with Dell you're likely dealing with someone who nearly speaks English
I called Dell two days ago, and got someone who spoke perfect Dutch. And while my laptop was bought in Netherland, it was no problem that I called Belgian customer service, and they sent a technician to a Belgian address. He couldn't fix it, unfortunately, so I'm waiting for them to call me back in Netherland and hopefully they send another technician to the Dutch address where I am today. I'm pleasantly surprised by the internationality of their support. (Although my wifi still doesn't work.)
And where is it written that Microsoft has to provide legal advice?
Where is it written that Microsoft has to threaten and bully? It's not about what Microsoft has to do -- they're free to bully as much as they like, and they've been doing so for most of their existence -- but they promised assistance, and the only thing the microsoft guy offered in the end was mockery and insults.
Now where is it written that people who have done nothing wrong have to jump through Microsoft's hoops?
Where is it written that they must answer questions when they're clearly not satisfied with the situation? The Microsoft guy was consistent in his message right from the start: it's the dev himself who's been waffling the whole time.
On the contrary, it's the microsoft guy who's been waffling. He claimed license infringement, but never explained properly how what parts of the license were infringed. Microsoft doesn't have to do anything when they're not satisfied with the situation, but they shouldn't be complaining if others don't do anything about changing the situation either.
He didn't make it clear he wants to cooperate.
He did. He cooperated, on the blind assumption that the Microsoft guy was right and would provide the required quote. Only when they ignored him for months without living up to their promise or providing any kind of information at all, did the dev revert to the original situation.
He intimated he was going to do as Microsoft requested, and then suddenly changed his mind.. like five fucking times, and finally used the threat of further illegal activity as a lever to try to get Microsoft to cooperate *on his terms.*
Microsoft never showed how his activity was illegal. That's all they had to do, but instead, they blindly relied on bullying and blind obedience. According to the dev's lawyer, there was no illegal activity whatsoever. Microsoft offered no information that proved there was. The dev repeatedly told MS that he would gladly do what they asked if only they did that, and the microsoft guy kept going around the issue and assumed the dev would do it anyway, even if he got insulted, bullied and ignored. That's simply not the way the world works.
It's Microsoft's copyright, it's Microsoft's software. They can do whatever the hell they want with it, and this guy doesn't seem to be interested in cooperating on *Microsoft's* terms, and so he draws out the exchange for.. what? Months now?
It's microsoft that ignored him for months. Yes, it's Microsoft's copyright, and it was in no way violated by the dev. Microsoft did claim that the license was violated, but never made it clear how. The clauses they claimed were violated, didn't say what they hoped they said.
Not only was he threatening to re-enable Express support in his product if Microsoft didn't come back to the email exchange,
Well, duh. That's the whole point. Microsoft didn't held up it's part of the bargain, failed to explain how the dev violated the license, so it's kind of obvious that eventually the dev wants to put that support back in. He made it abundantly clear that he would prefer to support the Express version.
but he even demanded they reinstate his privileges and access to the commercial software he had before they yanked it due to his non-cooperation.
In absense of any license violation, he was basically just being nice to Microsoft because they asked him something. He wanted to know what he would get in exchange. He got only insults, so he decided to stop cooperating.
He's not required to be nice to Microsoft, you know?
Seriously, who over the age of 14 or so cares about trailers?
Remember that we're not talking about just some game and its gameplay here. We're talking Fallout, which is a game where style and atmosphere is vital. Lots of people were afraid that Bethesda wouldn't be able to get that across, and this trailer lets them show that they "get it". For just some random action game, trailers and pretty movies are meaningless, but in this case and at this moment, a stylish trailer to show the atmosphere is a great idea. Because that's what Fallout is about.
Have you been reading the same exchange I have? Jamie has been very clear about what he wants to know: in what way has he violated the license? Instead, he gets emails, conference calls and what not, but no answer to this very simple yet central question. He's made it clear that he wants to cooperate, even removing the support before he got the answer, but in the end, MS gave him nothing except insults and threats.
It's not the dev that's being the dick, it's the microsoft guy. He keeps wasting everybody's time without actually helping in any way.
How about Eve? It's been around for ages, it has no levels at all, you can do what you like, and the political landscape is entirely determined by players. (And apparently some devs that are helping some players, but that's another slashdot story.)
