The more you read at the ultimate site more you realize the people digging thru this garbage know nothing about what they are reading, and not much about programming either.
You could have kept reading, you know.
See also the 2002 edition of the "Voluntary Voting System Guide" published by the Federal Election Commission especially this bit in Volume 1:
Self-modifying, dynamically loaded, or interpreted code is prohibited [...]
The FEC standards say "prohibited". They do not say "Any self-modifying, dynamically loaded or interpreted code is only okay if someone who is a really good programmer says it is" or "Interpreted code is okey dokey as long as it isn't called all that often". If the database itself contains application code which modifies the database, then that's a problem. It doesn't matter what kind of code it is or how benign you think it is, it should not be there at all.
If you would like to share your educated opinion where it matters, feel free to comment in the wiki. That's what it's there for.
As an experiment, the New York Times once ran the headline "Everything Is Fine, Nothing To Worry About" on their front page. For some reason that day's sales were way lower than either the Daily News or the New York Post, whose front pages both predicted imminent doom.
Even from Direct2Drive, whom I prefer by a little, you download the actual CD image/executable and back it up, and have a CD key mailed to you. Oh, and you have refunds.
Refund Policy. Certain restrictions apply to sales of Products sold through the Service that might not otherwise apply to physical goods. Refunds will not be issued due to your dissatisfaction with the Product or if your computer does not meet the minimum Product requirements. If you feel you qualify for a refund please contact Customer Service. Refunds or credits will be issued solely at IGN's discretion. Refunds may be offered if all the following conditions are met:
The time of your request for refund/credit is fewer than 48 hours from time of purchase
The game has not been activated
The game activation key has not been disclosed to you by email or webpage
We find your request reasonable due to special circumstances
So... If you had bought Batman:AA from Direct2Drive, received the activation key, activated it and then played it for about an hour, how much of a refund would you expect? Perhaps you believe that "The game SUCKS!" qualifies as special circumstances and not mere "dissatisfaction with the Product"?
Please, tell us more about this world you live in.
So, to sum it up: if you want to automate tabletop games with rigid rules and heavy bookeeping, like wargames, it's probably great (apart from the fact it does not alleviate some specific problems like being able to see the other's player pieces, how to simulate fog-of-war and so on, unless you force players to take turns at the table).
If you want to participate in a shared narrative game (like I would say any RPG is, even those heavily influenced by wargames, like D&D) it's probably better to have a lighter set of rules, and allow the referee to edit things on the fly without having the players to necessarily spot any inconsistencies.
I both agree and disagree with you here. I think it is better to have clearly defined parts of the game where the players know the rules and can feel that they are on a level playing field with the GM, and let the light and fluffy rules apply to everything outside of that. If the game master spends too much time editing reality just to fit the predefined story then you might as well strap the players onto a flatcar and push them down the tracks.
You can play fast and easy all you want with setting up the story, introducing the villains and leading up to a big showdown at the end, but once the miniatures are on the map and the fighting starts you need to play fair with the players. If that means letting somebody's character get an amazingly lucky shot which puts and arrow through your carefully prepared villain's eye from the other side of the castle in the opening round, then so be it. Grabbing the dice and saying "Uh... that didn't happen" is just cheating.
As a game master you just need to deal with it. Do some quick rewrites and reveal that the late big bad guy was just a pawn and now there's a new guy in charge, or arrange to have him spirited away by his minions and show up a few sessions later with an eyepatch and an even bigger grudge than before, but don't cheat your players just because something that they did doesn't fit in with the narrative you had in mind. Remember that RPGs are a shared experience where all of the participants develop the story together. Railroading them into the storyline that you prepared for them is just boring for everybody.
That's funny, I received a similar if slightly longer email from HTC.
