales. They want instant gratification & easy gameplay. They basically "walk down the isle and pick out a box" at purchase time. Their sheer numbers are huge. They rarely purchase games (1-5 a year).
The core gamer accounts for 60% of all sales. They are willing to put up with all kinds of nonsense, including obtuse manuals and difficult controls, if the game is worth the time. They research their purchases ahead of time, either online or through word-of-mouth (talking with other core gamers). They number less than 10% of the total market, but purchase very often (15+ year).
I'm not sure if the entire market has suddenly done a turnaround in 2 years but given that these tenets have held true for 10+ years I'd be really, really surprised.
Keep in mind this is just computer gaming. Consoles fall somewhere way outside of this and have all kinds of demographics, many odd (witness Parappa Da Rappa!).
Personally I place the blame on lousy games and deaths of genres on the publishers. This is in large part due to the influx of non-game-playing individuals who jumped into the industry so they could "get in on the action", then proceded to screw up the development process. Of course the fresh-into-the-industry executives who put a high priority on the opinons of their fresh-into-the-industry marketing wonks shoulder a large part of the blame too.
I just wish the industry would shake all these idiots out of the tree, send them off to blow big wads of cash on the console arena (which will implode sooner or later like it did in the 80s due to a very similar phenomenon), and let everyone who genuinely gives a rats ass about this industry get back to making fun, immersive, excellent bang-for-the-buck computer games.
By the way, Myst, Deer Hunter, blah, blah, blah - they were/are considered "breakthrough" games, since they sold in large numbers of casual gamers. (Core gamers ignored them because, after all, they're crap) A couple years ago every marketing weenie I dealt with was psyched out about these types of games and felt that every game currently in development could "learn" from Myst. As I said, shake them out of the tree and let's get back to work...
Er, what's wonderful is how every use of Napster is immediately illegal.
Of course if I *own* the CD that the song is on then I have the LEGAL right to MAKE a copy of that song. Now in my mind, and IANAL, getting that "copy" by getting it from another person is a perfectly legal process. However the RIAA case against Napster ignores this issue because, after all, it's much stickier than piracy. (Particularly since they've spending millions on lobbyists to destroy this legal ability)
So, in other words, what we have with Napster is not a simple case of piracy, but a very muddled case of piracy intermixed with (at least as far as I'm concerned) widespread sidestepping of that annoying step of compressing your a CD you already own into an MP3.
Now on the other hand what we have is individual writers who own their work (very different from musical artists since, until 35 years has passed, the artist does not OWN their work - their label does). Any time that work is reprinted the copyright holder is owed a royalty. However most universities require the owner to grant a fairly open license for personal, scientific, etc. research.
The question I haven't seen answered at this point is whether this database contains the thesis or a summary of it.
If it contains the thesis, then the copyright holder(s) are owed some fee for storing it in their database. And they're owed a royalty for every reprint (physical or electronic) this "service" makes, just as they get paid a royalty for reprints made through whatstheirfaces (the company that most people are published through).
The summary is a stickier issue, I think the copyright holder usually is forced to give free reign on reprinting that. So if they've just compiled a database full of summaries, then they should be in the clear. Maybe people sign over their rights for this stuff when they're published by whatstheirfaces?
Of course, if that is the case, and the legalities are in the clear... but exactly how useful is a database full of summaries?
Of course, this just reinforces the need for police not to hire any tom, dick, or harriet that applies for the job.
Police who need to physically restrain other individuals, which requires them to have the necessary mass and muscle, need to be up to the task at hand. Obviously not all parts of the police force DO this task, but those who do... need to.
In ye olden days this was never really a problem, but now you have a bunch of weasels who are filling out the police force... ones who I could easily pick up and throw through a plate glass window.
As a result they have to resort to these kinds of stupid, stupid, stupid decisions. No amount of pummelling or taunting or wrestling requires that you disfigure the criminal. As a policeman you have the unfortunate responsibility NOT to elevate the situation to the next level unless absolutely warranted.
