I note that the description very carefully describes it as a game, not as a programming language. The wage slave that reviewed it probably didn't even notice that it was a language masquerading as a game.
Wow, the DC had good games, that's for sure, but it was also plagued with one of the least comfortable controllers since the awkward devices of the 8 bit era. I can't be the only one who couldn't play a DC game too long before my thumb felt like it was shredded to ribbons. That was the sharpest D-Pad ever to grace a controller AFAIK.
The Visual Memory Unit was completely gimmicky as well.
I've always thought the "the internet is going to destroy literacy" argument was strange at best. I mean what do you do on the internet? You read, and write, and read. Then you look at porn. But still, kids are reading a lot more now than they did back when I was young. Back then they talked on the phone for hours instead. In some ways this internet culture is a throwback to Victorian times when people wrote letters to each other constantly.
Minimum wages are set locally. Large cities frequently have higher minimum wage than the Federal minimum wage. The government's minimum wage is what is considered fair for an American, regardless of where you live in America. It's not really in the people's interest to create a serf class of actual Americans. At least with illegal immigrants you can deport them if they start causing trouble.
The only problem with that theory is that the people calling in will be just as dumb and angry as ever, so even if the guy in the call center is great he probably won't see the massive increase in productivity that you would expect.
It seems to me that this company is the perfect "second tier" tech support line. The first tier being the guys in India who just go down the list regardless of what problem you have because 75% of the time it's the same dumb problem again and these guys get paid way too much to spend all day telling people what a mouse pointer is or how to double click.
I've always had the fantasy that if I owned a tech company that had direct contact with customers, that I would have two support lines. The first is right on the front of the support page and sends you to "first tier" support in India. They can escalate your call to second tier, but only after going through all of the easy fixes. The second tier support would have its number listed at the end of the FAQ/support database. People who went through the online support and still had to call would be send directly to the second level techs.
Of course I tend to have this fantasy every time I call tech support and are forced to go through everything their FAQ already covered that I already tried before they send me off to someone who can actually help.
Eventually we'll probably have to look into Hydrogen again, but only because Helium is a non-renewable resource on Earth and is already getting somewhat tight on supply. The safety issue is going to be a big problem no matter what you do though.
And yet people keep using missiles, even though they're "useless" compared to smuggling. Why do you think this is? Is smuggling perhaps harder than you think, especially into fortified compounds like military bases or Israel?
Plus, there is the risk factor in smuggling. If you are caught, often the agent will be caught alive and may give away secrets. Rockets don't do that, you launch one from the roof of an orphanage and then drive off before the rocket even hits the ground. Even if someone does spot your shooters, they're more likely to be killed instead of captured, preventing them from giving up too much information about your operation.
Of course the article talked a lot about cruise missiles, but in modern battles the only people launching them is the US. The real threat is cheap and poorly made rockets fired by insurgents.
It remains to be seen if this wildly experimental game is actually fun though. Obviously there has to be some way to make something permanent (maybe unit death?) given that otherwise the game devolves into each player just pulling repeated time tricks on each other forever (see: Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure).
I've never heard of an NES failing. I had mine crash once or twice while being left on overnight so we could continue in the morning (no 'save' feature in game), but that's about it!
What? The NES cartridge connector was notoriously badly designed. It would be a miracle if you've been using it regularly for 20 years without problem, unless you just stuck a single cart in it back in 1989 and have never touched it since.
Maybe you're talking about the second generation NES--the small curvy one that came out after the SNES? That one had a much better designed connector that AFAIK does not suffer from the same problems as the older slot loading NES.
Luckily, replacement 72 pin connectors are still pretty easy to find, as the market for them has never completely dried up thanks to the various collectors who want to keep their NES running.
I don't live in the Ghetto, but are there really grocery stores that don't have a produce section? I find this difficult to believe. Maybe if someone does their shopping only at some corner convenience store instead of going a few extra miles to a real grocery store, but that's true of anywhere. I have never seen a grocery store, no matter how redneck or run down the area is, that doesn't at least carry the basics (potatoes, tomatoes, lettuce, carrots, onions, peppers, etc...).
Doing a good job making the game enjoyable? Eve? That's debatable.
My big concern is that typical console gamers are about as far removed from Eve players as they are from people who snapped up Barbie Horse Adventures.
