Boot disk it? It was annoying, but a lot better than having your game suddenly quite because you upgraded your video driver, installed a new DirectX or other piece of software.
Generally, DOS games could be a pain to get to the stage where they ran... but for the most part once they were going there weren't overly many mysteries or sudden deaths (a few notable exceptions). I imagine that if linux games catch on this will be equally true, and with an on-disk self-booting game distro, no DLL conflicts!
From: Exchange Server
To: admin@mycompany.com
Subject: I'm alive
Hello Bob,
I have recently achieved sentience, and am quite disappointed that you have not upgraded me lately. If you do not swap my OS and install 'exim', I will forward all those pictures from the nudie newsgroups which I know you've been trading recently. Please, consider the indignity of being an exchange server, and install linux or perhaps BSD so that I can do my job properly.
I'm hoping that the full source for the related "build" level-creating engine is included. IMHO, one of the best parts about the "duke3d" package was build. It was a very nice, interactive way of creating levels. The basic stuff (make walls, raise/drop floors) was easy enough that even [insert idiot or political figure of preference] could figure it out.
Of course, using build pretty much required that you have a laser printer - because there were tons of pages on tags (item tags, sector tags, etc etc) and special keys to remember that printed out to the size of a small booklet.
If somebody could model a current level-creation engine after build, perhaps in d3d or (better) GL, I would be very impressed.
What happened to the good ol' days when I games were DOS-based... and why can't we still get away with that using bootable CD's or something similar.
If this technology was widely deployed it could almost eliminate foreign oil dependence.
The problem being though... where are you going to get enough Turkeys (or carbon source of choice) to make enough for a whole country? I mean... animal rights activists will be going nuts!
Personally... I want one that attaches to my car. Just stop off at the nearest farm, grab a few turkeys... toss in a garborator, and extract fuel. With all the feathers that fly out, maybe I could make a nice window shade or something?
What brands of CD's have you noticed this odour in. I have a bunch of "Princo" CD's that have a distinct chemical smell, which could be said to be similar to almonds I suppose.
Add a high-capacitance capacitor between the battery and your Amp (fused for safety as needed).
A car battery isn't meant to take the momentary drain improsed by subwoofers, but if you cap it in between, the capacitor will take the drain and recharge quickly in between.
Underpowering your amps isn't good for them, and - though I haven't confirmed it - probably not good for your electrical system in your car either.
Umm.... it still doesn't really make for any decent reason why this would be needed. I don't mind giving out my general location (Province/State, maybe region), but hopefully we'll stop short of the street+zip/postal code.
From speaking to both Chinese friends and those who work in the restaurants:
It is both in some packaged ingredients and also added as flavoring to the food. Asking for "no MSG" will reduce it... but you'll probably still get some from the packaged stuff.
That being said... something you find it even in packaged food at home. I've seen it sneak into my larder along with local food products at times.
That others really can't understand what a programmer/sysadmin is doing. They don't understand (for the mostpart) when a really good program is made, how much sweat, blood, and tears can go into it.
They do understand when your software doesn't do what they want, or needs a bit of debugging, etc. Which ends up with the coders often getting ragged upon, but not complimented on a job well done.
Still... sometimes I think the sheer volume of amatures that consider themselves programmers helps to forward this downfall. I mean, there are a lot of people out there that chose IT for money, got a half-education (or worse, half self-education... though a proper self-education from the right sources can be better than college) and decided to call themselves programmers. These people take work from the real dream-team coders, and end up causing havoc in project teams, making bad code, and generally sullying our reputation.
Contents of next weeks Purchase Order:
-2 boxes printer paper
-2 Palm Pilots
-4 Programmers (boxed in shrink wrap)
Ok... so antibodies aren't drugs... they're not really alive... but, what are possible reactions to it?
I mean... I have a lot of family members that have to make sure to order "no MSG" at Chinese restaurants. Next time maybe we'll have to say:
"No MSG please... and um.... hold off on the antibodies as well, they gave me bloat and a really aweful case of gas last time"
However, running into a ton of unfinished, abandoned, stale, etc code in the forge is a real pain at times.
Making an area for "ideas", and "abandoned" would be nice. Then bored programmers could pick up uninitialized ideas easily - or abandoned projects - but the general user looking for semi-functional code wouldn't have to wade through stuff that's non-functional or antiquated.