Except, of course, that most modal dialogs have gone the way of the dodo in OS9, and are certainly not going to be around in OSX.
Apple turned most modal dialogs into floating windows in OS9 which can be dismissed or left up at will.
Of course some apps can and do display modal dialogs, but those are using some odd method of displaying modal dialog (ie one not in the toolbox) or Apple has still left some way of displaying modal dialogs in the OS and they stumbled upon it.
Slashdot Mirror
"Oooh! This system doesn't work the same way as my PC does! ITT never taught me how to do deal with this! Man, it sucks!"
I really feel sorry for the new breed of programmers who are so accustomed to PC hardware that when three curve balls are thrown they strike out.
I actually know a shortly-out-of-college programmer who, seriously, won't use any environment except for MS Visual C/C++. Any platform (e.g. Palm) that requires a different IDE is, honest-to-god, "impossible to develop for".
Christ, when did I become an old man? I'm barely than a month over 30... yet somehow the older people I work with aren't phased by new platforms, unlike all these whiny little bitches.
Note to self: Posting to slashdot and drinking hard liquor doesn't mix.
The older you get the more cynical you get, and, frankly, I'm pretty damn cynical.
I love the soccer mom mentality that if they buy a car with 3 rows of seats, give each kid a row, that means they won't bother each other. So why are these monstrous SUVs always wandering into my lane because someone's not paying attention to the road? Kids are going to be kids, unless you want to strap them in and hook up electro-shock collars (yes, I realize this in inhumane, nor am I saying that you SHOULD do this) they won't stop. Either find a way to deal with it or don't be a parent, dumbass.
So if I haul things around 10-15% of the time, and I'm driving around by my lonesome the other 85-90% of the time, does that justify using that 5mpg guzzler 100% of the time? At what point does common sense break down for you?Or should I ease a vehicle for work use (writing it off on taxes, since it really IS a work expense), and then I buy a REASONABLE vehicle for my use? You know, you don't have to buy a NEW car for your own use, there are excellent USED vehicles which are in GREAT condition and get 35-45mpg.
I don't know - maybe you'll join the sane members of society and get a car that costs less to drive?Again, this whole attitude of your kind assumes that everyone has to replace their huge, monstrous, NEW SUV with a NEW Audi TT is just absurd. There are plenty of reasonable slightly-warmed-over used vehicles out there that can fit your requirements and pocketbook.
NEWSFLASH
Many companies already do that, except instead of calling their paid-for cellphone they call... your home phone. Often late into the night.
At least if they get used to calling the cell phone you can occasionally turn it off. Then if the Pointy-Haired type wants to call your home phone, they have to dig it up - in other words at least you have the satisfaction of knowing you made them do a little work.
Frankly, a colleague of mine uses his Nextel phone to go wander off to "fun" places (ie offsite) knowing that he's reachable within seconds.
I... could burn the whole building down....
Based on this logic, everyone who wants to pull themselves up by their bootstraps CAN pull themselves up.
Unfortunately the reality of the situation is that for every person like your father that accomplished that feat, there are hundreds of individuals who worked just as hard but didn't succeed.
In other words, the world is not as simple as you're trying to make it out to be.
And since you come from a position of privilege, you have a severe advantage over the individuals who are trying to accomplish your father's feat. Does it bother you that if you and that person were competing for the same job, you would probably get it due to your better training, education, etc.? Not even a twinge?
This is part of the reason why children of the rich generally tend to stay rich, and the children of the poor generally stay poor.
Uh, not that I condone (or even have done/will do this) but...
Some people are putting down that $200 deposit (plus $20 rental), then just never returning the unit. I'd be interested to know what story they're giving (I suggested to an acquaintance who intends to do this that the old "my dog ate it" excuse probably wouldn't work).
Provided, of course, you like the PS2. If not, you return the unit and get your $200 back.
