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  1. Console checkpoints are the worst on How To Ruin Your Game's PC Port · · Score: 1

    #1 aggravation is not even in the article - usage of checkpoints or limited save capability. I have limited time and patience for a game, and the last thing I want to do is die and go back 10 minutes to the last checkpoint. I guess this makes sense in old school consoles with limited storage capability, but a PC game should be able to save its complete game state anywhere. Even if you have to make a complete dump of the game's image in memory, that is preferable to forced replaying. If I kill Foozle, he has to stay dead.

  2. Sucky, but look at the big picture on What Do I Do About My Ex-Employer Stealing My Free Code? · · Score: 1

    I've been laid off twice in a 20+ year (so far) coding career. It sucks, but it's usually nothing personal. Some angel investor money didn't come through, some sales contract didn't get signed, and now they have to cut staff. It happens. I've never been out of work more than a month.

    Look at it from the company's side. They probably paid you a lot of money to build software for them. They may not have given you permission to GPL your code, or more likely they didn't understand or didn't care about the legal aspects of open source development. It may be hard to distinguish between the code your wrote on your own and the code you wrote for them, especially if you were a contractor working at home.

    Emotionally, you should separate the circumstances of your leaving the company from the behavior of the company with respect to your GPL code. Suppose you had gotten a better job and left voluntarily. Would you feel the same way about your former employer using your open source code?

    Consider approaching the company and say that you'd like to continue development on your toolkit as an open source toolkit. They'll probably agree. I live in a 4M pop metro area, and I am always running into people I worked with before. If you get a reputation for burning employers, it will come back to you eventually.

  3. Or they could just sail around the pirates on New Laser Makes Pirates Wish They Wore Eye-Patches · · Score: 1

    Most modern piracy happens in the waters off Somalia as ships exit or enter the route through Suez. Ships could sail around Africa instead of going through the canal, as was done for a number of centuries before Suez. No idea if that is even cost efficient vs. paying the ransom.

    And while no nation is required to allow armed vessels to dock in its ports, martime law does indeed allow armed vessels within a nation's territorial waters. Warships travel through the Panama canal all the time, and in fact such ships are designed so that they can fit through the canal. This classification is called "Panamax". Same goes for Bosphorus and the Dardanelles.

  4. Re:Depends... on Beating the College Bubble · · Score: 1

    Going to college to get an education, even one that you won't use in your career (assuming you even decide to have a career) isn't wrong as long as you know that that's why you're going and you're OK with it.

    That's fine, as long as you understand that this self-edification comes with a price. You can also go to the library for free, Good Will Hunting style. But far be it from me to discourage a glorious voyage of self-discovery. I'd just appreciate it if folks wouldn't sing the blues when the bills come and they aren't able to pay.

  5. Re:Bankruptcy won't help on Beating the College Bubble · · Score: 1

    The reason student debt does not get wiped in a bankruptcy is that no bank would loan money otherwise. On graduation day students typically have no assets or income. There is really no downside to immediately filing for bankruptcy and waiting out the 7 years of credit purgatory.

    If students want the government to continue to guarantee the loans, they will have to live with the fact that debt must be repaid.

  6. Re:Divorce Rates on Slashdot's Disagree Mail · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Folks in the Bible Belt marry younger due to greater inhibitions about premarital sex. Then surprise, lots of married people in their mid 20s decide they made a bad life decision when they were 18-20.

  7. Re:Since you mentioned Good Will Hunting on The 23 Toughest Math Questions · · Score: 1

    $2.50 a gallon? Sweet.

  8. Re:So Ob I can't beleive it's not here yet on Companies That Clean Up Bad Online Reputations · · Score: 1

    Why should I change my name? He's the one who sucks.

  9. Nice Try on Companies That Clean Up Bad Online Reputations · · Score: 4, Interesting

    My true name is, honestly... Dave Chappelle. I'm not the famous holder of the name, but I was born first and I stake my claim. I always see it coming. The waiter spend a second too long looking at my credit card, and I know I'm about to be hit with a lame Rick James joke that he thinks is hilarious.

    Let's just see them wipe the internets of Dave Chappelle...

  10. Re:I use both Vi (vim) and Emacs. Brief is better on The Birth of vi · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Up until recently I worked at Borland. My whole team was informed by teleconference that our work was offshored. Anyway, I used Brief in the 90s at other jobs, both before and after Borland bought it. So naturally, I assumed it would be easy to get a copy of Brief to do my development, given that my employer owns the program. Sorry, the help desk doesn't know anything about Brief and can't help you. So, I stared googling for a bootleg copy, from my Borland workstation, of Borland software.

    Any wonder Borland is about to go bankrupt?

  11. lpszComment = "Great!" on Microsoft's Charles Simonyi to be 1st Nerd in Space · · Score: 1

    for (unsigned long ulCount = 10; ulCount > 0; ulCount--)
    {
          char szMsg[5];
          MessageBox (NULL, itoa(ulCount,szMsg,10), "Countdown", MB_OK);
    }

    MessageBox (NULL, "Liftoff!", "Countdown", MB_OK);

    This is how of many of us 40-ish programmers learned to code UIs...

  12. LTBSD on The Perception of 'Random' on the iPod · · Score: 1

    I'm guessing the LTBSD was hey... nineteen?

  13. Stern was also creator of classic video games on Portrait of The Last Remaining Pinball Wizard · · Score: 1

    ...including the immortal Berzerk.