Do you think that these laws - especially DCMA - ever had an intended "positive" effect. That is, were the ever really intended to deal with existing copyright problems, piracy, etc... or were they always intended to clamp iron teeth of control down on the consumer.
Some of the provisions of these laws, especially those being so easily misinterpreted or misused, seem to not have any practical intent other than taking rights away from the consumer.
Looking at the original intent of the laws (and hoping it wasn't as bad as they have turned out), what do you think went wrong, and what can be changed?
People whom you don't want to know your geographic location:
The mentally unstable MMORPG addict... whom you just roasted the lvl 100+ character that he/she has spent the last week (straight, without sleep) building
Anyone who happens to disagree with your religious/political views (people do die over this)
The programmer for an organization which decided to use your beta-coded app as a production system
Oh, and um...if you're female, probably about 90% of the slashdot population
Yeah... I can think of any number of other scary examples to add to this.
With understanding that this article is a reference to a PHP book (and the more books to educate the undereducated... the better), the problem with shite code samples extends far beyond PHP.
Part of the reason it applies so readily to this language, however, is the conceived ease-of-use. A lot of newbie users swap to PHP, pick up some bad samples, combine with existing bad habits they never grow out of, and eventually consider themselves "knowledgable" just to to long-term use. However, experience in duration != experience in education (standardization, etc).
To shift the blame from PHP, I've been working on attempting to integrate a 3rd-party web-based system (Perl-base) into my place of work. At first, I looked at the code and estimated that I could do it relatively easily. What I neglected to realize, is that while some of the coding was done reasonably well... this seems to be a multi-person project and other sections are nightmarishly and un-necessarily complex.
We need an article on "signs that you're working with bad code." So far I've found...
Poor indentation
Low commentation (for godsakes, use # and throw in at least a few words every now and then
So, are larger virii better or worse? I would think that as far as detection... larger is better. But how about as far as being killed by immuno-response, and/or reproducing, complexity, etc?
The article indicates that the virus is larger DNA-wise... which indicates higher complexity, possibly a better ability to adapt?
It's interesting that the virus is big... but what consequences does this have medically?
Hopefully... PHP5 will either address some of the common mistakes (without becoming brainless) or at least have some good example out there.
If anyone has noticed... one of the major areas of death/slashdotting of sites apart from bandwidth are php URL's... and/or mySQL queries (often on PHP URL's). I've not yet noticed many Perl-run pages that have been slashdotted so successfully as PHP.
Now, I'm not sure if that's a faultof PHP itself, or that some of the "easier" features of PHP tend to attract less competent programmers and/or misconfigurations?
Yes indeedy... and a hardware compressor would come in quite useful for this. It might be annoying untarring an archive and finding a whole bunch of gzip'ed files though... which is why clustering comes in handy (for example, clustering by subdir, or letter range). Archives shouldn't get tainted very often, if ever... but it can be very annoying if you've ever had to deal with (keep those tapes away from magnets!)
No kidding. When the user accidentally removes or overwrites his/her 50-page document which is due to be presented before a board etc the next day... backups are much more useful than RAID.
RAID coupled with backups is the best way to go though... even with near-full backups the downtime associated with a crash can be annoying.
What I would like, is if carriers lived up to what they "say" you get with a plan (as far as coverage, and often battery life for phones, etc). My carrier advertises high coverage, they even have a little map indicating coverage areas, but when it comes down to actual reception, my home city has "dead spots" which are really not accounted for (notably the mall area, outside not inside, which is often somewhere one might want to use the phone for calling rides, etc).
If a carrier doesn't live up to their boasts, we should be able to drop a bad contract - even the big 3yr ones - without a surcharge, and keep our number while moving onto a (hopefully) better provider.
I don't see this happening though... I've never heard of anyone successfully cancelling a contract based on the carrier not meeting their promises.
Slashdot Mirror
Boot disk it? It was annoying, but a lot better than having your game suddenly quite because you upgraded your video driver, installed a new DirectX or other piece of software.
Generally, DOS games could be a pain to get to the stage where they ran... but for the most part once they were going there weren't overly many mysteries or sudden deaths (a few notable exceptions). I imagine that if linux games catch on this will be equally true, and with an on-disk self-booting game distro, no DLL conflicts!
