"(2) Follow standard industry disciplinary procedures: . ..A verbal warning first, then a written warning; and finally suspension or being expelled. "
For ordinary offenses (arriving late for lectures), this was the standard policy of my first university (RGU). Back they, they never had to handle the problems of plagiarism by students. The most lecturers had to worry about, was that foreign students would take their lectures notes back home, bind them and sell the script off to a publisher as a book.
...is that the university didn't warn him that they knew he was plagiarising papers for his courseworks, but instead let him keep going until the week of the final exams and then told him there wasn't any point in him taking them, as they wouldn't let him pass anyway, thus letting him build up debts of $15,000+.
There are two other possible options they could have done at the first time they he was plagiarising text:
(1) Throw him out immediately.
(2) Follow standard industry disciplinary procedures: . ..A verbal warning first, then a written warning; and finally suspension or being expelled.
Given that the university stated that plagiarising won't be tolerated, why didn't they warn him? If a students wasn't getting some topic and constantly getting wrong answers, wouldn't the department have told him? If someone decided they wanted to become a pilot, attended flying school, but lacked the concentration/attention span required to learn, would the instructors waste their (and his) time stringing that person along only to tell them that they shouldn't bother attending the exam?
There are standard punishments for this type of behavior. To allow someone to build up this amount of debt is purely vindictive and would probably amount to a "cruel and unusual punishment". It seems to me, the department were only interested in collecting as much money from him as possible.
About 15 years ago, when our new computer labs were first opened, five key combination locks were put on the doors, with the access code set to the default.
15 years later and 5000 miles away on a continent on the other side of the planet, I'm on the walking trails beside our hotel and come across a gate on the boundary fence which has the exact same combination lock. And yes, it had the exact same access code.
I only bought it after Gabe and Tycho raved about how fantastic it was. And even then, I mulled the purchase for months. But man, do I regret waiting so long... let me sum up the main characters.
Laharl is a complete self-centered jerk who hates everything that is good, and is a truly sadistic bastard. It's all about him or nothing.
Etna is on crack. I simply think it's the best way to describe her, and everyone I believe will agree with me. She's evil and has a few screws loose, and that's the way I like her.
Flonne is... ditzy, though I guess she adds to the story.
----- I'm only about 9 chapters in, but this game has already entered my hall of fame not too far off from my #1 spot that is River City Ransom (which I got about 15 years ago!). The story is completely off the wall. It's the Monty Python rendition of Final Fantasy Tactics.
The item world is cool. Little specialists live inside every item you can get. If you want to make your item stronger, you can go into the item to attempt to subdue them (to gain bonuses), or just to level up the item. The deeper you go, the harder stuff is, to the point where shit gets insanely hard. You can move the specialists between items. Rarer items can hold more specialists, and are harder to delve deeper into. Item Kings and Item Gods are effin huge.
The Dark Assembly is the netherworld's version of congress. In order to gain new benefits in the evil democracy, you need to get bills passed. Want stronger items in the shop? Try to put it by the Assembly. Senator not leaning your way? Bribe them. You fail to get it passed? Sure you can leave, but you can also opt to subdue all the senators, so the bill passes after you kick all of congress's ass.
Level 99 in a Square RPG? Too simple. Disgaea lets you level to 9999, in multiple classes, PER character. You can have an assload of characters, with nearly 100 classes aside from the main characters. You need to sometimes too, for side quests. Ever fight guys with millions of HP? I have. Emerald Weapon would get his ass whipped in this game.
The story? I've fallen out of my furniture of choice at times. Two words that I'm sure everyone will remember and chuckle at: Prism Rangers. I'm sorry, that cutscene made me bust out into hysterics practically. Very sharp, brutal storyline at times. It gets a bit slow and soft once in a while, but this shit is funny.
And tie it up with anime-style graphics, ridiculous special moves bordering on overkill, combos, the geo symbols, and exploding sub-ordinate penguins that speak l33t, and you get the idea of where this game is going. Just buy it. If you can't find it, Amazon or eBay it. It's worth every fucking cent and thensome.