If it's bad, it's not uncanny at all. It's just bad. The Uncannny Valley is what happens when it's extremely good. A previous article about this on slashdot explained that the same thing happens when you see a fresh corpse. It looks perfectly human, but something subtle, something really important. is missing.
When something does not appear human, its human traits stand out. When something does appear human, its inhuman traits stannd out.
This is basically what the Uncannny Valley is about. Exactly what should be considered human and inhuman here probably depends on a thousands of factors. Perhaps being "done well" is part of it, but mostly I think more human appearance and behaviour raises the stanndards of craftmanship considerably. When you're using stick figures, it's not a problem if they don't move exactly like Tiger Woods. In fact, it might be uncannny if they did. If you've got spectacular, photorealistic graphics, everything that's not equally realistic gives you the feeling that something is not quite right.
Can you buy Nintendo stock? Over a year ago I wanted to buy shares in Nintendo, but couldn't figure out where they were traded and how to buy them. They weren't at Nasdaq, and if they are publicly traded in Japan, my bank apparently doesn't trade there or doesn't allow me to do so. It would have been a nice couple of thousand dollars profit, I think.
Alright, I'll grant you that, although I think firefox is actually one of those rare cases where you should not use the package manager, but download straight from mozilla instead. Doing that solved a lot of problems for me.
Quite possibly the best story ever in a CRPG (I don't call them RPG because they're not), was Planescpae:Torment (and it told it without lame cutscenes too). I have no idea how well or badly it sold, but since people always mention Fallout and Baldur's Gate, I suspect Torment sold a lot worse.
So yes, I think you're right. Strong, engaging stories have an enthousiastic but really tiny niche market in the west.
The few Japanese CRPGs I've played (which don't include Final Fantasy, I'm afraid), actually had a rather lame story. They did have a story (town was attacked, talk to the right person, trigger next event, go to some place, trigger some cutscene), but it didn't grab me. It lay there waiting for me to trigger the next event. And it wasn't very well written. I don't doubt Final Fantasy was a lot better, but so were Fallout and Torment.
Ideally, I want both freedom and a good story. Fallout and Torment offered that. No other CRPG I've seen does.
I wish that was true. No, it was a bit reminiscent of Scotty in Star Trek IV. I believe he picked up the mouse and pointed it at the screen. And that for a government that claimed to want to stimulate the "knowledge economy" and invest in IT and stuff like that.
What I love about Debian and therefore Ubuntu is... if it's not in the package manager, I probably shouldn't be running it.
Nonsense. Third-party stuff works fine. I'm not sure if you're talking about third party.deb files (like Cedega, which works fine) or software that doesn't come in a.deb (like firefox, which works a lot better than the crippled firefox in Ubuntu), but both are perfectly valid options for Ubuntu users.
I know nothing about the Canadian Green Party, but the Dutch green party (Groenlinks) is actually one of the most internet-savvy parties, big supporters of Open Source, free speech and privacy. Sometimes I'm surprised of the nutcases that seem to represent the green parties on the other side of the pond.
Ofcourse the US Republicans also have some notable computer-illiterates. And the previous Dutch prime minister (Wim Kok, one of the best PMs we've had, actually) didn't even know how to use a mouse.
ODE and OPCODE are excellent open source libraries not written in Java, I've used both on a regular basis. If your going to do everything using native libraries written in C/C++ then what is the point bothering with Java at all?
If you can do everything in assembly, why bother with a higher level programming language at all? Because it's easier to write and a lot easier to maintain. That's why. If a high level programming language like has low-level libraries for high performance stuff like this, why should you noot make use of it? Why not use the best of booth worlds?
You may as well write the glue (because that mainly whats left) in C++
You could, but you'd hhave to worry about the low-level programming stuff that comes with C++. Why should you not use a higher level programming language like Java (or Python) for that?
I have actually done something similar using Python and it was almost as fast as a native C/C++ solution, which makes sense since 99% of the code was C/C++ anyway.
See, that's much better advice. Write the application-specific code in a high-level language, and make use of high performance libraries for the low-level stuff that every application is going to need. The use of Java is similar to the use of Python in this case.
...others said they wanted careers with managerial opportunities.
So, in other words, they don't want to work in IT.