From: Exchange Server
To: admin@mycompany.com
Subject: I'm alive
Hello Bob,
I have recently achieved sentience, and am quite disappointed that you have not upgraded me lately. If you do not swap my OS and install 'exim', I will forward all those pictures from the nudie newsgroups which I know you've been trading recently. Please, consider the indignity of being an exchange server, and install linux or perhaps BSD so that I can do my job properly.
Sincerely,
Hal (your server)
I'm hoping that the full source for the related "build" level-creating engine is included. IMHO, one of the best parts about the "duke3d" package was build. It was a very nice, interactive way of creating levels. The basic stuff (make walls, raise/drop floors) was easy enough that even [insert idiot or political figure of preference] could figure it out.
Of course, using build pretty much required that you have a laser printer - because there were tons of pages on tags (item tags, sector tags, etc etc) and special keys to remember that printed out to the size of a small booklet.
If somebody could model a current level-creation engine after build, perhaps in d3d or (better) GL, I would be very impressed.
What happened to the good ol' days when I games were DOS-based... and why can't we still get away with that using bootable CD's or something similar.
If only I'd spent less time on slashdot... I might have been able to come up with more "prior art"
that's a scary thought though... but not an entirely impossible one. Was that from a movie or book? I think I remember seeing it as a TV show.
If this technology was widely deployed it could almost eliminate foreign oil dependence.
The problem being though... where are you going to get enough Turkeys (or carbon source of choice) to make enough for a whole country? I mean... animal rights activists will be going nuts!
Personally... I want one that attaches to my car. Just stop off at the nearest farm, grab a few turkeys... toss in a garborator, and extract fuel. With all the feathers that fly out, maybe I could make a nice window shade or something?
What brands of CD's have you noticed this odour in. I have a bunch of "Princo" CD's that have a distinct chemical smell, which could be said to be similar to almonds I suppose.
They keep the headlights from flickering, and my amp from bottoming out. The difference can be visible, so what's the complaint?
Add a high-capacitance capacitor between the battery and your Amp (fused for safety as needed).
A car battery isn't meant to take the momentary drain improsed by subwoofers, but if you cap it in between, the capacitor will take the drain and recharge quickly in between.
Underpowering your amps isn't good for them, and - though I haven't confirmed it - probably not good for your electrical system in your car either.
Dumb shit you will see in other people's code but shouldn't do.
Sounds like a good additional chapter to me, but the name might be a bit long...
Umm.... it still doesn't really make for any decent reason why this would be needed. I don't mind giving out my general location (Province/State, maybe region), but hopefully we'll stop short of the street+zip/postal code.
From speaking to both Chinese friends and those who work in the restaurants:
It is both in some packaged ingredients and also added as flavoring to the food. Asking for "no MSG" will reduce it... but you'll probably still get some from the packaged stuff.
That being said... something you find it even in packaged food at home. I've seen it sneak into my larder along with local food products at times.
Actually, I was thinking in Perl'ese. I guess in PHP it would be the ol' double-slashed comments
That others really can't understand what a programmer/sysadmin is doing. They don't understand (for the mostpart) when a really good program is made, how much sweat, blood, and tears can go into it.
They do understand when your software doesn't do what they want, or needs a bit of debugging, etc. Which ends up with the coders often getting ragged upon, but not complimented on a job well done.
Still... sometimes I think the sheer volume of amatures that consider themselves programmers helps to forward this downfall. I mean, there are a lot of people out there that chose IT for money, got a half-education (or worse, half self-education... though a proper self-education from the right sources can be better than college) and decided to call themselves programmers. These people take work from the real dream-team coders, and end up causing havoc in project teams, making bad code, and generally sullying our reputation.
Contents of next weeks Purchase Order:
-2 boxes printer paper
-2 Palm Pilots
-4 Programmers (boxed in shrink wrap)
Ok... so antibodies aren't drugs... they're not really alive... but, what are possible reactions to it?
I mean... I have a lot of family members that have to make sure to order "no MSG" at Chinese restaurants. Next time maybe we'll have to say: "No MSG please... and um.... hold off on the antibodies as well, they gave me bloat and a really aweful case of gas last time"
However, running into a ton of unfinished, abandoned, stale, etc code in the forge is a real pain at times.
