This reminds me of the old joke that there only ever was one 'make' script, and everyone else modified it.
I wonder how much of what they found is influenced by how people learned to write HTML - which in all likelihood was to copy code from existing pages... might explain parts of what they found, such as:
Most people (roughly 98%) include head, html, title and body elements. This is somewhat ironic, since three of those four elements are optional in HTML
If you're #20, shooting for #3 doesn't seem sad to me. I'd have much more respect for a boss who has and presents a realistic view of our strategy, rather than empty rhethoric that isn't even remotely within his power to accomplish.
I can't help but be slightly amused at Slashdot's headline for this story. It seems the (MP|RI)AA have done their job so well, we're all too happy to go along with their interpretation that copying a DVD is illegal and there is no fair use.
Yes, I realize the irony of the situation (or the hypocrisy, really), and that's why we jump at the chance to yell "OMG, the MPAA broked theirr own law, they are teh guilty, LOL!!11".
Think about the unlikely event that they'd be brought to court over this. Something tells me they wouldn't hesitate to plead guilty - it might end up being the most cost-effective way for them to set a favourable precedent. So the best outcome for the rest of us would be for the MPAA to be declared innocent in this matter.
So they're only slashing prices on games they're selling, and not on future games that aren't being sold yet and don't have a price to slash?
What's wrong with saying "EA Cuts Console Game Prices"? Is it too easy to understand? Not enough next-gen/current-gen buzzwords? Why not say "curr-gen" and be the first to dazzle and confuse your friends with a new buzzword?
AQ (Ahn'Qiraj) is a new area, added by the last patch, containing new mobs and two new dungeons.
Players have constantly complained that the WoW game world is static - there is no way for players to change anything in the game world: all the mobs respawn, dungeons reset, etc.
Blizzard's solution to this was to make AQ accessible only after a one-time server-wide event. The much-anticipated secret event ended up being players on each server having to turn in huge amounts of stuff (800,000 linen bandages, 20,000 wolf steaks, etc...) as well as one player doing a TON of grinding to get some hammer or another (in effect, the most efficient way to do this being to have an entire faction choose one player to help - cue politics and drama). After all these exciting preparations were completed (Medivh being the first such server, apparently) the gates to AQ finally opened, and... it looks like players are still waiting to find out what happens next.:P
In a way, that's true - that's one way to look at it.
Another is that a game's quality degrades because: - it gradually becomes more and more of a hassle to run it (DOS games? floppies? etc.) - the graphics "degrade" - not really, but old games used to engage us with no problems, and the graphics were still amazing every new generation of games... go back a few generations and the graphics just plain look "bad", even though they haven't actually changed - gameplay becomes simplistic - yes, it was great at the time, and some games were pioneers and are true classics. Compare the gameplay of Dune II to, say, Starcraft, though... or Wolfenstein to Halflife... plenty of counter-examples, of course, but I'm only comparing equivalent games - "today"'s best games to "yesterday"'s best games in the same genre.
So in a way I agree that the quality never degrades, but (some) new games are such huge leaps forward that the net effect is the same.
I'd agree much more with that point of view if it was about music:p
Both the summary and the article speak of child porn and protecting children from accessing porn as if they're interchangeable. Well, they're not - which one is it?
There's no more sure-fire way to push people's buttons than to mention child porn... bah. Always makes me feel that it trivializes the problem when it's being used to push someone's agenda.
I actually watched the water torture one, by chance. It refers to the so-called chinese water drop - a person is immobilized, and drops of water drop on the same spot on their forehead, at a rate of one drop every 2 seconds or so.
They tested it on Kari... since there's no physical torture (other than being restrained), and they were obviously going to let her go when she had enough, it's not much of an issue showing it on TV.
Anyone know what the ecosystem in those caves (and in caves in general) feeds on? What's at the bottom of the food chain? (since there's no photosynthesis...)
And no, I didn't have the patience to read TFA carefully, though I did look at all the pictures in the four reports... hence the *shudder*:p
I think you have a very valid point about keeping Slashdot casual compared to traditional print media. However, "casual" versus "formal" means a lot of things: word choice, sentence structure, clarity, objectivity, amount of effort to remove bias or avoid controversial phrasing. Remove spelling and blatant grammar mistakes, and all those differences remain. It's very easy to have casual text without spelling or grammar mistakes. Leaving them in doesn't make a submission any more "real".
Let me use a very simple analogy: when you're hanging out with friends, I'm sure you dress casual. Jeans, a t-shirt, running shoes, whatever. I can only assume, however, that you DON'T pick a t-shirt with stains on it over a clean one. Doesn't make you any less "real", it just means you're showing respect for your friends. Think of spelling mistakes as stains on the language, and you'll see why all the +5 posts in this story saying that Slashdot would be better with some basic article spell checking don't actually disagree with you or with keeping Slashdot casual.
That's great, but still no mention of the ridiculous queues that most realms have seen since December. Half an hour to an hour login queues are now common - even on new servers. One of the Blizzard moderators posted something to the effect that every single day for the past few weeks has set a new record in terms of people online - which is great for Blizzard, but it means the game is practically unplayable for so many people, especially those who only have something like 2 hours to play every day and spend one of them in queue.