----- I just picked up La Pucelle. Certainly Prier is no Etna, but it's amusing at times. I miss Lift/Throw, and it's a lot tougher to really use the Dark Symbols/Portals effectively, and combat does take longer (Disgaea is generally more refined), but I'm pretty pleased with it. ----- You just can't go too wrong with these games folks. If you're a bit hesitant, get Disgaea first. If you like that, pick up La Pucelle.
I've also decided to take the.NET route with things for the ground-up rewrite of the app. However, I would've went with Java if I wasn't the only one in the company familiar with it.
The app's going to support both SQL Server/MSDE and Oracle for the backend (data access being completely abstracted by a DAL that uses ADO.NET), with future support for DB2, and possibly others like MySQL down the road. The primary front-end is going to be done in ASP.NET that strictly follows browser standards (XHTML 1.0 Strict with CSS Level 1 support). So if customers have old PCs, are running Macs, or Linux or whatnot, we have full support. WAN configs end up being much easier too, and remote access becomes much snappier.
There's still going to be a thick-client front-end for POS hardware and such, but that's the only thing that'll "require" Windows, and that may not last forever.
The primary communications mechanism is a web service layer. As an IIS application, it clusters well. Supports both application and OS-integrated security nicely. Just add SSL for encryption. SDK production becomes a snap, too. We have a mechanism to restrict access to certain webmethods, and our documentation simply gets some fields stripped out and becomes SDK docs. So if sa large customer that has a few in-house admins or IT staffers wants to write something in Perl or whatnot to have an existing app integrate with ours, it's fairly straightforward.
That's the plan at least. I'm quite a ways out from release, but with 3.x going into maintenance mode, I get a lot more time for prototyping, drawing up specifications, and actually getting to start doling out work for 4.x.
Good luck to you on your own.NET endeavor ----- -----
I would say, but a Google search would quickly reveal the product.
It does basic point-of-sale, inventory control (including purchasing), time/resource management (including work orders) for a vertical industry that has more or less been neglected all these years.
Oh, that's happened countless times. But the developers have become quite displeased, and management has realized that people are willing to walk instead of maintaining this disaster.
My current job. Before I begin, I've fortunately JUST been granted permission to stop development of the current major version, and rewrite the app from scratch, because the devleopment timeline to implement the new features in the existing version, far exceeded rewriting the app sanely to ensure extensibility wasn't a problem. And before anyone says "why not refactor?", I did consider it, though after you read what's below, you wouldn't want to refactor this mess either.
Our flagship product is written completely in VBA. The front-end was created using Microsoft Access. The back-end for data storage is Microsoft SQL Server. Oh-hoh, but you've heard NOTHING yet.
The VBA developers of the past was the VP and a few interesting individuals. None of them knowing how to program, nevermind in VB. It's largely a mass of 150,000 lines of spaghetti code. Functions are far from being imdepotent -- you'll have forms that touch all portions of the application. Lots of globals that are used frequently, often with conflict. One guy apparently didn't know how to use variables, so he'd embed text boxes on the main form, and set their visibility property to false, and use them to store values. Not only for the current form, but for the ENTIRE APP. It's great fun debugging those!
The database schema is just as bad. There's no normalization. We're talking strings that describe a product being primary keys. There are no constraints on columns, and adding them would break a lot of existing data in most deployments. Everything seems to be tacked on, often without thought. So instead of having detail tables, or linking tables, folks would just add columns. There are numerous tables in the database that bump up against the limit of how much non-BLOB data can be stored in a row, since nothing is normalized.
There's lots of other weirdness too. Someone apparently had fun learning from books -- why use the built in REPLACE() when you can write your own that only replaces one character (as opposed to substrings), in only one instance, can't define a start and end position, and doesn't support binary replace. And then use it throughout the entire app, improperly at that.
150,000 lines. How many are comments? 200. Written documentation? None. Spec? They didn't use specs.
Did I forget to mention that the database schemas also different from customer to customer, and the front-ends themselves, including weird one-offs for individual customers. I spent a month consolidating schemas and front-ends so we could have ONE distribution.