Cheaper than $1000 on eBay. Hell, I saw auctions this morning with over $600, but the RESERVE hadn't been met yet. Greedy SOBs...
Koinami? Is that the coin-op division of Konami?
Uh huh.
Have you checked the cost of DC and N64 development systems lately?
Think those companies are making money off each box sold? No, they're doing the exact same thing as Sony.
This is how the console world works now. Make money on the games, not the hardware - selling the hardware cheap creates demand for software, both now and in the future.
If you think Microsoft is going to break this trend of selling hardware at cost and making it up on developer fees (MSDN subscriptions anyone?) you're nuts.
Frankly, I don't think buying a PS2 (retail, not at auction) is any more nuts than the billions of idiots who lined up outside computer stores the night before Windows '95 was being released, so they could buy it at 12:01. C'mon, I know you're out there... heck, you probably saw someone just like me, driving by and laughing...
A problem... how?
With violence against women (rape, etc) being so widely depicted in Japanese literature/pop culture (well, according to you at least)... then according to Political Correctness there should be a HUGE problem with it in real life. Monkey See, Monkey Do, right?
Of course the real problem is that last time I checked the US had a much worse problem with that than Japan.
As usual, the Blameless Society is actually to blame for it's own actions.
Ever hear of the bell curve?
Uh. Yeah. Sure. Here, quit your whining, spend $35, and get slave support via the Rev. B ROM module. They've had Rev. C and Rev. B ROMs for sale for over a year now, though they've finally sold out of Cs.
t af
http://eshop.macsales.com/specials/XLR8YourMac.
Listen, I've met your kind before. Even if they changed model names every time they came out with new revisions you'd still bitch. You'd bitch because you didn't know your model was going to be discontinued. BFD. Welcome to the real world. Models get replaced with faster ones all the time.
If you bought a Dell, and two months later they discontinued your line and came out with new systems with with new features for the same price, would you do the same thing? No? Because this doesn't happen on the other side of the fence, right?
Wrong.
Dell speed-bumps systems just as often, if not more often, than Apple does. Many times those speed bumps, just like Apple, include new features. Even if you don't find out about those features until you bump into the limitations of your older model.
Life sucks and then you die. Either deal with it or commit suicide, but don't sit around and harp endlessly about how life sucks, okay?
Heh Heh Heh. Let's see what Altavista says...
>Etre traite d'imbecile par un cretin est un plaisir de gourmet
"To be milked of imbecile by a cretin is a pleasure of gourmet"
Somehow that makes less sense than how I read it, and I have a poor grasp of French.
Uh, go back and read that again.
Notice how 90% of his post was about how OS/X previews work on older Macs? Older Macs which were upgraded with G3 and G4 procs, and were therefore compatible with the OS/X preview.
Now read your response. Notice how you merely repeated the same concept you posted previously? Even though that concept was refuted in his post?
Now go run off and be a good little "Ancient Hacker"...
Uh. Kid. Get your facts straight.
Current OS/X betas DO run on older PCI Macs. This support is expected to continue on to the final product, as the code that this functionality is based off of is as finished as it's going to get. Is it officially supported? No. Does it work? Yes.
By the way, ignoring for a second that OS/X is technically NeXTStep, which never ran on that NuBus/PCI Mac in the first place, and therefore getting it to run on older Mac hardware is a herculean task that not even Microsoft (or Linus) would attempt, explain to me how older MacOS releases fit into your particular viewpoint? Since, after all, that broad sweeping statement certainly included them.
Last time I checked the only systems unsupported are 6+ year old 680x0 systems. Running OS9 on that old of a hardware platform is ridiculous, both from a memory (nothing like needing 64M on a platform that maxes out at 32MB) and performance (since most of the recent performance increases come from a switch from 680x0 to PPC code) perspectives.
Then again, I bet you're one of those crackpots who complained about Microsoft not supporting 286 and (some) 386 procs in Windows 95...