Which is exactly why I said the US government is as good as any, because other governments would most likely exercise even more control.
You can't claim that the US government applies NO control. DMCA, wiretapping, encryption restrictions, whatever.
All I'm arguing is that the vast majority of the computer industry is, for better or worse, subject to one government. If it was more spread out, one bad law would be less likely to have a negative impact globally.
You misunderstood - I didn't mean culture in the language or history sense. I meant it in the biological (and here on Slashdot, more often security) sense that more variety leads to a more robust ecosystem. Specifically, I meant that almost all the big names in computers are American companies. Any factor that has an impact on the American computer industry will end up having an impact on the entire Internet. If any ONE government is to control the vast majority of the world's technology companies, then the US government is as good as any (yes, this might be an unpopular view at the moment, but I can't think of ONE government that would be a much better choice). I would just be much more comfortable to see the control spread over several continents rather than concentrated in the US.
And so I don't get misinterpreted again, by control I mean market leaders and market share, not legislation.
As much as I'd like to see something like this happen - it's a huge project, led by SEVERAL governments and telecom companies, neither of which are exactly known for efficiency or technical brilliance. And it doesn't seem like there's much profit incentive, which makes it even less likely to be finished efficiently...
It's great that the EU is trying to assert itself in this area - having the US control 90% of the internet's technology is exactly the type of monoculture that is decried on the desktop - but is there any way this project won't end up crushed under the weight of its own bureaucracy?
Or a simpler explanation might be that, given a certain budget for fixing bugs/security flaws, they have to prioritize, and since bugs that have an exploit out in the wild are much more likely to have a negative impact, they get pushed to the front of the queue... which makes sense to me.
I don't think they set out to solve X bugs in Y months. I would assume they have a certain number of manhours devoted to fixing bugs, and fix however many they get around to. They can always increase the resources devoted to this, yes, but I doubt anyone over there says "oh, this one doesn't have an exploit in the wild, try to take as long as you can to fix it".
Slashdot Mirror
I wonder how much of what they found is influenced by how people learned to write HTML - which in all likelihood was to copy code from existing pages... might explain parts of what they found, such as:
If you're #20, shooting for #3 doesn't seem sad to me. I'd have much more respect for a boss who has and presents a realistic view of our strategy, rather than empty rhethoric that isn't even remotely within his power to accomplish.
Heh... just after I posted I noticed the slashdot title was changed from "illegal copies" to "unauthorized copies".
My point still stands.
I can't help but be slightly amused at Slashdot's headline for this story. It seems the (MP|RI)AA have done their job so well, we're all too happy to go along with their interpretation that copying a DVD is illegal and there is no fair use.
Yes, I realize the irony of the situation (or the hypocrisy, really), and that's why we jump at the chance to yell "OMG, the MPAA broked theirr own law, they are teh guilty, LOL!!11".
Think about the unlikely event that they'd be brought to court over this. Something tells me they wouldn't hesitate to plead guilty - it might end up being the most cost-effective way for them to set a favourable precedent. So the best outcome for the rest of us would be for the MPAA to be declared innocent in this matter.
How's THAT for irony?
So they're only slashing prices on games they're selling, and not on future games that aren't being sold yet and don't have a price to slash?
What's wrong with saying "EA Cuts Console Game Prices"? Is it too easy to understand? Not enough next-gen/current-gen buzzwords? Why not say "curr-gen" and be the first to dazzle and confuse your friends with a new buzzword?
Bah.
AQ (Ahn'Qiraj) is a new area, added by the last patch, containing new mobs and two new dungeons.
:P
Players have constantly complained that the WoW game world is static - there is no way for players to change anything in the game world: all the mobs respawn, dungeons reset, etc.
Blizzard's solution to this was to make AQ accessible only after a one-time server-wide event. The much-anticipated secret event ended up being players on each server having to turn in huge amounts of stuff (800,000 linen bandages, 20,000 wolf steaks, etc...) as well as one player doing a TON of grinding to get some hammer or another (in effect, the most efficient way to do this being to have an entire faction choose one player to help - cue politics and drama). After all these exciting preparations were completed (Medivh being the first such server, apparently) the gates to AQ finally opened, and... it looks like players are still waiting to find out what happens next.
In a way, that's true - that's one way to look at it.
:p
Another is that a game's quality degrades because:
- it gradually becomes more and more of a hassle to run it (DOS games? floppies? etc.)
- the graphics "degrade" - not really, but old games used to engage us with no problems, and the graphics were still amazing every new generation of games... go back a few generations and the graphics just plain look "bad", even though they haven't actually changed
- gameplay becomes simplistic - yes, it was great at the time, and some games were pioneers and are true classics. Compare the gameplay of Dune II to, say, Starcraft, though... or Wolfenstein to Halflife... plenty of counter-examples, of course, but I'm only comparing equivalent games - "today"'s best games to "yesterday"'s best games in the same genre.
So in a way I agree that the quality never degrades, but (some) new games are such huge leaps forward that the net effect is the same.