PERMIT ME TO INFORM YOU OF MY DESIRE OF GOING INTO PROGRAMMING WITH YOU. I GOT YOUR NAME AND CONTACT FROM THE TOGOLESE FREE SOFTWARE FOUNDATION. I PRAYED OVER IT AND SELECTED YOUR NAME AMONG OTHER NAMES DUE TO IT'S ESTEEMING NATURE AND THE RECOMMENDATIONS GIVEN TO ME AS A REPUTABLE AND TRUST WORTHY PERSON I CAN SHARE SOURCE CODE WITH AND BY THEIR RECOMMENDATIONS I MUST NOT HESITATE TO CONFIDE IN YOU FOR THIS SIMPLE AND SINCERE BUSINESS.
I AM AITCH TEE SEE, THE ONLY CHILD OF LATE MR AND MRS TEE SEE. MY FATHER WAS A VERY WEALTHY TELEPHONE MERCHANT BASED IN TAIWAN...
It went on for a while, but finally Mr. Tee See got to the point about source code:
THE SOURCE CODE IS CONTAINED IN A SEALED TRUNK BOX, IT WAS REGISTERED AND DECLEARED AS CONTAINING HERO SANDWICHES, SO EVEN AS I AM WRITEING YOU NOW THE SECURITY AND IT'S AGENTS ARE NOT AWARE OF THE CONTENTS CONTAINED AS SOURCE CODE FOR THE HERO PHONE. LET ME ASURE YOU THAT THIS TRANSACTION IS 100% HITCH AND FRISK FREE.BASED ON YOUR ACCEPTING TO HELP ME I WILL BE GIVING YOU A REASONABLE AMOUNT OF PERCENTGE FOR YOUR INVOLVEMENT IN THIS AND THIS WILL BE DISCUS UPON YOUR RESPONCE TO MY MAIL.
I have been reading over the terms of the GPL and this all seems like everything is legal, but a week later I'm still no closer to getting that trunk full of source code. Every time Mr. Tee See emails me there's some hitch or another -- First the location of the trunk was encrypted so I had to FTP him a copy of GPG, then he needed SRPMs for OpenOffice.Org so he could clear up some kind of red tape, and now he wants me to copy all of/usr/src from FreeBSD on a web server for him.
It's all very frustrating, but I'm convinced that Aitch Tee See is honest in his desire to get me the source code for the Hero. I will update you all when I finally receive it.
I have never seen anyone bring a laptop to a movie theater, ever.
Maybe that's because they leave them in their bags instead of holding them up in the air and waving them around while shouting "Hey, everybody, look at my laptop!"
Just a thought.
Unless you were trying to say that you have never, ever seen anyone bring a bag more than 30 cm wide into a movie theatre, in which case I would have to ask you just what kind of movies legally bind people enjoy.
"Washington Post Urges Thieves To Distribute Linux LiveCDs"
A few racks full of CDs in a highly visible place, or even cheap preloaded USB drives delivered right to the mark's front door along with a friendly letter explaining how running Linux would help improve security and thwart The Bad Guys could make your job of stealing from the clueless even easier than before.
I was, however, surprised to find that Rob Liefeld was now working for Ralph Lauren.
Look at it. Body parts which were obviously mixed and matched from several different mannequins, a spine that has to travel through another dimension to reach her pelvis, and no feet. Throw in a couple belts covered with pouches and you've got every Liefeld girl ever drawn.
Perhaps this is because I was taught the fundamentals of science and the application of principles as opposed to rote memorization of formulas. Some professors routinely made up units on tests just to hammer down the point (and throw off pretenders like yourself).
I'm sorry that your experience in first year was so traumatic, Mr. Coward, but that's why they are referred to as "weeder courses". There's no need to still be bitter about it.
Scientists are trained in a variety of units and converting from one to the other.
Indeed. For example, astronomers waste a lot of time converting between mks and cgs. They do not, however, publish real science using archaic units like rods, hogsheads, inches, or degrees Fahrenheit unless they want to be laughed at by their peers. Or are giving an interview to USA Today. Same thing, really.
A real scientist ought to know this. What excuses your ignorance?
Being one.
That, and you know, occasionally reading a thing or two about my own field. If your field is still stuck in the 18th century, then more power to you, but when you're looking at planets you're usually talking about astronomy and it helps to know the language.