There are some reports with 1000 lines of code-behind. Yes, reports. Why? Since the database is a mess, and the only way folks apparently matched data up was through joins after joins after joins (ever see 4 nested outer joins to match up two colums? I've seen it FIVE times in the same sproc!).
Did I fail to mention that there's no record locking? Yup, deadlocking issues are abound.
Did I fail to mention there are no CASCADES? That NOTHING in the app is transactional, including pushing accounting data into other packages -- some methods in which involve DIRECTLY modifying the other package's tables!
Did I fail to mention that between all the hidden controls, and virtually everything being databound (running this app over anything but a 100Mb LAN is near impossible), actuall causes some interesting issues in which multiple threads fight for the same data, in which pointers apparently get crushed and misused, resulting in Access itself crashing.
Triggers. 800 of them. Why have a sproc wrap everything neatly within a transaction when you can have triggers do all sorts of wacky things!
Naming conventions. Something like boolWhatever isn't a bool, it's a double. Things that should logically only support 2 states, are really 5. Maybe our app supports quantum indecision, I don't know.
Did I fail to mention that is uses ADO 2.1, and EXPLOITS several bugs in it. Moving to ADO 2.5 (or newer) comp
Recently I just picked up Disgaea for PS2. I read a few reviews on it, and PA seemed enthralled by it, but I couldn't justify the full $50 GameStop insisted I pay. I mulled it for months, and finally decided why not and included it in a stack of games I bought.
I seriously regret having put it off for months.
The story, though fairly basic, is sometimes downright hilarious. There were three times where I seriously had to contain myself, and throughout the rest of the plot there are many of chuckles. A lot of things are simply said in the dialogue that really came out of left field. And it all comes through with great anime style, and quality voice acting. This is akin to the "Monty Python's Quest for the Holy Grail" of tactical RPGs.
There's a lot of hidden things to explore. The demon senate concept is amusing to say the least, though I haven't managed to persuade any senators by force yet. The item world is ridiculous, and turns the game into a FF Tactics meets Dungeon Crawl concept since its always different, and I end up with all sorts of crazy items if I survive.
And the core game itself? Pretty good. I'm 9 chapters in after about 30 hours, and have a feeling it'll be 60 hours before I just beat the core game -- but they're going by as fast as they did for the original FF Tactics. Nevermind the fact the game supposedly has a ton of different endings, and that I could spend forever leveling up to level 9999, getting all sorts of insane items and ridiculous looking attacks, etc.
Yet, good luck finding it. 14 stores and one had two in stock. I'm sure this was a low-volume venture by Atlus here in the states. I've thoroughly enjoyed it, but most folks haven't even heard of it. Which is a shame.
I second that. I have a Plextor PX-708A and I've managed to rip off a full 4.5 disk in a hair over 8 minutes.
This Sony takes about 2 1/2 times longer to burn? Something doesn't seem quite right. The only possibility I'd hazard is that the dual-layer media is being burned at 2.4X, which I have a gut feeling is the case.
I think it's about time Slashdot had something along this line: ----- -----
Slashdot Men of Genius... Today we salute you, mister "begs-the-question". Mister begs-the-question! While millions can understand a basic phrase, you take the lead in misinterpreting everything. Cannot make a distinction! Your lack of logic ensures that phrases coined centuries ago will continue to wreak confusion for years come. A leader in confusion! You know, your anal retentive obsession about "begs the question" really begs the question, do you really understand basic English? This is the question I'm beggin'! And gosh, did you know that I B.A'd in Logic? Fat lot of good that did me with guys like you around telling me how to speak. Slashdot Men of Genius
That's nothing...
on
Retro Vision
·
· Score: 4, Funny
A while back, a bunch of us, for whatever reason, were arguing what the Hamburgler used to say. Whether is was "robble robble", or "rabble rabble". We debated this for 5 minutes, no fooling. Just kept going on and on, until someone suggested, "Why don't you just find out at a Hamburgler fan site?".