There are plenty of managerial opportunities in IT. There's a lot of demand for project managers who know about the kind of work the project involves. Like programming.
I keep hearing at performance reviews that it's exactly my managerial, administrative, customer-oriented skills that are lacking. I'm bad at those things exactly because I want to be a programmer, but apparently, being a programmer in the real world involves just a bit more than simply coding all day long. If female programmers want that, please come work for us.
You might know the syntax, and how to write hello world in much less time than that but either your definition of "moderate proficiency" is very different to mine or I just don't believe you.
What kind of programming education did you have? One of the courses at my university had the explicit goal that after that course you'd be able to pick up any programing language in about two weeks.
And it works. I was hired for my current job as web developer purely on my Java knowledge, and I learned javascript, xslt, and even html and css on the job. The basics of xslt took a few days. Same with javascript. It helps to have a good reference manual nearby, ofcourse.
The article only mentions the old non-relational databases from the '80s, but there are other non-relational databases. Due to the need to store objects in databases, object databases are gaining popularity. Most systems still use a relational database with an object-relational bridge, but that doesn't perform nearly as well as a dedicated object database. They're not dominating the database market yet, but it's definitely a useful skill to have.
Economics. Computers are cheaper than programmers, so efficiently writing code is more important than writing efficient code.
Actually, Java is hardly slower than C++ these days, so for most purposes, you can write pretty efficient code in higher level languages. C/C++ will remain for the really low-level stuff that you simply can't do in Java, and for the high-performance libraries where even the slightest speed gain will pay off in the end.
C/C++ will stay for quite some time indeed, but mostly for low-level stuff like drivers, OS and some other high-performance stuff that will always remain system-dependent. I think for applications, services and other high-level programming, C will die. The ease of maintainance and system-independence of Java and Python are advantages that C simply can't compete with. So C will stick around, but not for someone like me.
"A homeless person showed Rick van Amserfoort his collection of 30 fines. The harvest of one month on the streets: [...] smoking a joint in public
That's illegal in.nl?
In some places. Just like there are places where you're not allowed to smoke, or not allowed to drink alcohol. Alcohol is actually the best comparison here: some time ago I read that in some parks you're not allowed to drink alcohol, but the police won't interfere with well-groomed, law abiding people drinking rose on a warm summer evening. It's mainly so they have an excuse to arrest homeless people drinking a beer there.
If you look like an average guy with a job, the police won't stop you from smoking a joint in public. If you look like you're homeless, a drug dealer, in a gang, or Moroccan, then they will. The point of these laws is not to stop people from doing it, but to have an excuse to arrest people that are considered "trouble". Ofcourse if we get a slightly more repressive regime, that category may end up including people with outspoken political opinions that differ from the government's, demonstrators, foreigners, poor people, or basically anyone that's not on the government's list of favourites. And that's why these kind of broad, arbitrarily enforced laws are evil.
Slashdot Mirror
I called Dell two days ago, and got someone who spoke perfect Dutch. And while my laptop was bought in Netherland, it was no problem that I called Belgian customer service, and they sent a technician to a Belgian address. He couldn't fix it, unfortunately, so I'm waiting for them to call me back in Netherland and hopefully they send another technician to the Dutch address where I am today. I'm pleasantly surprised by the internationality of their support. (Although my wifi still doesn't work.)
Because they want more power over the consumer, and that means restricting the consumer even further.
Where is it written that Microsoft has to threaten and bully? It's not about what Microsoft has to do -- they're free to bully as much as they like, and they've been doing so for most of their existence -- but they promised assistance, and the only thing the microsoft guy offered in the end was mockery and insults.
Now where is it written that people who have done nothing wrong have to jump through Microsoft's hoops?
On the contrary, it's the microsoft guy who's been waffling. He claimed license infringement, but never explained properly how what parts of the license were infringed. Microsoft doesn't have to do anything when they're not satisfied with the situation, but they shouldn't be complaining if others don't do anything about changing the situation either.
He did. He cooperated, on the blind assumption that the Microsoft guy was right and would provide the required quote. Only when they ignored him for months without living up to their promise or providing any kind of information at all, did the dev revert to the original situation.