Uh, well, one problem.
Windows was already being worked on in 1985, and had at least a year or two of work in it.
Windows real "shot in the arm" came not out of Apple's refusal to clone Macs, but out of the constant dull, throbbing headache that was Microsoft's relationship with IBM.
IBM wanted a different direction for OS/2 than Microsoft wanted, from square one until the end of their relationship. This led Windows NT (or should I say OS/2 2.0?), but the more traditional Windows development certainly received a lot more attention because of all this animosity.
Remember, Microsoft has a "Not Invented Here" streak a mile wide...
I think you're making this a little more complicated than it actually is.
Last time I poked my nose into something similar on EQ (their beta test servers, which still run to this very day on the latest-and-greatest patch that hasn't hit the "public" servers), there was a simple file IN the EQ directory that told it what DNS names the appropriate servers were to be called on.
Change this file (might have encrypted it by now) to point to your "favorite" server(s) instead and... no more Verant.
To hard-code a particular IP address into the client is just plain suicide. Get ticked off at your ISP not providing sufficient bandwidth for your title? Too bad, you can't switch, unless you want to tick off all your customers. Someone-or-other did this (Westwood?) in one of their games, made things even more annoying whenever you had to reinstall everything (due to the inevitable build up of useless crud in a MS OS), because it couldn't see anything beyond your LAN until you updated.
Better than just doing DNS lookups for a particular address is to do what (I think) EQ has done, which is to have the ability to CHANGE what DNS lookups the client uses. Obviously when the client first connects it has old information, but as it gets patched the new information gets handed to it and off it goes to bigger and better equipment.
Verant has had this problem as they've upgraded systems from time to time, where the old systems are overloaded, but people have a hard time getting the patches in order to get on the new equipment.
By the way, I don't work for Verant, nor do I know a single person who does. I never even talked to one of their dungeon master weenies. Hell I haven't even booted up the game in 2 or 3 months. I just work in the industry... and talk to other people in the industry...
Hmm. Depends on what business nCUBE is in. (I followed the link bug didn't dig)
At first blush I don't think nCUBE is in a field that's remotely related to Nintendo's consumer consoles.
If there's a low likelihood of someone mistaking N-Cube for nCUBE (or vice versa), then there's a low likelihood of damages occuring by the use of the name.
Countless products in completely dissimilar industries use the same product names, it's only when the products are similar to one another (in form, function, or even if the two companies are in competition somehow) that "damages" (lost sales due to any one of a billion reasons) occur.
So *if* nCUBE isn't in a related industry, Nintendo COULD use N-Cube. If they really wanted to.
Of course IANAL. And the only thing keeping me awake right now is a continuous stream of quart-sized coffee mugs...
Well, they'd use more Microsoft-based systems in TV shows but NOBODY likes a BSOD.
The geeks laugh, and everyone else is bored.
Hmm. I don't know if my information is still accurate, but a couple years ago all the studies I read basically stated this:
The casual gamer accounts for 40% of all sales. They want instant gratification & easy gameplay. They basically "walk down the isle and pick out a box" at purchase time. Their sheer numbers are huge. They rarely purchase games (1-5 a year).
The core gamer accounts for 60% of all sales. They are willing to put up with all kinds of nonsense, including obtuse manuals and difficult controls, if the game is worth the time. They research their purchases ahead of time, either online or through word-of-mouth (talking with other core gamers). They number less than 10% of the total market, but purchase very often (15+ year).
I'm not sure if the entire market has suddenly done a turnaround in 2 years but given that these tenets have held true for 10+ years I'd be really, really surprised.
Keep in mind this is just computer gaming. Consoles fall somewhere way outside of this and have all kinds of demographics, many odd (witness Parappa Da Rappa!).