After that sentence, we all just fell silent. It was an absolutely strange suggestion when you thought about it, but we also realized that they probably do exist.
And lo and behold, Google didn't just find one, it found about a dozen. We laughed, both at the idea of googling for it, and the sad truth that there are Hamburgler fansites out there.
There is a candle shop that opened up at the end of a highway. Went in one day, just for the hell of it. Hey, who on earth makes a candle store out in the middle of randomness anyhow? Well the gal owning it is complaining about sales. Told her "yeah, it's those damn electric bulbs... but what're you gonna do?".
So I guess she got the idea to sell ice cream too on the side. It's actually good ice cream at that. But it's called "Licks N' Wicks". Truthfully I think she could've picked a better name. Still waiting for her to fold up shop.
"Last time I was in LA, I had to walk down eight flights of stairs with two big bags to check out of the hotel that had been without power twice during my stay. The vibrator would have really helped my muscles after that stressful hotel stay!"
There's muscles down there, but c'mon, they weren't worked hard from carrying bags.
Is it just me, or is anyone else wondering about that $100? I mean, $1.25 million is a nice, round number. Easy to remember and deal with, but that $100 extra is some sort of ugly wart at the end.
What is it? A birdbath? Prettier shingles? What honestly adjusts the price of a house by $100?!
I have 1 drink a year, at New Year's. Why should I have this?
My father is having a heart-attack and the ambulance has no idea where I live Oh well, I have to wait 30 seconds for my breath-test to compelte before I can attempt to get him to the hospital.
The unit fails, or is horribly uncalibrated, and my car stops. Again, why should I be inconvenienced?
If this is installed in every car, it should be DISABLED by default, and ONLY enabled for DUI offenders.
-----
Of course, remember folks, people will ALWAYS be idiots. Yesterday there was 5 inches of powder snow, and plows didn't bother coming to my neighborhood. There's a large downhill golf course 2 blocks away that's GREAT for sledding. But instead, some woman has he 4 young kids get on a sled, and hold onto the rear-bumper of her SUV as she drives around at 25-30mph. All fun and games until someone slides through a stop sign or loses control on the ice.
People are stupid, and they can't be protected by more foolish laws
He's the greatest, He's fantastic, Wherever there is danger he'll be there, He's the ace, He's amazing, He's the strongest, He's the quickest, He's the best, Danger Mouse, He's terrific, He's magnific, He's the bravest secret agent in the world.
Danger Mouse, Danger Mouse, Danger mouse.
I think that's all of it. Or maybe not. Crumbs, DM!
I actually have the Sony Ericsson T618, which has built-in BlueTooth and I pay the $20/mo for the unlimited data service T-Mobile has. It's a freakin' godsend.
On average I get about 45kbps, and as long as I have a phone signal, I have a data signal. I've used it on the road to connect to the company webmail, get directions, or grab patches/check docs online and stuff while enroute to a client (as a passenger) etc quite a bit.
Though the killer for me was I was out to eat with the VP when a client was having some serious issues. It could've waited until I got back, but we were waiting for the entree, so I whipped out my iPaq, connected to the customer's service through the terminal service client, fixed the borked config file, and made a return call all in about 10 minutes time. The customer was damned impressed and forever grateful.
And surprisingly, the service *is* unlimited. I put 400+MB through the phone last month, and I wasn't charged an extra cent. Truthfully I wish GRPS coverage around here was a bit better, but other than that, it kicks ass.
Slashdot Mirror
"(2) Follow standard industry disciplinary procedures: .A verbal warning first, then a written warning; and finally suspension or being expelled. "
. .
For ordinary offenses (arriving late for lectures), this was the standard policy of my first university (RGU). Back they, they never had to handle the problems of plagiarism by students. The most lecturers had to worry about, was that foreign students would take their lectures notes back home, bind them and sell the script off to a publisher as a book.
...is that the university didn't warn him that they knew he was plagiarising papers for his courseworks, but instead let him keep going until the week of the final exams and then told him there wasn't any point in him taking them, as they wouldn't let him pass anyway, thus letting him build up debts of $15,000+.