    Chicken, fight like a robot!

  14. Re:In this version on One-Man Star Wars Trilogy Returns to Chicago · · Score: 1

    ...Performed in-character as Hand Solo.

  15. Ukraine Weak! on Ukraine Holds 4th Largest Programmer Population · · Score: 0

    "Ha ha, the Ukraine. Do you know what the Ukraine is? It's a sitting duck. A road apple, Newman. The Ukraine is weak. It's feeble. I think it's time to put the hurt on the Ukraine."

  16. Re:How evil are you? on Review: Evil Genius · · Score: 5, Funny

    I voted for Bush.

    Just as evil, but all I needed was a Diebold machine and a couple hours to kill.

  17. It's a start, I guess. on Las Vegas Monorail Finally Ready To Open · · Score: 1

    In my hobby as a semi-pro poker player, I travel to Vegas often. The east side of the strip is the dull side. The Bellagio, Mirage, Mandalay Bay, and Luxor are all on the west side. The Venetian is the only cool (IMO) casino on the east side.

    Regarding the price, $3 is a steal compared to the $10 cab rides between hotels and $20 taxis from the airport. And I'm sure the casinos on the route will give free tokens to anyone with a player's card.

  18. Puh - lease. on Ars Technica Interviews Scott Collins · · Score: 1

    When using Windows, I use Mozilla because it blocks popups and has a bookmark file that's easy to parse. In all other ways that are meaningful to me, it is identical to IE.

    Does a car have a soul? Does my refrigerator have soul? They're important to me, but they're just tools.

  19. Time travel to the futuristic time of 2015 on Delorean Time Machine Replica Up For Auction · · Score: 4, Funny

    So far, other than big screen flat panel TVs, Robert Zemeckis' vision of the future is not panning out. No flying cars. No Jaws 17. No hovering skateboards.

    Then again, Buck Rogers was supposed to leave on the last of NASA's deep space probes in 1987, the moon was to hurtle out of Earth's orbit in 1999, and the exploration of Jupiter's moons began in 2001.

    Of course, we still have 11 years left. But even if we get Mr. Fusion, who will control the world's supply of banana peels and Old Milwaukee cans that supply its fuel? I say to you now: No Blood for Banana Peels.

  20. Re:Average range on Reasonable Salary for Entry Level Programmers? · · Score: 1

    As a Georgia Tech graduate and someone who has interviewed many programming candidates in Atlanta, I can tell you that your educational background is near the bottom of your list of qualifications. All interviewers care is that you finished - you've proven you can stick with the program and toughed out college. They will ask you what projects you enjoyed most, maybe a little sports chatter to relax you, and that's all you'll hear in the interview regarding college.

    You are just a coder serf. The only reason they're interested in you is because you work cheap. You'll get the crappiest assignments that no one else wants. Stuff like: debug the InstallShield script on Windows 98 without any service packs but with IE5 installed. Test all the UI error conditions on every form in the applications. Go through all the C++ code and make it work in Unicode.

    Trust me on this. Do not rely on your academic credentials. Get a co-op job if at all possible.

  21. That's moronic. on Control-Alt-Recycle · · Score: 2, Insightful

    if replacing, reuse the old one as an MP3 server on your home network

    You're just postponing the eventual landfill anyway, and in the meantime, consuming 200W or so of electricity 24/7. Where I live, electricity comes from coal, which among other things, causes acid rain.

    A much better idea would be to donate the PC to a school or a nonprofit charity.

  22. Oops, still a problem on Lindows Agreeing to Change Name · · Score: 1

    They will announce the new name next Wednesday, although a favorite is Lindos

    Calling it LinDOS? Microsoft might be no happier with that one either!

  23. Re:Hooters Park Anyone? on SBC Park Plans A Giant 802.11 Hotspot · · Score: 1

    For several years Hooters had a large outfield ad in Atlanta-Fulton Co Stadium. In a PC baseball game I played several years ago, they had changed the "Hooters" sign to "Hoopers", with basketballs in place of the owl eyes in the logo. Kind of clever.

  24. Rankin-Bass adaptations were musicals on LOTR to Become a London Musical · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Rankin-Bass did "The Hobbit" and "Return of the King". Remember the toe-tappers "Where there's a whip, there's a way" and "Frodo of the Nine Fingers"? And that Godawful warbling singer?

    I actually think it could be decent if it's done right. Professional stage people know how to grab the audience. I've been to several Broadway shows that I just knew would be crap, and 30 minutes in, I was swinging my feet and humming along just like everybody else. Musicals have a different vocabulary than film, and they just might pull it off.

  25. Not deserving of a sweep on Lord Of The Rings - Oscars, We Loves Them · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I've seen all the nominated films.

    Mystic River and American Splendor were clearly better adaptations than Return. And the Annie Lennox song was crap, and worse, not relevant to the film. The Mighty Wind song, sung on the show in character, was cute, but the Triplets of Belleville theme was the best.

    Master and Commander, Lost in Translation, and Mystic River were all better films than Return. Only Seabiscuit was inferior. Of course the wins for Return were for the whole trilogy. Rings as a whole deserves high praise. Master and Commander is a better action/adventure film than Return. It's also far better than Gladiator, the other Crowe genre film that won Best Picture.

    As an emsemble film, Return neither received nor deserved any acting nominations.

    I'm in complete agreement with the technical awards. Return probably would have won Cinematography if it had been nominated, over the more deserving M&C.