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User: Chris_Jefferson

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  1. MacBook on AnandTech Gives the Skinny On Recent SSD Offerings · · Score: 1

    Does anyone know which controller / drive is in macbooks, and how these results match up to those on macs with SSDs?

  2. Re:Summary and blogspam link laughably incorrect on "Authors Guild" Skims Half of Google Book-Rights Settlement · · Score: 3, Informative
    That sounds more like the BSD licence.

    In a no-copyright world, I could take your stuff, change it, put it in my binary-only product, and not give you back the changes I made. The GPL doesn't allow that.

  3. Re:Pass by reference on Null References, the Billion Dollar Mistake · · Score: 3, Informative

    According to the C++ standard, as soon as you dereference NULL, you are off into the nasty old land of undefined behaviour, and all kinds of horrible things can occur to you.

  4. Re:Mod parent up on Gamer Claims Identifying As a Lesbian Led To Xbox Live Ban · · Score: 1, Insightful

    I'm NOT saying Homosexuality isn't fine, but saying animals do it just isn't a good justification. There are animals that kill and eat their own mothers, but I don't think that's a good justification for doing it yourself.

  5. A hundred uses! All invalid! on Don't Like EULAs? Get Your Cat To Agree To Them · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Haha! Negative equity isn't a problem for me, I don't have to pay back my mortgage, because I got my goldfish to sign for it!

  6. Re:Hi again on How Many Open Source Licenses Do You Need? · · Score: 1

    I do not believe (but of course IANAL) that you can use GPL v3 code in iPhone applications, as they have to be DRM signed by Apple. However, you can make GPL v2 applications for the iPhone.

  7. GPL v3 vs Linus on How Many Open Source Licenses Do You Need? · · Score: 1
    The kernel, which is one of the biggest, certainly the most famous, GPL v2 project isn't planning to change to GPL v3.

    I'm impressed how Perens feels he can just brush away all disagreement with the GPL v3 because "Linus had a personal issue with it, some I'm ignoring that".

    Joining the GPL v3 steamroller isn't going to make developers any more willing to use it.

  8. Re:"Just about any game"? on Balancing Player Input and Developer Vision? · · Score: 1
    (Question Author) - Yes that is the game I'm talking about!

    You make a very good point about the artwork - I'm a terrible, terrible artist, both in terms of drawing, and just being good at composition. Getting some better artwork could well be a good idea to make the game smoother to play. You should have seem some of the earlier UI designs. They were REALLY horrible.

  9. Re:Frustration! on Balancing Player Input and Developer Vision? · · Score: 1
    I spent literally months being frustrated by various levels in Lemmings (not that I would claim any puzzle game can compare with that), but I still don't think I would change any of it.

    Of course back when I played Lemmings, the only hints I could get get was from the other people I went to school with. Now I could just jump on the internet when I get stuck.

  10. Re:look at the stats on Balancing Player Input and Developer Vision? · · Score: 2, Insightful
    (Article Author) While I think hard stats are better, I'm not sure the way you suggest going about it is the best.

    I bet if WoW offered two identical releases, one where you started level 1 and one where you could start on any level you wanted most people would choose the second. However, long term that would probably give WoW a worse reputation and an overall loss of sales.

  11. Re:What is your goal? on Balancing Player Input and Developer Vision? · · Score: 1
    (Original author of the post here)

    What about the obvious third option - I want to make a game that is the most fun for everyone else?

    Even if the aim is the sell the game, what are the features that will sell the game? Just because a bunch of users say they want something, doesn't actually mean that adding that will make the game better, or more popular.

    The real question is (I think) one of self-control. In your (and other's) experience, how easy (if at all) should it be to skip through parts of a game? Should users just be trusted to skip whatever and all parts they want, or should they be forced to put more thought and time in, because in the end they will enjoy it more?

  12. Python still can't replace quick scripting on Beginning Portable Shell Scripting · · Score: 3, Insightful
    While I find anything I want to be stable and distributable I now write in Python, I still can't resist pulling out shell scripting, and a splattering of grep, awk, find, mv and xargs to do 95% of the simple pushing around and chopping up of files I find myself doing every day.

    I find shell scripting have a nasty habit of not working quiet right when moved between Linux, the BSDs and Mac to be safe, and it's always a pain to write scripts that work correctly with spaces in file names.

    Why isn't there (or is there?) a simple python cheat guide, or library, that do the same things as grep, awk, find, mv and xargs?