.A verbal warning first, then a written warning; and finally suspension or being expelled.
There are two other possible options they could have done at the first time they he was plagiarising text:
(1) Throw him out immediately.
(2) Follow standard industry disciplinary procedures:
. .
Given that the university stated that plagiarising won't be tolerated, why didn't they warn him? If a students wasn't getting some topic and constantly getting wrong answers, wouldn't the department have told him? If someone decided they wanted to become a pilot, attended flying school, but lacked the concentration/attention span required to learn, would the instructors waste their (and his) time stringing that person along only to tell them that they shouldn't bother attending the exam?
There are standard punishments for this type of behavior. To allow someone to build up this amount of debt is purely vindictive and would probably amount to a "cruel and unusual punishment". It seems to me, the department were only interested in collecting as much money from him as possible.
Yes, something like S1000 if not exactly that type.
About 15 years ago, when our new computer labs were first opened, five key combination locks were put on the doors, with the access code set to the default.
15 years later and 5000 miles away on a continent on the other side of the planet, I'm on the walking trails beside our hotel and come across a gate on the boundary fence which has the exact same combination lock. And yes, it had the exact same access code.
A couple of links from a Google search for "microsoft powerpc chip ibm"
Microsoft to use IBM chips in next Xbox
Microsoft Partners with IBM for Xbox2
Yeah! I've always needed a box to play Glider. The Windows port always acts wonky and doesn't have an editor.
Paper airplane action, here I come!
-----
I only bought it after Gabe and Tycho raved about how fantastic it was. And even then, I mulled the purchase for months. But man, do I regret waiting so long... let me sum up the main characters.
Laharl is a complete self-centered jerk who hates everything that is good, and is a truly sadistic bastard. It's all about him or nothing.
Etna is on crack. I simply think it's the best way to describe her, and everyone I believe will agree with me. She's evil and has a few screws loose, and that's the way I like her.
Flonne is... ditzy, though I guess she adds to the story.
-----
I'm only about 9 chapters in, but this game has already entered my hall of fame not too far off from my #1 spot that is River City Ransom (which I got about 15 years ago!). The story is completely off the wall. It's the Monty Python rendition of Final Fantasy Tactics.
The item world is cool. Little specialists live inside every item you can get. If you want to make your item stronger, you can go into the item to attempt to subdue them (to gain bonuses), or just to level up the item. The deeper you go, the harder stuff is, to the point where shit gets insanely hard. You can move the specialists between items. Rarer items can hold more specialists, and are harder to delve deeper into. Item Kings and Item Gods are effin huge.
The Dark Assembly is the netherworld's version of congress. In order to gain new benefits in the evil democracy, you need to get bills passed. Want stronger items in the shop? Try to put it by the Assembly. Senator not leaning your way? Bribe them. You fail to get it passed? Sure you can leave, but you can also opt to subdue all the senators, so the bill passes after you kick all of congress's ass.
Level 99 in a Square RPG? Too simple. Disgaea lets you level to 9999, in multiple classes, PER character. You can have an assload of characters, with nearly 100 classes aside from the main characters. You need to sometimes too, for side quests. Ever fight guys with millions of HP? I have. Emerald Weapon would get his ass whipped in this game.
The story? I've fallen out of my furniture of choice at times. Two words that I'm sure everyone will remember and chuckle at: Prism Rangers. I'm sorry, that cutscene made me bust out into hysterics practically. Very sharp, brutal storyline at times. It gets a bit slow and soft once in a while, but this shit is funny.
And tie it up with anime-style graphics, ridiculous special moves bordering on overkill, combos, the geo symbols, and exploding sub-ordinate penguins that speak l33t, and you get the idea of where this game is going. Just buy it. If you can't find it, Amazon or eBay it. It's worth every fucking cent and thensome.
-----
I just picked up La Pucelle. Certainly Prier is no Etna, but it's amusing at times. I miss Lift/Throw, and it's a lot tougher to really use the Dark Symbols/Portals effectively, and combat does take longer (Disgaea is generally more refined), but I'm pretty pleased with it.