Personally I place the blame on lousy games and deaths of genres on the publishers. This is in large part due to the influx of non-game-playing individuals who jumped into the industry so they could "get in on the action", then proceded to screw up the development process. Of course the fresh-into-the-industry executives who put a high priority on the opinons of their fresh-into-the-industry marketing wonks shoulder a large part of the blame too.
I just wish the industry would shake all these idiots out of the tree, send them off to blow big wads of cash on the console arena (which will implode sooner or later like it did in the 80s due to a very similar phenomenon), and let everyone who genuinely gives a rats ass about this industry get back to making fun, immersive, excellent bang-for-the-buck computer games.
By the way, Myst, Deer Hunter, blah, blah, blah - they were/are considered "breakthrough" games, since they sold in large numbers of casual gamers. (Core gamers ignored them because, after all, they're crap) A couple years ago every marketing weenie I dealt with was psyched out about these types of games and felt that every game currently in development could "learn" from Myst. As I said, shake them out of the tree and let's get back to work...
There is no spoon.
Er, what's wonderful is how every use of Napster is immediately illegal.
Of course if I *own* the CD that the song is on then I have the LEGAL right to MAKE a copy of that song. Now in my mind, and IANAL, getting that "copy" by getting it from another person is a perfectly legal process. However the RIAA case against Napster ignores this issue because, after all, it's much stickier than piracy. (Particularly since they've spending millions on lobbyists to destroy this legal ability)
So, in other words, what we have with Napster is not a simple case of piracy, but a very muddled case of piracy intermixed with (at least as far as I'm concerned) widespread sidestepping of that annoying step of compressing your a CD you already own into an MP3.
Now on the other hand what we have is individual writers who own their work (very different from musical artists since, until 35 years has passed, the artist does not OWN their work - their label does). Any time that work is reprinted the copyright holder is owed a royalty. However most universities require the owner to grant a fairly open license for personal, scientific, etc. research.
The question I haven't seen answered at this point is whether this database contains the thesis or a summary of it.
If it contains the thesis, then the copyright holder(s) are owed some fee for storing it in their database. And they're owed a royalty for every reprint (physical or electronic) this "service" makes, just as they get paid a royalty for reprints made through whatstheirfaces (the company that most people are published through).
The summary is a stickier issue, I think the copyright holder usually is forced to give free reign on reprinting that. So if they've just compiled a database full of summaries, then they should be in the clear. Maybe people sign over their rights for this stuff when they're published by whatstheirfaces?
Of course, if that is the case, and the legalities are in the clear... but exactly how useful is a database full of summaries?
Of course, this just reinforces the need for police not to hire any tom, dick, or harriet that applies for the job.
Police who need to physically restrain other individuals, which requires them to have the necessary mass and muscle, need to be up to the task at hand. Obviously not all parts of the police force DO this task, but those who do... need to.
In ye olden days this was never really a problem, but now you have a bunch of weasels who are filling out the police force... ones who I could easily pick up and throw through a plate glass window.
As a result they have to resort to these kinds of stupid, stupid, stupid decisions. No amount of pummelling or taunting or wrestling requires that you disfigure the criminal. As a policeman you have the unfortunate responsibility NOT to elevate the situation to the next level unless absolutely warranted.
Except, of course, that most modal dialogs have gone the way of the dodo in OS9, and are certainly not going to be around in OSX.
Apple turned most modal dialogs into floating windows in OS9 which can be dismissed or left up at will.
Of course some apps can and do display modal dialogs, but those are using some odd method of displaying modal dialog (ie one not in the toolbox) or Apple has still left some way of displaying modal dialogs in the OS and they stumbled upon it.
Yeah, I find that "Flamebait" flag a little odd too. You have 3 moderations for "interesting" (or was that "insightful"?) and one "flamebait".
Shouldn't the 3 moderations "win" for what a response is going to be tagged as?!
I suspect "Flamebait" was the last moderation applied and, voila, that's what it gets tagged with.
Man, what some folks will waste their karma on...