Microsoft never showed how his activity was illegal. That's all they had to do, but instead, they blindly relied on bullying and blind obedience. According to the dev's lawyer, there was no illegal activity whatsoever. Microsoft offered no information that proved there was. The dev repeatedly told MS that he would gladly do what they asked if only they did that, and the microsoft guy kept going around the issue and assumed the dev would do it anyway, even if he got insulted, bullied and ignored. That's simply not the way the world works.
It's microsoft that ignored him for months. Yes, it's Microsoft's copyright, and it was in no way violated by the dev. Microsoft did claim that the license was violated, but never made it clear how. The clauses they claimed were violated, didn't say what they hoped they said.
Well, duh. That's the whole point. Microsoft didn't held up it's part of the bargain, failed to explain how the dev violated the license, so it's kind of obvious that eventually the dev wants to put that support back in. He made it abundantly clear that he would prefer to support the Express version.
In absense of any license violation, he was basically just being nice to Microsoft because they asked him something. He wanted to know what he would get in exchange. He got only insults, so he decided to stop cooperating. He's not required to be nice to Microsoft, you know?
Remember that we're not talking about just some game and its gameplay here. We're talking Fallout, which is a game where style and atmosphere is vital. Lots of people were afraid that Bethesda wouldn't be able to get that across, and this trailer lets them show that they "get it". For just some random action game, trailers and pretty movies are meaningless, but in this case and at this moment, a stylish trailer to show the atmosphere is a great idea. Because that's what Fallout is about.
Have you been reading the same exchange I have? Jamie has been very clear about what he wants to know: in what way has he violated the license? Instead, he gets emails, conference calls and what not, but no answer to this very simple yet central question. He's made it clear that he wants to cooperate, even removing the support before he got the answer, but in the end, MS gave him nothing except insults and threats.
It's not the dev that's being the dick, it's the microsoft guy. He keeps wasting everybody's time without actually helping in any way.
How about Eve? It's been around for ages, it has no levels at all, you can do what you like, and the political landscape is entirely determined by players. (And apparently some devs that are helping some players, but that's another slashdot story.)
If it's bad, it's not uncanny at all. It's just bad. The Uncannny Valley is what happens when it's extremely good. A previous article about this on slashdot explained that the same thing happens when you see a fresh corpse. It looks perfectly human, but something subtle, something really important. is missing.
When something does not appear human, its human traits stand out. When something does appear human, its inhuman traits stannd out. This is basically what the Uncannny Valley is about. Exactly what should be considered human and inhuman here probably depends on a thousands of factors. Perhaps being "done well" is part of it, but mostly I think more human appearance and behaviour raises the stanndards of craftmanship considerably. When you're using stick figures, it's not a problem if they don't move exactly like Tiger Woods. In fact, it might be uncannny if they did. If you've got spectacular, photorealistic graphics, everything that's not equally realistic gives you the feeling that something is not quite right.
Can you buy Nintendo stock? Over a year ago I wanted to buy shares in Nintendo, but couldn't figure out where they were traded and how to buy them. They weren't at Nasdaq, and if they are publicly traded in Japan, my bank apparently doesn't trade there or doesn't allow me to do so. It would have been a nice couple of thousand dollars profit, I think.
Alright, I'll grant you that, although I think firefox is actually one of those rare cases where you should not use the package manager, but download straight from mozilla instead. Doing that solved a lot of problems for me.
Quite possibly the best story ever in a CRPG (I don't call them RPG because they're not), was Planescpae:Torment (and it told it without lame cutscenes too). I have no idea how well or badly it sold, but since people always mention Fallout and Baldur's Gate, I suspect Torment sold a lot worse.
So yes, I think you're right. Strong, engaging stories have an enthousiastic but really tiny niche market in the west.
The few Japanese CRPGs I've played (which don't include Final Fantasy, I'm afraid), actually had a rather lame story. They did have a story (town was attacked, talk to the right person, trigger next event, go to some place, trigger some cutscene), but it didn't grab me. It lay there waiting for me to trigger the next event. And it wasn't very well written. I don't doubt Final Fantasy was a lot better, but so were Fallout and Torment.
Ideally, I want both freedom and a good story. Fallout and Torment offered that. No other CRPG I've seen does.
I wish that was true. No, it was a bit reminiscent of Scotty in Star Trek IV. I believe he picked up the mouse and pointed it at the screen. And that for a government that claimed to want to stimulate the "knowledge economy" and invest in IT and stuff like that.