-----
You just can't go too wrong with these games folks. If you're a bit hesitant, get Disgaea first. If you like that, pick up La Pucelle.
-----
I've also decided to take the .NET route with things for the ground-up rewrite of the app. However, I would've went with Java if I wasn't the only one in the company familiar with it.
.NET endeavor
The app's going to support both SQL Server/MSDE and Oracle for the backend (data access being completely abstracted by a DAL that uses ADO.NET), with future support for DB2, and possibly others like MySQL down the road. The primary front-end is going to be done in ASP.NET that strictly follows browser standards (XHTML 1.0 Strict with CSS Level 1 support). So if customers have old PCs, are running Macs, or Linux or whatnot, we have full support. WAN configs end up being much easier too, and remote access becomes much snappier.
There's still going to be a thick-client front-end for POS hardware and such, but that's the only thing that'll "require" Windows, and that may not last forever.
The primary communications mechanism is a web service layer. As an IIS application, it clusters well. Supports both application and OS-integrated security nicely. Just add SSL for encryption. SDK production becomes a snap, too. We have a mechanism to restrict access to certain webmethods, and our documentation simply gets some fields stripped out and becomes SDK docs. So if sa large customer that has a few in-house admins or IT staffers wants to write something in Perl or whatnot to have an existing app integrate with ours, it's fairly straightforward.
That's the plan at least. I'm quite a ways out from release, but with 3.x going into maintenance mode, I get a lot more time for prototyping, drawing up specifications, and actually getting to start doling out work for 4.x.
Good luck to you on your own
----- -----
I would say, but a Google search would quickly reveal the product.
It does basic point-of-sale, inventory control (including purchasing), time/resource management (including work orders) for a vertical industry that has more or less been neglected all these years.
-----
Oh, that's happened countless times. But the developers have become quite displeased, and management has realized that people are willing to walk instead of maintaining this disaster.
----- -----
My current job. Before I begin, I've fortunately JUST been granted permission to stop development of the current major version, and rewrite the app from scratch, because the devleopment timeline to implement the new features in the existing version, far exceeded rewriting the app sanely to ensure extensibility wasn't a problem. And before anyone says "why not refactor?", I did consider it, though after you read what's below, you wouldn't want to refactor this mess either.
Our flagship product is written completely in VBA. The front-end was created using Microsoft Access. The back-end for data storage is Microsoft SQL Server. Oh-hoh, but you've heard NOTHING yet.
The VBA developers of the past was the VP and a few interesting individuals. None of them knowing how to program, nevermind in VB. It's largely a mass of 150,000 lines of spaghetti code. Functions are far from being imdepotent -- you'll have forms that touch all portions of the application. Lots of globals that are used frequently, often with conflict. One guy apparently didn't know how to use variables, so he'd embed text boxes on the main form, and set their visibility property to false, and use them to store values. Not only for the current form, but for the ENTIRE APP. It's great fun debugging those!
The database schema is just as bad. There's no normalization. We're talking strings that describe a product being primary keys. There are no constraints on columns, and adding them would break a lot of existing data in most deployments. Everything seems to be tacked on, often without thought. So instead of having detail tables, or linking tables, folks would just add columns. There are numerous tables in the database that bump up against the limit of how much non-BLOB data can be stored in a row, since nothing is normalized.
There's lots of other weirdness too. Someone apparently had fun learning from books -- why use the built in REPLACE() when you can write your own that only replaces one character (as opposed to substrings), in only one instance, can't define a start and end position, and doesn't support binary replace. And then use it throughout the entire app, improperly at that.
150,000 lines. How many are comments? 200. Written documentation? None. Spec? They didn't use specs.
Did I forget to mention that the database schemas also different from customer to customer, and the front-ends themselves, including weird one-offs for individual customers. I spent a month consolidating schemas and front-ends so we could have ONE distribution.