Broadband Internet killed the lan party. Back when everybody was on modem, the only time you got a really good game against frineds (without bullcrap lag, drops, etc...) was when you schlepped all of your gear over to their house and plugged into the LAN. Nowadays you can get the same experience at home, any time you want, thanks to high speed low latency internet connections. Sure it doesn't have the camaraderie and face to face value of a real LAN party, but it's also way less effort for everybody involved.
For-pay LANs don't stand a chance in an area with good internet connectivity IMHO. One of the game stores down where I live has an 8 person LAN setup like that, and back in the 2000-2002 era there were always people on it, playing FPSes or RTSes. These days you'll see maybe one guy on his WoW account waiting for his RP group to show up and that's it. You might get the occasional group wanting to turn it into a party, but it's not going to sustain a business.
The thing is, local privilege escalations can become remote privilege escalations when combined with buggy services that allow for code injection. This is especially bad for people who are forced to run services that they don't trust and thus place them in jails, only to discover that if the exploit happens at the kernel level then your jail means nothing.
My guess is that rootkits are being updated as we speak, so get your kernels patched people.
Just out of curiosity, what are the chances of getting cell phone signal when you're out in the middle of the forest in Finland?
Or, more succinctly: how much of Finland has cell service?
My guess is when the other guys calls his bank to complain, they call your bank, and then your bank asks you to present the check as proof. They then analyze the check for forgery and throw you in jail if they find any. Pretty similar to what they do to people who write in numbers on checks currently and try to change the value line.
Apparently Sony has been starving the supply chain for the PS3 for a month or so now in an effort to work through the old systems before announcing the new one. I'd also expect stores to offer deals on old fat PS3s "while supplies last" to get them out of the door.
OTOH, my many year old bottle of silver-based thermal grease was only a couple of bucks retail. Something that's $33 in parts is going to cost upwards of $75-$100 at retail, which is getting well into the realm of "enthusiast" components.
Diamonds aren't even rare, the only reason they're expensive is because they're produced by cartels that that are more than willing pull underhanded tricks to crush the competition.
Granted, really large gem quality diamonds aren't enormously abundant, but the prices on them are definitely inflated.
Slashdot Mirror
I note that the description very carefully describes it as a game, not as a programming language. The wage slave that reviewed it probably didn't even notice that it was a language masquerading as a game.
Wow, the DC had good games, that's for sure, but it was also plagued with one of the least comfortable controllers since the awkward devices of the 8 bit era. I can't be the only one who couldn't play a DC game too long before my thumb felt like it was shredded to ribbons. That was the sharpest D-Pad ever to grace a controller AFAIK.
The Visual Memory Unit was completely gimmicky as well.
They probably just have a ban on useful interpreters.
Would it be similar to all of the Nerdrage already in this thread?
Honestly, you should probably be happy if they're not actually trying to read the comments on your average youtube video.
I've always thought the "the internet is going to destroy literacy" argument was strange at best. I mean what do you do on the internet? You read, and write, and read. Then you look at porn. But still, kids are reading a lot more now than they did back when I was young. Back then they talked on the phone for hours instead. In some ways this internet culture is a throwback to Victorian times when people wrote letters to each other constantly.
Minimum wages are set locally. Large cities frequently have higher minimum wage than the Federal minimum wage. The government's minimum wage is what is considered fair for an American, regardless of where you live in America. It's not really in the people's interest to create a serf class of actual Americans. At least with illegal immigrants you can deport them if they start causing trouble.
The only problem with that theory is that the people calling in will be just as dumb and angry as ever, so even if the guy in the call center is great he probably won't see the massive increase in productivity that you would expect.
It seems to me that this company is the perfect "second tier" tech support line. The first tier being the guys in India who just go down the list regardless of what problem you have because 75% of the time it's the same dumb problem again and these guys get paid way too much to spend all day telling people what a mouse pointer is or how to double click.
I've always had the fantasy that if I owned a tech company that had direct contact with customers, that I would have two support lines. The first is right on the front of the support page and sends you to "first tier" support in India. They can escalate your call to second tier, but only after going through all of the easy fixes. The second tier support would have its number listed at the end of the FAQ/support database. People who went through the online support and still had to call would be send directly to the second level techs.
Of course I tend to have this fantasy every time I call tech support and are forced to go through everything their FAQ already covered that I already tried before they send me off to someone who can actually help.
Eventually we'll probably have to look into Hydrogen again, but only because Helium is a non-renewable resource on Earth and is already getting somewhat tight on supply. The safety issue is going to be a big problem no matter what you do though.