Nonsense. Third-party stuff works fine. I'm not sure if you're talking about third party .deb files (like Cedega, which works fine) or software that doesn't come in a .deb (like firefox, which works a lot better than the crippled firefox in Ubuntu), but both are perfectly valid options for Ubuntu users.
Isn't a GM a volunteer who is doing work for CCP? Makes sense they want to keep him happy.
To show favouritism, you have to show that a corp gets its complaints answered much
faster than other people.
I know nothing about the Canadian Green Party, but the Dutch green party (Groenlinks) is actually one of the most internet-savvy parties, big supporters of Open Source, free speech and privacy. Sometimes I'm surprised of the nutcases that seem to represent the green parties on the other side of the pond.
Ofcourse the US Republicans also have some notable computer-illiterates. And the previous Dutch prime minister (Wim Kok, one of the best PMs we've had, actually) didn't even know how to use a mouse.
If you can do everything in assembly, why bother with a higher level programming language at all? Because it's easier to write and a lot easier to maintain. That's why. If a high level programming language like has low-level libraries for high performance stuff like this, why should you noot make use of it? Why not use the best of booth worlds?
You could, but you'd hhave to worry about the low-level programming stuff that comes with C++. Why should you not use a higher level programming language like Java (or Python) for that?
See, that's much better advice. Write the application-specific code in a high-level language, and make use of high performance libraries for the low-level stuff that every application is going to need. The use of Java is similar to the use of Python in this case.
There are plenty of managerial opportunities in IT. There's a lot of demand for project managers who know about the kind of work the project involves. Like programming.
I keep hearing at performance reviews that it's exactly my managerial, administrative, customer-oriented skills that are lacking. I'm bad at those things exactly because I want to be a programmer, but apparently, being a programmer in the real world involves just a bit more than simply coding all day long. If female programmers want that, please come work for us.
What kind of programming education did you have? One of the courses at my university had the explicit goal that after that course you'd be able to pick up any programing language in about two weeks.
And it works. I was hired for my current job as web developer purely on my Java knowledge, and I learned javascript, xslt, and even html and css on the job. The basics of xslt took a few days. Same with javascript. It helps to have a good reference manual nearby, ofcourse.
Most Apache frameworks are actually in Java. I don't think I've seen a single line of, or reference to C code at ApacheCon.
The article only mentions the old non-relational databases from the '80s, but there are other non-relational databases. Due to the need to store objects in databases, object databases are gaining popularity. Most systems still use a relational database with an object-relational bridge, but that doesn't perform nearly as well as a dedicated object database. They're not dominating the database market yet, but it's definitely a useful skill to have.
Economics. Computers are cheaper than programmers, so efficiently writing code is more important than writing efficient code.
Actually, Java is hardly slower than C++ these days, so for most purposes, you can write pretty efficient code in higher level languages. C/C++ will remain for the really low-level stuff that you simply can't do in Java, and for the high-performance libraries where even the slightest speed gain will pay off in the end.
C/C++ will stay for quite some time indeed, but mostly for low-level stuff like drivers, OS and some other high-performance stuff that will always remain system-dependent. I think for applications, services and other high-level programming, C will die. The ease of maintainance and system-independence of Java and Python are advantages that C simply can't compete with. So C will stick around, but not for someone like me.
That last one is actually true.
In some places. Just like there are places where you're not allowed to smoke, or not allowed to drink alcohol. Alcohol is actually the best comparison here: some time ago I read that in some parks you're not allowed to drink alcohol, but the police won't interfere with well-groomed, law abiding people drinking rose on a warm summer evening. It's mainly so they have an excuse to arrest homeless people drinking a beer there.
If you look like an average guy with a job, the police won't stop you from smoking a joint in public. If you look like you're homeless, a drug dealer, in a gang, or Moroccan, then they will. The point of these laws is not to stop people from doing it, but to have an excuse to arrest people that are considered "trouble". Ofcourse if we get a slightly more repressive regime, that category may end up including people with outspoken political opinions that differ from the government's, demonstrators, foreigners, poor people, or basically anyone that's not on the government's list of favourites. And that's why these kind of broad, arbitrarily enforced laws are evil.
Once is enough.