There are some reports with 1000 lines of code-behind. Yes, reports. Why? Since the database is a mess, and the only way folks apparently matched data up was through joins after joins after joins (ever see 4 nested outer joins to match up two colums? I've seen it FIVE times in the same sproc!).
Did I fail to mention that there's no record locking? Yup, deadlocking issues are abound.
Did I fail to mention there are no CASCADES? That NOTHING in the app is transactional, including pushing accounting data into other packages -- some methods in which involve DIRECTLY modifying the other package's tables!
Did I fail to mention that between all the hidden controls, and virtually everything being databound (running this app over anything but a 100Mb LAN is near impossible), actuall causes some interesting issues in which multiple threads fight for the same data, in which pointers apparently get crushed and misused, resulting in Access itself crashing.
Triggers. 800 of them. Why have a sproc wrap everything neatly within a transaction when you can have triggers do all sorts of wacky things!
Naming conventions. Something like boolWhatever isn't a bool, it's a double. Things that should logically only support 2 states, are really 5. Maybe our app supports quantum indecision, I don't know.
Did I fail to mention that is uses ADO 2.1, and EXPLOITS several bugs in it. Moving to ADO 2.5 (or newer) comp
Recently I just picked up Disgaea for PS2. I read a few reviews on it, and PA seemed enthralled by it, but I couldn't justify the full $50 GameStop insisted I pay. I mulled it for months, and finally decided why not and included it in a stack of games I bought.
I seriously regret having put it off for months.
The story, though fairly basic, is sometimes downright hilarious. There were three times where I seriously had to contain myself, and throughout the rest of the plot there are many of chuckles. A lot of things are simply said in the dialogue that really came out of left field. And it all comes through with great anime style, and quality voice acting. This is akin to the "Monty Python's Quest for the Holy Grail" of tactical RPGs.
There's a lot of hidden things to explore. The demon senate concept is amusing to say the least, though I haven't managed to persuade any senators by force yet. The item world is ridiculous, and turns the game into a FF Tactics meets Dungeon Crawl concept since its always different, and I end up with all sorts of crazy items if I survive.
And the core game itself? Pretty good. I'm 9 chapters in after about 30 hours, and have a feeling it'll be 60 hours before I just beat the core game -- but they're going by as fast as they did for the original FF Tactics. Nevermind the fact the game supposedly has a ton of different endings, and that I could spend forever leveling up to level 9999, getting all sorts of insane items and ridiculous looking attacks, etc.
Yet, good luck finding it. 14 stores and one had two in stock. I'm sure this was a low-volume venture by Atlus here in the states. I've thoroughly enjoyed it, but most folks haven't even heard of it. Which is a shame.
----- ----- -----
I second that. I have a Plextor PX-708A and I've managed to rip off a full 4.5 disk in a hair over 8 minutes.
This Sony takes about 2 1/2 times longer to burn? Something doesn't seem quite right. The only possibility I'd hazard is that the dual-layer media is being burned at 2.4X, which I have a gut feeling is the case.
-----
I think it's about time Slashdot had something along this line:
----- -----
Slashdot Men of Genius...
Today we salute you, mister "begs-the-question".
Mister begs-the-question!
While millions can understand a basic phrase, you take the lead in misinterpreting everything.
Cannot make a distinction!
Your lack of logic ensures that phrases coined centuries ago will continue to wreak confusion for years come.
A leader in confusion!
You know, your anal retentive obsession about "begs the question" really begs the question, do you really understand basic English?
This is the question I'm beggin'!
And gosh, did you know that I B.A'd in Logic? Fat lot of good that did me with guys like you around telling me how to speak.
Slashdot Men of Genius
----- -----
Fortunately for us, Star Trek didn't influence Peter Jackson's take on Lord of the Rings!
I mean... wtf is this? (quicktime required)
----- -----
A while back, a bunch of us, for whatever reason, were arguing what the Hamburgler used to say. Whether is was "robble robble", or "rabble rabble". We debated this for 5 minutes, no fooling. Just kept going on and on, until someone suggested, "Why don't you just find out at a Hamburgler fan site?".