  13. Re:Has anyone considered... on Google Search Flagging Everything As Potentially Harmful · · Score: 1

    Including google itself? (which is being flagged)

  14. Re:Innovation! on January 2009 Indie Game Round-Up · · Score: 0, Troll

    Yes, why not look for something original, like (I believe), my iPhone game :) iTune Link. While there has been a lot of real problems with apple and the iPhone store, I believe it is a great place for indie games, providing a way of getting some money out of small, fun games.

  15. Re:But.., on New Open Source FPS Blood Frontier Shows Promise · · Score: 2, Informative

    It's easy to do those kind of hacks in closed-source projects too, that's why almost every commercial game has moved to not trusting the client as much as possible, only sending it what the client can see and only accepting input it trusts as valid.

  16. Re:This is ridiculous on Lawsuit Stops Headline Scraping · · Score: 1

    Sure, the benefits might be great, but people should still have the choice if they want to be scraped or not. If it is so great, everyone who disables it will find their views drop while other news sites shoot up in popularity. That's how these things are supposed to work, not "this is good for you, honest, so I'm going to do without even if you don't want it".

  17. A victim of it's own hype? on Battlestar Galactica's Last Days · · Score: -1, Redundant
    I watched the first six or so episodes of BSG, decided it was a bit dull, and stopped.

    Now, my figures may be way off, but it looks to me like the last episode of BSG pulled in less than 2 million viewers, unlike Chuck, a fun show I'm currently enjoying, which pulled in around 6 million. (Do correct me if I'm way off).

    BSG is a show with a very vocal audience, who enjoy discussing and dissecting every issue all over the internet, despite my best attempts to avoid them. However, I'm not sure it's actually that fun to watch. It certainly wasn't at first.

    Who is the fifth cylon? I really couldn't care less. I don't hate BSG, but just to put some perspective on things, for most people it isn't that big.

  18. Re:Users are to blame on More Than Coding Errors Behind Bad Software · · Score: 1

    I'm not saying I don't just this group too. Just that this is why there is buggy software, and no amount of process is going to solve it. We, including me, are willing to trade bugs for features, so that is the kind of software the clever person is going to create.

  19. Users are to blame on More Than Coding Errors Behind Bad Software · · Score: 5, Insightful
    The sad truth is, given the choice between a well-written, stable and fast application with a tiny set of features and a giant slow buggy program with every feature under the sun, too many users choose the second.

    If people refused to use and pay for buggy applications, they would either get fixed or die off.

  20. Re:Ethics, line 1... on More Brains Needed · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Well I know lots of members of the medical profession, and I can say this is total rubbish, for 3 reasons: 1) Doctors appreciate organ doners. They know very little about you when you are rushed in, but if they know you are a doner they know something good about you. 2) There has been rumours of doctors getting in trouble for doing just what you say, and no-one wants to risk getting in trouble, so they err on the side of caution. 3) Why the heck would a doctor decide to not do an expensive operation? The hospital gets paid when they do expensive operations. I can honestly say YOU are scaremongering, and in the process possibly risking other people's lives. If you do die, getting the organs as quickly as possible is crucial, so your scaremongering could well kill people, and that makes you a shit. Sorry.

  21. Re:Who is Kate McKinley? on Browser Privacy Test · · Score: 1

    Don't trust the name, trust the evidence (I haven't RTFA yet, but intend to).

  22. There is speculation... on Alan Cox Leaves Red Hat · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Where does there always have to be speculation, from completely uninformed people? From my little knowledge of Alan Cox, from mailing lists, he always seems like the kind of guy who likes the lower-level details, and I imagine that few companies will be more interested in tweaking and improving the low levels than Intel. If they saw his obvious talent, and offered him a better job at better pay, then why not move? Alan Cox leaving Redhat doesn't have to say anything bad about them, maybe it says something good about Intel, and the things they are getting more involved in?

  23. Re:He would still be convicted for the obscene e-m on The Slippery Legal Slope of Cartoon Porn · · Score: 1

    So that will be Steven King, with the child sex scene near the end of 'It', in jail then?

  24. Re:It's 2009 on Michael Meeks Says OO.o Project is "Profoundly Sick" · · Score: 3, Informative

    Kohei wouldn't sign the copyright over to them. Try writing an addition to emacs or gcc and submit it to the FSF without a copyright assignment and you'll get exactly the same response.

  25. Re:It's just unreal on Bush's Electronic Archives Threaten To Swamp National Archives · · Score: 1

    Probably true. I had real hope for McCain when he was first running, I'd vaguely followed his carrier before and thought he was one of the few people who had some backbone, but then it all fell away, shame really. Of course, the real question is what state Obama will be in after he has been in power for 4 years.