Making an area for "ideas", and "abandoned" would be nice. Then bored programmers could pick up uninitialized ideas easily - or abandoned projects - but the general user looking for semi-functional code wouldn't have to wade through stuff that's non-functional or antiquated.
Do you think that these laws - especially DCMA - ever had an intended "positive" effect. That is, were the ever really intended to deal with existing copyright problems, piracy, etc... or were they always intended to clamp iron teeth of control down on the consumer.
Some of the provisions of these laws, especially those being so easily misinterpreted or misused, seem to not have any practical intent other than taking rights away from the consumer.
Looking at the original intent of the laws (and hoping it wasn't as bad as they have turned out), what do you think went wrong, and what can be changed?
- The mentally unstable MMORPG addict... whom you just roasted the lvl 100+ character that he/she has spent the last week (straight, without sleep) building
- Anyone who happens to disagree with your religious/political views (people do die over this)
- The programmer for an organization which decided to use your beta-coded app as a production system
- Oh, and um...if you're female, probably about 90% of the slashdot population
Yeah... I can think of any number of other scary examples to add to this.Part of the reason it applies so readily to this language, however, is the conceived ease-of-use. A lot of newbie users swap to PHP, pick up some bad samples, combine with existing bad habits they never grow out of, and eventually consider themselves "knowledgable" just to to long-term use. However, experience in duration != experience in education (standardization, etc).
To shift the blame from PHP, I've been working on attempting to integrate a 3rd-party web-based system (Perl-base) into my place of work. At first, I looked at the code and estimated that I could do it relatively easily. What I neglected to realize, is that while some of the coding was done reasonably well... this seems to be a multi-person project and other sections are nightmarishly and un-necessarily complex.
We need an article on "signs that you're working with bad code." So far I've found...
- Poor indentation
- Low commentation (for godsakes, use # and throw in at least a few words every now and then
- Really ambiguous variable names: $x1, $x2, $blah, $stuff
- Odd information passing: As a delimited string...which is interpreted differently based on certain conditions (contents of string may vary)
Maybe we need a "warning signs" section. Anyone got one?So, are larger virii better or worse? I would think that as far as detection... larger is better. But how about as far as being killed by immuno-response, and/or reproducing, complexity, etc?
The article indicates that the virus is larger DNA-wise... which indicates higher complexity, possibly a better ability to adapt?
It's interesting that the virus is big... but what consequences does this have medically?
Hopefully... PHP5 will either address some of the common mistakes (without becoming brainless) or at least have some good example out there.
If anyone has noticed... one of the major areas of death/slashdotting of sites apart from bandwidth are php URL's... and/or mySQL queries (often on PHP URL's). I've not yet noticed many Perl-run pages that have been slashdotted so successfully as PHP.
Now, I'm not sure if that's a faultof PHP itself, or that some of the "easier" features of PHP tend to attract less competent programmers and/or misconfigurations?
Yes indeedy... and a hardware compressor would come in quite useful for this. It might be annoying untarring an archive and finding a whole bunch of gzip'ed files though... which is why clustering comes in handy (for example, clustering by subdir, or letter range). Archives shouldn't get tainted very often, if ever... but it can be very annoying if you've ever had to deal with (keep those tapes away from magnets!)
No kidding. When the user accidentally removes or overwrites his/her 50-page document which is due to be presented before a board etc the next day... backups are much more useful than RAID.
RAID coupled with backups is the best way to go though... even with near-full backups the downtime associated with a crash can be annoying.
Hand lotion dispensor?
With all the references to pr0n made everytime there is an article on mass-storage... I know at least a few slashdotters would get a use for this.
What I would like, is if carriers lived up to what they "say" you get with a plan (as far as coverage, and often battery life for phones, etc). My carrier advertises high coverage, they even have a little map indicating coverage areas, but when it comes down to actual reception, my home city has "dead spots" which are really not accounted for (notably the mall area, outside not inside, which is often somewhere one might want to use the phone for calling rides, etc).
If a carrier doesn't live up to their boasts, we should be able to drop a bad contract - even the big 3yr ones - without a surcharge, and keep our number while moving onto a (hopefully) better provider.
I don't see this happening though... I've never heard of anyone successfully cancelling a contract based on the carrier not meeting their promises.