After that sentence, we all just fell silent. It was an absolutely strange suggestion when you thought about it, but we also realized that they probably do exist.
And lo and behold, Google didn't just find one, it found about a dozen. We laughed, both at the idea of googling for it, and the sad truth that there are Hamburgler fansites out there.
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You say this jokingly but...
There is a candle shop that opened up at the end of a highway. Went in one day, just for the hell of it. Hey, who on earth makes a candle store out in the middle of randomness anyhow? Well the gal owning it is complaining about sales. Told her "yeah, it's those damn electric bulbs... but what're you gonna do?".
So I guess she got the idea to sell ice cream too on the side. It's actually good ice cream at that. But it's called "Licks N' Wicks". Truthfully I think she could've picked a better name. Still waiting for her to fold up shop.
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Got to love the glow-in-the-dark telco-powered vibrator for "sore muscles". Guess some chicks can't even make it through a power outage!
Love the anecdote though...
"Last time I was in LA, I had to walk down eight flights of stairs with two big bags to check out of the hotel that had been without power twice during my stay. The vibrator would have really helped my muscles after that stressful hotel stay!"
There's muscles down there, but c'mon, they weren't worked hard from carrying bags.
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Some interesting articles about DTN that were made available on the IPNSIG (Interplanetary Network Special Interest Group) site:
DTN Tutorial (PDF)
DTN Architecture: The Evolving Interplantary Internet (TXT)
DTN for Extreme Environments (PDF)
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$1,250,100.
Is it just me, or is anyone else wondering about that $100? I mean, $1.25 million is a nice, round number. Easy to remember and deal with, but that $100 extra is some sort of ugly wart at the end.
What is it? A birdbath? Prettier shingles? What honestly adjusts the price of a house by $100?!
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I have 1 drink a year, at New Year's. Why should I have this?
My father is having a heart-attack and the ambulance has no idea where I live Oh well, I have to wait 30 seconds for my breath-test to compelte before I can attempt to get him to the hospital.
The unit fails, or is horribly uncalibrated, and my car stops. Again, why should I be inconvenienced?
If this is installed in every car, it should be DISABLED by default, and ONLY enabled for DUI offenders.
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Of course, remember folks, people will ALWAYS be idiots. Yesterday there was 5 inches of powder snow, and plows didn't bother coming to my neighborhood. There's a large downhill golf course 2 blocks away that's GREAT for sledding. But instead, some woman has he 4 young kids get on a sled, and hold onto the rear-bumper of her SUV as she drives around at 25-30mph. All fun and games until someone slides through a stop sign or loses control on the ice.
People are stupid, and they can't be protected by more foolish laws
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Bluetooth has 750Kbps - 1Mbps bandwidth I think
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He's the greatest, He's fantastic,
Wherever there is danger he'll be there,
He's the ace, He's amazing,
He's the strongest, He's the quickest,
He's the best, Danger Mouse,
He's terrific, He's magnific,
He's the bravest secret agent in the world.
Danger Mouse, Danger Mouse,
Danger mouse.
I think that's all of it. Or maybe not. Crumbs, DM!
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I actually have the Sony Ericsson T618, which has built-in BlueTooth and I pay the $20/mo for the unlimited data service T-Mobile has. It's a freakin' godsend.
On average I get about 45kbps, and as long as I have a phone signal, I have a data signal. I've used it on the road to connect to the company webmail, get directions, or grab patches/check docs online and stuff while enroute to a client (as a passenger) etc quite a bit.
Though the killer for me was I was out to eat with the VP when a client was having some serious issues. It could've waited until I got back, but we were waiting for the entree, so I whipped out my iPaq, connected to the customer's service through the terminal service client, fixed the borked config file, and made a return call all in about 10 minutes time. The customer was damned impressed and forever grateful.
And surprisingly, the service *is* unlimited. I put 400+MB through the phone last month, and I wasn't charged an extra cent. Truthfully I wish GRPS coverage around here was a bit better, but other than that, it kicks ass.
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Man, I'd love to see what cards Hallmark would come up with for that holiday.
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