I'd agree much more with that point of view if it was about music
I take it you've never worked on software developed by a team larger than 2-3 people?
Both the summary and the article speak of child porn and protecting children from accessing porn as if they're interchangeable. Well, they're not - which one is it?
There's no more sure-fire way to push people's buttons than to mention child porn... bah. Always makes me feel that it trivializes the problem when it's being used to push someone's agenda.
Yup... no one likes to see a pretty girl cry!
(well, okay, there are some sickos out there, but that's another matter).
I actually watched the water torture one, by chance. It refers to the so-called chinese water drop - a person is immobilized, and drops of water drop on the same spot on their forehead, at a rate of one drop every 2 seconds or so.
They tested it on Kari... since there's no physical torture (other than being restrained), and they were obviously going to let her go when she had enough, it's not much of an issue showing it on TV.
Too many spiders and scorpions... *shudder*
:p
Anyone know what the ecosystem in those caves (and in caves in general) feeds on? What's at the bottom of the food chain? (since there's no photosynthesis...)
And no, I didn't have the patience to read TFA carefully, though I did look at all the pictures in the four reports... hence the *shudder*
"Half an hour to an hour login queues are now common" == "30-60min on all servers all the time"?
:p
You're right, it is untrue, that's why I never claimed it
I think you have a very valid point about keeping Slashdot casual compared to traditional print media. However, "casual" versus "formal" means a lot of things: word choice, sentence structure, clarity, objectivity, amount of effort to remove bias or avoid controversial phrasing. Remove spelling and blatant grammar mistakes, and all those differences remain. It's very easy to have casual text without spelling or grammar mistakes. Leaving them in doesn't make a submission any more "real".
Let me use a very simple analogy: when you're hanging out with friends, I'm sure you dress casual. Jeans, a t-shirt, running shoes, whatever. I can only assume, however, that you DON'T pick a t-shirt with stains on it over a clean one. Doesn't make you any less "real", it just means you're showing respect for your friends. Think of spelling mistakes as stains on the language, and you'll see why all the +5 posts in this story saying that Slashdot would be better with some basic article spell checking don't actually disagree with you or with keeping Slashdot casual.
That's great, but still no mention of the ridiculous queues that most realms have seen since December. Half an hour to an hour login queues are now common - even on new servers. One of the Blizzard moderators posted something to the effect that every single day for the past few weeks has set a new record in terms of people online - which is great for Blizzard, but it means the game is practically unplayable for so many people, especially those who only have something like 2 hours to play every day and spend one of them in queue.
Which is exactly why I said the US government is as good as any, because other governments would most likely exercise even more control.
You can't claim that the US government applies NO control. DMCA, wiretapping, encryption restrictions, whatever.
All I'm arguing is that the vast majority of the computer industry is, for better or worse, subject to one government. If it was more spread out, one bad law would be less likely to have a negative impact globally.
I just finished re-reading Ender's Game :p
You misunderstood - I didn't mean culture in the language or history sense. I meant it in the biological (and here on Slashdot, more often security) sense that more variety leads to a more robust ecosystem. Specifically, I meant that almost all the big names in computers are American companies. Any factor that has an impact on the American computer industry will end up having an impact on the entire Internet. If any ONE government is to control the vast majority of the world's technology companies, then the US government is as good as any (yes, this might be an unpopular view at the moment, but I can't think of ONE government that would be a much better choice). I would just be much more comfortable to see the control spread over several continents rather than concentrated in the US.
And so I don't get misinterpreted again, by control I mean market leaders and market share, not legislation.
Very interesting... I hadn't even thought about that!
:)
This project should be even more fun to watch than I thought at first
Yup...
n g%20sunbeams%20out%20of%20cucumbers
:p
http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=Extracti
I find it amusing that my post was modded insightful, though
As much as I'd like to see something like this happen - it's a huge project, led by SEVERAL governments and telecom companies, neither of which are exactly known for efficiency or technical brilliance. And it doesn't seem like there's much profit incentive, which makes it even less likely to be finished efficiently...
It's great that the EU is trying to assert itself in this area - having the US control 90% of the internet's technology is exactly the type of monoculture that is decried on the desktop - but is there any way this project won't end up crushed under the weight of its own bureaucracy?
We're finally about to discover how to extract sunlight out of cucumbers!
The missing step was pickles!
If the software correctly figures out what to do every time, why would you ever need an undo? :p
Or a simpler explanation might be that, given a certain budget for fixing bugs/security flaws, they have to prioritize, and since bugs that have an exploit out in the wild are much more likely to have a negative impact, they get pushed to the front of the queue... which makes sense to me.
I don't think they set out to solve X bugs in Y months. I would assume they have a certain number of manhours devoted to fixing bugs, and fix however many they get around to. They can always increase the resources devoted to this, yes, but I doubt anyone over there says "oh, this one doesn't have an exploit in the wild, try to take as long as you can to fix it".
"Now we'll finally be able to combine the security and ease of use of Windows with the flexibility and low cost of Apple hardware!"
(first read somewhere here on Slashdot, I'm sure)