Although the ring dust is very cold -- minus 316 degrees Fahrenheit -- it shines with thermal radiation.
That's -193'C or 80 K if you're an actual scientist.
The bulk of the ring material starts about 3.7 million miles from the planet and extends outward about another 7.4 million miles.
...has an inner radius of 5.9 million kilometers and extends to 17 million km.
>The newly found ring is so huge it would take 1 billion Earths to fill it
That's "so huge it would take 1.03×10^29 Volkswagens to fill it"
JPL said
JPL is a collection of buildings in California and does not speak. Perhaps the Oracle of JPL made this prophecy?
"This is one supersized ring," said one of the authors, Anne Verbiscer, an astronomer at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.
Unless the McDonalds in Charlottesville have changed recently, 10^29 Volkswagens would be a 'Large'. If you want supersized rings it's going to be an extra 49 cents.
As always, it comes down to consumer choice. Do you want an MC-900-Foot-Jesus-Phone with a library of twelve thousand different fart noises at your fingertips which goes from fully charged to flat in six hours, or would you rather tote around a nigh-indestructible Motofone F3 with a battery which lasts over a week on a single charge, but has no features beyond voice and SMS?
I would advise you to vote with your wallet and let the market decide, but you'd have to buy a new F3 every day for over three weeks just to add up to the cost of The Other Phone so it seems that some votes count more than others.
Slashdot Mirror
You could have kept reading, you know.
The FEC standards say "prohibited". They do not say "Any self-modifying, dynamically loaded or interpreted code is only okay if someone who is a really good programmer says it is" or "Interpreted code is okey dokey as long as it isn't called all that often". If the database itself contains application code which modifies the database, then that's a problem. It doesn't matter what kind of code it is or how benign you think it is, it should not be there at all.
If you would like to share your educated opinion where it matters, feel free to comment in the wiki. That's what it's there for.
Darn it, you caught me. I guess I just have the same journalistic standards as the New York Times.
Where's the profit in that?
As an experiment, the New York Times once ran the headline "Everything Is Fine, Nothing To Worry About" on their front page. For some reason that day's sales were way lower than either the Daily News or the New York Post, whose front pages both predicted imminent doom.
Go figure.
Yup, they sure do. It's right there in their Terms of Service:
So... If you had bought Batman:AA from Direct2Drive, received the activation key, activated it and then played it for about an hour, how much of a refund would you expect? Perhaps you believe that "The game SUCKS!" qualifies as special circumstances and not mere "dissatisfaction with the Product"?
Please, tell us more about this world you live in.
If this really bothers you, you can always turn your screen sideways.
I both agree and disagree with you here. I think it is better to have clearly defined parts of the game where the players know the rules and can feel that they are on a level playing field with the GM, and let the light and fluffy rules apply to everything outside of that. If the game master spends too much time editing reality just to fit the predefined story then you might as well strap the players onto a flatcar and push them down the tracks.
You can play fast and easy all you want with setting up the story, introducing the villains and leading up to a big showdown at the end, but once the miniatures are on the map and the fighting starts you need to play fair with the players. If that means letting somebody's character get an amazingly lucky shot which puts and arrow through your carefully prepared villain's eye from the other side of the castle in the opening round, then so be it. Grabbing the dice and saying "Uh... that didn't happen" is just cheating.
As a game master you just need to deal with it. Do some quick rewrites and reveal that the late big bad guy was just a pawn and now there's a new guy in charge, or arrange to have him spirited away by his minions and show up a few sessions later with an eyepatch and an even bigger grudge than before, but don't cheat your players just because something that they did doesn't fit in with the narrative you had in mind. Remember that RPGs are a shared experience where all of the participants develop the story together. Railroading them into the storyline that you prepared for them is just boring for everybody.
On the other hand, they are famous comments. That's got to be worth something at that new government job.
That's funny, I received a similar if slightly longer email from HTC.