And yet people keep using missiles, even though they're "useless" compared to smuggling. Why do you think this is? Is smuggling perhaps harder than you think, especially into fortified compounds like military bases or Israel?
Plus, there is the risk factor in smuggling. If you are caught, often the agent will be caught alive and may give away secrets. Rockets don't do that, you launch one from the roof of an orphanage and then drive off before the rocket even hits the ground. Even if someone does spot your shooters, they're more likely to be killed instead of captured, preventing them from giving up too much information about your operation.
Of course the article talked a lot about cruise missiles, but in modern battles the only people launching them is the US. The real threat is cheap and poorly made rockets fired by insurgents.
It remains to be seen if this wildly experimental game is actually fun though. Obviously there has to be some way to make something permanent (maybe unit death?) given that otherwise the game devolves into each player just pulling repeated time tricks on each other forever (see: Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure).
What? The NES cartridge connector was notoriously badly designed. It would be a miracle if you've been using it regularly for 20 years without problem, unless you just stuck a single cart in it back in 1989 and have never touched it since.
Maybe you're talking about the second generation NES--the small curvy one that came out after the SNES? That one had a much better designed connector that AFAIK does not suffer from the same problems as the older slot loading NES.
Luckily, replacement 72 pin connectors are still pretty easy to find, as the market for them has never completely dried up thanks to the various collectors who want to keep their NES running.
I don't live in the Ghetto, but are there really grocery stores that don't have a produce section? I find this difficult to believe. Maybe if someone does their shopping only at some corner convenience store instead of going a few extra miles to a real grocery store, but that's true of anywhere. I have never seen a grocery store, no matter how redneck or run down the area is, that doesn't at least carry the basics (potatoes, tomatoes, lettuce, carrots, onions, peppers, etc...).
So the message is that the US is really unsafe, not unhealthy? Is that due to crime (especially gun crime presuambly) or some other factor?
It should be nice and neat in base pi.
Doing a good job making the game enjoyable? Eve? That's debatable.
My big concern is that typical console gamers are about as far removed from Eve players as they are from people who snapped up Barbie Horse Adventures.
Broadband Internet killed the lan party. Back when everybody was on modem, the only time you got a really good game against frineds (without bullcrap lag, drops, etc...) was when you schlepped all of your gear over to their house and plugged into the LAN. Nowadays you can get the same experience at home, any time you want, thanks to high speed low latency internet connections. Sure it doesn't have the camaraderie and face to face value of a real LAN party, but it's also way less effort for everybody involved.
For-pay LANs don't stand a chance in an area with good internet connectivity IMHO. One of the game stores down where I live has an 8 person LAN setup like that, and back in the 2000-2002 era there were always people on it, playing FPSes or RTSes. These days you'll see maybe one guy on his WoW account waiting for his RP group to show up and that's it. You might get the occasional group wanting to turn it into a party, but it's not going to sustain a business.
The thing is, local privilege escalations can become remote privilege escalations when combined with buggy services that allow for code injection. This is especially bad for people who are forced to run services that they don't trust and thus place them in jails, only to discover that if the exploit happens at the kernel level then your jail means nothing.
My guess is that rootkits are being updated as we speak, so get your kernels patched people.
Just out of curiosity, what are the chances of getting cell phone signal when you're out in the middle of the forest in Finland? Or, more succinctly: how much of Finland has cell service?
Isn't this problem (crappy chipset and graphics) supposed to be solved with nVidia's ION platform?
My guess is when the other guys calls his bank to complain, they call your bank, and then your bank asks you to present the check as proof. They then analyze the check for forgery and throw you in jail if they find any. Pretty similar to what they do to people who write in numbers on checks currently and try to change the value line.
Apparently Sony has been starving the supply chain for the PS3 for a month or so now in an effort to work through the old systems before announcing the new one. I'd also expect stores to offer deals on old fat PS3s "while supplies last" to get them out of the door.
OTOH, my many year old bottle of silver-based thermal grease was only a couple of bucks retail. Something that's $33 in parts is going to cost upwards of $75-$100 at retail, which is getting well into the realm of "enthusiast" components.
Diamonds aren't even rare, the only reason they're expensive is because they're produced by cartels that that are more than willing pull underhanded tricks to crush the competition. Granted, really large gem quality diamonds aren't enormously abundant, but the prices on them are definitely inflated.
A month is not much time at all for something like this.