It went on for a while, but finally Mr. Tee See got to the point about source code:
I have been reading over the terms of the GPL and this all seems like everything is legal, but a week later I'm still no closer to getting that trunk full of source code. Every time Mr. Tee See emails me there's some hitch or another -- First the location of the trunk was encrypted so I had to FTP him a copy of GPG, then he needed SRPMs for OpenOffice.Org so he could clear up some kind of red tape, and now he wants me to copy all of /usr/src from FreeBSD on a web server for him.
It's all very frustrating, but I'm convinced that Aitch Tee See is honest in his desire to get me the source code for the Hero. I will update you all when I finally receive it.
Maybe that's because they leave them in their bags instead of holding them up in the air and waving them around while shouting "Hey, everybody, look at my laptop!"
Just a thought.
Unless you were trying to say that you have never, ever seen anyone bring a bag more than 30 cm wide into a movie theatre, in which case I would have to ask you just what kind of movies legally bind people enjoy.
"Washington Post Urges Thieves To Distribute Linux LiveCDs"
A few racks full of CDs in a highly visible place, or even cheap preloaded USB drives delivered right to the mark's front door along with a friendly letter explaining how running Linux would help improve security and thwart The Bad Guys could make your job of stealing from the clueless even easier than before.
Won't somebody please think of the elephants?
Of course. By channeling it through the main deflector dish.
Cover letters look something like this.
It's up to you to decide if that's a good one.
I was, however, surprised to find that Rob Liefeld was now working for Ralph Lauren.
Look at it. Body parts which were obviously mixed and matched from several different mannequins, a spine that has to travel through another dimension to reach her pelvis, and no feet. Throw in a couple belts covered with pouches and you've got every Liefeld girl ever drawn.
Is that you, Michale Geist?
Or just some guy who doesn't talk and carries a crowbar.
I'm sorry that your experience in first year was so traumatic, Mr. Coward, but that's why they are referred to as "weeder courses". There's no need to still be bitter about it.
Indeed. For example, astronomers waste a lot of time converting between mks and cgs. They do not, however, publish real science using archaic units like rods, hogsheads, inches, or degrees Fahrenheit unless they want to be laughed at by their peers. Or are giving an interview to USA Today. Same thing, really.
Being one.
That, and you know, occasionally reading a thing or two about my own field. If your field is still stuck in the 18th century, then more power to you, but when you're looking at planets you're usually talking about astronomy and it helps to know the language.
That's -193'C or 80 K if you're an actual scientist.
...has an inner radius of 5.9 million kilometers and extends to 17 million km.
That's "so huge it would take 1.03×10^29 Volkswagens to fill it"
JPL is a collection of buildings in California and does not speak. Perhaps the Oracle of JPL made this prophecy?
Unless the McDonalds in Charlottesville have changed recently, 10^29 Volkswagens would be a 'Large'. If you want supersized rings it's going to be an extra 49 cents.
According to the link you provided, the USB driver issue on the 520GU was resolved over a year ago and it now runs USB 2.0 without problems.
Even the URL told you it was an old link.
Just remember to pick up an untraceable paperback copy. Orwell eBooks have a distressing habit of dropping into the memory hole.
As always, it comes down to consumer choice. Do you want an MC-900-Foot-Jesus-Phone with a library of twelve thousand different fart noises at your fingertips which goes from fully charged to flat in six hours, or would you rather tote around a nigh-indestructible Motofone F3 with a battery which lasts over a week on a single charge, but has no features beyond voice and SMS?
I would advise you to vote with your wallet and let the market decide, but you'd have to buy a new F3 every day for over three weeks just to add up to the cost of The Other Phone so it seems that some votes count more than others.
And isn't that what it's supposed to do? Or did I misread the spec somehow?
The "Sea Sick Flashlight"? That's the best they could come up with?
What's wrong with its proper name, the Chunder-Gat? I'd settle for Chunderbuss if Rankin/Bass objected.
Why? Don't you get paid, too? If not then maybe you're the one who has the wrong job.